Part 6

Husbands seldom learn by experience to recognise the object of their instinctive desire. Just as a baby screams and reaches towards the plant in the middle of the table when it really needs to go into the kitchen and ask cook for milk with a little water in it--not too hot--so a man says to his wife: “I dislike your clothes intensely. I wish you would go and buy a sort of shawl arrangement and drape it round you like the figures you see on a Greek vase. That is the way women ought to dress.” The poor fish-faced lady with the innocent expression and wispy hair goes obediently to Derry and Toms’s and buys an expensive silk shawl which she arranges round her ill-balanced form in exact imitation of the lady on the vase in Edward’s room, and comes down to dinner. Then the real tragedy begins, and all about a shawl! What he really had before his mind was no more a shawl than it was an Inverness cape or a Moujik’s jacket. It was a confection which he had seen on a lady in the Park with a beautiful figure, and if his innocent old dear had bought the same model and put it on he would have called her shameless and abandoned. If he had more experience and fewer childish dreams he would address her as follows: “My dear, I wish that you would not dress in parti-coloured scraps that don’t fit. I cannot myself think what you would look nice in, but first stand up straight and do your hair, and then try on clothes until you find something that I tell you is right.”

It is the folly of either side trying to explain anything to the other that leads to bloodshed.

_CHAPTER XII_: CHRISTMAS

When I asked Ruth what about Christmas, she said that it was always a pleasant season and she hoped none of us would break down; it meant so much to do for all. So of course I asked whether it would be any help to have in Mrs. Muff to wash up while Ruth made the puddings. She agreed that would probably be the best plan, as it would be a pity if we were not able to enjoy ourselves when it came to the point. She herself was usually at her wits’ end about Christmas-time.

“But you love that, Ruth!” I said candidly, forgetting myself for the moment.

“I beg pardon, m’m?”

“It is your wits’ beginning that bothers you, isn’t it?” I explained. “I mean” (seeing her face darken) “it is a nuisance thinking of things, I know, I feel it myself. We shall be able to give our minds to it if Mrs. Muff is here.”

I then passed hastily on to other things: the puddings, for instance, which took complete possession of my kitchen for a time. I do not think they became as personal to Ruth as to me. For my taste they were made too much of; they and the mince-pies crowded out the place and I was thankful to get rid of them. Long before Christmas I looked forward to the day when they all would be dead--“Arthur, Henry, Claud, Stanley, Gordon, Livingstone, Howard, Percy, George, Gerald, Trafford, and Herbert,” I counted along the shelf, “and all the little Thompsons. Arthur and Henry we shall want for ourselves and the kitchen on Christmas Day, you might give Claud to Mrs. Muff, and let Mullins have Stanley. Gordon and Livingstone are smaller and will do for New Year’s Day, so that leaves six to kill before Easter----” I caught sight of Ruth’s face, pale and agitated. “I am so sorry,” I apologised. “You know they seem almost like children, we have taken such an interest in them.”

“Would you care for a cup of tea, m’m?” Ruth asked anxiously.

“By and by,” I said. “I don’t really care very much for food just now. What about the turkey?”

“Well, m’m,” said Ruth, “a good-sized one that would stuff nicely ought to do us over Boxing Day, with a bit of beef, and there will be all the sausages.”

I already began to feel fat and over-fed; what with Claud and the others, and my enemy the beef with all his sausages, besides the stuffing, all arriving to lunch on the same day. It was like a lot of fat people driving over for tea and to spend the afternoon; a thing I have always detested.

“Ruth,” I pleaded, “you don’t think we might tell the tradespeople that of course one makes allowances at Christmas when every one is busy, so I should not be too exacting if one or two things--the sausages for instance--never came?”

“Oh, no, m’m,” she said proudly, “they’d never disappoint us at Christmas!”

“Ruth, I have hit upon a profound truth!” I exclaimed. “There is nothing the matter with sin in itself. The only thing that makes the Devil a bad man is that he misbehaves at the wrong time and in the wrong place. Think of the praiseworthy murders that might be committed on the right people, the thefts of horrible objects from the home that would reform humanity; arson if committed on the right kind of shops----” Ruth was running the taps for the washing-up and did not hear a word I said, so I left her and went upstairs to elaborate my theory of sin and write to Mrs. Muff. I allowed Ruth to arrange what food she liked during the next few days, as the kitchen was uninhabitable. They were giving the place a good clean down, she said. The open door disclosed Mrs. Muff singing hymns on a cork island in the middle of a flood, and an army of evicted beetles trying to settle their families into new quarters before Christmas, while Ruth and the range (clasped in one another’s arms, like the victims of Pompeii) breathed mutual forgiveness in a volcanic darkness of dust and ashes. I went out and met the efficient female coming back from town.

