Part 5

Tom and Anne were as devoted as I was to Miss Mathers. Of course Anne never became a gentlewoman, but she learned to sew, and to write without inking her fingers, not to come into a room head first and feet last nor to trail a vanishing hand across the door before she shut it; not to giggle, not to finger the spoons and forks before the next dish came in, not to sit still when she ought to stand up, not to frown and show her teeth in the sun, not to fall into habits of speech, and--most valuable and delightful accomplishment--not to argue about anything that had to be done. Tom said Miss Mathers was very restful because she saved them so much trouble. He explained that so long as there was any chance of altering an order by discussion it would be unsporting not to have a shot at it, but the argument was, on the whole, more fatiguing than it was worth, even to gain a slight concession.

I do not know whether she returned our affection, but when she left because Anne grew up, she said she did not intend to teach any more. It was very up-hill work in the present state of affairs. Parents of breeding were dying out, and modern education appeared to become daily more medical and less moral. She could never acquire the requisite knowledge for turning out a child’s stomach to examine its character. She should, therefore, retire and live with her brother, who really needed a lady to look after him.

_CHAPTER X_: THE CHARWOMAN

Two-and-sixpence a day is what it costs me to have the pleasure of Mrs. Muff’s society. She came at half-past eight and began at once on a bit of breakfast.

“I beg pardon, m’m,” said Ruth, when Mrs. Muff had been with us for a week (she came on Mondays and Tuesdays and did the rough washing), “but do I understand that Mrs. Muff is to have anything special ordered in for her breakfast?”

“It depends,” I said. “Is a charwoman fed on special food like a gold-fish? Won’t she thrive unless we give her ant’s eggs or boiled Indian meal?”

“I couldn’t say, I’m sure, m’m.” Ruth glanced angrily in the direction of the washhouse where Mrs. Muff was urging us in quavering tones to abide with her. “She had an egg this morning like the rest of us, but she said she wouldn’t be responsible if it happened again, as they always disagreed with her.”

“Ah, but these are fresh ones,” I said. “Did you explain it to her? Perhaps she had never tried them before; it makes all the difference.”

Ruth suggested that I had better speak to her myself, so I gathered up my skirts and “webbed it,” as an elegant friend of mine puts it, over the wet floor to Mrs. Muff and touched her on the shoulder.

“Good morning, Mrs. Muff,” I shouted. The song ceased. An amiable little cherry face with a sharp nose, vegetable eyes, and four teeth, by no means whole, whisked round upon me out of the steam.

“I can only abide with you for a minute, dear Mrs. Muff,” I bawled, “but I came to ask whether you had everything you wanted.”

“Oh, yes, thank you, m’m, indeed--unless it were that you could see your way to a new wash-tub; this one leaks something awful. If you thought of getting a man in to see to it he would tell you.”

“I know what he would tell me,” I replied, “I say--I know what he would tell me. I have heard it before.”

“And what was that, m’m?” Mrs. Muff inquired intelligently with one dripping hand behind her ear.

“I can’t explain,” I shouted, “it would take too long, but it made him whistle a great deal, and I don’t think the whistling did the tub any good, so we got a new one, and that is the one you are using--it is quite new--I can’t get another just yet.”

“Oh, quite so, m’m, quite so, I only thought I would mention it. I can manage splendidly, but this soap don’t seem to get up much of a lather. Where I was in my last place I did all the master’s shirts, and the table-cloths, and the sheets, and the pillow-cases. I made a splendid job of it; got a fine lather we did, and all with Cross and Blackwell’s soap, nothing else; I never put nothing to it, no soda nor chemicals; I don’t hold with them. Just the plain soap. Now I’ll just show you this soap if you can be troubled--beg pardon, it’s me left ear--if you’ll excuse me I’ll turn round--now then, what was it, m’m?”

“By and by,” I screamed, “but what about your breakfast?”

“Oh, don’t you trouble about that, m’m,” she assured me, “anything will do for me. Just what you are having yourselves, m’m. A bit of bread is all I need. I always say so long as we ’ave bread we’ve no need to complain. It’s a pity you don’t ’appen to have a better drying ground, isn’t it, m’m? You could do with a nice field. Always seems to make the things sweeter to my mind with plenty o’ fresh air; but, bless you, I can manage. I’ll give them an extra rub and they’ll look every bit as well. I’m accustomed to make things do as best I can, with me ’usband being an invalid. I was a splendid cook at one time, used to cook every bit of what ’e ’ad, I did indeed, and wash too--washed everything for the children--and in me last place we ’ad everything to do, the table-cloths, and the sheets, and the----”

The washhouse was full of steam, so she did not notice my escape. Through the open window I could hear that she supposed me to be still with her. Presently there was an abrupt pause and the hymn began again.

