“You don’t care for fancy work, do you?” asked Polly.
“No,” the poor girl said dolefully. “You see, I never had time for it
at home. I used to ride and go out with my brothers a good deal, and
there were always people straying in to talk.”
“But what about your cook?” I suggested. “I find that she fills
my day so completely that I have no time to think, or to paint in
water-colours.”
“My cook!” she said with astonishment. “Why, there are only ten minutes
in the day when I am allowed to see her.”
“Now, look here,” I said; “you must learn this sooner or later, and we
are all among friends--that is a ruse of hers, like an ogre pretending
that he is out district-visiting all day, and that the little girls he
brings home are orphans whom he is taking care of. She just does that
to get your confidence. Then, by and by, she’ll begin inviting you down
for a minute or two at a time----”
“Why, she did ask me to come down and look at the tomatoes to-day, just
before I came out,” reflected the bride.
“That’s it!” I exclaimed, slapping my plate triumphantly. “To-day it
was the tomatoes, to-morrow it will be the sausage-skewers: there will
be one missing, and she will wish you to see for yourself, so that
there can be no misunderstanding later on. The next day it will be two
things: to smell the rabbits in the morning, and see whether you--a
young, inexperienced child--think it wise to cook them----”
“But, my dear,” interrupted Mrs. Beehive, “surely there is no harm in
that, and Mrs. Spicer would prefer to make sure.”
“Do you know how a rabbit ought to smell?” I asked the bride, in
fairness, “because I don’t know to this day. It all seems to me equally
uninviting.”
“I didn’t know they ought to smell at all,” the girl murmured.
“You’ve a lot to learn,” I said kindly. “Anyhow--rabbits in the
morning, and in the afternoon, say, perhaps, that it is early closing
day and she had forgotten that you would want butter.”
“Then what does one do?”
“Ah, that is what cook says that she prefers you should decide,” I
concluded happily. “You won’t find the time heavy on your hands for
very long, especially if anything turns up that you want to do.”
“Thank you very much indeed,” she said gratefully; “it is so good of
you to tell me these things.”
“Is there anything else that troubles you?” asked Polly, holding out a
piece of cake.
“No, I don’t think so--” the bride hesitated, and then, after a
moment’s pause, threw this at us: “I suppose there isn’t really very
much that one _can_ have for breakfast, is there?”
“Just the bacon,” I remarked; “that is always as nice as anything.”
“Oh dear me,” said Mrs. Beehive, “surely we have got beyond those
days when it was ‘bacon and eggs, eggs and bacon,’ every morning. The
Americans have done so much for us there: all sorts of tempting little
hot dishes can be made--and fruit; you should give your husband fruit,
it is so good for him.”
“Paul won’t eat fruit,” said the bride.
“Well, then, try him with some light, vegetarian dishes,” said Mrs.
Beehive, now quite in her element. “_Onions farcies_, tomatoes and
cheese, ramekins of prawns, soufflés of liver, réchauffés of marrow on
a hard-boiled egg, with soubise sauce----”
“Well, you see,” the perplexed little dear objected, “cook doesn’t come
down much before half-past seven, and we breakfast at eight sharp,
because Paul----”
[Illustration]
“Make her,” Mrs. Beehive interposed, rolling her kid gloves into a hard
ball.
“How big is your cook in her stockinged feet?” asked Polly.
“Oh, she is quite a little thing,” answered the innocent bride, “quite
young, and very pleasant. But I couldn’t exactly go and fork her out of
bed, could I? I shouldn’t like to.”
“Give her orders,” said Mrs. Beehive firmly, “and if she doesn’t obey
them dismiss her.”
“No, no,” Polly and I almost shouted in the same breath, as we each
laid a hand on an outlying knee of the bride. “Don’t do that! Never
change anything but yourself,” said Polly. “Remember, dear, it is like
the sun revolving round the earth--things are not what they seem. Never
sack your cook, never leave your tradespeople, never be disillusioned
in your friends, never divorce your husband. All the others you could
get instead would be just the same, fixed and immovable like the sun.
You can only shift yourself and look at them from another side----”
Polly was quite breathless.
[Illustration]
“Only the sun does move,” I said gloomily, “carrying us with it. ‘Soon
will cook and I be lying each within our narrow bed,’ thank heaven!”
