Philip Gibbs

“ The mother-in-law, in the corner of the sitting-room, watches the drama of the married life, and with more experience of life, because of her years, sees the young wife do foolish things, watches her blundering experiments in the great adventure of marriage, is vigilant of her failures in housekeeping, and in the management of her husband. She cannot be quite tongue-tied. She cannot refrain from criticism, advice, rebuke. Between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law there is a daily warfare of pinpricks, a feud that grows bitter with the years. ”

“ But, as we have seen, the fun begins to peter out somewhere about the Eighth Year, and “the good time” has disappeared like a mirage when one gets close to it, and even youth and beauty are drooping and faded like yesterday’s flowers. What is the woman to do then? She is the victim of shattered illusions, of broken hopes. Before her is nothing but a gray vista of years. She has nothing to reconcile her with the boredom of her days, nothing to compensate her for domestic drudgery, no cure for the restlessness and feverishness which consume her, no laws by which she may keep straight. ”

“ She thrusts down these queer doubts, does not listen to the flutterings at the heart, ignores the little pinpricks of conscience. She turns quickly to the interests of her social life and falls easily into the habit of pleasant laziness, filling her day with little futile things, which seem to satisfy her heart and brain. When her husband has gone to business she dresses herself rather elaborately for a morning stroll, manicures her nails, tries a new preparation for the complexion, alters a feather, or a flower, in one of her hats, studies herself in the glass, and is pleased with herself. ”

“ They live in a world of romance before the marriage day. The man seems to walk on air when he crosses London Bridge on his way to the City. Or if he is a barrister he sees the beauty of his girl’s face in his brief—and is in danger of losing his case. Or if a journalist he curses his irregular hours which keep him from the little house in Tulse Hill, or the flat in Hampstead, where there is a love-light in the windows. He knows the outward look of the girl, her softness, her prettiness, her shy glance when he greets her. ”

“ Or, kneeling by the side of the woman whose transparent hand he clasps above the coverlet, the husband listens to the little voice within his conscience, and understands, with a great heartache, the pitiful meaning of the domestic strife which seemed to have killed his love for the woman for whose life now he makes a passionate cry. In the period of convalescence, after Death has stolen away, when life smiles again through the open windows, that man and woman get back to sanity and to wisdom beyond that of common-sense. They begin again with new ideals. ”

“ After the first year or two of marriage they know him with all his faults and flaws, and familiarity breeds contempt. But here, in this struggle for the Vote, in these window-breakings and house-burnings, in imprisonments and forcible feedings, in this solidarity of women inspired by a fierce fanaticism—there is, they think, the answer to all their unsolved questions, the splendor and the glory of their sex, the possibility of magnificent promises and gifts, in which the soul of woman may at last find peace, and her body its liberty. ”

“ Only sentiment and romance are allowed to count. These two people who are about to start on the long road of life together are utterly blind to each other’s vices or virtues. They are deeply ignorant of each other’s soul. They know nothing of the real man or the real woman hidden beneath the mask of social conventions, beneath the delightful, sham of romantic affection. They know nothing of their own souls, nor of the strength that is in them to stand the test of life’s realities. They know nothing of their own weakness. ”

“ To feel his pulse thrill to the wine of life, to get the fever of joy in his blood again, to plunge into the fiery lake of passion, are temptations from which he does not escape because he is Something in the City, or a barrister-at-law, and a married man with a delicate wife. But, being a man, with a man’s work, and a man’s ambition, he keeps his sanity, and quite often his self-respect. ”

“ Alas, her tragedy is as great as that of the young wife upon whose nerves she gets so badly, as great as that of the young husband who finds his home-life insufferable because of her presence.
For the mother-in-law is a prisoner of fate. She is the unwanted guest. She is dependent upon the charity of those who find her a daily nuisance. During the days of her own married life she devoted herself to her husband and children, stinted and scraped for them, moulded them according to her ideals of righteousness, exacted obedience to her motherly commands, and was sure of their love. ”

“ Sometimes when he has shut himself up in his study, when the servants are in the kitchen washing up the supper-things, when his wife is lying down with a bad headache, he unlocks the door of that Bohemia in his heart, and his imagination goes roving, and he hears the pan-pipes calling, and the stamp of the cloven hoofs of the old Nature-god. He would like to cut and run sometimes from this respectable life of his, to go in search of adventure down forbidden pathways, and to find the joy of life again in Liberty Hall. ”

“ Sometimes it is an illness which overtakes the husband or wife. Holding hands by the bedside, they stare into the face of Death, and again the trivialities of life, the pettiness of their previous desires, the folly of their selfishness, the stupidity of their little snobdom, are revealed by the whisperings of Death, and by its warnings. The truth of things stalks into the bedroom where the husband, or the wife, lies sleeping on the borderland. About the sick bed the weeping woman makes new vows, tears wash out her vanity, her self-conceit. ”

“ There is a great emptiness in her heart, and she has a great hunger and a great thirst of soul which she cannot satisfy. Nothing satisfies that empty, barren heart of hers, that throbbing brain. She has finished with Mudie’s novels. She can find no satisfaction in them. She revolts from the tittle-tattle of her women friends. That is no longer amusing. She finds no pleasure in the beauty of her face. It is no longer beautiful. She hates the sight of her face in the glass. She is afraid of those big wistful eyes which stare at her. She is sick to death of dressing herself up. ”

“ They laugh when visitors call at awkward moments and when the dinner is spoilt by an inefficient cook. After all, the comradeship of a young man and wife is the best thing in life, and nothing else seems to matter. They are such good comrades that the husband never leaves his wife a moment in his leisure time. He takes her to the theatre with him. They spend week-ends together, far from the madding crowd. They pluck the flowers of life, hand in hand, as lovers. ”