“I suppose you have done all your Christmas shopping?” she observed. “I always like to get mine done before the rush begins.”

“I am waiting for the London catalogues,” I said. “It is such a good way to shop.”

She told, as she had done before, how far more satisfactory it is to shop in person. “They put you off with anything if you leave it to them,” etc. I pointed out that with things like soap, and scent, and foie gras, and postage stamps, which are what I generally give people, there is not a wide field for the discretion of the shopman. She was so genuinely grieved at my idea of presents, and I know that she is such a good woman, understanding the public taste, and so on (besides, the catalogues had not come), that I thought it might be fun to try her way and see what it was like.

I turned into the principal street where the windows were full of suggestions: “Christmas novelties,” “Serviceable Xmas presents,” “What about the boys? Boots’ marvellous cash sponge always in request.” I bought some things marked “three-eleven-three,” and thought I was doing very well to secure them, as there were only a few. A little farther down the street I saw a great many more of the same things, only they were marked “one-eleven-three,” and looked in better condition. I went home and rearranged my list of people so as to use up some of the inferior “three-eleven-threes.” “I will take away Cousin Jemima’s soup-bowl,” I thought, “and give her one of the spare three-eleven-threes, then Pauline can have the soup-bowl and I will give her pencil-case to Jimmy Duncan, because his mother has taken me out so often.”

Next day I came upon a shop in a back street--it was in the Chinese quarter of the town. There were the most beautiful blue and yellow fruit plates and dishes, enough to make a thousand homes happy. They were so pretty that I danced with rage upon the pavement. I bought all I wanted and rearranged my list for the third time. It was getting dreadfully expensive. Cousin Jemima’s “three-eleven-three” had left her now, and she had been reduced to a pin-cushion at ninepence-halfpenny. Pauline’s soup-bowl was exchanged for a set of fruit-dishes which were much nicer, and then I remembered that she wanted one of my new photographs. I had ordered a dozen and they must be disposed of. I went home and rearranged my list again, which left me with two glass powder-boxes over.

When James came in and said, “Have you thought at all about Christmas presents?” I could scarcely answer coherently. He asked whether I could spare him any, and I told him that there were two powder-boxes he could have with pleasure. But that was no good, as none of his relations use powder. It was early-closing day, so we could not get anything else. He told me he had six boxes of cigarettes that I might have for my people if I could let him have something more suitable for his grandmother and the vicar’s children, so I gave him Pauline’s children’s sweets, and Cousin Jemima’s pin-cushion, and some of the Chinese dishes, and began all over again. This time there were three powder-boxes left, and my godson and James’s uncle were unprovided for. (James’s uncle was in a nursing home, so it was particularly important that he should have a cheery Christmas.) I suggested that we should tell him I was sending a photograph, but that James had spilt ink on it and I had ordered another specially, which would come in a few days. Meantime we were sending a powder-box to each of his nurses. “He will have a much gayer time like that than with ordinary presents,” I added hopefully. Clara came in then and said that Mullins had finished putting up the holly, and was there any message.

“I believe that the orthodox Christmas message is Peace and Goodwill,” I said. “Tell Mullins that I wish him peace and shall be glad of some myself.” Clara withdrew with the message, but came back to say that Mullins wished us both the compliments of the season, and was there anything else? I had only two halfpennies left, so I told Clara to tell him that if he were as wise as he pretended to be it was his part to bring gold at Christmas, not to ask for it, but that there was a small bottle of myrrh in the bathroom----However, James said I was not to be silly, so we borrowed a message from Ruth and promised to pay her back in the morning if she would get rid of Mullins. And then we did up our parcels, all but the powder-boxes. It was too late when I remembered that I might have given one to Mullins; he could have made himself look quite freshened up for Christmas with it.

There was an extraordinary demand for messages next day; even the lamplighter and the dustman longed to hear what I had to say. Some of them even sent books in which to record the messages, and that did it. “Mr. Jones’s book--and is there any message, please?”

I forgot what I had said to Ruth about forgiving Mr. Jones if he omitted to bring the sausages and the stuffing. His record for the past year was blacker than any recording angel would have put up with. I tore James’s fountain-pen from his pocket and wrote:

“_When Jones’s villain asks to-day A Christmas message, thou shalt say, ‘Here is a shilling in my name.’ Unfortunately it never came!_”

On Christmas Eve parcels began to arrive. Some were from people to whom, I remembered with a pang, nothing had been sent. The hopeless muddle of my scratched list had resulted in some names passing through my head without any definite settlement. But there was still time. “Come to the book-shop, quick!” I said to James.

