A lady and her husband

by Amber Reeves Blanco White

She turned back to her concrete example. James, for instance, had conceived his business and brought it into being like a man. It was not his fault that he had to build it according to the conditions of modern commerce. It was not his fault that he had not a natural tenderness for the girls' weak lungs, their flat feet, for the varicose veins in their legs. A man like James was impatient of weakness and stupidity,—impatient, therefore, of poverty and helplessness. His workers were his material—his instruments—his troops; all men's games have, after all, she supposed, an analogy to their great game of war. Men enjoy a fight, they had rather get things by fighting, and when one fights someone is sure to be hurt. No, these poor girls in the restaurants were not James's charge, but hers, and she had neglected her charge as idle women neglect it everywhere.

Mary reached this point in her thoughts with a certain satisfaction. The matter was now quite settled in her mind. She did not so much believe the conclusions she had come to as feel that this was her way of looking at things. Others might look at them in a different way, but for her, henceforth, that part of government that consists in helping the weak and protecting them from the strong was to seem part of woman's general task of clearing up after men. She understood now why James had not been pleased when she tried to undertake her neglected duty. Man never is pleased by the sight of woman's work. He hates having his study tidied, he hates meeting the housemaid on the stairs, the primitive routine of infant life makes no appeal to him. He does not like to think that his wife could possibly clean a rabbit. It is not logical of him, but there it is—in future she would not expect from James any glow of enthusiasm over the details of her work, she would be content with his general pat of appreciation when he found it properly done. Many a woman has been content with less.

Nor was she dismayed, as well she might have been, by the inadequacy of which she convicted her sex. We are all inadequate, and what she needed was a reason for being inadequate no longer. She had found it, she was delivered now, once and for all, from her doubt and her cowardice, from her ridiculous dilemma of a virtuous person helpless in an evil world. She had been, in her passive way, as evil as the world. She found the reflection bracing.

It was not until the next afternoon, when she was taking her walk by the river, that she began to wonder why she had been wicked and what were her excuses. It was a sunny day, the people on the Embankment walked cheerfully and the seagulls seemed to be enjoying themselves as they screamed over her head. The cold bright air made her thoughts—she imagined—unnaturally clear. She herself, of course, had been trustful and ignorant, so had her mother been, her grandmother, and in her grandmother's generation all really nice women. But women had not always been ignorant—in the days when they gnawed bones and lived in caves they must have possessed at least a rough practical knowledge of everyday life. In the Middle Ages, too—that was the next period of English history that came at all easily to her mind—James, a good burgher, or perhaps a farmer, would have expected her to look after his workers, after the maids, in any case, and the apprentices. She would, she thought a little wistfully, have liked doing that! It would have pleased her to plan and arrange for the big household, and have all these girls and boys growing up round her and all their careers and love affairs to watch over. And she would have liked to be a skilful woman with half a dozen crafts at her finger-ends, a woman with legitimate prides, with a reputation for this or that,—spinning, weaving, preserving, baking,—all the things that James and his friends were doing in factories. Even if her children had left her there would have been her trades to carry on. And it would, too, she told herself, have been very much more amusing for the children to grow up in such a community than in an elegant and empty modern home. There were now no interesting domestic crafts to watch, no apprentices to play with, no population of maids or clerks or journeymen to distract the eye of the mistress of the house. Instead, a strip of one side of a straight street, servants one hardly spoke to tucked away in the dark, and dear mother in the drawing-room never too busy to realise that the children were not where they ought to be and were making too much noise. Of course that was an advantage—Mary's loyalty stirred—a busy mother cannot devote herself all day to her children. But memory was too strong for loyalty—a busy mother has at least a certain intelligence at her disposed. Mary's own dear mother had not been intelligent.

She left that part of the subject hastily—she did not wish to think ill of her mother but she certainly had not succeeded with poor Julius. Mary was fond of Julius, but nobody could admire his character.

She turned her thoughts, rather, to the reasons for this change. Men, of course, had wanted to make fortunes out of women's industries, and with their usual success they had invented machines that would do it. And women, protesting probably, and being called fools for their pains, had let them go. The workers had gone into the factories and it was not a time when ladies could follow them there. Ladies, after all, were people of no education, and the idea of their responsibility had not occurred to them. Then, of course, there had been Napoleon. Mary had always disliked Napoleon and she was pleased to attribute this extra blame to him. He was a person, as she saw him, who had butchered the sons of a million mothers without in any way making it up to women as a husband or as the father of wonderful children. This Napoleon had looked upon women in the way a man of his nature would—as trifles and possessions, and the English nation had hastened to copy him. Only being Englishmen they had grown sentimental and called their wives angels and shut them in drawing-rooms. From their point of view, one must admit, it was a pleasant arrangement. A woman with nothing to do all day would naturally be ingratiating and affectionate in the evenings. And then of course there had been the French Revolution—it was with both delight and surprise that Mary recalled these historical facts. A year ago, she felt, her thoughts would hardly have moved with such an easy boldness. The French Revolution—ideas of equality were in the air—only in this country we do not level down but up. The middle classes must have enjoyed seeing their wives lead the life of a fine lady without, of course—Mary thought of Lady Hester's mamma—a fine lady's idea of herself or her challenging eye. It was all very natural. And then there had been the Queen and her babies and her crinolines—one could not expect women to be energetic with such a weight of cloth dragging at their waists. So they had gone on indulging their husbands and making them bad-tempered until by and by their children had revolted, and now—she felt a little thrill of excitement—she was revolting too!

Well—she put it to herself—it was perfectly right and proper! They had had a hundred years of drawing-rooms. And in spite of photographs and Nottingham lace and new kinds of light and new-coloured dyes and stuffs the rooms of a hundred years ago were probably prettier. It was no wonder that they were tired of staying in them. She, at any rate, was tired of hers. She was not a fine lady, she did not care for a fine lady's life. She was an ordinary middle-class woman, who preferred doing practical work to being kept in the house to be beautiful and mysterious and tender and all the rest of it to any man with half an hour to spare.

She had reached the Vauxhall Bridge Road now, and she turned back. She was surprised at the resentment that she discovered in herself when she thought of this aspect of the life she had led. She and her personality had simply been there to soothe them when they preferred her, as a comforter, to their pipes! She knew that she had not seen the matter like this before, and yet this was not, she felt convinced, a new resentment. She must have disliked her position all along, if only she had known it.

Well, there was no need to resent anything now, she was not poor Miss Percival, she had finished with the cause of her anger. In future she would have a life of her own, work of her own, and importance greater than the importance of her smiles or of her sympathy. It would not be, as a matter of fact, a question of smiles! For the first step towards her new activity would be telling James about what she meant to do.

This thought made her walk a little faster, but walking faster did not make the thought more pleasant. She would have to face an appalling scene with James, and probably a great many scenes after that. He would not give up his own way without a struggle. A fortnight ago, when she still hated James, she would not very much have minded his scenes, but now she had forgiven him, she had let herself feel fond of him again, she had deliberately stirred up her gratitude! She almost wished that she could take cover, just for the first impending interview, behind the dislike that had protected her when she ran away. But she could not do that—even on general grounds it is not right to dislike people if in any way one can manage to make oneself like them. And she owed it to James, moreover, to approach him in the kindest mood compatible with firmness. She had caused him, by her behaviour, quite enough discomfort and chagrin already. For the same reason she must not keep him waiting. She must write to him as soon as she got home and tell him that she meant to come back again.