Chapter I: Part 1

JOKING APART

BY THE
HON. MRS. DOWDALL

AUTHOR OF “THE BOOK OF MARTHA”

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
THE AUTHOR

LONDON
DUCKWORTH & CO.
HENRIETTA ST. COVENT GARDEN

_All rights reserved_

_Published 1914_

TO
LUCIE RALEIGH

_CONTENTS_

CHAPTER PAGE

I JOKING APART 1

II CHINESE TORTURE 9

III THE MARRIAGE OF HENRY 25

IV THE SECOND SISTER’S HUSBAND 39

V WHY NOT REST? 50

VI “WHAT THE DEVIL?” CLUB 68

VII THE MYSTERIOUS MUNCHERS 82

VIII SHEER TEMPER 94

IX THE ROYAL VISIT 111

X FIDELITY 124

XI THE RETURN OF THE BRIDE 136

XII JUST THE USUAL 153

XIII HOW NAUGHTY 168

XIV ELECTIONEERING 179

XV LETTERS OF GEORGINA BROWN 219

XVI LETTERS OF GEORGINA BROWN 240

XVII LETTERS OF GEORGINA BROWN 261

XVIII LETTERS OF GEORGINA BROWN 279

XIX LETTERS OF GEORGINA BROWN 298

XX LETTERS OF GEORGINA BROWN 315

_CHAPTER I_: “JOKING APART”

Just to show the sort of thing one has to put up with in life, take the writing of this book as an instance. It was getting along splendidly. Chapter after chapter was piled up; the commonplaces of everyday life lay delicately unclothed upon the pages. All the neighbours--everybody’s neighbours--were there, pinned down like butterflies; their beauties and their bulgy eyes and their great number of legs ready for the inspection of the public. It is not every one who is quick enough to get a good look at butterflies and moths when they are flitting about, so it is best to keep them somewhere where we can get at them any time we like.

But there was no difficulty in all this. The trouble was with that section of the public which wants a magnifying glass and a dissecting implement before it can enjoy a pinned-out butterfly. Aunt Mary, who takes a view altogether different from mine on almost every subject, but who is really a very sound woman and a good judge of what people think, read through my manuscript and said:

“But, my dear Martha, it is by no means clear what it is all about.”

This put me in a fever. If there is one thing I dislike more than another it is to be told that something I am interested in is “not clear.”

“Well, it is certainly not thick,” I replied, my poor mind harking back, as it nearly always does, to some such homely matter as the soup.

“Now that is an excellent example of what I mean!” Aunt Mary complained. “I say that many things in your book are not clear, and your mind at once flies off on the word ‘clear,’ and you imagine yourself at table, with a greasy waiter leaning over your shoulder holding a plate of kidney purée in one hand and bouillon in the other. You forget that you don’t carry your audience with you.”

“You are not clear now, yourself,” I said with a certain pleasure. “Would you please strain your criticism once more and add a little bit more beef.”

“Well, for instance, you never explain where Millport is,” she began. “You don’t say how you came there, nor what sort of place it is.”

“But everybody understands that,” I argued. “We all come to live in a place in the same way; by train, with furniture and linen, and a list of things to be done when we get there. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred we come because our husbands have got a job in the place. Very few people go to live anywhere for pleasure.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” my aunt admitted, “except that it is usual to give some explanation. Writers generally begin by describing the sun setting behind the suburbs, or rising over the heart of the city. They give the general lie of the streets and the surrounding country. And if they are talking about the provinces they usually create an atmosphere of depression, and domestic smells, and balked desires, just to start off with.”

“Will you write a description of my home?” I suggested. “Tell them that it is a solid enough house, stucco in front and bricks at the back; a cat-run and some laurel bushes facing the road, and a gardener and another cat-run behind the house. In the middle of the back cat-run there is a tennis net and three seedy deck-chairs, one of which supports a blonde authoress with ill-defined features, the other an aunt with a high forehead and ideals about literature; the third will shortly contain a husband who will come home in about half an hour with a pink evening paper. What is there in all that to cheer a reader who is in the same unfortunate position herself?”

“Still, they like to know,” said Aunt Mary. The gentle persistence of these mild women is what wrecks many homes, and was, I suppose, at the bottom of a good deal of martyrdom in the times of the Inquisition. We were silent. I was a little ruffled and bored, and Aunt Mary was planning a new attack in nearly the same place.

“You don’t describe your people, either,” she began again presently, boring away. It was like that bad moment when the dentist, having fitted a new spike on to his steam gimlet, says, “Now please, shall we go on? A little wider----”

“You don’t describe your people,” averred Aunt Mary. “You talk of Mrs. Beehive, and Reginald, and Polly, and the Henrys, and the Spicers, but you don’t give their heights or their features or circumstances, nor even tell us what rooms they are in when the conversations take place.”

“But don’t you see, dear,” I explained, “that if I did that the Henrys would probably get a job in Edinburgh or Sheffield. Or Reginald and Polly might die, and their places be filled by a similar couple whose names were Tom and Katie. Then Reginald instead of having a fair moustache would have a dark beard, and so on, and make all the description wrong. It is much better to leave them quite free to look different in different towns. I believe if you think of all the great names you know in literature you will find that the make-up of most of them has been left to the imagination of the public. Take Noah--we all know the look of him, but there is no description of him anywhere. And there are many more of the same kind whom I could mention.”