I told Ruth next morning that I thought she had misjudged Mrs. Muff; she seemed a good-natured old lady, and used to putting up with things. I was informed that she had carried on something dreadful that morning, wanting three courses for breakfast, besides jam and coffee; said tea wasn’t fit stuff to begin the day on, there was nothing strengthening about it. “And she’s calling the soap for everything,” Ruth added; “says she can’t wash with it, and there is no place to dry the clothes--perhaps you wouldn’t mind speaking to her.”

She was out on the back lawn this time hanging out the clothes. Some eccentric flannel garments flaunted defiance, with one leg in the air, and Mrs. Muff sang:

“_At the sign of triumph Satan’s host doth flee----_”

“Certainly it does,” I said to myself, and turning up my sleeves I walked out.

“Mrs. Muff,” I began, “what is all this again about breakfast and soap?”

Mrs. Muff in tears was worse than anything I had imagined to be possible. The only thought that enabled me to proceed was that Ruth in tears would be less harrowing but far more terrible. As usual, pity was conquered by fear, and I saw myself as an egg-thirsty tyrant standing (with Ruth behind me) belabouring the prostrate body of poor musical Mrs. Muff with a bar of Gossage’s Tallow Crown. Neither “Primrose Glory” (I think that was the name of her soap) nor fried fish were ever mentioned between us again. Ruth generously added half a cold pie to the peace contract, and I contributed a blue serge suit dear to James’s heart. It is always satisfactory to work in minor interests with great ones and to combine generosity with one’s own advantage.

Imagination is sometimes thought to belong to a high order of intelligence. I believe it often depends upon absence of education. A great mind may so use its education that it only provides a wider field for the imagination, just as the marvellous digestion of a goat can adapt all sorts of inedible stuff to a useful end, but it is difficult to improve on the brilliant fancy of quite ordinary children and illiterate old ladies. If Mrs. Muff had had a normally adult intelligence or the least smattering of science, she would never have expected me to believe that the numerous handkerchiefs that got lost in the wash had gone down the grid. We lost six in one week and ten in the next, and still the water flowed peacefully away, nor ever tarried for a moment round Mrs. Muff’s ill-protected roots. I gave orders that if she would make such a mess she must stand on a foot-stool, which she reluctantly did; but if her explanation about the grid had contained a tenth part of fact she would have been standing knee-deep in a lake in no time. If Mrs. Muff had not been so deaf I should have told her some of the explanations that I have heard children give for natural phenomena, and asked whether they seemed to her at all remarkable. A nice child of my acquaintance, who invariably comes to dinner with dirty finger-nails, has given me quite a lot of imaginative pleasure. Once (she was reproved and sent back each time) it was the cold weather that had made them black; another day--the next, I believe--it was the thunder; the last time I went there to lunch it was because she had been hanging down her hands, and her mother commented upon the curious fact that the week before it had been because she was reaching up to do her hair. I myself have been told that the plates were sooty because the plumber was in the house, that the fresh eggs were bad because of the time of year, and I have waited to complete my collection of “facts that every housewife ought to know,” until I am assured that the cat has had an unusual number of kittens on account of the range.