“You are letting your spirits run away with you, Martha,” said Mrs.
Beehive, “and you are not helping Mrs.--er--at all.”
“But, then, aren’t all wives alike, too?” asked the bride, who had
evidently been swallowing Polly’s metaphors whole, and feeling very
uncomfortable.
“Certainly they are,” replied Polly; “at least they are all the same as
each other, but they are never the same as themselves for long. But all
the people, men, cooks, etc., whom we have to handle can be depended on
to a certainty. That is why I suggest that any shifting which has to be
done shall be done by ourselves if we want to be comfortable.”
“You are not a suffragette, are you?” the bride asked in alarm. “Paul
can’t bear them.”
“Oh dear no,” said Polly airily. “If my dear Sisters in the Cook became
a governing body they would be lost to me, because they would become
part of the solid mass of things which you and I have to handle and
walk round. It’s no good mixing or changing governing bodies. They’ll
go on governing away just the same, and as fast as they do away with
one thing another will crop up. Some one has to stay outside and see to
things. Have some more tea?”
“And what about all the evil in the world?” demanded the round-eyed
bride, “Paul says----”
“My husband takes a very peculiar view,” interrupted Mrs. Henry, who
had not had her fair share by any means; we all felt that and made way.
“He says that the evil arises--it is really very naughty of him--from
our first parents having been driven out of Eden before they had had
time to get enough apples. That if we were to know good and evil
anyhow, we ought to know enough about it. I think he means that we
are all being as clever as we are able, but that there is not enough
intelligence in the world to cope with the demand: so he just does the
best he can. But he talks a great deal of nonsense, of course, and
doesn’t mean half he says.”
“I wish that Paul had a profession that would make him work at home,”
the bride said presently. “If he were a clergyman, now, or an artist,
just think how nice it would be!”
“My dear, you don’t know what you are saying,” Mrs. Henry assured her.
“My husband works at home, and there are times when I would pay anyone
any sum to take him away, and let him join the Morris Dancers, or
anything that would take him into the open air.”
“Really!” said the bride. “But can’t you take him out yourself if he
needs exercise?”
Mrs. Henry snorted. “It is not that I care whether he needs exercise or
not,” she said, “but I should be thankful to have the house to myself
sometimes. If I so much as start the sewing-machine in the room over
his head, he comes out like an animal from its den, and says he can’t
think of a word with that noise going on. Or if Bella is turning out
the room either above or below him, he complains that she is throwing
rocks about, and he can’t keep his papers on the table. If we clean the
passage outside his room, and the carpet-sweeper happens to touch his
door once, he flies out in a rage; and I can’t talk to anyone in the
drawing-room without his hearing. Then either he wants his meals taken
to the study, or else he comes down and won’t let the children speak;
and he slops the gravy all about, and wants the meal hurried through so
that he can begin to smoke--and I do draw the line at smoking at meals,
don’t you, Mrs.--er--?”
[Illustration]
“Oh no,” said the amiable little bride, “my husband might fill all the
dishes with smoke if he liked, and I would turn out the rooms myself
if only he would stay at home; but it is so dull being alone.”
“Well, my dear,” said Polly, “if there were a way to preserve your
present superfluous loneliness in water-glass or screw-topped bottles,
I’d buy it off you with pleasure, or, better still, make you keep it to
use later. You’ll want it.”
“We are dining out to-night for the first time,” said the bride,
cheering up at the prospect; “and then, perhaps, I shall get to
know a few people.” We felt that it would be only right to take the
top off this dream as well, and to show her the realities which lay
beneath. “Oh, I expect you’ll have plenty of callers by and by,” said
Mrs. Beehive. (“The better to see you, my dear,” I added in my mind,
remembering Red Riding Hood.)
“Don’t pour out all your soul on the carpet after dinner, there’s a
dear,” said kindly Polly.
“What do you mean?” the victim asked, beginning to get frightened.