“Well, well,” said Aunt Mary, “have it your own way, though I think you are wrong. But there is another thing. I don’t like your putting in Miss Brown’s letters. They are not in the spirit of the book, and they are a little vulgar in places, I think, if you will excuse my saying so. Those absurd names she gives to people do not deceive anybody, and the letters are calculated to do a great deal of harm. Louise made a great mistake in letting you have them.”

“Anyhow I asked Miss Brown,” I replied, “and she said I might do as I liked. She will never come back here, and the reason I wanted them is that my own view of Millport is one-sided. I have a filial sentiment for it, and I couldn’t describe it with the kind of photographic falsity which is sometimes a help when such an unstable person as myself is trying to set down emotional truths.”

“Still, I think it is a mistake,” said Aunt Mary. “I don’t like descriptions which, as you say, are like photographs. I never thought that Miss Brown showed much insight or tried to enter into the spirit of Millport society. But--joking apart--couldn’t you, Martha dear, write a nice little chapter, just giving a bird’s-eye view of the town, and explaining who all the people are who come into the book?”

I made several beginnings to please her, but it was no good. If I ever write a novel it will have no scenery, and no furniture, and very little gesture in it. People will speak as they do in nightmares, crowding round and peering into the sufferer’s face, and the reader will gasp as he turns over to the other page, “Oh! There’s Fred! stop him! He’s going over the cliff!” But every reader must bring his own cliff. All that I supply is the dream people who have every one of them got faces which we have seen at one time or another.

_CHAPTER II_: CHINESE TORTURE

The civilization of the Chinese is admittedly very old, and their forms of torture are supposed to be extremely subtle. Perhaps with great age has come the knowledge that the tortures which have occurred naturally to man since he first existed are not likely to be improved upon by those who wish to inconvenience their fellow-creatures. It is probable that the first human owner of a cave, gnawing his bone at the end of the family table, gnawed it in such a manner as to make some peculiar grating, slooping or gnashing sound which aroused the indignation of his hairy partner. It may almost be taken for granted that he forgot to help the stuffing. The rude physicians of that epoch would, in all likelihood, have testified that the cave ladies as a class were evasive and unruly, and that they would insist upon sitting round the fire capturing the parasites in one another’s tresses instead of coming to bed at the proper time. There can be no doubt that the children speedily acquired the habit of saying “What?” every few minutes, that the slaves hid things, that the dweller in the next cave was the earliest inventor of a musical instrument, and that the first door which the first man put to his cave in self-defence banged the first time it was left ajar.

It may therefore be, for all we know, that the subtle devices called Chinese tortures are quite modern arrangements adapted to a frailer generation, and that the real old, original Chinaman just left his victims to suffer unprotected in an ordinary household. The prevaricating, garrulous female prisoners were, perhaps, shut up for years with a gentleman who slooped at his meals, thus killing two birds with one stone. The children who asked “Wha-at?” when their questions were answered for the first time were immured with parents who said “Waddear?” at the end of an animated description of a day’s adventure. Prisoners of both sexes who left their clothes on the bathroom floor and never destroyed envelopes were served exclusively by maids who threw everything portable into the dustbin, except clothes, which they hung up in the wrong side of the wardrobe. People who laughed incessantly while they spoke kept house for those who grumphed and blew air through their cheeks at breakfast. They were a merry party in the prisons one way and another if you come to think of it!

And there was another very dreadful thing that I can hardly speak of. Taking one hundred as the maximum that anyone can understand of what is possible in human thought, the most loving hearts whose comprehension equalled, say, four, were given a love potion and immediately introduced to some lady or gentleman, equally tender and sincere, whose comprehension ran up sometimes as far as nine. This is not the same thing as being misunderstood. That is a grievance which no one really minds unless they are very hard at work altering their natural character; as, for instance, when the born miser who has forked out three-and-sixpence instead of two shillings, after heart-breaking struggles with himself, says bitterly, “It is so horrid of you to suggest that I don’t like giving money away. It hurts me far more than if you had accused me of something that I really do.” But to return to the ninepence and fourpence. It is not misunderstanding; it is what an earnest lady was heard saying at a party when the music stopped, “Of course I was never able to go _quite_ all the way with John Stuart Mill.”

If that lady had been John Stuart Mill’s bosom friend he would have felt the remark as an awful blow. Can anything be more painful than for some one to refer to, let us say, the resemblance of the human skeleton to that of a pig and for his companion to reply with tears springing up from an injured, loving heart, “Oh, please don’t talk like that! I hate it when you say such things. As if there could be any resemblance!” Of course it doesn’t matter now and then, but if it is to go on all the time you can’t do much better with a thumb-screw. One need not go far to see tortured men and women with their dear ones simply dancing on their vitals. The sharp intake of Reginald’s breath is audible when Polly says at dinner, “My husband never can keep a toothbrush more than a fortnight, can you, Reggie? It gets in a perfectly impossible state. I have to----” etc. If Reggie tells a funny little story all about a spade--a story with a good point to it and quite impersonal--she will most probably blame him for vulgarity, yet his little story about the spade was as detached as a robin’s song in December. It is the personal touch in speech which only the unimaginative can hear unmoved. Men have complained that they were obliged to say indecent things themselves as a protection against hearing some one else say something less indecent in an indecent way. By their method they shut the others up.