“ There is no problem of the Eighth Year in Poverty Court, only the great problems of life and death, of hunger and thirst and cold, of labor and want of work. Here in the mean streets of the world is the great lesson that want of work is the greatest disaster, the greatest moral tragedy, that may happen to men and women.
If the idle women of the little snobdoms would come forth from their houses and flats, they would see that lesson staring them in the face, with a great warning to themselves. ”

“ Herbert looked into his wife’s eyes for a moment and then stared down at the carpet.
“I used to see love looking out,” he said.
“It’s looking out now,” said Clare. “Love of life instead of discontent. Love of this great throbbing human nature, with so much to be put right. Love of poor people, and little children, and brave hearts. Madge Vernon taught me that, for she has a soul bigger than the suffrage, and ideals that go beyond the vote. I have blown the cobwebs out of my eyes, Herbert. ”

“ The real woman is of flesh and blood. The real woman is so much better than the sham. Don’t you think so?”
“It depends on what you call sham,” said Herbert.
“I was a sham until that plaster image of me broke. I indulged in sham sentiment, sham emotion, sham thoughts. Look at me now, since I went outside these four walls and faced the facts of life, and saw other people’s misery besides my own, and the happiness of people with so much more to bear than I had. Look into my eyes, Herbert.” ”

“ She revels in romantic fiction, and reads novel after novel at the rate of three a week. Occasionally one of these novels gives her a nasty shock, for it deals with realism rather than romance, and reveals the hearts of women rather like herself, and the tragedies of women rather like herself, and the truth of things, in a cold, white light. She reads the book with burning eyes. It makes her pulse beat. It seems rather a wicked book, it is so horribly truthful, not covering even the nakedness of facts with a decent layer of sentiment, but exposing them brutally, with a terrible candor. ”

“ They whisper about her, so that she puts her hands to her ears, when she is alone in her drawing-room. Faces peer at her, with mocking eyes, or with tempting eyes—the faces of men who might have been her lovers, baby faces of unborn children. Little hands flutter about her heart, pluck at her, tease her. The ghosts of her girlhood crowd about her, the ghosts of dead hopes, of young illusions, of romantic dreams. She thrusts them away from her vision. She puts her hands before her eyes, and moans a little, quietly, so that the servants in the kitchen shall not hear. ”

“ Besides, modern life in small flats is not cut out for children.”
“And modern life in small flats,” said Clare, “is not cut out for wives.”
“It isn’t my fault,” said Herbert. “I am not the architect—either of fate or flats.”
“No, it isn’t your fault, Herbert. You can’t help your character. It isn’t your fault that when you come home from the city you fall asleep after dinner. It isn’t your fault that when you go to the club I sit at home with my hands in my lap, thinking and brooding. It isn’t your fault that your mother and I get on each other’s nerves. ”

“ And if they would thrust aside their selfishness and learn the love of humanity, it would light a flame in their hearts which would kindle the dead ashes of their disillusionment and burn up their grievances, and make a bonfire of all their petty little troubles, and make such a light in their lives as would enable them to see the heroic qualities of ordinary duties bravely done, and of ordinary lives bravely led. Here they would find another way of escape from the perils of the Eighth Year, and a new moral health for their hearts and brains. ”

“ She stares at the pattern on the carpet, when a Mudie’s novel lies on her lap, and comes to detest the artificial roses on the trellis-work. She digs her heels into one of them. If the roses were real she would pluck them leaf by leaf and scatter the floor with them. The ticking of the clock on the mantelshelf irritates her. It seems a reproach to her. It seems to be counting up her waste of time.
She stays more at home, in spite of hating it, because she is beginning to loathe her round of visits. She feels lonely and wishes her husband would come home. ”

“ When once a woman has lost her interest in her home and husband, when she has become bored with herself, when she has a morbid craving for excitement and adventures, when she has become peevish and listless and hungry-hearted, she cannot remain in this condition. Those forces within her are tremendously powerful. They must find some outlet. They must reach a definite time of crisis when things have got to happen. These vague yearnings must be satisfied, somehow, anyhow. The emptiness of her heart must be filled by something or other. ”

“ She goes languidly through the days and a matinée jaunt no longer thrills her with a little excitement. The plays are so boring, full of stale old plots, stale old women, stale old tricks. She is sick of them. She still reads a great number of romantic novels, but how insufferably tedious they have become! How false they are! How cloying is all this sickly sentiment! She searches about for the kind of novel which used to frighten her, problem novels, dangerous novels, novels dealing with real problems of life. ”

“ All the color had faded out of her face and she was dead white.
“You need not be afraid, Clare. The love of a man for a woman is not a terrifying thing. It is a good thing. Good as life.”
He took her by the wrists and held them tight.
“Gerald!” said Clare. “For God’s sake.... I have a husband.”
“He bores you,” said the man. “He is your husband but not your mate. No woman finds peace until she finds her mate. It is the same with a man.”
“I will not listen to you. You make me feel a bad woman!”
She wrenched her hands free and moved toward the bell.
Gerald Bradshaw laughed quietly. ”

“ More than that, all the little meannesses of their life, all the petty selfishness of their days, all the little futile things over which they have wrangled and jangled are thrust on one side, and are seen in their right perspective. The things that matter, the only things that matter, are seen, perhaps, for the first time, clearly, in a bright light, now that they are face to face with stem realities. The shock throws them off their pedestals of conceit, of self-consciousness, of pretence. They stand on solid ground. ”

“ He would like her always to be sitting in the drawing-room when he comes home, in a pretty frock, with a novel in her lap, with a smile in her eyes. He does not and will not understand that this childless wife of his must have strong interests outside her little home to save her from eating her heart out. He hides from himself the fact that her childlessness is a curse which is blighting her. ”