to being grouped in self-conscious, affectionate attitudes that did not
remotely convey the business-like relations of a business-like
committee. "That's what they like! Votes for women, indeed!"
Fixed by the glassy eye of the camera, we were unable to reply to this;
so our scornful critic went away, doubtless confirmed in his belief that
there is no higher reward for a rebel woman than that of standing in a
thin blouse, at a street corner, to be photographed, blown about by a
cutting east wind, jostled by yelling children, and exposed to the
chance of recognition at any minute by some disapproving friend or
relative.
"Nobody will ever look upon us as real people in business, after that,"
sighed one of our shop assistants when we regained comparative privacy
behind the counter.
"Nobody," acquiesced our militant member, gloomily. "And only this
morning, I was really feeling like a genuine tradesman when I took down
the shutters and agreed with the man next door that trade will never
improve as long as this Government is in power."
"Our trade certainly won't," agreed a chorus of anti-Government
agitators.
The door was suddenly flung open, and a boy came in and flung a
sovereign on the counter.
"Could you oblige Mr. Bunting with change, please, miss?" he asked
briskly.
That was all. There was no condescension in his tone. There was no
impudence in his manner. He did not ask if we wanted our rights now, or
if we would sooner wait till we got them. He did not say he had no wish
to see women sitting in _his_ Parliament. He just stood there, as
shopman to shopman, waiting to effect a trade transaction that raised
us, once and for all, beyond the level of amateurs.
Nothing approaching a sovereign's worth of change was in the
chocolate-box hopefully described by us as the till; but our militant
member, now as ever, knew how to rise to a great occasion. She looked up
from the column of figures she had hastily pretended to be adding up
when the shop bell tinkled, seemed to take in the boy's request with
difficulty, called "Forward, dear, please!" in a languid tone up the
spiral staircase, then returned to the column of figures. No lady of
business experience in any shop or any post office could have been more
exasperatingly irrelevant.
The rest of us looked fearfully at the boy in front of the counter. He
was kicking his heels together and whistling tunelessly. Her procedure
had, indeed, not erred in a single detail; and he saw nothing aggressive
in her behaviour. Henceforth we knew we could count on being treated in
the trade as equals.
XI
The Person who cannot Escape
The lady of the manor seemed gently amused when I criticized the
architecture of the cottage in which I had taken rooms, on the farther
side of the village.
"It is not picturesque, like those that belong to us," she admitted;
"and I always think it was a little unwise of Horace to let that piece
of land for building purposes without having the plans submitted to us
first. Still, the land was no good for anything else, not even for
allotments; and if we had stipulated for gables and things of that sort
we might have it still on our hands, a prey to taxation."
"I'm not thinking of the outside," I said; "it's the inside that matters
when you have to live in a place. Nor am I thinking of myself, being in
a position to leave whenever I find it impossible to endure the
discomfort another minute----"
"My dear," said the lady of the manor, looking concerned, "is it as bad
as that? I told you it was absurd to expect to find rooms in a primitive
place like this----"
"I am not thinking of myself," I repeated, "but of poor Mr. and Mrs.
Jim Bunce, who have to live there always because there isn't another
cottage in the place, to say nothing of all the little Bunces, three
boys and a little----"
"Oh!" she smiled, instantly reassured; "don't worry about them. They are
not writing books, like their lodger. You must remember that the poor do
not feel things, as you and I do; otherwise, they would appreciate nice
houses when they get them. Only think how disheartened Horace and I were
over those sweet gabled cottages we re-fronted for them down by the
marsh----"
"Were those the ones you told me on no account to go to?" I interrupted,
presuming unkindly on an old friendship.
I was told not to be unreasonable. "Naturally, I advised you to go to a
newer place where the sanitation would be better," said my hostess. "I
am sorry you don't like the Bunces' house, but that is your own fault
for not coming here when you were invited."
"It seems to me rather more the fault of the man who built the Bunces'
house," I represented, still unreasonably, as I gathered from her
expression. "Have you seriously studied its front elevation? A child
could draw it on a slate:--two rooms upstairs, two rooms downstairs; two
windows upstairs, two windows downstairs; chimneys anywhere you like,
but never in direct communication with fireplaces, as the lodger
discovers when the fire is lighted in the sitting-room."
