to reclaim baronets in their dinner-hour had broken down completely; in
spite of everything I could do, the dirty dogs would persist in eating
their dinner at that time. Then again, the beautiful and imaginative
essays which dear Casey wrote, under different names and with varying
addresses, on my suitability for domestic service, had begun to attract
too much attention; and a censorious world stigmatized as false and
dishonest what was really poetical. I wanted too, a position of greater
independence.
Of course, I had to learn the work. At first I was taught the leading
principles of button-removal. Then I went on to the rough-edging. This
consists in putting a rough edge on starched collars and cuffs with a
coarse file. Afterwards I was promoted to the mixing department. This is
where the completed articles are packed for delivery. It requires great
quickness and a nice sense of humour. For instance, you take up a pair
of socks and have to decide instantly whether you will send them both to
an elderly unmarried lady, or divide them impartially between two men.
Our skill in creating odd socks and stockings was gratefully recognized
by the Amalgamated Hosiers' Institution, who paid the laundry an annual
subsidy. A good memory was essential for the work. Every girl was
required to memorize what size in collars each male client took, so
that the fifteen-inch collars might be sent to the man with the
seventeen-inch neck and vice-versa. As the manager said to me once:
"What we are here for is to teach people self-control. The rest is
merely incidental."
I did not remain very long in the mixing department. My head for figures
soon earned me a place in the office. Much of it was routine work. Four
times every year we had to send out the notices that owing to the
increased cost of labour and materials we were reluctantly compelled to
increase our prices 22-1/2 per cent. We made it 22-1/2 per cent. with
the happy certainty that very few of our customers would be able to
calculate the amount of the increase, and still fewer would take the
trouble; this left a little room for the play of our fancy. As one of
our directors--a man with a fine, scholarly head--once said to me:
"Bring the larger vision into the addition of a customer's account. The
only natural limit to the charge for washing a garment is the cost of
the garment. Keep your eyes ever on the goal. Our present prices are but
milestones on the road." He had a beautiful, ecclesiastical voice.
Nobody would have guessed that he was an engineer and the inventor of
the Button-pulper and Hem-render which have done so much to make our
laundries what they are.
From the very first day that I took up my work in the office I became
conscious that Hector, the manager, had his eye upon me. He would
generally read a page or two of Keats or Shelley to us girls, before we
began to make out the customers' accounts. This was all in accord with
the far-seeing and generous policy of the laundry. The reading took a
little time, but it filled us with the soaring spirit. It made pedantic
precision and things-that-are repulsive to us. After I heard Hector read
the "Ode to a Nightingale" I could not bring myself to say that two and
two were four; nothing less than fourteen seemed to give me any
satisfaction. Hector knew how quickly responsive and keenly sentient I
was. A friend once told me that he had said of me that I made arithmetic
a rhapsody. "This," I replied quietly, "means business."
It did. One Saturday afternoon I had tea with him--not on the Terrace,
as the A.B.C. shop in the High Street was so much nearer. He was very
wonderful. He talked continuously for two hours, and would have gone on
longer. But the waitress pointed out that the charge for a cup of tea
and a scone did not include a twenty-one years' lease of the chair you
sat on.
He was, of course, a man of great scientific attainments. His work on
the use of acids in fabric-disintegration has a reputation throughout
the laundries of Europe. But he had not the habit of screaming
blasphemies which my Great Example failed to convince anybody that she
had discovered in Huxley. In brief, he did not conform to the
unscientific idea of what a scientific man must be like. He was a
cultured idealist. I will try to recall a few of the marvellous things
he said that afternoon.
In reply to some remark of mine, he said with authority and conviction:
"Marge, you really _are_."
And, indeed, I had to admit that very often I am.
He was saying that in this world gentle methods have effected more than
harsh, and added this beautiful thought: "In the ordeal by laundry the
soft-fronted often outlasts the starched."
Later, I led him on to speak of ambition.
