THE S.R.W.
Why is it that women are so fond of founding societies both for the
improvement of themselves and of each other? Is it a confession
of weakness, or is it one of the signs of the coming of the
millenium?
Mrs. Whittaker was a woman who never did things by halves. She
distinctly prided herself thereupon.
"If a thing, my dear, is worth doing," I heard her say about the
time of which I am writing, "it is worth doing _well_. I have great
faith--although I have gone so far above the old-world thoughts of
religion--in the verse which says: 'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do,
do it with all thy might.' It is a grand precept, one that I instil
into my children--er--er--"
"For all you are worth," remarked a flippant young woman who was
listening.
"I--I shouldn't have expressed it in that way," stammered Regina,
somewhat taken aback. "But--but--er--it's what I mean."
"And your children, are they the same?"
"Yes, I am proud to say that my children are very much like me in that
respect. When they play, they play; when they work, they work; when they
idle they idle; and I am sure if ever they were naughty, that they
would be naughty with all their might."
Poor Regina! Well, to make the story somewhat shorter, I must tell you
that when Regina Whittaker went into public life, she did so in no
half-hearted manner.
"I am convinced," she remarked to the lord of her bosom, "I am convinced
that I am taking a step in the right direction. What do you think,
Alfie?"
"My dear," said Alfred Whittaker, somewhat sleepily, for he had had a
hard day in the city and had eaten an extremely good dinner, "if it
pleases you, it pleases me. You have such a clear, sensible head," he
went on, feeling that perhaps he had been a little too unsympathetic,
"you have such a clear, sensible head, that I am sure you will take up
no question that is not a good one--an advantageous one."
"I thought you would see it in that light, dear Alfie," said Mrs.
Whittaker in tones which betokened much pleasure. "You are so generous
and so just. Some men would hate to feel that their wives had any
interest outside their own homes."
"Oh, my dear heart and soul!" exclaimed Alfred Whittaker, looking up in
a very wide-awake sort of way, "surely this is a land of liberty. I
don't want to tie you down to being no better than my slave. God knows
you fag enough and slave enough for all of us. It would be hard if you
couldn't have a few opinions and a few interests of your own."
"Yes, dear; but it isn't quite that. It is not only of opinions that I
am speaking, it is the encouraging way in which you consent to my
entering on this somewhat pronounced question."
"I have absolute faith in your judgment," said Alfred Whittaker; and
again he composed himself for his after-dinner nap.
Regina sat looking at him as he slumbered. Her heart was very full, for
she was an affectionate woman, and, in spite of her little airs and
pretensions, she was really a good woman at bottom. Her heart swelled
with pride to think that this was her husband, this handsome, portly,
dignified man with a presence, an air of being somebody, this man who
was so good, so easy to live with, such a good husband and such an
affectionate father. And to think that he was hers! As I have said
already, her heart thrilled within her.
It was true that others might not have agreed with Regina in her
estimate of her husband. The outer world might have thought him anything
but handsome, might have thought that he had anything rather than a
presence. What Regina called portly, a less tender critic might have
described in an extremely unpleasant manner; but, you see, Regina looked
at him with eyes of possession, and the eyes of possession are ever
somewhat biassed.
So her thoughts ran pleasantly on. Yes, it was indeed sweet to be so
blessed as she was in her home life. She had once believed that her life
was a wasted one. Well, that was in the foolish days, before she had
tried her wings. Not that she ever regarded her flights into the world
of higher thought with the very smallest regret; that could never be.
Enlightenment is always enlightenment, whether it is actually paying in
a monetary sense or not. She firmly believed that an elaborate and
somewhat masculine education had enabled her to become a better wife and
mother than she would have been had she been contented with the genteel
education which her parents had thought good enough, further than which
indeed their minds had never attempted to fly. Perhaps, her thoughts
ran, her mission in life was to bring enlightenment to the minds of
other women, in a somewhat different way to that which she had hitherto
accepted as the most reasonable. Be that as it may, Regina entered upon
her duties as President of the S.R.W., armed with the full sanction of
her husband's permission and approval.
To all her friends she was an amazing and, at the same time, an amusing
study about this epoch.
"I am perfectly certain," remarked Mrs. M'Quade to the mother of the
little girl who at school was called Tuppenny, "I am perfectly certain
that Mrs. Whittaker has at last found her _metier_. Are you going to
join her scheme for the regeneration of women?"
"I don't think so," replied the lady who lived at Highthorn. "My husband
is so very sneering when anything of the kind is mentioned. I shouldn't
mind for myself; I think it would be rather fun. They are going to have
tea-parties and _soirees_, and all sorts of amusements. But George would
be so full of his fun, that I don't feel somehow it would be good enough
for me to go into. Besides, it's three guineas a year. As far as I can
tell," she continued, "from what Mrs. Whittaker has told me, there won't
be any real regeneration of women in our day. It may come in the day of
our grandchildren, but I don't feel inclined to work for that."
"That shows a great want of public spirit," remarked the doctor's wife,
laughingly.
"Yes, I daresay it does, but I don't believe women are public-spirited,
except here and there--generally when they have made a failure of their
own lives, as my old man always says."
