Part 5

All personal remarks are to imaginative persons a heavy strain on endurance. Their imagination at once conjures up a loathly picture of themselves in the circumstances suggested by the remark. It also mentally fits the remark with an answer, and another offensive picture results. For instance, there is the question, “Are you very tired?” The imagined answer, in a tone to fit the question, is, “Yes, dear, very.” Plop! You immediately see yourself as a great, fat, loose body dropping into an arm-chair. You see a luscious smile spread over your imagined face as the kindly solicitous one unlaces your boots--you feel mushy all over. “Damn!” is probably your ungracious reply as you hurriedly put the mask over your normally apparent fatigue. “What the deuce should I be tired for? You’re tired yourself--I’ll take your boots off.” So you divert attention from the anxious scrutiny of commonplace blemishes which in tactful circles “we don’t notice.” Then you feel a brute, and you get in a temper at having been made to feel a brute when you were not really one at all; and you were already in a temper before, because you had seen an incorrect vision of yourself as a juicy fool. And yet there was nothing in any of it to get in a temper about. There are scores of harmless remarks that have this irritating, personal effect. “Is your head very bad?” is a ticklish question for anybody but one’s old nurse to take upon themselves. It is not often that there are more than three people in the world who may ask it. You see, the only possible answer, “Yes, very,” is so silly. What a thing to be asked to say! The next move on the part of the dear enemy can only be, “Would you like anything for it?” and what on earth could one like for it that one has not already done of one’s own accord? Even if we haven’t put on a wet handkerchief with eau-de-Cologne it is unthinkable to have any but one of the possible three persons fiddling with wet things about our head. Our forehead would, to a certainty, be shiny and the hair pushed the wrong way. The wretch would probably smooth back the curls behind our ears, and we should know what a hideous fright we looked and that they loved us just as well like that--No, three people is too many. No one but our nurse who was there from the very first can be suffered to deface our beauty and not know what they have done.

All sensible people will have abandoned this chapter long ago, so I may as well finish it for the morbid delectation of the neurotic, or for those perfectly sane, yet kind-hearted sufferers, who have not yet dared to speak of their sorrows, even to themselves. Let us collect some other impossible, searching remarks and leave them to soak in without comment. “My darling’s eyes look heavy to-day”--(if you are not very careful the adjective may quite well be “puffy”)--“perhaps you have eaten something that has disagreed with you.” I had to write this in a great hurry for fear I thought about it and began to get furious again.

“You must tell me when you are tired of me, and I’ll go.”

Murder is too good for the inquisitress who subjects one to this last torture; and yet she sins in the name of Love, and we dare not complain for fear of angering the god, who employs the weak-minded as often as not. I never heard one man say to another, “Your beard has lost its pretty colour since you were ill. I wonder if you tried vaseline--” or, “I can’t bear to see you wear those trousers; they are too loose on the hips; they make you look quite stout. You don’t mind my saying so, do you?” This would entail a searching finger through the beard or a playful pinch on the hips. No, men don’t do it. They have to bear it sometimes, but they don’t do it. Decidedly the fringe of aggravation is male and female in fairly equal proportion; but when you get to the very heart of it, you will find a lady sitting there as sure as fate. And it is only after you have been thoroughly unjust that you can begin to lavish affection on her with a generous hand.