“What does he mean?” a woman asked on one of these occasions.

“Well, Polly gets so gross when she begins to talk about ordinary things,” said Reginald, “that I have to shout out all I know about more difficult subjects for fear she should begin to attempt them.”

“What did I say that was gross?” asked Polly, opening her large eyes.

“I don’t want ever to remember what you said about the baby,” Reginald answered with haste. “Let us talk about something else quickly; rape, sacrilege, anything you like, but don’t mention the child’s toes again.”

“But Reginald----” protested his wife.

“Silence, woman!” commanded Reginald, and when he had gone out of the room Polly said that she was quite coming round to the idea that women ought to vote. Men cared nothing whatever about children and lots of other things. They were so utterly material, and political life ought to have an element of delicacy and refinement to keep it on the highest level. As a child Reginald had, of course, suffered the usual forms of infant torture. He used, as we all did, to come into the drawing-room to see visitors. His sisters became inured to this, although it bored them. They got a certain interest out of the visitor’s appearance and tricks of manner, which were all reproduced with merciless accuracy in the schoolroom afterwards; not ill-naturedly, but because they had been stored as sounds are stored on the phonograph. Reginald was more than bored; he suffered from the personal attentions of his mother and her guests. Personal remarks always hit his comfort like unpleasant sounds hit the sense of music. “Where have you been?” his mother would ask, which she would not have done if they had been alone, because she knew that there was practically nowhere to go except the park. Then began the old, old rigmarole: how he had grown, whom he was like, what form of exercise he took--there is no need to go into details, because we are all familiar with the stupid, tactless business. We have all sat and simmered while the little creatures stand kicking one foot against the other until we release them from our impertinence. Then his mother either repeated something he had told her in confidence the day before, or she made affected use of his schoolboy slang as if it were her own, or she blew his nose with her handkerchief, and showed off generally, and made him show off, and it was all beastly. He suffered incessantly from this showing off on everybody’s part. In his public-school days his sisters showed off when he came home. They borrowed his forms of speech. These were not his own to begin with, but they were the language of his tribe, and what was his by capture was theirs by theft, which is quite different and creates a false situation. He never got at these facts by himself, but he felt uneasy and strained. Later on he much preferred strangers to his own family, because they kept out of his bathroom and he was free to present his own idea of himself without the risk of some one remarking across the table, “Why, Reggie! You _loathe_ poetry! How can you! You always said it was such humbug!” We can never alter or enlarge our tastes in the family circle. A strict record is kept of all our utterances, and they are brought up against us as if we had crossed the floor of the House of Commons. Strangers take all for gospel and do not know what we said last year.

But apart from Reggie’s little troubles, we all have our own. For instance, there is the torture by question. This is suitable for both men and women, and it is most effective, perhaps, when administered by women, because they have the pertinacity of insects and cannot be got rid of; slapping doesn’t destroy them. You may even burn sulphur, it doesn’t keep them off a bit. Remember, it was a poor, lorn widow who defeated the unjust judge. If her husband had been there he would have blushed and said, “Come away, Maria--it’s no good--he won’t listen.” But Maria lit once more upon the bald head of the judge and set up her interminable buzz, and lo! the thing was done.

The following scene illustrates how the torture by question is administered:

SCENE. A cosy apartment (the only one in which there is a fire after breakfast) provided with a telephone. The meals are ordered for the day. You have seen about the children’s spring hats, you have telephoned for a man to see about the knife machine. “Seeing” stands for opening it to get out the knife which cook dropped in without thinking, and that means ten shillings, “for man’s time--rep. kn. mach.” There does not seem to be anything else to see about just at present, and you settle down to a bit of crochet or, perhaps, to some occupation which takes your whole thought, such as writing a story for the magazines.

Cook slides round the door and looks at you. At the sight of her, all your ideas get up and say they are afraid they must be going. Ideas don’t like cook, because she doesn’t like them. She has a heavy hand with them and they won’t settle.

“Yes, cook, what is it?” you ask.

“If you please’m, the butcher hasn’t veal to-day.”

“Hasn’t he?” you say patiently, “then tell him to raise some animal that he has got.”

You wait, pencil in hand, for her to go.

“What shall I order, m’m?” she insists. “The boy is waiting.”

You quickly review last week’s meals. The household has had cutlets, fish, fowl, steak and a good many other things. Some people dislike the insides of animals so we will not complete the list. Anyhow, they seem to have eaten everything that there is in the world, except veal. Your horizon is all veal. There doesn’t, in fact, seem to be anything but veal to eat, “without,” as cook says, you have just what you had yesterday. The sudden passionate anger of the interrupted flies to your head.

“I don’t care if it’s stewed missionary,” you stammer; “but I will have something new. Go away quickly and think of something.”