"I am ambitious. That is to say, I live not in the present, but in the
future. At one time I had a bicycle, but in imagination I drove a
second-hand Ford; and now I possess the Ford, and in imagination I have
a Rolls-Royce. I once held a subordinate position in the laundry, but in
imagination I was the manager; and now I am the manager, and in
imagination am asked to join the Board of Directors. As the poet
Longfellow so wisely said--Excelsior. Engraved in letters of gold on the
heart of the ambitious are these words: 'And the next article?' At this
present moment I am having a cup of tea with by far the most brilliant
and beautiful girl of my acquaintance, but in imagination----"
And it was just there that the tactless waitress interrupted us so
rudely. It was in vain that I tried to lead him back to the subject.
Almost his last words to me that afternoon were:
"I suppose you don't happen to know what the time is?"
Nor did I. It was just an instance of his subtle intuition. He
understood me at once and without effort. Many men have made a hobby of
it for years and never been within three streets of it.
The clock at the post-office gave him the information he required, and,
raising his hat, he said: "Well, I must be getting on."
The whole of the man's life was in that sentence. Always, he was getting
on--and always with a compulsion, as of destiny, shoving behind.
Knowing my keen appreciation of art, of which I have always been a just
and unfailing critic, he took me on the following Saturday to see the
pictures. It was not a good show--too many comics for my taste, and I'd
seen the Charlie Chaplin one before. However, in the dim seclusion of
the two-shilling seats just as the eighteenth episode of "The Woman
Vampire" reached its most pathetic passage, and the girl at the piano
appropriately shifted to the harmonium, Hector asked me if I would marry
him.
(No, I shan't. I know I'm an autobiographer and that you have paid to
come in, but there are limits. You know how shy and retiring I am. No
nice girl would tell you what the man said or did on such an occasion,
or how she responded. There will be no details. And you ought to be
ashamed of yourself.)
But just one of Hector's observations struck me particularly: "You know,
Marge, there are not many girls in the laundry I would say as much to."
That statement of preference, admitting me as it were to a small circle
of the elect, meant very much to me. I could only reply that there were
some men I wouldn't even allow to take me to a cinema. I asked, and was
accorded, time for consideration.
I was face to face with the greatest problem of my life. There was, I
know, one great drawback to my marriage with Hector. An immense risk was
involved. When the end of this chapter is reached the reader will know
what the risk and drawback were.
At the same time, everybody knew well that Hector was marked out for a
great position. I had already, with a view to eventualities, had some
discussion with one of the Directors, Mr. Cashmere, whom I have already
quoted. I was a special favourite of his. But it is quite an ordinary
thing in business, of course, for a Director to discuss the internal
affairs of the Board with one of the Company's junior clerks.
Mr. Cashmere expressed the highest opinion of Hector, and said he had no
doubt that Hector would become a Director, as a result of a complicated
situation that had arisen. Two of the Directors, Mr. Serge and Mr.
Angora, while remaining on the best possible social terms with the
chairman, Sir Charles Cheviot, were bitterly opposed to him on questions
of policy. On the other hand, though agreed on questions of policy, Mr.
Serge and Mr. Angora were bitterly jealous of each other, and a rupture
was imminent. Under the circumstances, Mr. Cashmere, while assuring
everybody of his whole-hearted support, had a private reservation of
judgment to be finally settled by the directional feline saltation.
Whichever turn the crisis took, he regarded it as certain that there
would be a resignation, and that Hector would get the vacant place.
"Why," I said, "it's rather like the Government of the British Empire."
"Hush!" he said, warningly. "It is exactly like it, but in the interests
of the shareholders we do not wish that to be generally known. It would
destroy confidence."
I myself felt quite certain that if Hector did become a Director he
would very shortly be chairman of the Board. He was a man that naturally
took anything there was.
It was in my power to marry a man who would become the chairman of a
Laundry Company with seventeen different branches. It was a great
position. Had I any right to refuse it? If I did not take it, I felt
sure that somebody else would. Was anybody else as good as I was? Truth
compelled me to answer in the negative. The voice of conscience said:
"Take a good thing when you see it. People have lost fortunes by opening
their mouths too wide."