_CHAPTER IX_: THE ROYAL VISIT

It was first rumoured and then announced in the papers. By and by the full programme of events was published, and then invitations to this and that were issued. There was nothing unseemly about the Millport manœuvres before the great battle of Exclusive Rights. No one admitted that there had been, was, or would be any demand for invitations to anything; not even for the big garden-party where the King and Queen were to be present. There was a semi-private luncheon too, but that was a sacramental feast. No one spoke of it beforehand, any more than a duke would rush into his club, shouting, “I say! I’m going to get the Garter--are you?” No. One read about it in the paper next morning; that was all. But there was a wider choice of behaviour with regard to the other invitations. People behaved like the animals in the Ark, each one after his kind. The sort who are at their best early in the morning, and are therefore unpopular with liverish hosts, were in great spirits about the whole thing. They applied early for tickets for everything. The appointed day lay before them as a rosy picnic. But this was not the attitude of quite the best people. They did all their spade-work by moonlight, when the busy revellers were in bed, dreaming happy dreams, with medallions of their Majesties put out with the clean shirts for the morning. But in those dark hours the county families worked for promotion like heroes, appearing next day spruce and unconcerned as usual, with the suggestion, “Shall you be going to the garden-party? We might drive out together--Oh, haven’t you? How extraordinary! These things are frightfully badly managed. I expect they haven’t got half the invitations out yet; ours only came last week.” In the case of those whose midnight labours had been unblessed with cardboard fruit the formula was a little different. There was no pretending that the fruit was unpalatable and had been rejected. Millport is not so crude as all that. The formula was to the effect that invitations were being issued on a purely official basis, and mismanaged at that, and that there would be an awfully queer crowd there. How would they behave?

Reginald was on the committee of the hospital which the King and Queen were to visit, so, of course, Polly would be provided with a good place. One thing was quite clear, that the occasion asked for, if it did not actually demand, a new dress.

“My dearest life,” said Reginald, “to begin with, the Queen is short-sighted, and to go on with, you will be hidden by abler and stouter persons than yourself in the front row.”

Polly argued that there would be the tea afterwards, and, besides, anyhow----Reginald gave her a cheque at once, because when women begin saying, “besides, anyhow,” it is far wiser to give in. Such words never preface the truth, and the business of hearing what follows is generally very long and tedious. Polly had an almost new afternoon dress which, had it been a success, she would have worn; but it was not altogether right, and Mrs. Henry, whose husband was also on the committee, had been in the shop when she bought it, and would remember its age. Also she had since been given a hat which was not quite right with the dress. It would need all a woman’s life as a context to show up trifles like these so that they would figure as reasons before a husband’s mind. Therefore, we invent reasons which look solid, rather than bring forward the nebulous truth which would probably be met with contempt.

“I want a dress for the King’s visit, Miss Price,” said Polly, standing next day in a small room at the top of a dingy little house. Miss Price, very minute, very wizened, very commanding, stood beside a round table on which were a vase of artificial flowers, several photographs of worn, though cheerful, faces, and some fashion papers of remote date.

“I am afraid I shan’t be able to manage it, Mrs.--er--” she said, “I am so rushed already, I can hardly get through the orders I have.” Polly took no notice of this. “Are you making for a lot of people?” she asked with deep interest.

“There’s Mrs. Beehive,” began Miss Price. “She’s ordered a very nice dress.”

“Oh, has she?” said Polly, “what fun! I shall look out for it. Is it very new?”

“Well, no,” Miss Price said hesitatingly, “the new styles would hardly suit Mrs. Beehive. She is all shapes and sizes, you would think, according to the weather.”

Polly sopped this up like nectar, and retailed it to Reginald when she got home. “Great Scot!” he said, “I hope Beehive doesn’t go and look over my waistcoats at the tailor’s, and ask the fitter how much he has let out since last year. What curious creatures you are.”

“It’s all right,” said Polly, “I love to know beforehand what people are going to wear, and then I know what to avoid.”

“But I think you told me that Miss Price said she couldn’t make it?” said Reginald.

“Oh, that is just a little nervous habit of hers,” Polly assured him, “like nice-mannered people wanting to be pressed to a second helping. Would you believe it if your tailor said he hadn’t time to make you a new coat?”

“I never heard of any tailor saying such a thing,” Reginald replied.

“No, of course not,” retorted Polly contemptuously, “because you order your clothes in March, and they come home the year after next. I might undertake to make you a pair of boots if I could wait to deliver them until after you were dead. And I don’t suppose you ever complain, do you?”

