Mrs. Dowdall

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 find it so difficult to observe by-laws, such as ignoring people unless one knows them. I should have chatted to this weary Wilhelmina if I had thought that there was a chance of her answering, but I had an instinct that she would partially raise one eyelid at me and pretend to be either a dying empress or a virtuous barmaid accosted in Piccadilly under a misapprehension. ”

“ Merchant has a great deal of a certain quality, definite enough, but for which I know of no name, which is in part natural goodness and, in part, only a queenlike unawareness. Whatever it is, it reacts on some submerged part of my character, and produces in me a sort of street arab whom I do not recognize. You know that I am not fast nor vicious nor dishonest, only an ordinary person enjoying life, yet with this woman I feel like Eve after the Fall. I rush helter-skelter from every topic of conversation, covering my harmless, natural thoughts with platitudes. ”

“ The man himself is so nervously suspicious of friendliness that he sometimes makes me think of a darling old scarecrow in a field from which all the crops have been gathered long ago. Or can you imagine a Lifeguards-man feeling so shy and indelicate without his full-dress uniform that he insists on wearing a tea-tray strapped to his chest when he is off duty? That is the sort of defensive attitude that Millport people adopt towards their friends. ”

“ Music seems to have some power of disenchantment, because at a concert, though the munchers fill a good part of the building, there are always dozens and dozens of people whom one knows. It may be that the awful weariness paralyses the hypnotic power of the munchers. They are there just the same, with their vacant faces, and their queer screws of hair, and their unsuitable clothes, but they are almost too weak to chew from their packets of refreshment. In fact, no one chews at a concert, except surreptitiously in a box. ”

“ There are some days when I believe all the food in the shops is made of painted cardboard like a doll’s-house dinner-party, because, although there appears to be an endless variety, there is, in fact, nothing that can be bought and eaten by ordinary people. If you examine each item separately, this will become evident. All the things in the windows are frauds, for the reasons described in Mrs. Globe’s shop, and therefore there is nothing for it but to have just the usual; to return up the street again to the butcher. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Personally I go in just any old thing, because I never expect to be recognized; and I hate leaving my seat, because I generally have on an evening top and thick boots, and it looks so bad if you go out and the lights are up.
Being, like all idle people, an intolerable wonderer, I have wondered for years “who the people are who go to the theatre.” ”

“ Miss Darling’s wedding was about as flat and comfortable and sensible a proceeding as you could well imagine. No passion in it to lead to possible disappointment and disaster; no marrying for money or position, as they are both already comfortably seated on the top branch of their social tree, and both have about the same amount of money, enough for perfect ease and to cover sudden emergencies, but not enough to lead to riotous living. Miss Darling loves everybody, so it is not likely that she will leave out her husband. ”

“ I don’t think that Miss Darling has a mother, but the bridegroom’s was there—a bad woman, I should think, from the look of her: thick-skinned, over-dressed, and with short legs, which are always a sign of doubtful virtue. I don’t think that her son drinks; in fact, I am sure he does not; but she is the type of woman who schemes indefatigably to find a good young girl to marry her drunken blackguard of a son in the hope of keeping him straight. ”

“ Ritz-Trotter, Miss Darling, and Mr. Friseur. I am always puzzled as to how the Mr. Ritz-Trotters get wives. They are all right in an office, or on a board, or as butlers, or in any kind of man’s work (except soldiering, or sailoring, or diplomacy) . But why does anyone want such a person in the house to keep? If one had dozens of husbands, it would be useful to have one Mr. Ritz-Trotter to manage the shares, and tell one where to sign things; but as we are limited to one, it seems such a waste of a unique opportunity to choose that sort. ”

“ Love in all its expressions is more like something chemical than anything else, [Pg 27] 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. ”

