CHAPTER IV.

GASTAVUS BECOMES HOUSEWIFE—AND JULIA UNDERGOES A CHANGE.

Had Gustavus been a reasonable man, he might have begun supplying, in a rational way, the deficiency of domestic lore which his Julia thus lamentably discovered; but, unfortunately, his pride of the perfectibility of his own knowledge of these occult mysteries was called in question at the very time that his anger was roused by a fault the most heinous of any beyond the pale of the decalogue. With a look of terrible scorn, in which, all the gristly muscles of his grim face were called into a grotesque, convulsive motion, he announced, in as much of a paucity of vocables, and as loud a sound as ever the stentorian Cycloborus, expressed his settled determination to take the sovereignty of the kitchen on his own shoulders; and no one could have heard the sound and seen his countenance without believing that it was just as sure as death or sin that he would do as he said he would do. At least, there can be no manner of doubt that Mrs Julia M’Iver believed him, and it was equally doubtless that she did not fear him. She smiled at the success of her scheme, and the smile itself would have done the business of confirmations, if there had been any need of such aid in the matter. So, accordingly, the apparition was soon afterwards exhibited, of the great bibbed Gustavus striding about in the kitchen, and performing _manibus suis_ all the operations of the culinary department of his domestic economy; and we would tell a big untruth, or be guilty of misprision itself, if we attempted to conceal the fact, that he washed and dressed his own linens as well as, if not a deuced deal better, than any washerwoman that ever danced in a trough in the village of Duddingstone.

When Hercules laid down his club, and took off his lion’s skin, and received from the hands of his mistress the spindle and distaff, the big warrior did no more than many a better man has done when he resigns himself to the dominion of love; but no love on earth would ever have made Gustavus M’Iver take upon himself the duties of a woman. He did it from a sheer love of good eating and clean linens—ay, and he persevered in it too, though he saw, as plain as palpable physics, that (what he dreaded) his _petite_ Julia would become a prey to the harpies of indolence. And, to be sure, the ordinary consequences very soon began to shew themselves; for where there was no love and no work to occupy the mind, and plenty of well-dressed victuals to fill the stomach, Mrs M’Iver was, in every respect, a lady at large, and, a lady at large being synonymous with a lady in danger, she fell into habits of going abroad, and calling, and gossiping, and sipping, and tasting, till she became as big a drunkard as ever was seen out of the county town of Horrestia. Yet, still true to her character, she feared Gustavus nothing—no more than she did the good whisky which she swallowed in choppins; and this fortitude made the mischief ten times greater than it would otherwise have been; for, terror being the fulcrum of law and amendment, there might have been some hope of her if she had not ensconced herself behind the noblest of all the cardinal virtues—true blue courage. Though a _petite marchande de modes_, and unable or unwilling to cook a dinner or dress a shirt, Mrs Julia M’Iver knew the rights of her sex just as well as the “guid wife of Auchtermuchty” herself—she knew that Gustavus had no right to turn her away without supporting her, and he could not beat her without subjecting himself to the horn of a summons of separation and aliment; so, upon the whole, she had grounds for her fearlessness, which would have supported her though she had had never a particle of true heroism from the mother of every one of us.

Few women whom fame has immortalized, have done so much as was achieved by this little heroine; for she had already made a giant her cook and servant, and now she forced him to become her nurse, when she chose to be sick from the effects of intemperance. A more complete reversal of all the reciprocal duties of husband and wife, had never been achieved by woman; and it was in vain that Gustavus looked more grim and gaunt than ever—that he even condescended to _argue_ upon the subject—a thing he had never before done in his life, and of which, in truth, he was deemed totally incapable. He still loved the wicked imp, and she knew he loved her—and what more was required to account for the fearless perverseness on the one side, and the submission on the other? But what was he now to do? It was comparatively mere pastime to cook or to wash, or even to nurse the sick Julia, when her illness overcame his resentment; but the thought that the grand qualities and faculties of a man who had commanded and killed in his day, and whose very look spread terror around him, were to be brought down to subserve the mere purpose of ministering to one of the smallest of women that ever drew breath, and one of the greatest drunkards that ever drank whisky, was surely enough to make an ordinary man mad. If the difficulty was to be resolved at all, it could be only by cogitation; and so straightway he set about a process of thinking—an operation of marvellous difficulty to him, as might have been manifestly seen by the length of his stride and of his face, as he paced backwards and forwards—his apron, a species of mail he donned every morning before he began his operations, shaking and rattling among his huge limbs like a mainsail in a gale of wind.

And, to be sure, his was not altogether a barren cogitation, as might have been both seen and heard in the loud thunder of his hand on the table, as he muttered his resolution to stop the supplies. He never failed to act upon a thought; for the thing was too difficult to be got, to be lost for want of use, and, accordingly, the supplies were stopped; but what was that to Julia Briggs, so long as he had any credit in the town, or she had any clothes on her back? Julia got intoxicated as regularly as ever she had done before, and demanded imperiously his ministrations as nurse, with the same _sang froid_, or rather pertness, that formed a part of her cardinal courage. His cogitations had gone for nothing; and again the painful duty of pondering and devising, was forced upon the thick intestines of his gigantic head.

Again he perambulated the house from room to kitchen, sometimes brandishing like a sword a spit or skewer, in the mental absence produced by the effort to think; and he caught at last—what he laboured for—a cure for Julia’s habits of drinking; and he acted upon it again as manfully as before; for he locked her up, and the devil a chum, or gossip, or pot-companion could approach her; but he forgot that there was such an aperture as a window in a house, or a mouth in a woman, and the first thing that assailed his ears was the cry of Julia for constables to give her the liberty that our great country has awarded as a boon to all natural-born subjects of the realm. Nor was so just an appeal vain; for authorities and neighbours interfered in behalf of the prisoner; and Gustavus was told to his teeth that he had not a jot of right to imprison his wife; whereupon she was released, and the evening of the same day saw her, under the effects of the jubilee of her emancipation, more intoxicated than he had yet ever beheld her.

Again was the rusty machinery of his intellect set in motion, and the result was a device that distanced the former experiments, as well for its ingenuity as its chance of success. He had heard of women being _satiated_ with liquor; and so he put in her power ten times more than ever it was in the capability of woman to swallow—an act that was accompanied by something in the shape of an argument, to the effect that, if she became disgusted with it, she would give it up, and if she died of it, the consequence would be the same. The result in the one case would be an achievement that would bring him comparative happiness, and the consequence in the other would, he was now satisfied (such was the misery he had suffered, and was still suffering), be anything but a misfortune. But Julia took no more than was good for her, and thanked Gustavus heartily for his extreme kindness, while every day she applied herself to the big measure; and every night, while the supply lasted, went to bed with the assistance of Gustavus’ own hands.