"It is no use trying to teach these people anything," murmured the lady
of the manor; "of course, damp wood, badly laid----"
"It reminds me," I continued, "of a dolls' house I once had, made out of
a packing-case, neatly divided into four compartments, with a staircase
jammed against one side of it and brought to an abrupt termination by
the doorstep. The staircase is exactly like my dolls' house one, so
steep that a false step lands one straight in the front garden with no
conscious interval for falling. Mrs. Jim kindly provides against this
contingency by leaving the front door always open," I added hastily, in
deference to a look of renewed concern.
The lady of the manor agreed that there was something in what I said
about the defects of modern architecture. "They do not build as they
once did," she observed sententiously; "but then, the peasantry is not
what it used to be. If the poor were still thrifty and hard-working, and
did their own brewing and baking----"
"How can they?" I interposed. "You should see Mrs. Bunce's daily attempt
to cook me a milk-pudding in an oven that never bakes anything equally
on both sides, and sometimes refuses to bake at all. Oh! I never know
what or why the poor are supposed to brew, but I do know that they
cannot bake in the houses they are obliged to live in."
"My dear," was the reply I received to all this, "you have only yourself
to blame for seeking impossibilities in a country cottage, when you
might have settled down with your typewriter in the blue room over the
library, and had your meals regularly. I do not pity you in the least."
"I do not pity myself," I said. "The person to be pitied is the person
who cannot escape, never the person who can."
As I walked back to the cottage that was built on the plan of a dolls'
house, I wondered how long it would be before I availed myself of my
privilege of escape. When I first became Mrs. Jim Bunce's lodger, a
polite fiction existed that I was to dwell apart in the two front rooms,
away from the family, a detached and superior position that might have
made the writing of books a possibility. Unfortunately, this magnificent
isolation had to yield to the force of numbers. There was only a
sketchy, ill-fitting door between me and the kitchen, and I shared to
some extent in the family joys and sorrows--they were generally
sorrows--even when this was closed. More often it gave way before sudden
pressure, and burst open to admit a crawling baby, followed by an
assortment of small boys, pigs, chickens, puppies, and anything else
that was young and undisciplined, brought up tempestuously at the rear
by Mrs. Bunce and a broom. The writing of books did not thrive under
these conditions, nor in the more strenuous moments that followed when
the baby girl, bored and whimpering, had been carried off and set upon
the flagstones under my window with nothing more thrilling to engage her
attention than a piece of firewood.
The baby for once was not crying when I arrived back at my rooms, a
state of grace that was accounted for when I came upon her mother, who
was laying my tea, with the baby tucked under one arm.
"She be that okkard I canna keep her quiet another way," was Mrs. Jim's
simple explanation of her feat of skill.
It seemed an opportunity to make friends with the greatest disturber of
my peace, and I rashly flirted with the baby until it was converted into
the firmest of allies. Nothing, as it turned out, could have been more
destructive of my future hopes of accomplishing work. If it was
difficult to write when the baby cried, it became impossible when the
baby laughed. I cannot recommend the game of "peep-bo" to any one who
seriously wishes to combine business and recreation, though the baby's
mother seemed to regard it habitually from this point of view. I have
seen her play "peep-bo" while she mixed puddings, fed pigs or boys,
washed clothes, scrubbed floors, buried a dead chicken, or parcelled out
the weekly income into its amazing weekly budget. Perhaps she led a less
chequered existence during the month I stayed with her; for without
acquiring her agility in doing housework with the baby under one arm, I
became an expert in distracting the baby's attention from an insistent
tooth, and found this far harder work than any job I was ever paid for.
I came to the conclusion that one does not know much about hard work
until one has lived with somebody whose work is never done and never
paid for.
