Mrs. Dowdall

“ I got to tolerate Sam after a time, because he finished up James’s cigar ends. An ash-tray full of horrors vanished in a moment before his all-embracing slobber—but enough—the dinner-gong will sound in vain for me if I allow my mind to dwell on Sam’s habits. The only dog I have ever loved is dear to me because he is less like a dog than anything else. ”

“ Teresa took the cup he offered her, and became fascinated by his withered little face, his immense spectacles and his Kropotkin hair. Her instinct scented suffering and the cage, and she led him on to talk. It must be understood that this was her first experience of his kind and she never forgot it. He began explaining to her, earnestly at first, then excitedly; he struck his knobbly little hands one against the other. “Blood!” he concluded, “blood! there’s nothing else for it. We shall give our blood when the time comes and we shall take it ruthlessly—without remorse.” ”

“ After all I had suffered at the hands of Elizabeth Tique’s gardener I determined not to keep one at all. That is the kind of resolution one makes, judging a whole class from a single specimen, and then buying experience. But it seemed to me that just as a cook is too pervasive in a small house, so a gardener occupies too much space in a small garden. I remembered the mowing machine, and the manure, and one thing and another, and thought how much enjoyment I should get from doing the garden myself, with the help of an occasional man. ”

“ There, down by the sea with his devoted mother and aunt and nurse, he played and bathed and went his own way in peace, asking nothing that was unreasonable, kind-hearted, courageous and merry; the kind of child that terrifies its weaker relatives by the thought of what it has to meet in the future; of candid eyes coming upon hatred for the first time, small hands roughened by work and stained with blood from the noses of hostile neighbours with predatory instincts and a perverted sense of humour ”

“ But Generosity has a still closer friend whom she says nothing about, namely Injustice. She cannot always behave as freely as she would like when Justice is there, explaining things and being so absolutely right. But when Injustice has been to tea with her, talking his bad, unscrupulous talk, making everything so gay, and putting the blame on all the wrong people, then Generosity has a free hand and can be as lavish as she likes.
“Come in here for a minute,” said Reginald to Percy one morning in the City, “I want to get this hat ironed.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Your spinal cord splits in sympathy with the brave lump of coal which has held out so long against Maggie’s invincible poker, and which now retreats in a million fragments to the other end of the room. Shovel, ovel, ovel, ovel—shovel, ovel, ov—— “Surely that is enough, Maggie; you will make it so black,” you venture at last.
Down come the blinds with a sickening rattle, and you are left to take what comfort you can from the cold, strong tea (she has forgotten the hot water and the bell is at the other end of the room) , the shivering butter, and the stern, unpopular cake. ”

“ Will you come with me, dear Dicky? I wish you would,” said Susie.
Teresa said she would. Sometime the idea of Aldwych without David must be recognised and dealt with. She also wished her mother to forget that “a girl may regret some day” having refused a beautiful old place in the country and a really good husband “just for an idea.” Poor little Teresa supposed that any show of reluctance to go back to the house might be taken as evidence of a weak spot in her armour. Neither she nor Evangeline had ever known how much of the world their mother detected from behind her veil of misty sweetness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Men go into the world and become accustomed to hardness and cruelty, especially in foreign countries, with which a great port like this is constantly in touch. They drink and quarrel, and their poor homes have so little beauty to encourage them. Is it to be wondered at that a young girl who dreams of romance and her own little home and the sound of baby feet should refuse to believe that these things are of less value to the rough sailor or soldier or merchant, drunk with wine and full of strong passions that have no place in her finer nature? ”

“ THE MYSTERIOUS MUNCHERS
Surely there is something in Shakespeare about somebody who “munched and munched and munched.” If so, it is there because Shakespeare had to do with theatres and evidently knew. When you look at all the pansy-faces together, munching, munching, munching, you begin to wonder why it is that persons who normally go for at least two hours at a time without food require so much extra nourishment all of a sudden. Sarah Jane, we know, gets through a morning’s hard work with no other encouragement than a cup of inky tea at eleven. ”

“ If you loved someone as much as you could and were told you must only flirt with them—wouldn’t you feel you couldn’t? It would be like selling one’s soul to the devil.”
“No, I do think that is awfully silly,” said David. “You can’t flirt with a girl you love. You get run away with and then—well, you go where it is going. You don’t think about whether you ought to stop and pick mushrooms.”
So it seemed. For when Susie came back David had gone, and Teresa’s pale little face bore evidence of having paid dearly for her inability to (as she thought) flirt with her love for Mrs. Potter. ”

