Chapter III: Part 3

“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.

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

I have heard Mrs. Beehive say of one of our most prosperous neighbours that they had “struggled up from the Palmerston Road.” They were certainly a little battered and jaded when they got there: “there” being a handsome residential mansion on the edge of the Park. It has a tennis lawn, a vegetable garden, a garage, four entertaining rooms, ten bedrooms, butler’s pantry, electric light, ground-floor kitchens, and every modern convenience--altogether about as much material for annoyance and waste of time as can well be imagined. By the time Tom was sixteen and Anne fourteen, our doom was drawing near. In spite of my resistance, James and I were about to struggle up from the Palmerston Road; I saw it coming. Our pleasant little house was falling to bits over our heads. We were eight where we had been but four, and (this settled it) Ruth was getting angry. She wanted help in the kitchen, and there was nowhere to put any help at night. James, too, was bothered by the gramophone; Tom and Anne wanted a tennis lawn; nurse wanted a room where the dressmaker could sew (she made the nursery floor so bitty). Nurse even spoke of the bandboxes containing the winter hats as if they had recently broken out like a plague. When every one had displayed their grievances, I remembered that I wanted another room myself in which to escape from them--the aggrieved parties--a question-proof room if possible with only one door. I had thought of an underground suite of apartments like that of the Duke of Portland, with a glass roof. It would have been such a pleasure to watch the numerous legs of my tormentors as they ran about looking for me. I told the efficient female that we thought of moving, and she said: “Ah, I knew you would have to sooner or later.” I assured her that it was quite undecided, and that if we did move it would be into a smaller house. The odious creature smiled falsely, and said, of course that was the ideal life. They themselves never knew what peace was until they moved into a small house, and one really well-trained servant could run everything for eight people quite easily. That is all very well for her. She has given up making ices in boots and omelettes in hats, and now eats nothing but nuts. She is so vilely efficient that she secured from her harassed Maker the only sample he had of a patient husband who can and will digest anything. She kept the pattern and made a little outfit of children of the same convenient kind. Then, I suppose, no more were stocked, as, on the whole, there is no great demand for docile nut-eating men. They do not provide enough incident for the average household.

When James was thoroughly fired with the struggling-up idea, he set his mind towards the topmost pinnacle of ambition. A house near the Park was not enough for him, we must move into the country. “Where does the country end and the county begin?” I asked. “The county, I understand, is the thing to aim at.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I always thought it was the whole caboodle, town and country and all.”

“But, then, where do the county families come from?” I asked.

“The large provincial towns, I believe,” James replied without looking up from his book.

“Can you live right in town and be a county family?” (Silence.)

“What county families do we know?”

“Oh, the Higginbottams and the Crackers and the Fitzmullets--do go away.”

“But they all live in the town except the Fitzmullets, who are seven miles from a railway station.”

“If you don’t go away at once,” said James, “I will see that the whole county, wherever we are, calls on you, and you will die of a slow, insidious poison. They will poison your mind and your dress and your language. Do you see?”

I left the subject then. We shall come back to it later, because the struggling up of a species from one vantage-point to another is a fascinating study for those who love Nature, and I have not half got to the bottom of this county business yet; it is so involved. In the meantime there was the move itself.

Of all the experiences most calculated to humble the mighty a house move is the most humiliating. One’s household possessions lose all reticence, decency and moral sense. They flaunt themselves and cry aloud to the passers-by for attention. They behave more like Neapolitan beggars than anything else--maimed beggars on the spree. I have seen antics performed by my own furniture that made me long to burn down every city of the Empire and be numbered amongst the beasts of the field. An undertaker’s work seems wholesome and cheerful compared to that of the furniture-remover. He gets an ingrained sense of squalor that corrupts his senses and his memory until ugliness is to him not only inevitable but appropriate. I met the foreman packer staggering up our garden path with a wardrobe on his head. In one hand he flourished a picture (with the glass broken) representing the Duke of Wellington standing with drawn sword on the top of a mountain; in the other a fire-screen that was once intended for a jumble sale, but had been mislaid for years behind the plate-chest.

“For the drawing-room, I suppose,” he observed, and passed on. I ran after him, protesting that both were marked “not to go”; but when I reached the house I found them in the middle of the drawing-room floor with seven unspeakable cushions marked “cook’s bedroom,” a warming-pan (unearthed from heaven knows where), James’s large and particularly ugly writing-table, and the dining-room carpet neatly tacked down.