THE CONJUGAL NUTTALLS.
The March of Progress is sounding loudly in the ears of the people who
throng the streets of Melbourne. It is not a lazy hum, a droning
whisper, with an invitation to sleep in its every note; there is
something martial in its tones, something that tells you to look alive
and move along, if you do not wish to be pushed into a corner and lost
sight of. It may be that the March of Progress is set to quicker time
in the busy thoroughfares of Melbourne than in those of the cities of
the older world. It makes itself more strongly felt; it asserts itself
more independently; it sets the blood in more rapid circulation. It
carries us along with it, past noble-looking stores filled with the
triumphs of the workshops of the world which emigrants call Old; past
great hotels whence men issue in the noonday light, wiping their
months unblushingly, and through the swinging doors of which you catch
glimpses of excited men, eating, drinking, talking, gesticulating, as
rapidly and fiercely as if they thirsted to trip up the heels of Time,
and take him prisoner by the forelock; past fine houses and squalid
houses; through quarters where wealth smiles and poverty groans; to
the very verge of the growing city, from which line the houses dot the
landscape pleasantly, and do not crowd it uncomfortably--from which
line are seen fair plains and fields, and shadows of primeval forests
in the clouds. And here, the air which had been swelling louder and
louder, until it grew into a clanging sound that banished all sense of
rest, grows fainter and sweeter; here in the suburbs, as you walk in
them by the side of the whispering river, over whose bosom the weeping
willow hangs, the March of Progress subsides into a hymn, which
travels on through the landscape to the primeval forests, and softly
sings, that soon--where now grim members of the eucalypti rear their
lofty heads; where now a blight is heavy on the bush, which before the
burning sun had waged fierce war with it and sucked the juices from
the earth, was bright and beautiful with tree and flower--the golden
corn shall wave, and gladden the face of nature with rippling smiles.
The March of Progress sounds but faintly before a prettily-built
weatherboard cottage in the suburbs, where dwell the family of the
Nuttalls. It is a pleasant cottage, and so Mr. Nicholas Nuttall seems
to think as he looks round the parlour with a smile, and then looks
down again, and reads, for at least the sixth time, a letter which is
lying open on the table.
"And Matthew is alive," he said, speaking to the letter as if it were
sentient; "alive and prosperous! To think that it should be thirty
years since I saw him; that I should come out here, scarcely hoping to
find him alive, and that, after being here only a month, I should hear
of him in such a wonderful manner. So amazingly rich, too! Upon my
word," he continued, apostrophising a figure of Time, which, with a
very long beard and a very long scythe, looked down upon him from the
family mantel-shelf; "upon my word, old daddy, you're a wonder. You
are," he continued, shaking his head at the figure; "there's no
getting over _you!_ You grow us up, you mow us down; you turn our hair
black, you turn it white; you make us strong, you make us feeble; and
we laugh at you and wheeze at you, until the day comes when we can
laugh and wheeze no more. Dear! dear! dear! What a handsome fellow he
was to be sure! I wonder if he is much altered. I wonder if he ever
thinks of old times. I shall know him again, for certain, directly I
clap eyes on him. He must have got grey by this time, though. Dear!
dear! dear!"
And Mr. Nicholas Nuttall fell to musing over thirty years ago, fishing
up from that deep well a hundred trifles which brought pleasant
ripples to his face. They had been buried so long that it might have
been excused them had they been rusted, but they were not so. They
came up quite bright at his bidding, and smiled in his face. They
twinkled in his eyes, those memories, and made him young again. In the
glowing wood fire rose up the pictures of his past life; the
intervening years melted away, and he saw once more his boyhood's
home, and the friends and associates whom he loved. As at the touch of
a magician's hand, the tide of youth came back, and brought with it
tender episodes of his happy boyhood; he looked again upon faces,
young as when he knew them, as if youth were eternal, and time had no
power to wrinkle; eyes gazed into his lovingly, as of yore; and days
passed before him containing such tender remembrances that his heart
throbbed with pleasure at the very thought of them. He and his brother
were walking hand-in-hand through a leafy forest; they came upon two
girls (who were afterwards drowned but he did not think of that!) whom
they greeted with hand-clasps, and then the four wandered on. He
remembered nothing more of that woodland walk; but the tender
pressure of the girl's hand lingered upon his even after so many
years, and made the day into a sweet and loving remembrance. And thus
he mused and mused, and all his young life passed before him,
phantasmagorically. The flowers in the garden of youth were blooming
once again in the life of Mr. Nicholas Nuttall.
