I
EXCEPTIONS may be allowed in theory, at least, but the rule stands impregnable in reason and practice, that a wife should have the absolute control of the household, and that no male person should meddle, even as an irresponsible critic, with the servant department. There are limits to the subjection of the gentler sex which reserves the right to choose its acts of homage to the titular head of the family. Can anything be prettier, for instance, than the deference which women of very pronounced character will show to their husbands in some affairs? “Nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to have taken a stall at your charming bazaar, but my husband absolutely forbids me, and you know what a tyrant he is about my health,” or “You really must not ask my opinion about the Eastern Question, for I am shockingly ignorant of politics, but my husband knows everything, and I have heard him say that the Government has been very weak.” It would not, however, be wise for this favoured man to trespass too far on the almost Oriental deference of his wife, or hastily to suppose that because his word was useful in saving her from the drudgery of an unfashionable bazaar or the weary drone of a conversational bore, his was a universal infallibility. This sweet spirit of passive obedience will not continue if a rash man should differ from the house manager on the technical merits of a servant, for he will then be told that his views on all such matters are less than nothing and vanity.
No man knows, nor ever expects to know, what women talk about after they have left the dining-room in stately procession and secluded themselves in the parliament of the drawing-room; but it may be guessed that the conference, among other things, reviews the incredible folly of mankind in the sphere of household affairs. How it will not give the head of the family one minute's serious concern that the cook feeds her kinsfolk with tit-bits in the kitchen, provided that his toast be crisp and his favourite dish well cooked. How he would any day give a certificate of character to the housemaid, if he were allowed to perpetrate such an absurdity, simply and solely on the ground that his bath was ready every morning, and his shaving-water hot, while he did not know, nor seem to care, that the dust was lying thick in hidden corners. How he would excuse the waitress having a miscellaneous circle of admirers, provided she did not loiter at the table and was ingenious in saving him from unwelcome callers. They compare notes on the trials of household government; they comfort one another with sympathy; they revel in tales of male innocence and helplessness, till they are amazed that men should be capable of even such light duties as fall on them in their daily callings, and are prepared to receive them kindly as they enter the room with much diffidence and make an appeal by their very simplicity to a woman's protecting care.
John Leslie was devoted to his very pretty and very managing wife, and had learned wisdom, so that he never meddled, but always waited till his advice was invited. Like other wise husbands, he could read his wife's face, and he saw that afternoon, two days before Christmas, as soon as he entered the drawing-room, that there had been trouble in the household. His kiss was received without response; her cheeks had the suggestion of a flush; her lips were tightly drawn; and there was a light in her eyes which meant defiance. She stated with emphasis, in reply to a daily inquiry, that she was perfectly well, and that everything had gone well that day. When she inquired why he should suppose that anything was wrong, he knew that it had been a black storm, and that the end thereof was not yet.
“By the way, Flo,”—and Leslie congratulated himself on avoiding every hidden rock,—“I've completed my list of Christmas presents, and I flatter myself on one downright success, which suggests that I have original genius.”
“Do you mean the picture of Soundbergh School for Jack?” said Mrs. Leslie coldly. “I daresay he will be pleased, although I don't believe that boys care very much for anything except for games and gingerbread cakes; they are simply barbarians”; and as Leslie knew that his wife had been ransacking London to get a natty portable camera wherewith Jack might take bits of scenery, his worst-weather guess seemed to be confirmed.
“No, no, that was obvious, and I believe Jack will be fearfully proud of his picture,” replied Leslie bravely; “but I was at my wit's end to know what to get for old Margaret. You see, I used to give her pincushions and works of art from the Thames Tunnel when I was a little chap, and I bought her boas and gay-coloured handkerchiefs when I came up at Christmas from Oxford, and you know since she left the old home and settled with us eighteen years ago we have exhausted the whole catalogue.”
“You have, at least”; and having no clue, Leslie was amazed at his wife's indifference to the factotum and ruler of the household, whom the junior servants were obliged to call Mrs. Hoskins—“Mrs.” being a title of dignity, not of marriage—or Cook at the lowest, and who was called everything by her old boy John Leslie and his son Jack, from Maggie to Magsibus, and answered to anything by which her two masters chose to name her.
“Oh, you have been as keen as any one in the family about Magsy's present,”—and Leslie still clung to hope,—“but I've walked out before you all. What do you think of a first-class likeness of Spurgeon in an oak frame, with his autograph? You know how she goes on about him, and reads his sermons. It 'ill be hung in the place of honour in the kitchen, with burnished tin and brass dishes on either side. Now, confess, haven't I scored?”
“If you propose to put your picture on her table on Christmas morning, I fear you will be a day late, for Margaret has given up her place, and asked to be allowed to leave to-morrow: she wants to bid Jack good-bye before she goes,” and Mrs. Leslie's voice was iced to twenty degrees below freezing.
“What do you mean?” cried Leslie, aghast, for in all his dark imaginations he had never anticipated this catastrophe. “Maggie! our Meg! leaving at a day's notice! It's too absurd! You've... had a quarrel, I suppose, but that won't, come to anything. Christmas is the time for... making up.”
“You do not know much about household management, John,” Mrs. Leslie explained with much dignity. “Mistresses don't quarrel with servants, however much provoked they may be. If I have to find fault, I make a rule of doing so quickly and civilly, and I allow no reply. It was Margaret flung up her place with very unbecoming language; and you may be sure this time there will be no 'making up,' as you call it.
“What happened, Florence?” said John Leslie, with a note in his voice which a woman never treats with disrespect. “You know I do not interfere between you and the young servants, but Margaret has been with us since we married, and before that was for sixteen years in my father's house. We cannot part lightly; did she speak discourteously to you?”
“I do not know what a man may call discourtesy, but Margaret informed me that either she or the housemaid must leave, and that the sooner the housemaid went the better for the house.”
“But I thought that the housemaid was a Baptist too, and that Margaret and she got on capitally, and rather looked down on the waitress because she was a Methodist.”
“So they did for a time, till they found out that they were different kinds of Baptists, just imagine! They had such arguments in the kitchen that Lucy has had to sit in her pantry, and last evening Margaret called the housemaid a 'contracted Baptist,' and she said Margaret was a 'loose Baptist.' So Margaret told me that if she was a 'loose Baptist,' it was not good for the housemaid to stay in the house with her; and if I preferred a woman like that, she would go at once, and so she is going.” “When men break on theology in the smoking-room,” remarked Leslie, “the wise go to bed at once, and two women—and one of them old Margaret—on the distinctions among the Baptist denomination must be beyond words and endurance. It is natural that places should be given up, but not necessary that the offer should be accepted. What did you say to Margaret, Florence?”
“That she had secured the dismissal of five servants already within three years: one because she was High Church; a second because she was no Church; that big housemaid from Devon for no reason I could discover except that she ate too much, as if we grudged food; the last waitress because she did not work enough, as if that concerned her; and the one before because she had a lover Margaret did not approve, and that I did not propose to lose a good housemaid because she was not the same sort of Baptist as Margaret.
“It is very nice and romantic to talk about the old family servant,” continued Mrs. Leslie with a vibrant voice, “and I hope that I have not been ungrateful to Margaret, but people forget what a mistress has to suffer from the 'old family servant,' and I tell you, John, that I can endure Margaret's dictation no longer. She must leave, or... I must”; and when his wife swept out of the room to dress for dinner, Leslie knew that they had come to a crisis in family life.