“Well,” I suggested, “if anyone asks you whether you have early tea in
the morning, and whether your husband finds that he can manage with
four clean shirts a week, put them off with some excuse----”
Polly broke in earnestly, “And don’t let out any little theories you
may have formed about living or anything, and don’t answer when they
ask if this was your first offer of marriage, and----”
“And,” I interrupted across her, “don’t say if you like games, or you
will be placarded as a champion hockey-player. Don’t admit that you can
read, write, cipher, walk, ride, drive, see, hear, taste, smell, get in
a temper, or play on any instrument, or that you ever wash, eat, sleep,
cry, laugh, or thread a needle. Admit nothing, deny nothing, express
no hopes or fears, acknowledge no creed. There is only one subject on
God’s earth which you can broach without danger to your reputation, and
that is the weather. If you find yourself being led into an expression
of opinion about anything, throw the evil thing from you and take up
the weather where you left it--and may heaven defend you.”
“One more thing,” said Polly; “and mind what I say, or you’ll regret
it. If anyone offers you a footstool or a cushion behind your back,
kick it away and sit up, whatever you feel like.”
“But I do very often feel tired,” said the bride.
“Never mind,” replied Polly, with inexorable breeziness, “sit up;
lock the gates; put your tongue out. If the rabble once gets into
your heart, they’ll sack the place and use everything in it to your
disadvantage.”
Mrs. Henry was tying her veil and thinking about something else, but
Mrs. Beehive looked, somehow, as if she had eaten too much. The little
bride hurriedly looked at the clock and exclaimed: “Oh how late! Paul
will be back; I must fly! Thank you a thousand times for all your
kindness and advice. I can’t believe all you said just now, but I
expect you didn’t mean it, did you?”
She wrung our hands and disappeared. Mrs. Beehive and Mrs. Henry
summoned a taxi and drove off together.
“Why were you so frank, Polly?” I asked when we were alone. “I am
always pleased to back you up, but do you think it is any good?”
“Of course not,” said Polly; “I should have bitten my tongue out if it
were. But, anyway, we shan’t have it on our consciences that we didn’t
warn her.”
_CHAPTER XII_: JUST THE USUAL
If there is anything more remarkable than the way in which everything
in the world is constantly changing, it is how everything goes on just
as usual; just as it has gone on for centuries and centuries. That
perpetual business of the toilet dates from the Fall. Sundays have
always come round in due course. I expect that the family dinner-table,
that uncouth institution, has been going on a long time. Domestic
friction occurs in the first pages of Genesis. Who was the first
monthly nurse? She probably dates pretty far back. And the only part
of the show which we are definitely assured will be done away with is
the only bit of it which has any real permanent interest--marrying and
giving in marriage. On that showing we may have to face the endless
routine of getting up, washing, eating, talking, and going to bed
again with all the flavour that there is in any of it--gone! It will
be worse than being in a nunnery, because there will be nothing to
renounce. So long as one knows that the world, the flesh, and the
devil (which are for each sex concentrated in the other) are only
separated from us by our own will it is all right; but not to have them
prowling about outside within reach, should we change our minds, is
unthinkable. It will be just like an everlasting party of pew-openers,
for they are the only people I can think of who have no sex. Another
curious thing is that Creation--Nature--whatever you like to call
her--manages to vary her show continually, while the lords of creation,
who are supposed to be better equipped with intelligence, cannot for
the life of them think of any new way of doing the same old thing. In
Nature the same ideas are repeated, without appearing to be the same.
Quite old-fashioned customs like sunrise and sunset, the seasons, the
weather, recur as usual, but they are not often monotonous: except
in exaggerated places like the Poles or the Equator, where it goes on
being dark or light for too long at a time, or only rains once a year,
or where the snow doesn’t know when to stop. But these exceptions are
just faults. They don’t show the utter lack of resource displayed by
the mass of human beings. Think what it means to pass our little span
of time in a world where one may ask on any Sunday, “What is there for
dinner?” and be told, “Just the usual!” And the usual is the absolutely
usual; it is not like the setting of the sun, which goes on as usual,
but with differences enough to make the performance always surprising.
There is no difference whatever between the beef of one Sunday and that
of the next; every bubble on the Yorkshire pudding is in its appointed
place--even the burned side is the same--and the tart or pudding (it is
immaterial which) is so identical with last Sunday’s that no thinking
mind can seriously reject the doctrine of immortality.
“What fruit have you to-day, Mrs. Globe?” you may ask the
greengrocer’s wife on Monday.
