I
Lunch finished, Mr. Ferdinand Wimple, the poet, sullenly removed his coat and sulkily carried the dishes to the kitchen sink. He swore in a melodious murmur, as a cat purrs, as he turned the hot water on to the plates, and he splashed profanely with a wet dishcloth.
“I'm going to do the dishes to-day, Ferd,” announced his wife, pleasantly enough. She was a not unpleasant-looking woman; she gave the impression that she might, indeed, be a distinctly pleasant-looking woman, if she could avoid seeming hurried. She would have been a pretty woman, in fact, if she had been able to give the time to it.
When she said that she would do the dishes herself, Mr. Wimple immediately let the dishcloth drop without another word, profane or otherwise, and began to dry his hands, preparatory to putting on his coat again. But she continued:
“I want you to do the twins' wash.”
“What?” cried Mr. Wimple, outraged. He ran one of his plump hands through his thick tawny hair and stared at his wife with latent hatred in his brown eyes... those eyes of which so many women had remarked: “Aren't Mr. Wimple's eyes wonderful; just simply wonderful! So magnetic, if you get what I mean!” Mr. Wimple's head, by many of his female admirers, was spoken of as “leonine.” His detractors—for who has them not?—dwelt rather upon the physical reminder of Mr.'Wimple, which was more suggestive of the ox.
“I said I wanted you to do the twins' wash for me,” repeated Mrs. Wimple, awed neither by the lion's visage nor the bovine torso. Mrs. Wimple's own hair was red; and in a quietly red-haired sort of way she looked as if she expected her words to be heeded.
“H——!” said the poet, in a round baritone which enriched the ear as if a harpist had plucked the lovely string of G. “H——!” But there was more music than resolution in the sound. It floated somewhat tentatively upon the air. Mr. Wimple was not in revolt. He was wondering if he had the courage to revolt.
Mrs. Wimple lifted the cover of the laundry tub, which stood beside the sink, threw in the babies' “things,” turned on the hot water, and said:
“Better shave some laundry soap and throw it in, Ferd.”
“Heavens!” declared Mr. Wimple. “To expect a man of my temperament to do that!” But still he did not say that he would not do it.
“Someone has to do it,” contributed his wife.
“I never kicked on the dishes, Nell,” said Mr. Wimple. “But this, this is too much!”
“I have been doing it for ten days, ever since the maid left. I'm feeling rotten to-day, and you can take a turn at it, Ferd. My back hurts.” Still Mrs. Wimple was not unpleasant; but she was obviously determined.
“Your back!” sang Mr. Wimple, the minstrel, and shook his mane. “Your back hurts you! My soul hurts me! How could I go direct from that—that damnable occupation—that most repulsive of domestic occupations—that bourgeois occupation—to Mrs. Watson's tea this afternoon and deliver my message?”
A shimmer of heat (perhaps from her hair) suddenly dried up whatever dew of pleasantness remained in Mrs. Wimple's manner. “They're just as much your twins as they are mine,” she began... but just then one of them cried.
A fraction of a second later the other one cried.
Mrs. Wimple hurried from the kitchen and reached the living room in time to prevent mayhem. The twins, aged one year, were painfully entangled with one another on the floor. The twin Ronald had conceived the idea that perhaps the twin Dugald's thumb was edible, and was testing five or six of his newly acquired teeth upon it. Childe Dugald had been inspired by his daemon with the notion that one of Childe Ronald's ears might be detachable, and was endeavouring to detach it. The situation was but too evidently distressing to both of them, but neither seemed capable of the mental initiative necessary to end it. Even when little Ronald opened his mouth to scream, little Dugald did not remove the thumb.
Mrs. Wimple unscrambled them, wiped their noses, gave them rattles, rubber dolls, and goats to wreak themselves upon, and returned to the kitchen thinking (for she did not lack her humorous gleams) that the situation in the living room bore a certain resemblance to the situation in the kitchen. She and Ferdinand bit and scratched figuratively, but they had not the initiative to break loose from one another.
Mr. Wimple was shaving soap into the laundry tub, but he stopped when she entered and sang at her: “And why did the maid leave?”
“You know why she left, Ferd.”
“She left,” chanted Ferdinand, poking the twins' clothing viciously with a wooden paddle, “because...” But what Mr. Wimple said, and the way he said it, falls naturally into the freer sort of verse:
“She left [sang Mr. Wimple]
Because her discontent...
Her individual discontent,
Which is a part of the current general discontent
Of all the labouring classes...
Was constantly aggravated
By your jarring personality,
Mrs. Wimple!
There is no harmony in this house,
Mrs. Wimple;
No harmony!”
Mrs. Wimple replied in sordid prose:
“She left because she was offered more money elsewhere, and we couldn't afford to meet the difference.” Something like a sob vibrated through Mr. Wimple's opulent voice as he rejoined:
“Nellie, that is a blow that I did not look for! You have stabbed me with a poisoned weapon! Yes, Nellie, I am poor! So was Edgar Poe. What the world calls poor! I shall, in all likelihood, never be rich... what the world calls rich. But I have my art! I have my ideals! I have my inner life! I have my dreams! Poor? Poor? Yes, Nell! Poor! So was Robert Burns! I am poor! I make no compromise with the mob. Nor shall I ever debase my gift for money. No! Such as I am, I shall bear the torch that has been intrusted to me till I fall fainting at the goal! I have a message. To me it is precious stuff, and I shall not alloy it with the dross called gold. Poor? Yes, Nell! And you have the heart to cast it in my teeth! You, Nellie! You, from whom I once expected sympathy and understanding. You, whom I chose from all the world, and took into my life because I fancied that you, too, saw the vision! Yes, Elinor, I dreamed that once!”