Cook, like the fly, takes wing as far as the kitchen dresser and returns; stands once more, as it were, washing her front legs in the doorway.

“May I telephone, please, m’m?” she inquires.

You sharpen your pencil meanwhile, and there is a faint rustle in the air as of lost ideas peeping round to see whether every one has gone.

“H’m, h’m (a little cough from the direction of the telephone). If you please’m, Jones says that the haddock isn’t very nice to-day; he has some nice turbot at two-and-sixpence.”

“Ask the silly idiot if he sends up turbot for his own nursery breakfast, will you,” is the only reply your indignation will afford. Goodness knows what all the haddock are about in these days; they always used to be “nice” at any time of year.

“Shall I tell him not to trouble about it, m’m?” she says, holding the receiver away from her ear.

“Oh, yes, don’t let him break up his health over it,” you say, and once more resume your work. Your quiet room is now, in your imagination, a seething, noisy mass of food, all of it quarrelling as to who shall climb on to the table at dinner.

“What shall I order for breakfast instead of the fish?” demands cook, lightly poised for flight beside the writing-table.

“Bacon,” you say, “bacon, bacon, bacon,” and you look up hoping to see a mess of squashed cook on the blotting-paper. But not at all. She is round the other side, tickling your left ear.

“The bacon’s finished to-day, m’m. Did you remember to order any more?”

“Are the hens all dead?” you inquire.

“Oh, no, m’m, I don’t think so.”

“Very well then, squeeze them and go away.”

And then when the same old scrambled eggs, too heavily salted, come up next morning for breakfast she will have the effrontery to say that you ordered them!

What does the perfect woman do in these circumstances? Does she put down her occupation and say, “Dear me, cook, what a pity, isn’t it! What shall we do?” and does cook reply, “It is a pity, isn’t it, m’m! I don’t know what to suggest, I’m sure. Would you like a nice egg?” and then does the perfect woman say, “Well, you know we had eggs yesterday, cook, but I don’t see what else we are to do. It’s very awkward. But you can’t have anything nicer than eggs, can you? Suppose you get some eggs, and if you tell me when they arrive I will come down and look at them.” I believe it is this quality that makes women easier to rear than men. You can’t kill them by ordinary methods.

There is one more form of torture which no quiet home ought to be without if there is a contemplative enemy to be destroyed. It is called the torture by vivacity. The sort of thing you get in this book, only worse. The victim is put down in any ordinary chair, rather too near the fire if possible, and then the torturer begins. “What plays did you see when you were up in town? Can’t remember! Well you _are_! You ought to have seen Such-and-such. Do you know the story? There’s a man who’s tremendously in love with a girl and she won’t have him. Eileen Protheroe takes the part--don’t you admire her? of course you do--what nonsense! Don’t try to be clever--that’s your way. Well, she’s absolutely splendid in this. She comes on in a wonderful dress of pale champagne with heliotrope, most beautifully draped, and her hair done wonderfully under a small hat. Well, she won’t have him, but she tries for Tom--let me see--what is his name? What was the name of that friend of yours whom you used to see sometimes in Buxton? Awfully smart, in a brown suit--oh, you must remember--Well, this man reminded me of him--you must know whom I mean--don’t be silly. Anyhow this man is just like him----”

My pen has fallen off the table in a fit and is panting on the mat, protesting that it cannot run another inch.

_CHAPTER III_: THE MARRIAGE OF HENRY

It must be funny to have the partner of one’s life say, “You are quite beyond me, Henry dear, altogether.” It must give one such a shock, although of course it is true. Henry is so far removed from Mrs. Henry that if they manage to keep within calling distance of one another all their lives they are said to be “quite an idyllic couple.” We all know that if two people are knocking about idly in a field, one of them looking for golf balls or beetles or a lost trifle from the pocket, the other sewing or aimlessly preoccupied with thoughts about moth in the cupboards or the drawing in of the days, their conversation is not likely to be either profound or meaty; nor can it be even that interchange of feather-weight looks and intonations which are the pollen of mutual understanding. Mr. and Mrs. Henry’s life is very like this sort of knocking about together in a field. Sometimes Henry wanders off and says something with a little more ginger to it, and then Mrs. Henry is exceedingly offended, and complains that he is quite beyond her altogether.

The Henrys have not drifted apart lately; they are as near together now as ever they were. In fact, they are far less likely to drift apart now than they were at first. They are kept together by the strong tie of habit, and, some say, by public opinion. Others maintain that although public opinion prevents Henry from ever thinking of bolting, if he did entertain the thought public opinion would have less hold upon him than would his deep-rooted habit of staying with his wife. Thirty years ago they were kept together by a different tie, which might easily have been broken had either of them thought to break it. The tie was a sort of chemical affinity fortified by conscience. Love in all its expressions is more like something chemical than anything else, and the chemical experiment of Mr. and Mrs. Henry’s marriage was, at one time, a very touch-and-go business. Chemical affinity caught them as they meandered at a garden-party; it kept them together at several subsequent entertainments, just because neither of them were the sort of atoms that are so--I don’t know the right expression; it may be volatile, I call it impulsive--as ever to unglue themselves from the atom they chance to unite with, unless under great provocation from some other very masterful atom.