This was particularly impressed upon me one evening, when, having put
the children to bed, fed every live thing that clamoured in the thickly
populated back yard, cleared away her husband's supper and watched him
start for the village club, Mrs. Bunce told me she was going to step
across the road to do the week's washing for a sick neighbour. This
little act of humanity, mentioned so casually as to divest it of the
slightest taint of charity, kept her at the wash-tub till past midnight;
and at five the next morning I heard her go downstairs to get her man's
breakfast. After that, one felt it would be an immense relief to hear
her grumble. She never did; and there were moments when I began to see
points in the comfortable theory held by the lady of the manor with
regard to the insensibility of "these people."
There was the day, for instance, when the baby, after crying fretfully
for two hours, took to battering a saucepan lid with a tin spoon. I had
borne its wails with set teeth, but this new and excruciating din took
me into the back room, bent on remonstrance. I was met with a beatific
smile from Mrs. Jim, who was peeling potatoes at the sink.
"Bless her heart!" she said placidly. "That be the first time as ever
she's been quiet this morning!"
Finally came the day when stolid, undemonstrative Mrs. Bunce upset all
theories as to the wonderful patience of the poor. The lady of the manor
called with an annual invitation to a mothers' tea. It was Saturday
afternoon, and the weekly house-cleaning was in full swing. The
inopportune visitor, stepping over a heap of small boys whose tangled
arms and legs suggested the interior of a fisherman's worm-can, came
next upon the baby, who, in her week-end pinafore, was still hopefully
sucking a spoon that had once held jam. The jam was distributed
impartially over the baby's countenance, and no one could pretend she
was looking her best, a criticism that might have been applied with
equal truth to her mother, who was engaged in cleaning the kitchen
flues. The general effect of Mrs. Bunce's home was certainly not that of
the picturesque cottage interior so dear to the imagination of those who
live remotely in manor-houses; and it was easy to see that this lady of
the manor welcomed such a heaven-sent opportunity of being feudal, as
she alluded in a perfectly kind and courteous manner to the disarranged
condition of the kitchen stove and the mottled complexion of the baby.
She gave her invitation as a sort of consolation prize at the end, and
went away without waiting to hear if it was accepted--as in the good old
days, I suppose, when a refusal would have been met with the
_oubliette_. I walked up the road with her, and learned how necessary it
was to speak out now and then; otherwise these young mothers grew so
careless and slovenly. The idea of slovenliness in connection with this
particular young mother, who to my knowledge did the work of all the
servants in the manor-house, in addition to being a wife and a mother
and a dressmaker, left me incapable of speech.
Mrs. Jim Bunce, who had remained silent and immovable while the duty of
the rich in speaking plainly to the poor was being fulfilled, sat
playing with the baby on her lap when I returned to the house. There was
just time to reflect that she had chosen a curious moment at which to
suspend her weekly attack upon the flues, before she gave me a further
surprise.
"You wouldna think as I didn't never want to have a girl when I had this
one, would ye, miss?" she jerked out abruptly.
Still failing to understand that anything unusual was happening, I said
something stupid and polite about a personal preference for little
girls. She smiled across at me rather queerly as she started suddenly to
her feet and caught the baby to her with a quick, passionate gesture
that made it cry out with astonishment.
"It bain't that," she said roughly. "I didna want to bring another woman
into it."
She stood there, looking at me fiercely, and the baby gave another
whimper to express its outraged sense of the fitness of things. There
was nothing heroic in the woman's figure; I think her hair was coming
down, and there was soot about her, and her blouse wore a general air of
bulgy disorder. At her feet lay strewn the symbols of inartistic toil, a
hairless stove broom, a cracked saucer with a mess of blacklead in it,
some indescribable bits of rag. Over it all hung the sickly smell of
stale, unventilated air, mingled with the fumes of damp and smouldering
wood. It was assuredly not the setting for a great situation. Yet, as
we stood there, looking at each other, in the little hush that fell upon
us after that outburst of the rebel mother, I found myself wondering if
I had ever known how great situations are made.
The baby struggled to escape from an embrace it did not understand; and,
of course, the baby was right. Mrs. Jim Bunce recognized the call of
convention, and acknowledged it by giving a sound scolding to those
portions of her family that happened to be within reach. The flues were
attacked afresh with tempestuous energy; the baby was left sobbing and
neglected in one corner, the sprawling boys scurried to another. I was
told as plainly as looks could tell that my place on a Saturday
afternoon was not the home.