“Oh yes,” said Reginald. “Haven’t you seen boys tearing along the Exchange with large cardboard boxes under their arms? If you got on to the Flags you would find the place littered with tissue paper, and Beehive, and Henry and I trying on each other’s trousers. That means that we complained of the delay and sent a boy to fetch the things at once.”

One rather sad feature of the traffic that went on in Miss Price’s dingy apartments was the immense pains which were taken by all the ladies to find out what was the very last word in fashion, and so attire themselves for the delight of their Sovereigns. Little did they suspect that a creation from the Rue de la Paix will avail a woman at the gates of Buckingham Palace no more than a pair of blue corsets will soften the heart of Peter. In both cases the facts would very likely be used against her. The desire to please nearly always contains elements of pathos.

The programme of the great day’s proceedings was dull enough reading. It not only left one with a strong belief in the divine right of kings, but also suggested that Providence went a step further and provided rulers who, though human in many respects, were fashioned of immortally tough material. We read about the woman’s heart beneath the queenly robe, of the home life of monarchs, and the birthday festivals of princes. The papers assure us that the King frequently expresses regret at the loss of his collar-stud, and that the Queen enjoys a chat with her intimate friends. Anecdotes are related of how an emperor once remarked to a gamekeeper whom he met traversing the park, “I expect you find plenty to do towards the middle of August,” and how the wife of a reigning Sovereign entered the cottage of an old woman and observed with a smile, “I see you have been peeling onions; you must remember not to cut your husband’s bread with the same knife.” All these incidents show, beyond any doubt, that the same heart beats alike for rich and poor. But there is one heaven-sent quality which distinguishes rulers from the common herd, and that is an insensibility to boredom and the pangs of platitude which transcends all mortal endowments. Human nature has the power to endure; the higher and royal nature, I hope and believe, does not mind.

How much the Imperial pair observed of all the labour which had been expended for their pleasure it is impossible to say. Whether it ever struck her Majesty that Polly’s sleeves were cut from a more exclusive design than Mrs. Henry’s, or whether she was startled by Mrs. Beehive’s superior knowledge of the habits of the Court, no one will ever know. But probably the fact that all sorts of hidden details had been attended to with enthusiasm by every one, that a spider on the roof of the hospital had been dislodged from his perch, that the chairman had given extra attention to the parting of what hair he possessed, that the matron had on her last new underbodice, and that the address which was to be delivered by the Recorder had been carefully prepared: all these trifles, if unrecognized separately, must yet have combined to express a general sense of happiness and welcome.

The morning of the great day dawned gloomy and cold, the first wet day there had been for three weeks. A chilly north-west wind brought, alternately, penetrating fine rain and short intervals of greeny-grey sky, through which the sun peeped without interest. On the first moment of these intervals macintoshes and umbrellas were eagerly put aside, the enthusiasts lining the streets emerging gay as a rainbow, until the fretful clouds gathered once more, and everybody with one voice exclaimed, “Dear me! What a pity!”

Inside the hospital there had been very little sleep for anybody. It would be interesting to know whether persons marooned on a desert island, with the whole day before them, begin to get in a hurry when the time comes to dish up what frugal meals are available--say, two bananas and a sweet biscuit. It is certain that the importance and extent of preparations to be made for an occasion have no bearing on the amount of time needed to complete them. There will be a scurry at the end, whether the occasion is the beanfeasting of a thousand people, or the getting off of one man and his papers for an early train. Whether we allow half an hour for the one (and make the beanfeast impromptu), or whether we prepare for the other six months beforehand (reminding him every hour that the time is getting on, and finally ourselves putting the tobacco-pouch in his pocket), the result will be the same; the thing will get done with equal hurry and impatience. Everything had been quite ready the day before this visit of the King and Queen; yet no one in the hospital went to bed, except the patients, who were in bed already, and they got very little sleep. The visit, which it was reckoned would take half an hour, was timed for eleven, and by nine o’clock the invalids were all washed and had ribbons in their hair; the wards were spotlessly tidy, and such windows as were to be occupied by guests were already nearly filled. There was to be a short reception in the hall when their Majesties arrived, and a few people were to be presented.