We took a taxi and rattled to the book-shop; but there--as the most unreasoning person I know often says--“I lost my reason.” James gave it the first flick by saying three times, “Won’t they have read that?” I was so irritated over the whole thing that I said, unless he could manage to hurry up the Day of Judgment before to-morrow, I couldn’t possibly tell, after which he, very properly, refused to help me. The counter was full of books of a kind I never read, and detest to look at: but I suppose some one reads them or they would not be there. “Reminiscences of a Conchologist,” “Historic Moments with the Queens of Saxony” (this might be amusing, but it wasn’t, because public characters have a way of keeping their best historic moments out of the press), “Leaves from my Asparagus Bed,” by a lady gardener, “Ad Nauseam” (this was bound in mauve leather, cost eighteen pence and was of a suitable size for packing, but I knew I could not write a letter with it that would carry conviction). James was fidgeting about the shop all this time. “Do please find something for Caroline,” I said to him.

“Just wait till I get this for the vicar,” he answered, hunting in his pocket. I asked what it was and he held it up.

“But you can’t have that!” I said, “I want it. It is the very thing for Caroline; and the vicar won’t read it. Here! this is much better for him.” I took up a book with a beautiful picture on the cover. A masked bishop digging up a corpse from the hearthstone, under the very nose of an expiring cook.

“The vicar is such a darling,” I said, “you must give him something nice. He loves excitement, and told me himself that the lending libraries are so stupid; they send him nothing but shop, and he does not know what to ask for.”

James gave in, and, as it turned out, made the success of the year with his present. Caroline wrote me the warmest letter of thanks for the book from which I had rescued the vicar. It was a serious, blue cloth work called “In Tune with the Indefinite.” She is a thoroughly bad woman, as worldly as Lot’s wife, and without a spark of generosity in her composition. She said she simply loved mysticism, and had been wanting this particular book ever since it came out.

I forgave Mr. Jones on Christmas Day and tried to think well of Mullins and the others. I also gave the boy half a crown on the second of January, explaining that I was sorry for the delay; there had been a slight mistake as to the time for which it was ordered. I hoped he would not be inconvenienced by receiving it in the following year instead.

_CHAPTER XIII_: THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR

If I had been clairvoyant enough to foresee the arrival of the Buttons in the house next door, I should have looked for another dumping-ground for my domestic burdens, and, quite likely, have found myself side by side with other and worse Buttons; so I dare say it was for the best--or the least bad anyhow. When we took our house the adjoining Bijou was empty. I had forgotten (being, as the efficient female says, a little excitable) that it might some day be filled.

We were very happy for two years; then Satan began to find occupation for our landlord, at whose bidding the Buttons sprang up like fungus on the lawn of the empty house. I came home after a short holiday to find them thriving upon their evil juices. There were then two parent Buttons and three young ones. Six years later there were eight young ones, “and all by the same father,” as a friend who was staying with us remarked with surprise. In the mission field, where I understand that human life is often fostered for table purposes, the Buttons would be invaluable, but for a civilised country there were too many of them, added to which (as it they wanted adding to!) they kept animals and birds and every kind of creature with a voice whom they could lay hands on.

What deaf idiot can have floated the idea of there being dumb animals in the world to claim our affection and respect? When I find a dumb animal I shall love it with all my heart and soul. As for those animals that already exist, it would be as reasonable to speak with tears in our eyes about dumb foreigners because they make life intolerable with vociferations we do not understand.

I used to read books about the Great African Silence, dreaming about it as a Mussulman dreams of Paradise. If there is a certain hour known as cock-crow why may not other hours be apportioned in the same way and devoted to a particular animal? If this were done I could arrange my day. I would not go to bed until after cock-crow, I would do my shopping at dog-bark, and arrange to dine with a friend during caterwaul. As it is there is no method about the nuisance; it is all adrift and mixed up. And in the case of the Buttons there were the children, who welded single aggravations into one vast outrage.

They used to disperse themselves for conversation, when reasonable people approach one another. They planted one in the turret at the top of the house, another at the bottom of the garden, a third and fourth, within quarrelable distance, at the drawing-room window, while the fifth remained in a distant potting-shed, and then they began; the dumb animals acting as chorus.

“Ron----ald?” (From the turret.)

“Ye----s?”

“What are you doing?”

“Wh----at?”

“Wha----t--are--you--do----ing?”

“Mending my boat.”

“Wha----t?”

“Men----ding--my--boa----t.”

“Mend----ing--your--wha----t?”

“My bo----at.”

“Your--co----at?”

“Bo----o----at.” (“Bow--bow--bow!----Bow--bow--bow!----Bouff!”)