I decided that this was not the moment to explain to Mrs. Jim Bunce that
an age was dawning in which women would be glad instead of afraid "to
bring another woman into it."
XII
The Daughter who stays at Home
"I suppose you think," Penelope threw at me with unnecessary vehemence,
"that it is only the daughter who lives away from home who is really a
rebel."
"On the contrary," I said, "most rebellion is bred in the home. Napoleon
said----"
"Oh, I know what Napoleon said," interrupted Penelope. "At least, I know
the kind of thing he must have said, if you want to quote it. Seriously,
I don't think you know what it feels like to be the daughter who comes
back to live at home, after being handicapped by a modern education. You
see, the daughter has gone on, and the home hasn't. It isn't mother's
fault, because she naturally thought she was fitting me for home life
when she let me take a college course in housewifery. But what is the
use of knowing all about the chemistry of cooking and the science of
house-cleaning, if you have to apply it in a home that has stayed in the
same place for a hundred years? Everything and everybody is against one,
from the abominable kitchen-range to the cook who has been with mother
ever since she was married. You are going to say Napoleon again."
"I was going to say," was the cautious reply she received to this, "that
the only victories which leave no regret are those that are gained over
ignorance."
"Who said that?" demanded Penelope suspiciously.
"Napoleon," I admitted.
"Now that we have got rid of Napoleon," proceeded Penelope, coldly,
"perhaps you will take some interest in--oh, what rubbish to say that
about the victories that are gained over ignorance! All the victories
you win at home are victories over ignorance, and they always leave
regret behind, always, always! That is why it is much worse to win than
to lose, when you fight at home, ever so much worse!"
"Having got rid of Napoleon," I said soothingly, "why do we not talk as
though we had? Tell me what is wrong with your mother's house, from the
college point of view."
Penelope stopped looking crestfallen, and chuckled. "It is all creepers
outside and old sinks inside," she exclaimed concisely. "But when I said
that to mother, she didn't understand one bit. She even seemed a little
hurt. I didn't mean to hurt anybody's feelings, naturally; I was trying
to be funny. Do you think," she added irrelevantly, "that there was ever
a time when my grandmother called my mother new-fangled?"
Knowing Penelope's mother, I said I thought this possible; knowing
Penelope, I went on to suggest that tact was an excellent substitute
for humour in the home.
"I know," she sighed. "But it is only in books that the daughter of the
house is a monument of tact and goes about her household duties,
rattling an enormous bunch of keys and singing snatches of gay song. I
don't know how you sing snatches of anything, but if it in the least
resembles what Sarah sings when she is cleaning plate, I am very glad
that only one of us does it. Of course, there is mother's old bunch of
keys if I want to rattle as I walk; but as soon as I found out that only
two of these opened anything, I took off those two and tied them
together with a piece of ribbon. Even mother admitted the wisdom of
suppressing five-and-twenty keys that belonged to no existing locks; but
Cook regards my piece of unofficial key ribbon as one more proof of
new-fangled ways. You don't know how difficult it is to be a daughter of
the house with success when half the house knew you as a baby, and the
other half wishes it had never known you and your new-fangled ways at
all."
I asked for details of the new-fangled ways, and the unsuccessful
daughter of the house cheered up slightly. "You should have seen their
faces," she said, "when I drew up a time-table of meals for a whole week
in advance, to save wasting Cook's time, and mine, every morning. Cook
nearly gave notice."
To my objection that somebody's unusual appetite or the arrival of an
unexpected guest would upset the time-table for the rest of the week,
she retorted that the same might be said of the time-table for any one
day. "In both cases you would merely send out for something extra," she
represented. "But I can't induce Cook to see that. She says it has never
been done that way, and--oh, you know the rest! It's so queer, isn't it,
that people think there is something abnormal and unfeminine about you
if you get the housekeeping done in ten minutes instead of spreading it
over the whole morning? Besides, when I set out to make a list of meals
for a whole week, I choose a moment when I am feeling hungry and
therefore inspired. That gives one a chance of inventing something new;
but if I go into the kitchen directly I have eaten a large breakfast,
the thought of more meals is intolerable, and I say 'Yes' to all the
dull old dishes that Cook suggests."