[Illustration]
“Well, m’m, there’s not very much to-day, except the apples; they’re
very nice; two-pence-halfpenny the pound.” And yet the shop looks full
of fruit. But when you come to look at it closely, it is like the egg
in “Alice in Wonderland,” which receded from every shelf to the one
above it. The other fruit doesn’t actually melt away under one’s gaze,
but it becomes impossible to obtain. It is either a pine-apple at
seven-and-sixpence (very nice, but quite out of the question), or nice
English grapes (which you can’t make into a serviceable pudding for a
family), or some outlandish fruit, two-pence each (which, of course,
wouldn’t do), or else the oranges, which we are rather tired of; and
besides, they are going off now and are not recommended.
There are some days when I believe all the food in the shops is made of
painted cardboard like a doll’s-house dinner-party, because, although
there appears to be an endless variety, there is, in fact, nothing that
can be bought and eaten by ordinary people. If you examine each item
separately, this will become evident. All the things in the windows are
frauds, for the reasons described in Mrs. Globe’s shop, and therefore
there is nothing for it but to have just the usual; to return up the
street again to the butcher. We always “fall back” on his bloated,
striped perpetuity.
“What about a nice fowl?” asks some bright spirit, and, indeed, that
is true; what about it? except that, even supposing you can afford to
spend three-and-sixpence on a quarter-of-an-hour’s amusement for four
persons, there is not really any difference between this fowl and the
last we had, so we may as well fall back on the butcher, who gives
more for the same price. The fish-monger has all sorts of delightful
traveller’s samples in the way of foreign birds hanging over the front
of his shop, but, if you look into them, they are all plain fowls at
heart; and when you get the two-and-sixpenny ones home and undress
them, really it would come cheaper and be just as satisfactory to pot
a sparrow out of the bathroom window with a catapult. By the way, I
wonder that is not done oftener. It would be a change from the neck of
mutton, and until they become “just the usual” sparrows, and find their
way to the poulterers, we shall not be told that they are very scarce
and not in season.
Perhaps the reason why many of us behave so much as usual is that,
although there are many varieties of conduct available, we have got
into a nervous habit of eliminating most of them from our list of
what is possible, just as we reject many eatables which the shops
would provide. But in either case it is not actually necessary to fall
back on the apples or the butcher or the nice thing to say. There is
plenty of variety to be had if people would stop falling back on the
“old favourites” either in food or conversation. The dullest permanent
officials and ladies in the world have thoughts about what is going on,
if they would only allow themselves to think them: thoughts as peculiar
to themselves, as different from their neighbours’, as are the curves
made by two lambs jumping in the air. But they won’t tell us what these
thoughts are. They push them away, saying to themselves, “No, that
would never do,” and so they fall back on the apples. That is to say,
they dish up the same old remarks in the same old way, until those of
us who feel boredom begin to scream and cry and throw the food about.
It is dreadful. I have seen people sitting round a table deliberately,
wantonly refusing us the thoughts which the good God put into their
heads in order that that they might share them with us. Some funny
fellow on reading this will discover that it would be capital sport
if we all said what we thought. He will picture insults flying like
bullets, and all decency at an end. But no one is suggesting that the
usual topics of conversation should be changed unless with the consent
of all present. All we require is that when the scenery of Dorsetshire
or the marriage of one’s son or the book which every one is reading is
under discussion, the company should not limit their conversation to
what it is “always as nice as anything” to say; that they should not
give us “just the usual,” but try some of the other things in the shop,
in season and out of season, as we have been taught. The price, of
course, may be a little higher; but though some will call us vulgar if
we do not fall back on the apples, others will call us dull if we do,
so what does it matter? No one, however careful, can be a perfect lady
to the whole world. So when Mrs. Beehive asks us what we feel about
the scenery of Dorsetshire, let us be as open with her as we should be
with our doctor if he suddenly lost his temper, thumped his fist on
the table, and, looking us straight between the eyes, thundered, “Damn
it all, madam, what have you had for breakfast?” We should tell the
truth at once then, without stopping to think whether we had not better
leave out the fifth cup of tea. It is just the fifth cup of tea that
may be the significant note in an otherwise commonplace breakfast. It
is sickeningly dull hearing you tell us, not what you noticed about the
scenery of Dorsetshire, but what you decided years ago that it was a
nice thing to think about the scenery of any county. The apples were
all right in their place, but why fall back on them?