But his reverie was soon disturbed. For the partner of his bosom, Mrs.
Nicholas Nuttall, suddenly bouncing into the room, and seating
herself, demonstratively, in her own particular arm-chair, on the
other side of the fire, puffed away his dreams in a trice.
Mrs. Nicholas Nuttall was a small woman. Mr. Nicholas Nuttall was a
large man. Mrs. Nichols Nuttall, divested of her crinolines and
flounces and other feminine vanities, in which she indulged
inordinately, was a very baby by the side of her spouse. In fact, the
contrast, to an impartial observer, would have been ridiculous. Her
condition, when feathered, was that of an extremely ruffled hen,
strutting about in offended majesty, in defiance of the whole poultry
race. Unfeather her, and figuratively speaking, Mr. Nicholas Nuttall
could have put Mrs. Nicholas Nuttall into his pocket--like a doll.
Yet if there ever was a man hopelessly under petticoat government; if
ever there was a man completely and entirely subjugated; if ever there
was a man prone and vanquished beneath woman's merciless thumb; that
man was the husband of Mrs. Nicholas Nuttall. It is a singular fact,
but one which may be easily ascertained by any individual who takes an
interest in studying the physiology of marriage life, that when a very
small man espouses a very large woman, he is, by tacit consent, the
king of the castle: it is an important, unexpressed portion of the
marriage obligation; and that, when a very small woman espouses a very
large man, she rules him with a rod of iron, tames him, subjugates
him, so to speak, until at length he can scarcely call his soul his
own.
This was the case with the conjugality of the Nuttalls, as was proven
by the demeanour of the male portion of the bond. For no sooner had
the feminine half (_plus_) seated herself opposite the masculine half
(_minus_) than the face of Mr. Nicholas Nuttall assumed an expression
of the most complete and perfect submission.
Mrs. Nuttall was not an agreeable-looking woman. As a girl she might
have been pretty: but twenty-five years of nagging and scolding and
complaining had given her a vinegarish expression. Her eyes had
contracted, as if they had a habit of looking inward for consolation;
her lips were thin, and her nose was sharp. This last feature would
not have been an ugly one if it had not been so bony; but constant
nagging had worn all the flesh away, and brought into conspicuous
notice a knob in the centre of the arc, for it was a Roman. If such
women only knew what a splendid interest amiability returned, how
eager they would be to invest in it!
Mrs. Nuttall sat in her chair and glared at her husband. Mr. Nuttall
sat in his chair and looked meekly at his wife. He knew what was
coming--the manner, not the matter. He knew that something had annoyed
the wife of his bosom, and that she presented herself before him only
for the purpose of distressing him with reproaches. He waited
patiently.
"Mr. Nuttall," presently said Mrs. Nuttall, "why don't you speak? Why
do you sit glaring at me, as if I were a sphinx?"
To throw the _onus_ of the interview upon Mr. Nuttall was manifestly
unfair, and the thought may have kept him silent; or, perhaps, he had
nothing to say.
"This place will be the death of me, I'm certain," Mrs. Nuttall
remarked with an air of resignation.
Nicholas shrugged his shoulders with an almost imperceptible
motion--shrugged them, as it were, beneath his shirt and coat, and in
such a manner that no movement was imparted to those garments. Ever
since they had been married, something or other was always going to be
the death of Mrs. Nuttall; about six times a day, on an average, since
the honeymoon, Mr. Nuttall had heard her utter the complaint,
accompanied by an expression of regret that she had ever married. That
regret she expressed upon the present occasion, and Mr. Nuttall
received it with equanimity. The first time he heard it, it was a
shock to him; but since then he had become resigned. So he merely put
in an expostulatory "My dear"--being perfectly well aware that he
would not be allowed to get any further.
"Don't my-dear me," interrupted Mrs. Nuttall, as he expected; he would
have been puzzled what to say if she had not taken up the cue. "I'm
tired of your my-dearing and my-loving. You ought never to have
married, Nicholas. You don't know how to appreciate a proper and
affectionate wife. Or if you were bent upon marrying--and bent you
must have been, for you would not take No, for answer--you ought to
have married Mary Plummer. I wish you had _her_ for a wife! Then you
would appreciate me better."
