I
EXCEPTIONS may be allowed in theory, at least, but the rule stands
impregnable in reason and practice, that a wife should have the absolute
control of the household, and that no male person should meddle, even as
an irresponsible critic, with the servant department. There are limits
to the subjection of the gentler sex which reserves the right to choose
its acts of homage to the titular head of the family. Can anything
be prettier, for instance, than the deference which women of very
pronounced character will show to their husbands in some affairs?
“Nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to have taken a stall
at your charming bazaar, but my husband absolutely forbids me, and you
know what a tyrant he is about my health,” or “You really must not ask
my opinion about the Eastern Question, for I am shockingly ignorant of
politics, but my husband knows everything, and I have heard him say that
the Government has been very weak.” It would not, however, be wise for
this favoured man to trespass too far on the almost Oriental deference
of his wife, or hastily to suppose that because his word was useful in
saving her from the drudgery of an unfashionable bazaar or the weary
drone of a conversational bore, his was a universal infallibility. This
sweet spirit of passive obedience will not continue if a rash man should
differ from the house manager on the technical merits of a servant, for
he will then be told that his views on all such matters are less than
nothing and vanity.
No man knows, nor ever expects to know, what women talk about after they
have left the dining-room in stately procession and secluded themselves
in the parliament of the drawing-room; but it may be guessed that the
conference, among other things, reviews the incredible folly of mankind
in the sphere of household affairs. How it will not give the head of
the family one minute's serious concern that the cook feeds her kinsfolk
with tit-bits in the kitchen, provided that his toast be crisp and his
favourite dish well cooked. How he would any day give a certificate of
character to the housemaid, if he were allowed to perpetrate such an
absurdity, simply and solely on the ground that his bath was ready every
morning, and his shaving-water hot, while he did not know, nor seem
to care, that the dust was lying thick in hidden corners. How he would
excuse the waitress having a miscellaneous circle of admirers, provided
she did not loiter at the table and was ingenious in saving him from
unwelcome callers. They compare notes on the trials of household
government; they comfort one another with sympathy; they revel in tales
of male innocence and helplessness, till they are amazed that men should
be capable of even such light duties as fall on them in their daily
callings, and are prepared to receive them kindly as they enter the room
with much diffidence and make an appeal by their very simplicity to a
woman's protecting care.
John Leslie was devoted to his very pretty and very managing wife, and
had learned wisdom, so that he never meddled, but always waited till his
advice was invited. Like other wise husbands, he could read his wife's
face, and he saw that afternoon, two days before Christmas, as soon
as he entered the drawing-room, that there had been trouble in the
household. His kiss was received without response; her cheeks had the
suggestion of a flush; her lips were tightly drawn; and there was a
light in her eyes which meant defiance. She stated with emphasis,
in reply to a daily inquiry, that she was perfectly well, and that
everything had gone well that day. When she inquired why he should
suppose that anything was wrong, he knew that it had been a black storm,
and that the end thereof was not yet.
“By the way, Flo,”--and Leslie congratulated himself on avoiding every
hidden rock,--“I've completed my list of Christmas presents, and I
flatter myself on one downright success, which suggests that I have
original genius.”
“Do you mean the picture of Soundbergh School for Jack?” said Mrs.
Leslie coldly. “I daresay he will be pleased, although I don't believe
that boys care very much for anything except for games and gingerbread
cakes; they are simply barbarians”; and as Leslie knew that his wife
had been ransacking London to get a natty portable camera wherewith
Jack might take bits of scenery, his worst-weather guess seemed to be
confirmed.
“No, no, that was obvious, and I believe Jack will be fearfully proud of
his picture,” replied Leslie bravely; “but I was at my wit's end to know
what to get for old Margaret. You see, I used to give her pincushions
and works of art from the Thames Tunnel when I was a little chap, and
I bought her boas and gay-coloured handkerchiefs when I came up at
Christmas from Oxford, and you know since she left the old home
and settled with us eighteen years ago we have exhausted the whole
catalogue.”