Henry was not such a gluey, adhesive atom as Mrs. Henry, but he had a conscience, and a dash of imagination or poetry or something. He saw much that was invisible to Mrs. Henry, and he saw it better when there was a female figure in the foreground of what he saw, giving just the human touch to the picture. When he became attached to Mrs. Henry he kept his attention riveted on her without an idea of the dangers by which their union was beset. There were hundreds of brilliant and powerful atoms whirling past under his very nose, but their chemical attraction was neutralized for him by the fact that he never lifted his eyes from Mrs. Henry and his dreams. This instinct of keeping the eye of love fixed on the beloved object is implanted in the heart of man by the god of populations, who knows that marriages must be kept going--the Henry kind of marriages anyhow. It is impossible to stop and consider each case separately.

“You must get on, Mr. Cupid; move quickly, please. Pair them off--(we can see the testy old gentleman in the spectacles)--yes, yes, just like the frogs, certainly; we must get on. There’s this batch of babies to be got off at once to keep up the numbers. So--Harper, Harthorn; Jones, Johnson; Smith, Smithson. Couple them up, please, anyhow. Light and dark alternately if you can; don’t put two tall ones together, nor two dwarfs if you can help it; mix the temperaments as much as possible----” Cupid strikes; stops dead. “I refuse, sir. I am very sorry, but there are two here whom you must let me consider, please. The very foundations of your throne will be shaken if these are ill-assorted. Very dangerous elements to combine, these two, sir. Very little known about their action----”

My metaphors are getting so mixed that it will soon be impossible to disentangle them. What I meant was that although it is said to be in the nature of atoms to stick together until one or other leaves for some more powerful attraction, in the case of the human atom a protective quality has been given which enables them to resist other attractions so long as they do not look about and consider. This saves a lot of time for the testy old gentleman in spectacles. In fact, the work would never get done otherwise; there would be a dozen changes of plan before any marriage came off.

But it was touch-and-go many a time with Henry had he but known. Atoms came near his path, which, had they drawn him to themselves, might have brought about a richer fact than that which is called the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Henry.

For although they have lived together so long, he is still altogether beyond her, and she is (though he does not mention this) altogether beyond him. They hear each other saying things all day, but, in so far as speech is a meeting ground for thought, they have never spoken to one another. If Henry were a lop-eared rabbit he could not expect less from each day as it dawns. He expects breakfast (dear thing), but then so does Bunny, and he expects other meals throughout the day. He expects his house to be made clean, and Mrs. Henry on the one hand and the gardener on the other very kindly see to that. He expects changes in the weather, in the seasons, in the dawn and fading of day; but he expects no other change. How surprised Henry or the rabbit would be at anything unusual in the behaviour of Mrs. Henry or the gardener. Suppose Mrs. Henry were to say with sincerity, “I think so-and-so,” instead of “I always say so-and-so.” Suppose that she showed by a sudden look of life behind her eyes that for one moment her thought had stood beside his thought and had seen what he saw. Nothing in the papers would, I believe, surprise poor Henry more than if this happened, for in these thirty years it has never occurred once.

At first in his humility he thought that it was because her thoughts were above the range of his coarse words; that when she said, “Yes, dear, quite so,” it meant that she was reaching down to grasp his idea, and that when she had pulled it up beside hers he would see to a distance he had never seen before. But, instead, he found that he never reached her mind at all; he called to her and she answered as people answer on a golf-course, or in the street, or in the hall of an hotel, with lookers-on within hearing, careful of the prejudices of society. But just where she stood he never knew, of what she saw he had no idea. He sometimes thought that her dwelling must be under a green canvas umbrella behind a molehill. Then Henry became more and more exclusively male. The chemical tie between him and her had been strengthened by conscience and habit until there was very little fear of the busy old gentleman’s plans being upset by any untoward volatility on the part of atom Henry. But perhaps if Henry had heard some of the things his wife said when she was driven to involuntary candour by the weight of many years’ disgust with the male sex, he might have--oh no, hardly that! She must have a home and so on. And then the fuss! fancy inquiries and no real reason to give! Besides, she was a very good sort of woman. Women would not be such faithful mothers, perhaps, if they were not rather limited in their desires: no man could stand the strain of what they have to put up with. So Henry would surely reflect, and as he reflected he would put his hand in his pocket with the ease of habit, and pay the tax-collector, and the doctor, and the gardener, and the schoolmaster and all of them.

* * * * *

“Of course, my ideal,” says Mrs. Henry in confidence to Mrs. James, “is to have a nice house quite in town; close to the trams, so that there is no difficulty in getting about in the evening. If you dine out two or three times a week, and pay a cab each time, it runs up so--but men never think of these things!” Henry does think of them a good deal, but paying the cab bill is a mild and peaceful occupation compared to getting into evening clothes half an hour after he comes home, in order to sit through a long evening between two women, one of whom looks like a muffin which has fallen, wet, into a box of cheap jewellery, and the other looks like a cormorant who has just been converted to some rather faddy new religion. He has to turn from one to the other for two hours, as sweetbread succeeds fish; and when the women have gone, and the pleasant smile has left his face, he is obliged to follow them almost immediately (for, after all, what is half an hour’s rest?), and stand about suffering all sorts of torture, music perhaps, or more rot from a pair of lacy old idiots. And then to be driven home too late to do anything; for you can’t sit up at night if you have to be off early next day. It is all very well now and then, for a change, and to go to people whom you like----

Let us now hear some more of what Mrs. Henry really, really thinks.