"But Mrs. Whittaker hasn't made a failure of her life."
"Well, she has and she hasn't. She has failed to become anything very
much out of the ordinary. She is very fond of calling herself an
unconventional woman who never does anything like anybody else, but I
fail to see very much in it excepting that she makes horrible guys of
her girls."
"Well, I am going to join the society," said Mrs. M'Quade, with the air
of one who is prepared to receive ridicule. "No, I don't pretend for a
moment that I want regenerating myself--or even that other women do--but
Mrs. Whittaker has been a very good patient to the doctor one way and
another, and she's stuck to us, and I think the least I can do is to
join her pet scheme--and, mind you, it _is_ a pet scheme."
"I call that absolutely Machiavellian," said her friend.
"Oh, a doctor's wife has to be Machiavellian, my dear, and a thousand
other things," said Mrs. M'Quade, easily. "I have been fifteen years in
the Park, and I have kept in with everybody--never had a wrong word with
a single one of Jack's patients. You may call it Machiavellian, and
doubtless you are right, but I call it ripping good management myself."
"So it is, my dear, so it is. And you shall have the full credit of it,"
said Tuppenny's mother, who was a genial soul and loved a joke as well
as most people.
And Regina meantime was taking life with considerable seriousness. She
fell into a habit of speaking of the S.R.W. as of her life's work;
indeed, she became a very important woman. No sooner was it known that
she was an excellent and dominant President of the S.R.W. than she came
into request for other societies of a kindred nature--no, I don't mean
societies solely for the regeneration of women, not a bit of it. There
was one for the sensible education of children between three and seven
years old, whose committee she was asked to join not many weeks after
the birth of the S.R.W.; and there was another society which bore the
name of "The Robin Redbreast," and provided the poor children of a south
London district with dinners for a halfpenny a head, and a number of
others that they provided with dinners for nothing at all. Then there
was a Shakespeare Society, which had long existed in the Park, and which
until Regina became a full-blown president had never thought of asking
her to come on to its committee.
Now all this took Regina a good deal away from her home, and the result
of her absence and of these wider interests in life was that the two
girls at Ye Dene were enabled to shape their lives very much more in
their own way than ever they had done before. Regina had, it is true,
always aimed at inculcating a spirit of independence in her children.
She required them to do certain things during the course of the day, to
be punctual at meals, especially at breakfast, to report themselves when
they were going to school and when they returned; but otherwise, she
left them fairly free to spend the rest of their time as their own
inclinations led them. They had their own sitting-room and their own
tea-table, at which they could invite any children belonging to their
school, or indeed, for the matter of that, any of the children living in
the Park; and up to the advent of the S.R.W. it must be owned that this
system worked as well as any system could have worked with children of
such pronounced characters as the young Whittakers. But after their
mother became a public woman, Maudie and Julia may be said to have run
absolutely wild. No longer did they report themselves in the old way,
because they had a very complete contempt for servants, and there was
usually no one else to whom they could report themselves.
"Does your mother never want to know where you are?" asked a
schoolfellow when Maudie was just sixteen.
"Well, yes, we always tell her at night what we have done during the
day."
"Oh, do you?"
"Yes," returned Maudie. "Mother is most deeply interested in all our
doings. Did you think she wasn't? How funny of you! Isn't your mother
interested in what you do?"
"Oh yes, of course mine is. But then mine is rather different to yours.
Mine is not a public character."
"Well, I don't know that our mother is exactly a public character," said
Julia, who was keenly on the watch for a single word which would in any
way pour ridicule or contempt upon her mother.
"Oh yes, she is. Father says she's a philanthropist."
"Oh, does he? Well, I don't know I'm sure. Perhaps she is. I know she's
a jolly hard-worked woman, and if she wasn't as clever as daylight she
wouldn't be able to keep going as she does. As for her being a
philanthropist--well, after all, what is a philanthropist?"
"Well, I did ask father, and he explained it, but he didn't make it very
clear. It seems to be a sort of person who goes about doing good."
"That's mother all over," said Maudie.
"Then who mends your stockings?" asked Evelyn Gage.
"Our stockings? Why, mother has never mended our stockings. Sewing is
one of the things mother isn't great on. You couldn't expect it."
"Why not? Mine does."
"Oh, yes, but our mother is rather different. You see, she was educated
like a man."
"How funny!" giggled Evelyn.
"I think," said Maudie to Julia, half an hour later, when Evelyn Gage
had gone home and the two were getting out their lesson-books for their
home work, "I think it would be rather funny to have a mother like an
ordinary woman, don't you, Ju?"
"Well, I don't know," returned Julia. "Evelyn's mother makes jam and
pickles and pastry and lovely little rock cakes, and things that our
mother never seems to think of. _She_ is always too much taken up with
great questions to bother herself with little etceteras, as old nurse
always called such things."
"Perhaps, though, we should find it rather a bore to have a mother who
worried about our stockings and things, just an ordinary, average kind
of mother. But anyway, we haven't got a mother like that, so we must
make the best of what we have got."