EMILY'S MISSION.
It was all through Emily that I am to-day the man I am.
We were extraordinarily lucky to get her; there was no doubt about that. Her testimonials or character or references or whatever it is that they come to you with were just the last word. Even the head of the registry-office, a frigid thin-lipped lady of some fifty winters, with an unemotional cold-mutton eye, was betrayed, in speaking of Emily, into a momentary lapse from the studied English of her normal vocabulary.
"Madam," she said to my wife, "I have known many housemaids, but never one like this. She is, I assure you, Madam, absolutely it."
So we engaged her; and ere long I came to hate her with a hatred such as I trust I shall never again cherish for any human being.
In almost every respect she proved perfection. She was honest, she was quick, she was clean; she loved darning my socks and ironing my handkerchiefs; she never sulked, she never smashed, her hair never wisped (a thing I loathe in housemaids). In one point only she failed, failed more completely than any servant I have ever known. She would not make my shaving-water really hot.
Cursed by nature with an iron-filings beard and a delicate tender skin, I was a man for whom it was impossible to shave with comfort in anything but absolutely boiling water. Yet morning after morning I sprang from my bed to find the contents of my jug just a little over or under the tepid mark. There was no question of re-heating the water on the gas stove, for I never allowed myself more than the very minimum of time for dressing, swallowing my breakfast and catching my train. It was torture.
I spoke to Emily about it, mildly at first, more forcibly as the weeks wore on, passionately at last. She apologised, she sighed, she wrung her hands. Once she wept—shed hot scalding tears, tears I could gladly have shaved in had they fallen half-an-hour earlier. But it made no difference; next morning my water was as chill as ever. I could not understand it. Every day my wrath grew blacker, my reproaches more vehement.
Finally an hour came when I said to my wife, "One of two things must happen. Either that girl goes or I grow a beard."
Mildred shook her head. "We can't possibly part with her. We should never get another servant like her."
"Very well," I said.
On the morrow I started for my annual holiday, alone. It was late summer. I journeyed into the wilds of Wiltshire. I took two rooms in an isolated cottage, and on the first night of my stay, before getting into bed, I threw my looking-glass out of the window. Next morning I began. Day by day I tramped the surrounding country, avoiding all intercourse with humanity, and day by day my beard grew.
I could feel it growing, and the first scrubbiness of it filled me with rage. But as time slipped by it became softer and more pliable, and ceased to irritate me. Freed, too, from the agony of shaving, I soon found myself eating my breakfast in a more equable frame of mind than I had enjoyed for years. I began also to notice in my walks all sorts of things that had not struck me at first—the lark a-twitter in the blue, the good smell of wet earth after rain, the pale gold of ripening wheat. And at last, before ever I saw it, very gradually I came to love my beard, to love the warm comfort and cosiness of it, and to wonder half timidly what it looked like.
When I left, just before my departure for the six-miles-distant station, I called for a looking-glass. They brought me a piece of the one I had cast away. It was very small, but it served my purpose. I gazed and heaved a sigh of rapturous content; a sigh that came from my very heart. My beard was short and thick, its colour a deep glorious brown, with golden lights here and there where the sunbeams danced in some lighter cluster of its curling strands. A beard that a king might wear.
I have never shaved again. Every morning now, while untold millions of my suffering fellows are groaning beneath their razors, I steal an extra fifteen minutes from the day and lie and laugh inside my beard.
"And what of Emily?" you ask.
Almost immediately after my return she left us. She gave no reason. She was not unhappy, she said. She wished to make a change, that was all. To this day my wife cannot account for her departure. But I know why she went. Emily was a patriot with a purpose. A month after she parted from us I received a letter from her:—
"Dear Sir,—May I ask you to take into consideration the fact that by having ceased to shave you will in future be effecting a slight economy in your daily expenditure? Might I also suggest to you that during the remainder of the War you should make a voluntary contribution to the national exchequer of every shilling saved under this head? The total sum will not be large, but everything counts. Yours is, if I may be allowed to say so, the finest beard I have been instrumental in producing during my two and a half years' experience in domestic service. I am now hard at work on my sixth case, which is approaching its crisis.
Apologising for any temporary inconvenience I may have caused you, I am,
Yours faithfully,
Emily Johnson,
Foundress and President of the
Housemaids' Society for the
Promotion of Patriotic Beards."
I never showed the letter to my wife, but I have acted on Emily's suggestion. I often think of her still, her whole soul afire with her patriotic mission, flitting, the very flower of housemaids, from home to home, lingering but a little while in each, in each content for that little while to be loathed and stormed at by an exasperated shaver, whom she transforms into a happy bearded contributor to her fund.