“ What we want is the truth—the whole truth—about what people with faces like turbot and macaroons think. I should stay awake all night with the excitement of knowing Mrs. Beehive as her Maker knows her. Probably she could throw a great deal of light on all sorts of obvious things that complicated people, like Reginald, miss owing to being tangled up in their own intelligence.”
“By the way,” said Mrs. Spicer, “talking of food, isn’t it absurd how we keep on with the same dishes when the cookery books are full of different ways of cooking everything? ”

“ I see, in my mind’s eye, the Almighty evolving a perpetually changing order out of the chaos that occurs every day. You don’t make a world out of a hill, and then a tree, and then an ocean, stuck down like salt-cellars on the table. The sea is being made into rain to wash the ground into different shapes: the trees settle down into coal, or we cut them up to build things with, and [Pg 126] we clear the ground for villa residences to hold the new people whom Providence sends. Sometimes there is an earthquake which throws up the dead whom we have forgotten and swallows up the living. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Bushytail’s stall belonged to a duchess who didn’t turn up; so although for some hours Mrs. Bushytail, like good dog Tray, grew very red, and would have growled and bit her till she bled, had she happened on the duchess just then, yet, when the first shock was over, she began, like a sensible woman, to count her blessings. She soon discovered several. One was that she would be able to run the stall as she liked, and bully every one else as the duchess might have bullied her. Another substantial blessing was that strangers coming round to the stall would probably mistake her for the duchess. ”

“ You mentally apologize to Maggie for all the things you were going to say. Your heart is wrung when you see her staggering under a load of silver jugs and entrée dishes, two loaves, a ham, and five plates with knives and forks to match.
“I am sorry the master was obliged to complain about breakfast being late, m’m,” [Pg 62] says Maggie, looking like a thunderstorm with heart disease. She disposes the feast all over your room, plates on the top of your clothes, two entrée dishes at your feet (just where you can’t reach them without spilling the tea) , and the ham on the washstand. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ I asked. “What is the same?”
“I mean that it takes a great many men to make one husband, just as it takes a great [Pg 128] many Octavia Sinclairs to make one person’s life,” she explained.
“How many husbands have you besides Reginald?” I asked with some hesitation.
“It is very difficult to be patient with you, Martha,” replied Polly. “I have only one husband, as you know, but he is compounded of all the men I ever met. When I meet a man who is bad-tempered, I weave the thread of his ill-temper beside that of Reginald’s amazing patience, and you can’t imagine how Reginald’s colours glow. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ I know that we have all got to live on other people, but while it seems suitable to borrow a neighbour’s fowl if we eat it up and it is made into blood and muscle and energy, yet it is merely disgusting to swallow it whole and then treat it as the whale treated Jonah. ”

“ There are so many poor things like you, you know, who have to be cheered up. Good-bye—good-bye, Mrs. Tibby. Hope you will have a splendid night and be about again directly.”
I was so entranced by Mrs. Bushytail’s vigour and excellence that I forgot about Mrs. Merchant, who had in the meantime been quietly rambling through the wards, timidly passing the time for the patients one by one. She is not a vital person, and she is very shy, but they watched her with the idle, restful pleasure which, when one is ill, a cat performing its simple toilet may afford without raising one’s temperature. ”

“ I thought, “I shall be arrested for loitering with intent. I wish Miss Kate would hurry up.” I was just passing a little house with dingy green curtains half-way up the windows when, to my surprise, the door burst open and Miss Kate shot out like an arrow aimed with temper.
[Pg 205]
“Run!” she breathed. “Run—don’t let him get us.”
We ran like sandpipers for a mile, and then Miss Kate stopped and looked behind her. “It’s all right,” she said, “I don’t think he has followed us. He was an anti-vivisectionist—just fancy! I would have sent one of the men from the committee rooms if I had known.” ”

“ You do not smoke, I know, but you have fifteen love-affairs a week, so I can explain the absurdity of the occasional cigarette in terms that you will understand, by saying that it is as if some one told you she did so enjoy being made love to, now and then—about once a year—by a really nice old gentleman with a bald head, so long as he did not attempt to kiss her. ”