No wonder, that at so thoroughly illogical and bigamy-suggesting an
aspiration, Mr. Nuttall looked puzzled. But Mrs. Nuttall paid no
attention to his look, and proceeded,--
"I went to school with her, and I ought to know how she would turn
out. The way she brings up her family is disgraceful; the girls are as
untidy as can be. You should see the bed-rooms in the middle of the
day! And yet her husband indulges her in everything. He is something
like a husband should be. He didn't drag his wife away from her home,
after she had slaved for him all her life, and bring her out to a
place where everything is topsy-turvy, and ten times the price that it
is anywhere else, and where people who are not fit for domestics are
put over your heads. He didn't do that! Not he! He knows his duty as a
husband and a father of a family better."
Mr. Nuttall sighed.
"The sufferings I endured on board that dreadful ship," continued Mrs.
Nuttall, "ought to have melted a heart of stone. What with walking
with one leg longer than the other for three months, I'm sure I shall
never be able to walk straight again. I often wondered, when I woke up
in a fright in the middle of the night, and found myself standing on
my head in that horrible bunk, what I had done to meet with such
treatment from you. From the moment you broached the subject of our
coming to the colonies, my peace of mind was gone. The instant I
stepped on board that dreadful ship, which you basely told me was a
clipper, and into that black hole of a hen-coop, which you falsely
described as a lovely saloon, I felt that I was an innocent convict,
about to be torn from my native country. The entire voyage was nothing
but a series of insults; the officers paid more attention to my own
daughter than they did to me; and the sailors, when they were pulling
the ropes--what good they did by it I never could find out!--used to
sing a low song with a chorus about Maria, knowing that to be my name,
simply for the purpose of wounding my feelings. And when I told you to
interfere, you refused, and said it was only a coincidence! That is
the kind of consideration I get from you."
Mr. Nuttall sighed again.
"There's Jane," observed Mrs. Nuttall, approaching one of her
grievances; "the best servant I ever had. At home she was quite
satisfied with ten pounds a year; and now, after our paying her
passage out, she says she can't stop unless her wages are raised to
thirty pounds. Thir-ty pounds," said Mrs. Nuttall, elongating the
numeral. "And at home she was contented with twelve. Do you know how
you are to meet these frightful expenses? I'm sure _I_ don't. But
mind, Nicholas, if we come to ruin, don't blame me for it. I told you
all along what would be the result of your dragging us to the
colonies. I pray that I may be mistaken; but I have never been
mistaken yet, and you know it;" and Mrs. Nuttall spread out her skirts
(she was always spreading out her skirts, as if she could not make
enough of herself) complacently.
Still Mr. Nuttall made no remark, and sat as quiet as a mouse, gazing
humbly upon the household prophet.
"Thirty pounds a year for a servant-of-all-work!" continued the lady.
"Preposterous! The best thing we can do, if that's the way they're
paid, is all of us to go out as servants-of-all-work, and lay by a
provision for Marian."
A vision of himself, in feminine attire, floor-scrubbing on his knees,
flitted across the disturbed mind of Mr. Nuttall.
"She must have the money, I suppose. I know who has put her up to it;
it is either the baker's or the butcher's man. The two noodles are
hankering after her, and she encourages them. I saw the pair of them
at the back-gate last night, and she was flirting with them nicely.
You must give information to the police, Nicholas, and have them
locked up."
"Looked up!" exclaimed Mr. Nuttall.
"Certainly. Do you think the police would allow such goings on at
home?"
"Perhaps not, my dear," said Mr. Nuttall, with a sly smile; "the
police at home, I believe, are said to hold almost a monopoly in
servant-girls."
"I don't understand your coarse allusions, Mr. Nuttall," said Mrs.
Nuttall, loftily. "What I say is, you must give information to the
police, and have these goings-on stopped."
"It is perfectly impossible, Maria. Do be reasonable!"
"Sir!" exclaimed Mrs. Nuttall, glaring at her husband.
"What I meant to say, Maria," said Mr. Nuttall, clearing his throat,
as if something had gone down the wrong way, "is, that I don't believe
it is a criminal offence for a servant-girl to talk to a baker, or
even a butcher, over a gate; and I doubt if giving information to the
police would lead to any satisfactory result."