_CHAPTER XI_: HUSBANDS

To those about to marry a husband often seems not only a subject for affection and admiration but also for respect such as is given to an older and more experienced being. The young bride sees herself in imagination the possessor of a husband and children; she classifies them as belonging to separate orders of being. This I have found to be a mistake, but many of us drift so gently into a knowledge of the fact that we never notice how far we have wandered from our original conception. I realised the position quite suddenly one day. There was no falling apple nor boiling tea-kettle nor anything of that sort to start the theory in my head; it was not even as if I had been cutting down James’s trousers to fit Tom. I had been sitting with my hands in my lap, twiddling my thumbs, when all of a sudden this occurred to me. “James is to the other children what the thumb is to the other fingers. I have five fingers, the most powerful and useful of which stands apart from the others and is called the thumb. I have five children of which the first, the most powerful and useful, is called the husband. I have been deceived by instinct, by tradition, and by my parents, and it does not matter in the least; things are exactly as they were before. I will brush my husband’s hat and think no more about it.” But I did think more about it. I began also to notice other ladies in the same predicament, and marked how unconscious they were of their true position. I watched them feed and dress and exercise their first-born husbands, observing how they advised and reproved and deceived them for their good, how they encouraged them to work and were surprised when the work was recognised and paid for by the world. Mrs. Beehive’s husband was rather celebrated. He had built a great many public buildings, she once told me with pride and in just the same way as she described how baby had begun to take notice at an exceptionally early age. I could hear her, in imagination, say, “Yes, dear, very nice indeed,” while Mr. Beehive toiled and built like the dearest and humblest of beavers that he is, occasionally reviving his hopeful efforts to explain the nature of creation to the passive, mutton-headed creature who has, so to speak, swallowed him up and borne him anew for herself against his will. Another thing I discovered was that Ruth knew what a husband is and never told me. Servants are much sharper than their mistresses about these things. I suppose it is because they are not distracted by love and marriage. In their minds the master and the children are lumped together with other troublesome and necessary facts which girls have to put up with. (Whether they are “Mother’s” husband and children or the mistress’s makes very little difference.) They want a great deal more cooking than anyone would do for themselves, they tear their clothes, and are unpunctual and passionate. Sometimes they come home drunk and use up the money that is wanted for the house, or they speculate and gamble with it--silly fellows--instead of laying it out sensibly on bargains and outings. The only excuse they might have for doing the things they do--littering up the place with books and papers and musical instruments, screaming at one another without their hats in the street, or sitting in poky rooms in their shirt-sleeves--the only excuse they might have for all this folly would be to get well paid for it, so that they might spend at least part of the day sensibly in dancing and holiday-making. But not at all. They come home either as surly as bears or else perfectly limp and useless for conversation, they want more cooking done, and probably have less money on them than they took out. That is Ruth’s view I know, and it is that, secretly or avowed, of all the experienced women of good repute whom I know; those who think otherwise are not wives at heart, they are on a par with, if they are not actually, concubines. Soon after the day when I had twiddled my fingers and thought of these things, I began to notice all sorts of little contributory facts which fitted in with my newly formed theory. What Ruth said was nothing new, but I had never understood it before. I went into the kitchen, as usual, to go through the ceremony which Tom calls “seeing the beef.” I had been out alone the evening before, and had left a chop for James’s dinner.

“There is very little of the cold grouse left, m’m,” said Ruth, “the master’s been at it.”

“But I left a chop for him, didn’t I?” I asked.

“Yes’m, but he’s been at the grouse all the same. He would have it. You can see for yourself.”

Yes, I thought, if things were not as I now see they are, Ruth would have spoken differently. She would have said: “I am sorry, m’m, I can’t let you have the grouse to-day, but it was required for the master.” As it is, the very servants can evidently see no difference between the master wanting cold grouse and the boys raiding the pantry for tarts. Where is my husband? It appears that I have not got one. There is no such thing.

I then remembered with painful feelings of disillusionment something that Clara had said a few days before. “The master’s vests, m’m, they are all out at the elbows, with him yawning like that. He pulls them to pieces every time he raises his arms. I wonder could you speak to him about it?”

“He only yawns like that when he is doing very difficult work, Clara,” I said at the time. “We can’t help it; it wouldn’t do to interrupt him.”

“No, m’m, but if you could just mention it to him--you see it takes me all the evening to mend them when I ought to be getting on with the new curtains.” It was just as if she had said: “Of course, it is a pity he shouldn’t enjoy himself, and I would be the last to wish to stop it, but we can’t let his play stand in the way of what has to be done.”

The idea of a wife being the mother of her husband is an old one, but it has been too ambiguously put before the public, therefore girls still marry under a misapprehension. The misapprehension is of no consequence and hurts no one, but I cannot help thinking it would save disappointment if instead of nursing a delusion we could idealise a fact. If children were not made unnecessarily ridiculous the supposed husband would not be missed from the family group. If Mrs. Beehive gave to her younger children some of the dignity which she has, by reason of her nature, stripped from Mr. Beehive it would be a great deal better than throwing it away, and Mr. Beehive would suffer less from being placed in the same pigeon-hole with his own baby. Why should the mother of the family be the only one who is allowed any dignity or private life? She denies this, of course, and draws you a beautiful fancy picture of papa, the head of the house. She dresses him up for your benefit in all his war-paint of waistcoat and whiskers, but she does it in just the same spirit as she dresses up her son as a postman to please him while she gets on with her work. And the cruel thing is that she has so long ago stripped him of his natural fur and feathers that when she says “that is enough,” and folds away the waistcoat and whiskers in a drawer, he is exposed to the neighbours in a defenceless and absurd condition.

What is it that binds Mr. and Mrs. Beehive together? The problem has fidgeted me for years. It has disturbed me in my work, and sometimes even caused me to overlook Mr. Jones’s iniquities until it was too late to do anything. I once asked Ruth why it is that married people remain with one another, and she said she supposed it was the evenings.

“What about the evenings?” I asked.