“You have, at least”; and having no clue, Leslie was amazed at his
wife's indifference to the factotum and ruler of the household, whom the
junior servants were obliged to call Mrs. Hoskins--“Mrs.” being a title
of dignity, not of marriage--or Cook at the lowest, and who was called
everything by her old boy John Leslie and his son Jack, from Maggie to
Magsibus, and answered to anything by which her two masters chose to
name her.
“Oh, you have been as keen as any one in the family about Magsy's
present,”--and Leslie still clung to hope,--“but I've walked out before
you all. What do you think of a first-class likeness of Spurgeon in an
oak frame, with his autograph? You know how she goes on about him,
and reads his sermons. It 'ill be hung in the place of honour in the
kitchen, with burnished tin and brass dishes on either side. Now,
confess, haven't I scored?”
“If you propose to put your picture on her table on Christmas morning,
I fear you will be a day late, for Margaret has given up her place, and
asked to be allowed to leave to-morrow: she wants to bid Jack good-bye
before she goes,” and Mrs. Leslie's voice was iced to twenty degrees
below freezing.
“What do you mean?” cried Leslie, aghast, for in all his dark
imaginations he had never anticipated this catastrophe. “Maggie!
our Meg! leaving at a day's notice! It's too absurd! You've... had a
quarrel, I suppose, but that won't, come to anything. Christmas is
the time for... making up.”
“You do not know much about household management, John,” Mrs. Leslie
explained with much dignity. “Mistresses don't quarrel with servants,
however much provoked they may be. If I have to find fault, I make a
rule of doing so quickly and civilly, and I allow no reply. It was
Margaret flung up her place with very unbecoming language; and you may
be sure this time there will be no 'making up,' as you call it.
“What happened, Florence?” said John Leslie, with a note in his voice
which a woman never treats with disrespect. “You know I do not interfere
between you and the young servants, but Margaret has been with us since
we married, and before that was for sixteen years in my father's house.
We cannot part lightly; did she speak discourteously to you?”
“I do not know what a man may call discourtesy, but Margaret informed
me that either she or the housemaid must leave, and that the sooner the
housemaid went the better for the house.”
“But I thought that the housemaid was a Baptist too, and that Margaret
and she got on capitally, and rather looked down on the waitress because
she was a Methodist.”
“So they did for a time, till they found out that they were different
kinds of Baptists, just imagine! They had such arguments in the kitchen
that Lucy has had to sit in her pantry, and last evening Margaret called
the housemaid a 'contracted Baptist,' and she said Margaret was a 'loose
Baptist.' So Margaret told me that if she was a 'loose Baptist,' it
was not good for the housemaid to stay in the house with her; and if I
preferred a woman like that, she would go at once, and so she is going.”
“When men break on theology in the smoking-room,” remarked Leslie, “the
wise go to bed at once, and two women--and one of them old Margaret--on
the distinctions among the Baptist denomination must be beyond words
and endurance. It is natural that places should be given up, but
not necessary that the offer should be accepted. What did you say to
Margaret, Florence?”
“That she had secured the dismissal of five servants already within
three years: one because she was High Church; a second because she was
no Church; that big housemaid from Devon for no reason I could discover
except that she ate too much, as if we grudged food; the last waitress
because she did not work enough, as if that concerned her; and the one
before because she had a lover Margaret did not approve, and that I did
not propose to lose a good housemaid because she was not the same sort
of Baptist as Margaret.
“It is very nice and romantic to talk about the old family servant,”
continued Mrs. Leslie with a vibrant voice, “and I hope that I have not
been ungrateful to Margaret, but people forget what a mistress has to
suffer from the 'old family servant,' and I tell you, John, that I can
endure Margaret's dictation no longer. She must leave, or... I must”;
and when his wife swept out of the room to dress for dinner, Leslie knew
that they had come to a crisis in family life.