“ One question often puzzles me. Does a good chef ever go near the scullery? Can real art survive within fifty yards of that thing which feels like seaweed and looks like a tennis net? or that tangle of greasy grey wire that speeds the departing and welcomes the coming occupant of a saucepan? Can nightingales’ tongues be [Pg 24] prepared at a zinc table where pink and grey rabbit-skins, potato peelings, white of egg, and the clammy skeletons of fish are gathered together in reckless confusion?
See a cook’s cupboard and die! It is very like Naples. ”

“ Don’t admit that you can read, write, cipher, walk, ride, drive, see, hear, taste, smell, get in a temper, or play on any instrument, or that you ever wash, eat, sleep, cry, laugh, or thread a needle. Admit nothing, deny nothing, express no hopes or fears, acknowledge no creed. There is only one subject on God’s earth which you can broach without danger to your reputation, and that is the weather. ”

“ Then when she hid her sympathy from Ivor and forced herself to suffer for the sake of keeping him with her, she could see a look of childish judgment in his eyes that placed her unjustly in the category she dreaded, that of people who have grown up and are beyond the pale of confidence from the young. If she went on pretending for his sake, she said to herself, he would become like Romulus and Remus, living in his own thoughts without a mother. ”

“ The deadest mutton is never so dead as objects that have been called into temporary life by human ownership. I would rather find fifteen naked corpses in a house than one old pair of trousers. I should like to take that house agent to Pompeii and show him the petrified bodies and their belongings and ask him which made his flesh creep most. It might make him abandon his gruesome trade and be the end of Mrs. Simpson. But if there were no houses to let, where would all the poor ladies of England lay their eggs? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Potter to such a remote corner of Teresa’s consciousness that when she did remember her again the recollection had no more sting than a bad dream. She ate her dinner, served by willing men and women who performed their duties like priests of Isis, instead of, as dear Strickland did, giving her the uneasy feeling that one course would have been quite enough if ladies were not so greedy. She had observed sometimes to Evangeline that Millport maids treated their mistresses as if they were parrots whose dirty cages had to be cleaned out, and whom it “took up people’s time” to feed. ”

“ It is sad, but remarkable, that nothing ever happens to me in the way that books and efficient people claim as a certainty; but I am sure that Ruth enjoyed the dinner more than Mrs. Beeton ever enjoyed anything. You lose half the fun of a dish if you know beforehand what it is going to look like. The range, with his unfailing common sense and utter lack of artistic feeling, behaved strictly in accordance with his flues, slightly undercooking some things and burning others just a trifle: but the ice was perfect. ”

“ Really, it is impossible to know whether they do it on purpose or not; especially Reginald, who is supposed to be clever. However, it all just shows that it is stupidity that makes one get in a temper. There is often nothing to get angry about, but the whole thing gets on one’s nerves. But there is worse to come. So far we have only touched the fringe of what is bad for the temper. We will now visit a land of torture, parts of which are, I believe, untrodden by the male sex.
Has any man ever had to defend his own self—his ego—call it anything you like, from the pursuing eye of a friend? ”

“ I had meant to say a great deal about David Varens during this dinner party. But Millport has proved too strong for him. It always must have been and is now overpowering for the gentle, detached characters whose strength is in enjoyment of the immediate thing that circumstances have put in their way to be done as well as possible; people who accept inherited comfort and adventitious pain equally, as it comes; who love and hate by instinct without recognition of any outside interests to modify their decision and who never go back on a verdict given by this tribunal of taste. ”

“ The garage shelters an any-number-of-horse-power Rolls-Royce, which must not be used too often, and an open car with a canvas hood. This one jolts so much that when we are all in it we grind against one another the whole way, like stones washed about on the beach. The chauffeur hates it, and has blown it up twice, but they always stick it together again to save the Rolls-Royce. I forgot to say that in the West End, so to speak, of the garden there is a hot-house where they keep the huffiest gardener of all. ”

“ When Tom was seven and Anne nine, I decided to engage a governess. I had never lost the feeling of—shall we call it respect—that I had felt for my own governess; one does not lose a feeling like respect in ten years. Therefore, when I found myself interviewing a governess for some one else, I felt rather like a sheep engaging a butcher. ”

“ General Fulton looked at her in exasperated admiration as she sat there, quietly warming her toes in front of the fire, meditative and candid; the typical gentle wife who patiently adds up the problems of life for her husband, and leaves his wisdom to unravel the answer. ”