The housework led to more rebellion, she proceeded to complain. "I did
my best to persuade Sarah that if she would do the cleaning in a
labour-saving sort of way she would probably have time to go for a walk
every day before luncheon. That caused a revolution." Pressed for
particulars of the revolution, Penelope chuckled again. "First, there
was Cook, who said she had never been in any place where the housemaid
went for a walk before luncheon; she further intimated that she could
not stay in a place where the housemaid, etc., etc. Then there was
mother, who said that, of course, she would not dream of interfering
when I was doing everything so nicely, and all that; but if I went away
at any time it would be very awkward for her, as she couldn't have the
maids going for walks at all hours of the day, with no one to see where
they went. I pointed out to her that I should not dream of seeing where
they went, if I were at home, also that they already went out on stated
evenings, when it might be even more desirable and was certainly less
possible to see where they went. Mother was just beginning to
understand--mother is splendid, really, you know!--when Sarah spoiled
everything by declaring that nothing would induce her to go out in the
morning. She had never been expected to do such a thing in any other
place, and she wasn't going to be put upon now. If she could have
another evening instead and an extra Sunday--well, after that, all was
sound and confusion, and mother issued from the struggle kind but
triumphant. Since the plate-cleaning episode, which followed close upon
the revolution, I have felt a mere flattened failure of a daughter."
The plate-cleaning episode had been caused by the attempted introduction
of a cleaning-cloth, which dispensed with the necessity for plate powder
or metal paste. "Sarah seemed quite pleased about it at first," said
Penelope with a sigh. "She pretended to understand perfectly when I
explained how nice it would be to have a clean and empty housemaid's
cupboard, instead of having every shelf crowded with plate-brushes and
bits of sodden rag and tins of sticky brass paste, and that horrid
saucer full of plate powder that sprinkles pink dust over everything
when it gets dry. You know that kind of cupboard, don't you? Well,
Sarah took to the idea like a lamb, and everything was going splendidly
when mother caught her rubbing up the drawing-room candlesticks with my
new patent cloth; and because I couldn't prove on the spur of the moment
that the Sheffield plate would be none the worse for it fifty years
hence, mother said she had the utmost confidence in my judgment, but she
could not help feeling that the old way was safer. After that, I found
Cook putting the cloth on the fire with the tongs, while Sarah hoped
impressively at the top of her voice that she hadn't given herself
blood-poisoning by using the nasty-smelling thing. So now all the old
pink saucers and tins and things have reappeared in the housemaid's
cupboard, and the plate-cleaning once more occupies the whole of the
morning, and the brass occupies another and the stair-rods another, to
say nothing of all the useless copper pots and pans on the kitchen
chimney-piece that Cook never uses, but won't let me put away--oh, we
are jogging along quite comfortably now in the dear old way of a hundred
years ago!"
The sequel to this occurred about a week later, when I went to call on
Penelope's mother and found ladders placed against the front of the
house, and the trailing creepers of ages given over to the ministrations
of the local nurseryman.
"Yes," said Penelope's mother, complacently, "they should have been cut
before. Creepers are unhealthy things; they shut out light and air and
spoil the window architecture. As Penelope says, the outside is the
only part of any house on which the architect has expended either skill
or attention, so it is a pity to hide it."
I said something polite down her ear-trumpet about new ways of looking
at these things; and Penelope's mother smiled in agreement. "Some people
do not know how to move with the times," she said. "Because a thing was
done in a certain way a hundred years ago, let it be done in that way
for ever and ever, they say. Yet, by bringing intelligence to bear upon
the common things of every day, even toil may become a pleasure, and
duty--well, duty almost ceases to exist. Of course, I am speaking
figuratively," she added hastily, as if she felt she had gone too far.
Not knowing exactly how duty could be a figure of speech, or how,
indeed, it could ever be anything else, I remained silent before this
reincarnation of the earliest Victorian lady I know; and Penelope's
mother took up the silver teapot--not, however, to pour out tea, but to
point out to me its shining surface.