“You know,” she says, “children are a great tie.” I wish that some one would explain exactly what they mean by this remark. Suppose that children are a tie to bind Mrs. Henry down from those wild flights of adventure and the freedom of the buccaneer to which she is naturally prone, well, what a pity! However, we all admit that they are a great tie. Their childish thoughts are such a dull field in which to confine the brilliancy of mamma’s reflections on Hall Caine or the ladies whom she knows, or our spiritual nature in general. Of course they are not nearly so great a tie to a man.

Now Henry has got so used to looking at things in one way that he would agree to this proposition, because he knows quite well that he never in his life sat up with baby, no matter what was wrong, while Mrs. Henry never left the children at all if they were ill; and she never got away for a whole morning like he did. Why, he could fritter away the whole day at the office and never be called off for anything! But then, if the chemical attraction that brought him and her together had contained a spark of anything like laughter, he would have made his own ribs ache and hers too when she said that children were no tie to a man. If they tie her to the house what else, in heaven’s name, ties him to the office? Isn’t he bound to his stool by cords woven of school bills, doctor’s and dentist’s bills, rent for larger, airier premises, the elaborate “summer out” in seaside lodgings instead of the cheap holidays in god-painted solitudes before the nursery days?

But then, as Mrs. Henry so justly says, a man never thinks of these things. Perhaps it is as well that he doesn’t or we might none of us be here, either to write or read this captious book.

Such analytical thoughts do not amuse the Henrys, and quite rightly. He sometimes had freakish moments, and gay imaginings flew high through his head thirty years ago. There were all sorts of merry firework stuff ready to burst into Catherine-wheels and “God Bless our Home,” if anyone had brought a little living spark of fire to set it off. But Mrs. Henry does not think in that way. There never seems to be anything to laugh at that she can see, although she enjoys a joke as much as anybody.

But what is so amusing about the whole thing is that under the canvas umbrella behind the molehill where Mrs. Henry lives, there is a strange life that is quite beyond Henry altogether. There are large qualities like unselfishness, innocence, courage. In case of fire or flood Mrs. Henry would save all the children, or even Henry himself, at the cost of her life, without a thought beyond annoyance at the incompetence of men who build houses that catch fire like flannelette.

Virtues like those would be brilliant objects if they were taken into the air and allowed to mix freely with vices, so that we could have a good look at both and decide which we prefer, honestly and without prejudice on either side. If, instead of stuffing all the vices into a box where they get mouldy and breed maggots, and instead of keeping all the virtues folded up with a string round them and a macintosh over the top, they were both taken out and used as occasion offered, Mr. and Mrs. Henry might find it necessary to approach one another enough to hand things backwards and forwards. And so they might eventually get talking, and neither be quite beyond the other any more.

_CHAPTER IV_: THE SECOND SISTER’S HUSBAND

Going into town one day I met two people on the road. One was a gloomy-looking elderly woman in a bonnet and the kind of things that go with bonnets; the other was a young, probably married, girl, who walked by her side, and on whom the burden of conversation seemed to lie. The burden was heavy, but, if it had not been, neither of the women could have handled it. I used to wonder why the commercial travellers who called at our door never had any needles smaller than a small sausage-skewer. Then one day a quite nice woman with whom I was sewing remarked, “It’s no use giving me a needle like that, my dear, I should be dropping it all the time; I should never know I had it in me hand.” The same thing happens in conversation. Many people do not know it is there unless you cut it a bit thick “so as they can get a hold of it.” And not only must they be able to grasp it, but it must stay quietly where it is for some time. It must be a sort of parcel that you can carry in your arms and then hand to some one else. None of that juggling with balls, which some author speaks of as a desirable form of conversation.

“And your second sister’s husband, Mrs.--er--, is he still alive?” said the younger woman to the elder as I passed them. It is funny, now you come to think of it, how we never can remember our friends’ names “without we think,” as they say in Millport. “Mrs.--er--” is the usual form of address, I find, and we repeat it constantly; perhaps in the hope that by and by the name will come back to us.

“And your second sister’s husband, Mrs.--er--, is he still alive?” I nearly said it to the ticket man at the booking office. Instead I leaned over the little opening and said, “Third return Southfield, Mr.--er--, thank you--pleasant change after the rain, isn’t it? It is indeed, thank you. You haven’t got two halfpennies for a penny, have you? Oh, never mind, don’t trouble; but it’s handy to have about you; saves waiting for the change sometimes if you’re in a hurry.” Then I dropped a shilling on the ground and fell over the man behind me.