"It will be a very satisfactory result--won't it?--if Jane runs away
and gets married. Servant-girls don't think of that sort of thing at
home. I shall be in a nice situation. It would be like losing my right
hand. I tell you what this country is, Mr. Nuttall--it's demoralizing,
that's what it is." And Mrs. Nuttall wept, through sheer vexation.
All this was sufficiently distressing to Mr. Nuttall, but he did not
exhibit any outward show of annoyance. Time was when Mrs. Nuttall's
tears impressed him with the conviction that he was a man of hard
feeling, but he had got over that. And so Mrs. Nuttall wept, and Mr.
Nuttall only experienced a feeling of weariness; but he brightened up
as his eyes rested upon the letter which had occasioned him so much
pleasure, and he said--
"Oh, Maria, I have an invitation for you. At short notice, too. For
this evening. From Mr. and Mrs. Blemish. Great people, you know,
Maria."
Mrs. Nuttall instantly became attentive.
"And whom do you think we shall meet? When I tell you, you will be as
surprised as I was when I read it."
"Whom, Nicholas?" asked Mrs. Nuttall, impatiently. "Do _not_ keep me
in suspense."
"My brother Matthew!"
"Alive!" exclaimed Mrs. Nuttall.
"Of course. You would not wish to meet him in any other condition,
would you?"
"That you should make such a remark," observed Mrs. Nuttall, "of a
brother whom we all thought dead, is, to say the least of it,
heartless, Nicholas. Of course, if the Blemishes are, as you say,
great people, and he visits them, it is a comfort, as showing that his
position is not a bad one. But, if we are to go, can you tell me what
to wear? I don't know, in this outlandish colony, whether we are
expected to dress ourselves like Christians or aboriginals."
"The last would certainly be inexpensive, but it would scarcely be
decent, Maria," remarked Mr. Nuttall, slily.
"That may be very witty, Mr. Nuttall," responded his lady, loftily;
"but it is hardly an observation a man should make to his own wife.
Though for what you care about your wife's feelings I would not give
that," and she snapped her fingers, disdainfully.
From long and sad experience, Mr. Nicholas Nuttall had learned the
wisdom of saying as little as possible when his wife was in her
present humour. Indeed, he would sometimes lose all consciousness of
what was passing, or would find himself regarding it as an unquiet
dream from which he would presently awake. But Mrs. Nuttall was always
equal to the occasion; and now, as she observed him about to relapse
into a dreamy state of inattention, she cried, sharply--
"Nicholas!"
"Yes, my dear," he responded, with a jump, as if half-a-dozen needles
had been smartly thrust into a tender part.
"What am I to wear this evening?"
"Your usual good taste, Maria," he commenced--
"Oh, bother my good taste!" she interrupted. "You know that we are to
meet your brother to-night, and I am only anxious to do you credit.
Not that I shan't be a perfect fright, for I haven't a dress fit to
put on my back. If I wasn't such a good contriver, we should look more
like paupers than respectable people. My black silk has been turned
three times already; and my pearl grey--you ought to know what a state
that is in, for you spilt the port wine over it yourself. Is your
brother very rich, Nicholas?"
"They say so, Maria; he owns cattle stations, and thousands of sheep
and cattle. He is a squatter, you know."
"A what?" she screamed.
"A squatter."
"What a dreadful thing!" she exclaimed. "What a shocking calamity! Is
he always squatting, Nicholas?"
"My dear;" said Nicholas, amazed.
"Not that it matters much," she continued, not heeding him; "he may
squat as long as he likes, if he has plenty of money, and assists you
as a brother should. Thank heaven! none of my relations ever squatted.
Has he been squatting long, Nicholas?"
"For ever so many years," he replied.
"What a disagreeable position! Why, his legs must be quite round. You
ought to thank your stars that you have a wife who doesn't squat--"
But observing a furtive smile play about her husband's lips, she rose
majestically, and said,
"I shall not waste my conversation upon you any longer. I suppose the
cab will be here at half-past nine o'clock; everybody else, of course,
will go in their own carriages." (Here she took out her watch, and
consulted it.) "Bless my soul! it is nearly seven o'clock now. I have
barely three hours to dress."
And she whisked out of the room, leaving Mr. Nuttall, nothing loth, to
resume his musings.