A HOME STATION--WHAT MRS. BULLER THOUGHT OF IT--WHAT MAJOR BULLER
THOUGHT OF IT.
Riflebury, in the south of England--our next station--was a very lively
place. "There was always something going on." "Somebody was always
dropping in." "People called and stayed to lunch in a friendly way."
"One was sure of some one at afternoon tea." "What with croquet and
archery in the Gardens, meeting friends on the Esplanade, concerts at
the Rooms, shopping, and changing one's novels at the circulating
library, one really never had a dull hour." So said "everybody;" and one
or two people, including Major Buller, added that "One never had an hour
to one's self."
"If you had any one occupation, you'd know how maddening it is," he
exclaimed, one day, in a fit of desperation.
"Any one occupation!" cried Mrs. Buller, to whom he had spoken. "I'm
sure, Edward, I'm always busy. I never have a quiet moment from morning
to night, it seems to me. But it is so like you men! You can stick to
one thing all along, and your meals come to you as if they dropped out
of the skies, and your clothes come ready-made from the tailor's (and
very dearly they have to be paid for, too!); and when one is ordering
dinner and luncheon, and keeping one's clothes decent, and looking after
the children and the servants, and taking your card, and contriving
excuses that are not fibs for you to the people you ought to call on,
from week's end to week's end--you say one has no occupation."
"Well, well, my dear," said the Major, "I know you have all the trouble
of the household, but I meant to say that if you had any pursuit, any
study----"
"And as to visitors," continued Aunt Theresa, who always pursued her own
train of ideas, irrespective of replies, "I'm sure society's no pleasure
to me; I only call on the people you ought to call on, and keep up a few
acquaintances for the children's sake. You wouldn't have us without a
friend in the world when the girls come out; and really, what with
regimental duties in the morning, and insects afterwards, Edward, you
are so absorbed, that if it wasn't for a lady friend coming in now and
then, I should hardly have a soul to speak to."
The Major was melted in a moment.
"I am afraid I am a very inattentive husband," he said. "You must
forgive me, my dear. And this sprained ankle keeping me in makes me
cross, too. And I had so reckoned on these days at home to finish my
list of Coleoptera, and get some dissecting and mounting done. But
to-day, Mrs. Minchin brought her work directly after breakfast, and that
empty-headed fellow Elliott dropped in for lunch, and we had callers all
the afternoon, and a _coterie_ for tea, and Mrs. St. John (who seems to
get through life somehow without the most indefinite notion of how time
passes) came in just when tea was over, and you had to order a fresh
supply when we should have been dressing for dinner, and the dinner was
spoilt by waiting till she discovered that she had no idea (whoever did
know her have an idea?) how late it was, and that Mr. St. John would be
so angry. And now you want me to go in a cab to a concert at the Rooms
to meet all these people over again!"
"I'm sure I don't care for Mrs. St. John a bit more than you do," said
Mrs. Buller. "And really she does repeat such things sometimes--without
ever looking round to see if the girls are in the room. She told me a
thing to-day that old Lady Watford had told her."
"My dear, her ladyship's stories are well known. Cremorne's wife hears
them from her, and tells them to her husband, and he tells them to the
other fellows. I can always hear them if I wish. But I do not care to.
But if you don't like Mrs. St. John, Theresa, what on earth made you
ask her to come and sit with you in the morning?"
"Well, my dear, what can I do?" said Mrs. Buller. "She's always saying
that everybody is so unsociable, and that she is so dull, she doesn't
know what to do with herself, and begging me to take my work and go and
sit with her in a morning. How can I go and leave the children and the
servants, just at the time of day when everything wants to be set going?
So I thought I'd better ask her to come here instead. It's a great bore,
but I can keep an eye over the house, and if any one else drops in I can
leave them together. It's not me that she wants, it's something to amuse
her.
"You talk about my having nothing to do," Aunt Theresa plaintively
continued. "But I'm sure I can hardly sleep at night sometimes for
thinking of all I ought to do and haven't done. Mrs. Jerrold, you know,
made me promise faithfully when we were coming away to write to her
every mail, and I never find time. Every week, as it comes round, I
think I will, and can't. I used to think that one good thing about
coming home would be the no more writing for the English mail; but the
Indian mail is quite as bad. And I'm sure mail-day seems to come round
quicker than any other day of the week. I quite dread Fridays. And then
your mother and sisters are always saying I never write. And I heard
from Mrs. Pryce Smith only this morning, telling me I owed her two
letters; and I don't know what to say to her when I do write, for she
knows nobody _here_, and I know nobody _there_. And we've never returned
the Ridgeways' call, my dear. And we've never called on the Mercers
since we dined there. And Mrs. Kirkshaw is always begging me to drive
out and spend the day at the Abbey. I know she is getting offended, I've
put her off so often; and Mrs. Minchin says she is very touchy. And Mrs.
Taylor looks quite reproachfully at me because I've not been near the
Dorcas meetings for so long. But it's all very well for people who have
no children to work at these things. A mother's time is not her own, and
charity begins at home. I'm sure I never seem to be at rest, and yet
people are never satisfied. Lady Burchett says she's certain I am never
at home, for she always misses me when she calls; and Mrs. Graham says I
never go out, she's sure, for she never meets me anywhere."
"Isn't all that just what I say?" said Major Buller, laying down his
knife and fork. (The discussion took place at dinner.) "It's the tyranny
of the idle over the busy; and why, in the name of common sense, should
it be yielded to? Why should friends be obliged, at the peril of
disparagement of their affection or good manners, to visit each other
when they do not want to go--to receive each other when it is not
convenient, and to write to each other when there is nothing to say? You
women, my dear, I must say, are more foolish in this respect than men.
Men simply won't write long letters to their friends when they've
nothing to say, and I don't think their friendships suffer by it. And
though there are heaps of idle gossiping fellows, as well as ladies with
the same qualities, a man who was busy would never tolerate them to his
own inconvenience, much less invite them to persecute him. We are more
straightforward with each other, and that is, after all, the firmest
foundation for friendship. It is partly a misplaced amiability, a phase
of the unselfishness in which you excel us, and partly also, I think, a
want of some measuring quality that makes you women exact unreasonable
things, make impossible promises, and after blandly undertaking a
multiplicity of small matters that would tax the method of a man of
business to accomplish punctually, put your whole time at the disposal
of every fool who is pleased to waste it."
"It's all very well talking, Edward," said Aunt Theresa. "But what is
one to do?"
"Make a stand," said the Major. "When you're busy, and can't
conveniently see people, let your servant tell them so in as many words.
The friendship that can't survive that is hardly worth keeping, I
think. Eh, my dear?"
But I suppose the stand was to be made further on, for Major Buller took
Aunt Theresa to the concert at "the Rooms."