* * * * *

When the moment was over, and the royal couple had passed on their way through the wards; when they had been ushered past the fluttering windows; when they had re-entered their carriage, and disappeared, methodically bowing, along the glittering, bobbing, trotting, waving, cheering vista, which is to most of us the whole life of our King and Queen, then, happy and relieved, we returned to the official tea downstairs, and resumed our several natures.

_CHAPTER X_: FIDELITY

“I wish that people wouldn’t write these ridiculous letters,” said Polly, laying aside a bundle of about eight closely written sheets. “It’s Octavia Sinclair. She says she is quite sure that I have forgotten her. I have not forgotten her in the least, only she doesn’t fill the whole of my landscape; it is so absurd that people should want to.”

“It is almost barbaric to want a landscape to remain the same always,” I agreed. “One runs up villa residences everywhere now, of course, and the place looks different; but the old earth is the same underneath, if people would only have the sense to understand.”

“Do you think I run up lots of villa residences?” Polly asked wistfully.

“I was trying to help you, dear, not to criticize,” I replied.

“You see,” Polly explained, “if you are making anything, no matter what, the pieces you are making it with don’t all stay in the same place. When the world was being made it would have been dreadful if all the mountains and countries had been made in succession and just stuck down one in front of the other, and if each tree and each animal had stayed where it was----”

“My dearest Polly,” I begged, “stop just one minute. You don’t see trees as men, walking, do you?”

“If you are going to be like the serious raconteur’s comic brother in the pantomime, I’ll stop,” she answered. “You must either follow me or stay at home. I see, in my mind’s eye, the Almighty evolving a perpetually changing order out of the chaos that occurs every day. You don’t make a world out of a hill, and then a tree, and then an ocean, stuck down like salt-cellars on the table. The sea is being made into rain to wash the ground into different shapes: the trees settle down into coal, or we cut them up to build things with, and we clear the ground for villa residences to hold the new people whom Providence sends. Sometimes there is an earthquake which throws up the dead whom we have forgotten and swallows up the living. It is all like a kaleidoscope making different patterns of the same bits.”

The door opened and Reginald looked in, decided that the moment was not for him, shrugged his shoulders, and went out.

“You can’t play a game with every one staying in the same place,” resumed Polly. “You can’t embroider if you don’t use first one thread and then another; you can’t paint a picture without adding new colours to the old ones; you can’t make music with one note; you can’t----”

“I’ve got that point, dear,” I said. “You can go on. You can’t make a hotel a lively place with only one guest. Yes?”

“I am not talking of enjoyment,” said Polly, “but of any work of construction. I am constructing my life, and even though I were a hermit (so you may dispose of your vulgarities about hotels and villas) I could still add new experiences to the old without being accused of infidelity.”

“But suppose you repented of your past experiences?” I suggested.

“I shouldn’t wish them undone,” said Polly calmly. “I should merely see them in a new light, and they would fall back into their place in the background of my life’s pattern.”

“Poor experiences! Alas! Octavia, my poor friend!” I murmured.

“I feel the same thing about men,” said Polly; “they are in the pattern too. Sex is merely a matter of colour in the threads.”

“Which is what colour?” I asked.

“They are both all colours,” she said; “that is why they make such a good picture together.”

“Well, what do you mean by saying that it is the same with men?” I asked. “What is the same?”

“I mean that it takes a great many men to make one husband, just as it takes a great many Octavia Sinclairs to make one person’s life,” she explained.

“How many husbands have you besides Reginald?” I asked with some hesitation.