I once had a cook who greeted me every morning with the same remark,
“There’s nothing left but just the spinach.” She pronounced it
“spinack,” which made the offence worse, and she referred to the fact
that we had eaten all the other vegetables in our twice-a-weekly hamper
from the country. Conversation among careful people has, as a rule,
very little left in it besides “just the spinack.” I mentioned this to
Polly one day, and she said at once, without a moment’s reflection: “I
have just had a luncheon-party, and there is nothing left of me but
just the spinack, I can tell you. Another quarter of an hour and I
should have fallen back on the apples.”
[Illustration]
“I thought your party was delightful,” said Mrs. Spicer, who happened
to be present.
“Of course it was,” said Polly, “because I gave you the best I had. It
wasn’t much compared to the intellectual treat you might have had if I
happened to be one of the Great Spirits of the Age, but it was all I
had in the box; it wasn’t ‘just the spinack.’ I kept nothing from you.”
“But--” Mrs. Spicer seemed about to raise an objection, and hesitated.
“Yes?” said Polly; “don’t hover round your mind, please, rejecting
things; we’re not tied to the apples.”
“You said yourself,” Mrs. Spicer reminded her boldly, “that you
advised me never to say what I thought about anything--that it was not
safe--that the weather was the only possible subject of conversation.”
“I never said that anything else was safe now, did I?” inquired Polly.
“But you won’t make your parties a success if you go on the lines I
indicated as safe. After all, what is life without risks?--especially
in conversation.”
“But I don’t believe I could be interesting anyhow,” said Mrs. Spicer
with a forlorn sigh. “I never can think of anything to say.”
“Then don’t say anything,” Polly advised, “and your silence will become
so rich and meaty with thought (for every one, even a canary, thinks,
there can be no doubt about that), that after a time, when you have
quite lost the habit of thinking what to say, a moment may come when
some slight emotion will unloose your tongue and it will speak for
itself, and----”
“Polly, dear,” I warned her, “you will be so sorry when you have drawn
the analogy between what Mrs. Spicer will say and Balaam’s ass; it will
be easier to stop now than to explain it away.”
Mrs. Spicer giggled. We know her pretty well now, and she doesn’t mind.
“I wish, Martha, that you would rely a little more on my judgment and
less on my knowledge of Scripture,” said Polly. “I had quite forgotten
the story you refer to. What was in my mind was a vision of what
it would be like if the things we call ‘still life’ suddenly spoke
and told us how the world looked to them. It would be a delightful
change from hearing how it looks to clever men. As it is, we have
no missing link between the unusual sincerity of some of us and the
usual insincerity of the rest. What we want is the truth--the whole
truth--about what people with faces like turbot and macaroons think. I
should stay awake all night with the excitement of knowing Mrs. Beehive
as her Maker knows her. Probably she could throw a great deal of light
on all sorts of obvious things that complicated people, like Reginald,
miss owing to being tangled up in their own intelligence.”
“By the way,” said Mrs. Spicer, “talking of food, isn’t it absurd how
we keep on with the same dishes when the cookery books are full of
different ways of cooking everything? But, somehow, if you look through
the books, there are only about three things one can have, because the
others either want ingredients that we haven’t got in the house, and
that are not worth buying for once, or they have to be prepared the day
before, or they use too many separate pans, and cook grumbles about the
washing-up; but it does seem unenterprising, as you say.”
“Considering, my dear, that since the time of Noah, or thereabouts,
we have been going on as usual and found it less trouble, it is not
likely”--said Polly sententiously--“it is not likely, so far as I can
judge by the look of you, that you will return our calls by moonlight,
or go to church on a week-day, or tell me which of us you would rather
ran away with Mr. Spicer----”
“But you don’t do those sort of things yourself,” protested Mrs. Spicer.
Polly said, “Excuse me a moment,” and went to answer the telephone.
“I never knew Polly do anything actually unusual,” I said to Mrs.
Spicer, “but she seems to do the usual things because they have just
occurred to her for the first time as a good thing to do; not because
there is nothing else she can do.”
“Just fancy!” said Polly, coming back; “Reginald says that the
Henrys are dreadfully upset because their cook is going to marry the
chauffeur, and she won’t be able to stay on with them. It is just what
always happens, isn’t it?”