In the train I found myself in imagination again pursuing the second sister’s husband. Was he still alive or not? He had married into the family of those strange, flat sisters, who looked like vegetables. He and the first sister’s husband were, probably, very much alike; only one was called Tom and the other Willie, and one did well and the other didn’t. Unfortunately the first sister’s husband had been conversationally disposed of before I met the elder and the younger lady, so it was impossible to decide whether he were still alive or not. Perhaps he had been carted away in a hearse, followed by six or seven cabs full of black people, all minding their own business, but glad to get a nice drive and a bit of rest; pleased also to see Annie and her husband, who had come over from Manchester for it, and Willie’s nephew, who had got a day off from the works. It was all very nice, but a pity about poor Willie--ah, dear me, yes, to be sure--a nice bit of country you pass through on the way to the cemetery--yes, indeed; and how they are building out in that direction too! I went all the way to Willie’s funeral with that lugubrious lady in the bonnet, and thoroughly enjoyed the trip. But still the problem vexed me--her second sister’s husband; was he still alive? Probably not so well in his health, anyhow, as he used to be, poor fellow! But the three sisters would most likely go on for some time. Sisters are easier to rear as babies and they last longer, for they don’t trouble their heads so much. It is worry kills people, and a hen does not worry much. It squawks and flutters if anything comes on it, sudden-like, but it’ll soon settle down again and pick its food and lay another egg if you give it time--eh, dearie me, yes, to be sure!

I finished up the afternoon at a tea-party, and sat next to a lady whom I had met before but did not really know. I think that I must have fallen asleep for a moment, because I suddenly found myself looking at her with a glassy eye and asking, “And your second sister’s husband, Mrs.--er--, is he still alive?”

No--nothing happened. It was at a time of year when the days are closing in--we had all just remarked on the fact--and my lucky star was twinkling through a gap in the curtains.

“He’s very well, thank you, Mrs.--er--,” replied my neighbour with a pleased smile. “He’s doing very well now. You knew he’d been ill, of course--so good of you to ask--but they think he’s quite turned the corner now.”

I wonder if she saw my blushes. Perhaps she put them down to the tea; and there was a good fire going too. Some of us, I remember, preferred to sit a little away from it, thank you; there’s always a risk in going out afterwards. I had been so successful that I ventured again and asked, “Has your sister many children?” “Oh, just the three she’s always had,” was the alarming reply I got. “Did something prick you, Mrs.--er--?” she asked kindly. “Oh, that’s all right. I thought you seemed to give a jump. No, just the same three. The eldest, you know, are at school, and there’s the baby. He’s just two now; such a nice age!”

“Do you think so?” I said, I couldn’t resist it; it was what the young lady in the shop had said to me that morning when I told her I would rather have a boot that fitted me. Of course, two is a nice age, but if you only knew how often I have heard the same thing said about every child, from an infant a day old to a great dolloping creature of fifteen, with spots----!

“Oh, I think so, don’t you?” said the poor thing, a little surprised. “They’re just beginning to pick up everything, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” I answered bitterly, “measles and pins, and all sorts of things. It’s wonderful how they do it, isn’t it?”

Some one began to sing just then so we had to be quiet. Everybody hushed, except two old ladies who looked up in surprise at the sudden silence, and I caught the concluding sentence of one of them, “Windermere, did you say? Oh, very nice indeed, for those that like foliage.”

After the song my neighbour left me and went to our hostess. The business of good-byes had begun. “Oh, it isn’t late, Mrs. Deane, you mustn’t think of going.” “I am afraid I must be going, thank you. Mind you come and see us some day soon--yes, any day, just look us up. No, I’ve given up my Thursdays now. I found it cut up the week so, and one day doesn’t suit everybody--no, of course not--and if you’ve another engagement it’s awkward to break it, isn’t it? Well, you won’t forget? That’s right--and bring baby. She’d love to play with Sammy and Edna. We’ve the new nursery now, you know. A great improvement. Oh yes, the other wasn’t half large enough. No, it doesn’t do not to have enough room. You’re well off here, aren’t you? Such a lovely outlook! and the bushes quite cut you from the houses----”

They were both standing all this time with the front door open behind them. Our hostess had rung the bell, and the parlour-maid was waiting in a thorough draught (she had come up in the middle of her tea, I believe, as she looked a little crumby about the apron and not very pleased). “Well, Mrs.--er--, I mustn’t keep you. Don’t come out, please, you’ll take cold. Is this your hall? How well the prints look! You must get your husband to come round and have a look at ours----” Our hostess came back at the end of twenty minutes and went straight to the fire to warm herself. But some one else was ready to go then, and the same ceremony had to be repeated.

The second sister’s husband must be a plucky man the way he clings to life; but, after all, he’s not much in the house. When I married I was told by an authority on provincial etiquette that it was not looked upon with favour if any female guest were found in the house after the man’s hour for coming home. Being fresh from the schoolroom, and not having noticed during my excursions downstairs any arbitrary distinction of sex in the matter of visitors, I found this rule a little difficult to understand. But in a year or two it became not only an excusable breach of hospitality, but an obvious necessity if the breadwinner’s life was to be prolonged. My own second sister’s husband, who is extraordinarily patient and fairly inattentive, would, I am sure, have jibbed if he had ever been asked whether he did not find his work a great strain, his children a great relaxation, his hobby a great expense and his politics a great mistake. Besides, he loathes standing in a draught with his hat off, and not one of the kind of women who call on me would sit on his chair and twiddle his whiskers, which my sister Maud says is what he really likes. So, when anyone asks me whether my second sister’s husband is still alive, I shall tell them that he is, and why. Perhaps it will be a warning to them to take more care of poor Tom and Willie.