“It is very difficult to be patient with you, Martha,” replied Polly. “I have only one husband, as you know, but he is compounded of all the men I ever met. When I meet a man who is bad-tempered, I weave the thread of his ill-temper beside that of Reginald’s amazing patience, and you can’t imagine how Reginald’s colours glow. When I meet another who admires what Reginald calls my waffle-headedness (which he dislikes, by the way), I enjoy a perfect orgy of waffle-headedness, and use it all up before Reginald comes back, and then he restores the balance on the other side, and there, again, we have proportion, which is the art of life. I know several men whose trousers are either perfectly creased or not folded at all, and between them I realize that Reginald’s are the nearest to the ideal trouser, showing thought for the temple of his spirit without the exaggerated anxieties of you, for instance, Martha. Wasn’t there some poet who spoke of ‘the need of a world of men for me’? The lady whom he mentioned there had lost her husband or her lover, or whoever he was, and she felt, I suppose, that it would take several men to replace him. Now I have not lost mine, and his beauty is immensely enhanced by the qualities of all the rest of his sex. As for embracing and that kind of thing, that is quite beside the mark. I dare say that if we were all in the garden of Eden I might occasionally salute the marbled brow of one or two of the most perfect, just to emphasize some point in what I was saying, or as the expression of some passing emotion; but the thing has got to mean so much more than Nature intended, that one doesn’t do it, and it is no special deprivation to me to do without.”

“And suppose the threads of your pattern get restive,” I asked, “and won’t stay in their proper positions. Are you never confronted with a blazing flower of the tropics when you were at work on a daisy?”

“No,” she replied quite seriously; “but if I were, of course I should work it in somehow.”

“Does Reginald embroider on the same plan?” I asked after a pause.

“I expect not,” she answered; “because I don’t think that men are so wrapped up in themselves as we are--I don’t mean fond of themselves, I mean wrapped up. And another thing. I never think that there is much substance in my mind except what other people put in--and that, I admit, I develop very nicely--but Reginald has stuff of his own which he spins out of his inner consciousness, and which takes shape when it encounters facts. I don’t know whether that is the difference between other men and women, but I have an idea that if Moses had been a woman he would have come back from the wilderness rather bereft of ideas, and not having done any useful thinking at all. Perhaps his (or her) mind would have ‘turned on itself,’ as they say, and he (or she) would have been at loggerheads with all the fowls of the air. ‘There was a most impertinent vulture,’ the female Moses would have told the children of Israel, ‘who made a point of settling down first on whichever rock I had arranged to sit on. Of course if I had been a man he wouldn’t have dared. It has taken me forty years of intense thought to dodge him, but I believe I could manage it now if I went back.’”

“But Moses had no society, either, to help his great thoughts to take shape,” I said pettishly; “and when he did get back he was a kill-joy, and finally died of temper.”

“Well, my dear,” said Polly, “you find taking two children to the seaside quite as much as you can manage. I don’t know, I’m sure, what you would say to forty thousand, or whatever the number was whom Moses took. If you got through as well as he did you’d be lucky. And remember, he had to keep them amused for more than a month.”

Polly is like that; it is impossible to take any of her arguments to a logical conclusion. I tried to make her see that Reginald was very forbearing to find all his ideals of womanhood in her without seeking outside inspiration, and she said that “men were like that”; they had no ideals, and were prepared to take just anything and muddle along with it provided it fulfilled some of its purposes. “Have you ever watched them shopping?” she asked; “they never turn out a whole shop as we do. They say, vaguely looking round, ‘Is this all you have?’ and the girl, of course, grins and says, ‘Yes, it is the very best, and the other kinds are never asked for now’; and he says, ‘Oh, very well then, just send it up, will you, please,’ and he pays far too much for it. Now we, even when we have bought a thing, often see something else that would have done far better, and then we fret over it, or take steps to alter it. That is idealism.”

“Oh, Polly!” I remonstrated. “You make my head ache so. Do you mean that men are never discontented with their wives? And, besides, you said yourself that all the other men you saw only made you admire Reginald the more.”