“No, certainly not,” replied Ezra, who was keenly alive to the possibility of his wife’s blazing up into uncompromising criticism herself, if they attempted to apply the famous “cure” upon her.
“Criticism-cure” existed rather in theory than in practice in Perfection City, but it was held that if a brother or a sister should be guilty of any offence against the common weal, it would be an edifying experience to summon him or her to the Assembly, and let all the members tell him or her exactly what each one thought of the conduct in question. In theory this was supposed to work admirably, and to be a weapon capable of reducing to reason the most refractory member of the Community, but when Ezra remembered it and imagined for a moment its possible effects on Olive, he foresaw a whole train of deplorable results. Suppose she defended herself, she could say sharp rankling things with a surprising amount of unanswerable truth in them, or suppose she didn’t defend herself, but took the scolding silently. Her eyes would get bigger and bigger with tears which would roll over her cheeks, and her sweet little chin would quiver, and she would look imploringly at him. He couldn’t stand that, he knew, but would rush up and take her in his arms, and carry her off out from the midst of the carping, criticising brethren, and he would call her sweet pet and darling, and say she was right and they were horrid brutes to scold her, and he would be very angry and would be quite capable of knocking Brother Wright down, if he, as was likely, had been savage with the little pet. No, criticism-cure should not be applied to Olive. And Ezra, arguing thence into wider fields, began to feel some doubts as to the value of that remarkable weapon as a means of eradicating the naturally evil tendencies of the human heart. Theories which had seemed sound and complete in the abstract had a curious habit of ringing false when he imagined himself as applying them to Olive. It was very curious, but they did not seem to fit her, or was it possible that the theories themselves were wrong? No, he dismissed that thought as entailing too much mental demolition and carting away of rubbish. Of one thing only was he sure, the “criticism-cure” was not to be tried on his little wife.
“I think it is a case for petting rather than for punishing,” remarked Madame, after an interval during which they had both been severally following out the ramifications of their own reflections.
Ezra jumped at this idea. He was of that opinion too, as he impartially observed. Indeed he was always of opinion that Olive required petting.
“Yes, I think I understand the case,” continued Madame. “The flowers were a toy, doubly prized now they are gone. What is wanted is to provide a new and more attractive toy, so that the baby-mind will lightly forget the old grief.”
Ezra did not quite like this way of referring to Olive, but he had called in Madame’s aid, and he had no choice but to listen to the physician’s diagnosis and prescription regarding the case in question. Madame meanwhile looked at him half pityingly, having apparently overcome her eyes’ desire to avoid his glance.
“Poor Ezra!” she said softly. “You are mated to a child, petulant, wilful, hard to manage, and very bewitching. You will find that you cannot in this case work by the light of pure reason. You must bring yourself down to her level and try to see with her eyes, to take delight in the petty trifles that interest her. ’Tis weary work! The task of Sisyphus was none the less severe because it produced no tangible good.”
She was silent, and Ezra began to repent that he had sought counsel from so exalted a source, since it was delivered to him with such a liberal seasoning of the bitter salt of implied reproof.
“I think that I can apply a remedy in this instance,” resumed Madame. “I know a woman’s mind as well as most people, and I know too the vain weaknesses of a silly girl—perhaps the knowledge comes from a memory, or perhaps from a shattered hope, who knows? At all events, dear friend and brother, it will serve you now.”
She left him to go into the small inner apartment which was her bedroom, and came out again in a few moments carrying a small gold bracelet of curious workmanship, an Oriental trinket.