V
The next serious impression on Wynne’s susceptible brain was the discovery of routine, and he conceived for it an instant dislike. To him it appeared a grievous state of affairs that nearly all matters were guided by the clock rather than by circumstance. One had one’s breakfast not because one was hungry, but because it was half-past eight, and so on with a mass of other details, great and small, throughout the day. That people should wilfully enslave themselves to a mere mechanical contrivance, instead of rising superior to the calls of time and place, was incomprehensible to Wynne. He could not appreciate how regularity and repetition in any sense benefited the individual. He observed how a breakdown in the time-table of events was a sure signal for high words from his father, and an aggravated sense of calamity which ran through every department of the house. True, a late breakfast presaged the loss of a train, and so much time less at the office, but surely this was no matter for melancholy? It argued a poor spirit that could not rejoice at an extra quarter of an hour in bed, or delaying the pursuit of irksome duties.
Wynne had never seen his father’s office, but at the age of seven he had already formed very pronounced and unfavourable views regarding it. To his mind the office and the City were one—a place which swallowed up mankind in the morning and disgorged them at night. The process of digestion through which they appeared to have passed produced characteristics of a distressing order.
A child judges men by his father, and women by his mother. From this standard Wynne judged that men might be tolerable were it not for the City. The City was responsible for his father’s ill-humours at night—the city inspired home criticism and such observations as:
“I come back tired out and find——” etc.
Wynne had a very wholesome distaste for recurrent sentiments; he liked people to say new things that were interesting. The repetition of ready-made phrases was lazy and dull—the very routine of speech. It were better, surely, to say nothing at all than have catch-phrases for ever on one’s lips.
From this point his thoughts turned to inanimate objects, and subconsciously he realized how routine affected their arrangement as inevitably as it affected human beings. Look where you would, there was always a hat-rack in the hall, a church almanack in the lavatory, and a clock on the dining-room mantelpiece. Why?
There was a certain rough justice in the position of the hat-rack, assuming that one admitted the law which discouraged the wearing of hats in the house, but why should one desire to study saints’ days while washing one’s hands? A clock, too, would be none the less serviceable if standing on a cabinet. Who, then, was responsible for dictating such laws? he asked himself. Clearly these were matters for investigation.
An opportunity to investigate arose a few days later. There was a new housemaid, and after her first effort to turn out the drawing-room Mrs. Rendall summoned her to explain that the chairs and tables had not been put back in their proper places.
“Your master would be most annoyed if he saw this, Emily. It is very careless indeed. These chairs must go like this”—and the old order was restored.
“Why do they have to go like that, Mummie?” demanded Wynne, when the maid had departed.
“Because they always have,” replied Mrs. Rendall, with great finality.
He was too young to understand the meaning of a vicious circle or he might have recognized its rotations in her reply. So everything must be done again because it has been done before. Seemingly that was the law governing the universe.
Speaking almost to himself he mused:
“I think it would be nice to do things because they never have been done before.”
To which Mrs. Rendall very promptly replied:
“Don’t be silly.”
“That isn’t silly,” said Wynne. “Why is it silly?”
“If you say another word you will go straight to bed.”
The remark was as surely in place as the clock which stood on the dead centre of the mantelpiece.