_CHAPTER V_: WHY NOT REST?

If you say you can’t go to bed, the doctor says “Boo! Let somebody else do the work. What are your servants for?” You try to explain that you can’t leave a baby with a cook. He replies that it won’t hurt your husband to have a cold dinner for once. You explain with infinite patience, slowly and as grammatically as possible, that it is not a question of dinner, but that cook doesn’t understand what baby wants. Then the doctor crams on his hat and says that inexperienced people make the best nurses, and will you be in bed, please, in half an hour from now, and don’t get up until he sees you again the day after to-morrow.

At first it is rather nice, having a fire lit in your bedroom, ordering tea to be brought up, beginning a new novel, drawing the blinds, and lighting a little silver lamp. Cook says that she can manage Master Tommy splendidly until nurse comes back. It is a pity Maggie has to count the laundry to-day, but it can’t be helped.

The bed is soft and warm; the hot-bottle is almost as good as a visit to the Riviera; you turn the pages of your novel.

* * * * *

A piercing shriek rends the air--and another--and another--hot and damp with terror, your heart galloping like a fire engine, you are in the nursery--no time for a dressing-gown. It is impossible to say which is making the most noise, the baby or the cook. “Yeow, yeow, yeow, yeow,--hush, hush--yeow, yeow, yeow--there, there, there: there’s a pretty boy--upsy-daisy! peek-a-boo! yeow, yeow----” “Exactly what I told that vile doctor would happen,” you mutter, stopping your ears. “Don’t rock him like that!” you bawl. “Beg pardon, m’m?” inquires cook, with a smile and cocking one ear at you while the baby’s head swings now to the lamp above his head, now down to the ground, missing the coal-scuttle by a hair’s breadth. “Beg pardon, m’m? I’m sorry he’s disturbed you. Upsy-daisy! We’ve been getting on capitally.”

Struggling between politeness and gratitude, fear of offending the cook (it is the great dread that hangs over us all), and the murderous instinct of the parent whose young has been annoyed, you take your offspring on your knee and offer him your humble apologies, while cook runs off “just a moment to see to the kettle.”

Ten minutes elapse. You are getting very cold in your little cambric nightgown. The baby is inclined to be exacting, like one who brings a petition for heavy damages for a small injury. He is rather jumpy in the nerves, and inclined to be suspicious and contradictory.

“Why don’t you want me to break that cup?” is the kind of question that he asks, “Why don’t you? Why”--increasing to a wail--“why don’t you? Will you tell me why you don’t want that cup broken----” “Oh hang!” you say, “because I don’t. What on earth is cook doing?” You are hot now instead of cold. “Do play with your soldiers, Tommy.” “Why do you look like that?” says Tommy, beginning to cry. “What’s that on your cheek?” he demands suddenly, fingering your pet mole with a sticky finger. It is now twenty minutes since cook left the room. You ring the bell violently.

“Why do you ring the bell?” asks Tommy, now weeping unrestrainedly. “I don’t want you to ring the bell--I want my tea--I want Nanny--I don’t want medicine--I don’t want you to ring the bell--my tooth is sore--I want Nanny----”

Cook comes rushing up. “Sorry to have kept you, m’m,” she says, “but I had to chop a few sticks for the kettle; the fire had gone that low. Now, master, come to me and we’ll ride-a-cock-horse.”

There is nothing for it. Tommy’s interest is on one side, a long life of seclusion in the asylum on the other. Tommy must go to the wall.

“I think I wouldn’t move him about, Jane,” you say. “If you will read to him and give him his tea he will be quite happy.” Then you escape with a heart of lead and ears of granite, and lay you down once more. You get hot and cold alternately as occasional faint screams reach you from the nursery. The coals fall, one by one, lower in the grate. The fire is nearly out. You see the cold, grey trees waving outside the window. The hot-bottle got chilled while you were in the nursery. The only warm thing in the room is your pillow which is boiling----

Pop-op-op-op-bang!

That is how Maggie always announces her presence. She staggers into the cold twilight, bearing an immense tray with tea sufficient for a school feast, and all the other items on her long menu are stale and tasteless. The butter is so shivering with cold that it is only able to clutch a few crumbs out of the bread, and these lie petrified on its chilly flakes. The sandwiches are too small, dry besides, and the jam inside them is an old enemy. The cake is last week’s: one of Jane’s failures, which, as she says, “seems to hang on a long time.” Maggie sweeps your book, your lamp, and everything you are likely to want off the table, and plants her horrid collection of uneatables in their place, lights a flaring gas immediately in front of your eyes and prepares to depart. “Maggie,” you say (how hatefully irksome it is to ask for the obvious when one is ill), “would you please draw the blinds, and make up the fire, and put out that gas, and bring me back my lamp and books.”