GASTAVUS BECOMES HOUSEWIFE—AND JULIA UNDERGOES A CHANGE.
Had Gustavus been a reasonable man, he might have begun supplying,
in a rational way, the deficiency of domestic lore which his Julia
thus lamentably discovered; but, unfortunately, his pride of the
perfectibility of his own knowledge of these occult mysteries was
called in question at the very time that his anger was roused by
a fault the most heinous of any beyond the pale of the decalogue.
With a look of terrible scorn, in which, all the gristly muscles
of his grim face were called into a grotesque, convulsive motion,
he announced, in as much of a paucity of vocables, and as loud a
sound as ever the stentorian Cycloborus, expressed his settled
determination to take the sovereignty of the kitchen on his own
shoulders; and no one could have heard the sound and seen his
countenance without believing that it was just as sure as death or
sin that he would do as he said he would do. At least, there can
be no manner of doubt that Mrs Julia M’Iver believed him, and it
was equally doubtless that she did not fear him. She smiled at the
success of her scheme, and the smile itself would have done the
business of confirmations, if there had been any need of such aid
in the matter. So, accordingly, the apparition was soon afterwards
exhibited, of the great bibbed Gustavus striding about in the
kitchen, and performing _manibus suis_ all the operations of the
culinary department of his domestic economy; and we would tell a
big untruth, or be guilty of misprision itself, if we attempted to
conceal the fact, that he washed and dressed his own linens as well
as, if not a deuced deal better, than any washerwoman that ever
danced in a trough in the village of Duddingstone.
When Hercules laid down his club, and took off his lion’s skin, and
received from the hands of his mistress the spindle and distaff,
the big warrior did no more than many a better man has done when
he resigns himself to the dominion of love; but no love on earth
would ever have made Gustavus M’Iver take upon himself the duties
of a woman. He did it from a sheer love of good eating and clean
linens—ay, and he persevered in it too, though he saw, as plain
as palpable physics, that (what he dreaded) his _petite_ Julia
would become a prey to the harpies of indolence. And, to be sure,
the ordinary consequences very soon began to shew themselves;
for where there was no love and no work to occupy the mind, and
plenty of well-dressed victuals to fill the stomach, Mrs M’Iver
was, in every respect, a lady at large, and, a lady at large being
synonymous with a lady in danger, she fell into habits of going
abroad, and calling, and gossiping, and sipping, and tasting, till
she became as big a drunkard as ever was seen out of the county
town of Horrestia. Yet, still true to her character, she feared
Gustavus nothing—no more than she did the good whisky which she
swallowed in choppins; and this fortitude made the mischief ten
times greater than it would otherwise have been; for, terror being
the fulcrum of law and amendment, there might have been some hope
of her if she had not ensconced herself behind the noblest of all
the cardinal virtues—true blue courage. Though a _petite marchande
de modes_, and unable or unwilling to cook a dinner or dress a
shirt, Mrs Julia M’Iver knew the rights of her sex just as well as
the “guid wife of Auchtermuchty” herself—she knew that Gustavus
had no right to turn her away without supporting her, and he could
not beat her without subjecting himself to the horn of a summons
of separation and aliment; so, upon the whole, she had grounds for
her fearlessness, which would have supported her though she had had
never a particle of true heroism from the mother of every one of us.
Few women whom fame has immortalized, have done so much as was
achieved by this little heroine; for she had already made a giant
her cook and servant, and now she forced him to become her nurse,
when she chose to be sick from the effects of intemperance. A
more complete reversal of all the reciprocal duties of husband
and wife, had never been achieved by woman; and it was in vain
that Gustavus looked more grim and gaunt than ever—that he even
condescended to _argue_ upon the subject—a thing he had never
before done in his life, and of which, in truth, he was deemed
totally incapable. He still loved the wicked imp, and she knew he
loved her—and what more was required to account for the fearless
perverseness on the one side, and the submission on the other?
But what was he now to do? It was comparatively mere pastime to
cook or to wash, or even to nurse the sick Julia, when her illness
overcame his resentment; but the thought that the grand qualities
and faculties of a man who had commanded and killed in his day, and
whose very look spread terror around him, were to be brought down
to subserve the mere purpose of ministering to one of the smallest
of women that ever drew breath, and one of the greatest drunkards
that ever drank whisky, was surely enough to make an ordinary man
mad. If the difficulty was to be resolved at all, it could be
only by cogitation; and so straightway he set about a process of
thinking—an operation of marvellous difficulty to him, as might
have been manifestly seen by the length of his stride and of his
face, as he paced backwards and forwards—his apron, a species
of mail he donned every morning before he began his operations,
shaking and rattling among his huge limbs like a mainsail in a gale
of wind.
And, to be sure, his was not altogether a barren cogitation, as
might have been both seen and heard in the loud thunder of his hand
on the table, as he muttered his resolution to stop the supplies.
He never failed to act upon a thought; for the thing was too
difficult to be got, to be lost for want of use, and, accordingly,
the supplies were stopped; but what was that to Julia Briggs, so
long as he had any credit in the town, or she had any clothes on
her back? Julia got intoxicated as regularly as ever she had done
before, and demanded imperiously his ministrations as nurse, with
the same _sang froid_, or rather pertness, that formed a part of
her cardinal courage. His cogitations had gone for nothing; and
again the painful duty of pondering and devising, was forced upon
the thick intestines of his gigantic head.
Again he perambulated the house from room to kitchen, sometimes
brandishing like a sword a spit or skewer, in the mental absence
produced by the effort to think; and he caught at last—what he
laboured for—a cure for Julia’s habits of drinking; and he acted
upon it again as manfully as before; for he locked her up, and
the devil a chum, or gossip, or pot-companion could approach her;
but he forgot that there was such an aperture as a window in a
house, or a mouth in a woman, and the first thing that assailed his
ears was the cry of Julia for constables to give her the liberty
that our great country has awarded as a boon to all natural-born
subjects of the realm. Nor was so just an appeal vain; for
authorities and neighbours interfered in behalf of the prisoner;
and Gustavus was told to his teeth that he had not a jot of right
to imprison his wife; whereupon she was released, and the evening
of the same day saw her, under the effects of the jubilee of her
emancipation, more intoxicated than he had yet ever beheld her.
Again was the rusty machinery of his intellect set in motion, and
the result was a device that distanced the former experiments,
as well for its ingenuity as its chance of success. He had heard
of women being _satiated_ with liquor; and so he put in her power
ten times more than ever it was in the capability of woman to
swallow—an act that was accompanied by something in the shape of
an argument, to the effect that, if she became disgusted with it,
she would give it up, and if she died of it, the consequence would
be the same. The result in the one case would be an achievement
that would bring him comparative happiness, and the consequence in
the other would, he was now satisfied (such was the misery he had
suffered, and was still suffering), be anything but a misfortune.
But Julia took no more than was good for her, and thanked Gustavus
heartily for his extreme kindness, while every day she applied
herself to the big measure; and every night, while the supply
lasted, went to bed with the assistance of Gustavus’ own hands.