“Well, you see, m’m,” she said, “as you know yourself, there is not very much for unmarried girls as is anyways respectable to do in the evenings.”

“Yes, but the men, Ruth,” I said,“--mind the milk--it is boiling--thank you--why do they stay to be treated like children?”

“Well, m’m, I suppose it is because they are what you might call childish. Of course, you may say they do bring in the money, and some of them are very knowledgeable--such as master--but you’ll find they haven’t much idea of spending an evening profitably without they are married.”

_It wouldn’t do to let them know_, is a great phrase in every peaceful household. And it is quite true; it would never do at all. Husbands want reasons for everything and we know what that means! It is impossible to make them understand why some perfectly ordinary things cannot be done. We say, perhaps, light-heartedly enough, “I have such a headache, I wish I hadn’t to go out!” and he says, “Well, why do you go out?” Of course we reply that there is the fish to be got--it never came--and then it is his turn to say, “Why not send Ruth?” We explain that Ruth has to cook the dinner.

“But she can’t cook the fish before it comes.”

“But there are the other things?”

“Oh, never mind them, your head is the only thing that matters. Let Ruth go.”

We end by a detailed description of the cook’s afternoon and the havoc this slight disorganisation of the traffic would cause, knowing, of course, perfectly well that there is no reason why Ruth should not go except that she just can’t. Cooks don’t go for fish unless they offer to, and then they are not experienced enough. What we really want the man to do is to say he will go, but we don’t say this because it would end in his sending Ruth and thinking himself very clever. He would report that she was delighted to go and made no fuss whatever. Next day we should be made to feel that the unwritten law had been broken through our fault. We had taken a mean refuge behind the master, whose orders she could not refuse to obey. Things would be very uncomfortable for some time and she would very likely ask whether the master were going to undertake the housekeeping, because if so--etc. But it is impossible to explain all that at the time, so we are either cross because of the headache and conceal the cause, or else we are rude at once when he begins his suggestions, and then he says women are unreasonable and ought to take more exercise.

I seem always to be exploding fallacies in this book, but there is one more which must be mentioned because it is connected with the husband fallacy. It is part of Mrs. Beehive’s whisker make-up. This is the fallacy of the Experienced Man. I have never yet seen a man who gave me the impression of being in the least experienced in anything more important than the details of his own business. In matters of life and death he is as hopeful at eighty as he was at eight. James still says to me: “What a good plan it would be to share a house for the summer with the Van Diemans. You see, they would not be in our way in the least; they would have rooms to themselves, we needn’t see them unless we want to. He would be there to fish and play golf with me, and you would be left with her. She would probably do the housekeeping for you.”

The last time he mentioned this I said: “Do you ever go to stay with anyone without hiding at the top of the house and pretending you are dead for nine-tenths of the day?” He said no, but that was different--when you had rooms of your own. I replied: “Do you know what you would do? You would open the door of our sitting-room as you came upstairs and say: ‘Why not come in and have a chat and a smoke?’ The poor deluded dears would come in, you would be as pleased as Punch for ten minutes and then begin to fidget.”

“Oh, but then they would go,” said James, “and besides I like it for much longer than that.”

“You don’t, ten minutes is the outside limit. I have timed you often when the Van Diemans have been here: in ten minutes you begin to wind up your watch and ask where they are going to spend Christmas.”

“Oh, do I?” said James.

“Yes, and another thing, you don’t like fishing. It is the idea of fishing that you like. When it comes to the point you go because Van Dieman is such a good chap, but you hate the wet grass, and the flies, and not catching anything.”

“What a sordid mind for detail you have,” he said; “there is no imagination about you.”

“An ounce of experience is worth two pounds of imagination,” I answered.

We took our holiday in an altogether different way, and James was appalled when the Van Diemans told him how they had spent their time. He said it was inconceivable how people could enjoy that sort of thing. When I pointed out that it was entirely owing to my foresight and intelligence that we had not been there, he said shamelessly that it would have been quite different if we had gone; it was just an accident that they had behaved in accordance with their temperaments and their invariable habit.

Women, on the other hand, are so experienced that I have begun to think they remember not only their childhood but also their previous incarnations. From what I know of both sexes it seems probable that Adam spat out his piece of apple behind the nearest fig-tree, while Eve munched hers conscientiously to the end and got some good out of it. I used to consult Mrs. Beehive in the early days about all sorts of domestic matters, but finally I gave it up because she was so depressing. She said so often: “It’s no good, dear. It’s a nice idea, I know, but you will find it will rot with the sun,” and it always did, in spite of Mr. Beehive saying that it was sure to do beautifully, and that the reason why theirs had been a failure was the unusual dampness of the year; it was not likely to occur again.