“Down, Spot----Spot! Spot! Spot!” (Whistling) “Peow, weow, weow----”

“Jimmy----”

“Wh----at?”

“Mother says, do you want your hammer?”

“Wh----at?”

“Mother says--do--you--want--your--hammer?”

(It would not be right to say what I did with that hammer in my mind, because a sin thought of is a sin committed in the eye of Goodness.)

“I ca----n’--t he----a--r.”

“Kwakee--scrwaak.” (From the parrot.)

“Bow--bow--bow!----bow!----Bow--bow--bow!----bow!”

“Cock--a--doodle--do!”

“Co--rr----a--warra--corrawarra.” (From the hen.)

Dog-bark and child-call lasted nearly until cock-crow came round again, because the Buttons, like the poor, keep their little ones up rather late. They trundled rattly things along the gravel, and joked loudly with papa after he came home, until half-past ten at night. We only needed cries of “Salt!” “Herrings!” and “Murder!” to give us the flavour of life at its fullest.

By way of side-shows there were the gramophone, and the pianola, and the annual baby (who never slept very well), and Mrs. Button’s singing, and the flirtations of the cook’s cat.

We enjoyed occasional precious lulls when Mrs. Button had a baby or the children were down with some disease. Even then there were always a few who had recovered first or who had not yet developed it; and as the animals did not get infectious diseases, and their confinements in no way interfered with their usual routine, the “Corrawarraing” and “Cockadoodling” and “Bowing” went on all the year round. It never took Mrs. Button more than a fortnight to have a baby, and during that time the monthly nurse sang almost as loudly in the garden as Mrs. Button used to do in the drawing-room, so, altogether, the lulls did not amount to very much. We always stayed at home during the Buttons’ summer holiday for the pleasure of being without them; besides which, we got an extra month’s peace by going away ourselves as soon as they came back.

I never could see any point in the Button family; they seemed to serve no useful end. They fed, and moved about, and multiplied exceedingly, yet never ate each other up, nor burrowed, nor became destructive in their neighbours’ gardens. But they were neither grateful to the eye nor could they be used for sport or for the table.

Mr. Button went every day to some mysterious place of business, where persons gave him good money to do for them what they could equally well have done for themselves; it was probably dull work, and Mr. Button did not mind doing it. It suited both parties that the work should go on, because the money they gave him made it possible for him to go on being Mr. Button, which was what he liked. Mrs. Button also liked him to go on being what he was, and they were so contented that they continued to make more and more young Buttons, just because it seemed a pity not to. I am quite certain that was the only reason that moved them to such an important step.

I have never seen children who so clearly as the young Buttons showed that it did not matter in the least whose children they were, any more than it matters which particular couple of rabbits own the young ones nibbling on the lawn. They were just the young Buttons. If their parents had happened to be the Duttons, or the Scruttons, or the Muttons, it would have suited them quite as well--so long as cook didn’t leave. That really would have mattered after she had got into their ways.

I have known the Button family now for some years, and never have I heard or seen them do anything that could not have been equally well said or done in a different way. “It will do as well as any other” is a favourite saying with all of them. Once, when the Buttons were away, their life’s history shaped itself in my thoughts, falling more or less into rhyme because they are so monotonous. There had been a new baby lately, and the butcher’s cart was at the door again:

_Archibald Button carved the mutton Upon a Sunday morning, His family beside him see! The dining-room adorning._

_The pudding’s placed before his wife, Who shares his uneventful life. He chose her on the oddest ground, Because her views were all so sound._

_Their family consists of these-- Two pairs of twins, one set of threes, Besides two others later on Who followed quickly one by one._

_’Twas James and Wilhelmina who First broke on his enraptured view; Tom, Kate, and Anne succeeded soon And twins again the following June._

_When these arrived you might have thought They had as many as they ought, But no, they only said, “How nice,” And called them Gus and Beatrice._

_Two years elapsed till some one said, “Poor Mrs. Button is in bed.” She rose again and with her came An infant girl without a name._

_They called her Mary as Papa Desired it after Grandmama. And then when Alice came next year They named her from an aunt so dear._

_When little Herbert’s birth was past These parents brave had done at last. No more the task before them lay What names they at the font should say._

_From parents such as I describe Young children can no sin imbibe. Behold them, therefore, meek and good, All sitting waiting for their food._

_Sound common sense and upright deeds Will furnish all their daily needs. Temptation cannot make them stray; They much prefer the narrow way._

_A lively tongue perhaps inquires To what a Button’s mind aspires, And why on mutton should subsist, Or why indeed it should exist._

_I cannot say, but this is known That when the world is upside down, Amidst the wreck of all that’s stable The Buttons will be found at table._

_CHAPTER XIV_: HOUSE-MOVING