On the other hand there were two considerations of importance. I might
possibly receive a better offer. If I had been quite sure that Hector
would have taken it nicely, I would have asked him for a three months'
option to see if anything better turned up, but I knew that with his
sensitive nature he might be offended.
The second consideration was the terrible risk to which I have already
referred. Do be patient. You will know all about it when the time comes.
I had to decide one way or the other, and--as the world knows now--I
decided in favour of Hector. And immediately the storm broke.
Every old cat that I knew--and I knew some--began to give me advice.
Now, nobody takes advice better than I do, when I am conscious that I
need it and am sure that the advice is good. Of this I feel as sure as
if such an occasion had ever actually arrived. In an International
Sweet-nature Competition I would back myself for money every time.
I was told that in the dignified position which was to be mine I must
give up larking about and the use of wicked words when irritated. It
seemed to me that if I was to surrender all my accomplishments I might
just as well never marry Hector at all. I avoid a certain freedom of
speech which my great predecessor uses on a similar occasion.
Dear old Mr. Cashmere found me in almost a bad temper about it, and
listened gravely to my complaint. Placing one hand on my shoulder, he
said:
"Marge, I have lived long, and in the course of my life I have received
much advice. My invariable rule has always been to thank for it,
expressing my gratitude with some warmth and every appearance of
sincerity. This is all that the adviser requires. It gives him, or her,
complete satisfaction. It costs nothing. Afterwards, I proceed precisely
as if no advice had been given."
That freak, Millie Wyandotte, sent me a plated toast-rack and a letter
from which I extract the following:
"If you were half as extraordinary as you think you are, this
would be a miserable marriage. Anybody who married it would get
lost, bewildered, and annoyed, and the hymn for those at sea should
be sung at the wedding ceremony. But cheer up, old girl. Really
extraordinary people never think it worth while to prove that they
are extraordinary, and mostly would resent being told it. You'll
do. Psychologies like yours can be had from any respectable dealer
at a shilling a dozen, including the box. They wear very well and
give satisfaction. Here's luck."
Mr. J. A. Banting sent me a travelling-clock at one time the property of
Lord Baringstoke, and a letter of such fervent piety and tender
affection that it is too sacred for me to quote.
Fifty-eight rejected suitors combined to send me a hand-bag of no great
intrinsic value. I cannot but think that the principle of syndication is
more suited to business than to generosity.
But I will not weary the reader with a list of the numerous and costly
gifts that I received. Suffice it to say that one of my brothers, an
excellent judge, offered me a fiver for the lot, and said that he
expected to lose money by it.
* * * * *
Immediately after the wedding ceremony the blow fell. I had foreseen the
danger of disaster from the very first, and that disaster came. I can
hardly bring myself to write of it.
I have spoken of my husband as Hector, but his surname was Harris--his
mother was one of the Tweeds. Consequently, I had become Mrs. Harris.
The tendency of a Mrs. Harris to become mythical was first noticed by an
English writer of some repute in the nineteenth century. I forget his
precise name, but believe that it was Thackeray.
It was in the vestry that I seemed to hear the voice of an elderly and
gin-bemused female telling me that there was no sich person. I did not
cease to exist, but I became aware that I never had, and never could
have, existed. I was merely mythical. Gently whispering "The Snark was a
Boojum," I faded away.
The last sound I heard was the voice of Hector calling to me:
"Hullo, hullo! Are you there? Harris speaking.... Hullo, hullo.... Are
you there?"
And, as not infrequently happens, there was no answer.
H. G. WELLS'
Best Novels
TONO BUNGAY
(11th Edition)
THE NEW MACHIAVELLI
(10th Edition)
MARRIAGE
(12th Edition)
MR. POLLY
(9th Edition)
THE
ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU
(10th Edition)
DUFFIELD AND COMPANY
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise,
every effort has been made to be true to the author's words and intent.