Oh, gracious goodness! I said to myself, what will my poor husband do under this awful visitation? for if one mother-in-law is more than he can bear, what on earth will he do when he finds himself afflicted with two?—and the worst of it all was, that I saw that during my confinement—but, alas! I must reserve this for another chapter.
CHAPTER VIII.
WHICH TREATS OF MRS. YAPP, MRS. B—FF—N, MRS. TOOSYPEGS, LITTLE MISS SK—N—ST—N, AND FLY-AWAY MISS SUSAN.
“It was one winter’s day, about six in the morn,
When my little innocent creature was born;
There were doctor, and nurse, and a great many more,
But none of them saw such a baby before.”
Popular Song.
Mrs. Yapp’s threatened visit took such a hold of me, that I felt myself quite driven up in a corner; and the worst of it was, I saw no way of getting out of it with any decency. Though I couldn’t for the life of me understand what claim she had upon my husband’s hospitality, now that it had pleased Providence in its bountiful mercy to take his first wife from him—and looking at it as I did, it did seem to me to be very like her impudence indeed in calling my husband her “dear boy,” since her daughter had been dead and gone a good two years at least. Besides, of course, I was a mere nobody—I was—and not worth even so much as the mentioning in her letter, for her coming couldn’t put me out in the least—oh no! And what would my lady care if it did, for it was very clear I was nothing to her—not I, indeed! and as to whether it was convenient for me to receive her or not, that was the last thing thought of; for if she turned us all topsy-turvy, and left us without so much as a leg to stand upon, what would it matter to her so long as she was all right and comfortable, and could get her bed and board for nothing—for that was at the bottom of it, I could see—a mean old thing! Making her dear boy’s house her home too!—her home, indeed!—her hotel, more likely; and she has got four hundred a-year long annuities. Sooner than I’d be guilty of such meanness, I declare, upon my word and honour, I’d take the first broom I could get, and sweep the very first crossing I came to.
Still, under the circumstances, it was very clear that it would never do to slam the door in her face, when she came to us, though, I declare, I felt as if nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to have done so; for really I don’t know anything more uncomfortable than to be obliged to go bowing and scraping, and saying a lot of civil things to a creature, when all the time you’re wishing to yourself that she was safe at the bottom of the sea—as every lady with her proper feelings about her knows she has been obliged to do scores and scores of times. Of course, Mrs. Yapp would be professing all kinds of love for her “dear boy,” and be continually crying up to the skies his beloved first wife, and she would naturally expect me to go sympathizing with the poor dear, when really and truly I didn’t care two pins about the thing. And it is so unpleasant to a right-minded female like myself, to be forced to take out one’s handkerchief, and play the crocodile about a bit of goods that one had never been a penny the better for. Of course, too, she would pretend to be so delighted to make my acquaintance, and unable to make enough of me to my face, though, directly my back was turned, she would go picking me to pieces like anything. Augh! I do detest deceit.
However, thank goodness, the next day’s post brought a letter directed to Edward, which being in a woman’s handwriting, I naturally opened, and found to my delight that Mrs. Yapp regretted to say that she couldn’t be with “her pet” until that day week; so that, as Edward was coming home on the Thursday, he could receive the old thing himself, and take that load off my hands at any rate.
Well, on the Thursday home came Edward. Directly I heard his knock, I snatched up a duster and began rubbing down the hall chairs, so that he might not find a speck of dust in the house on his return; and I was quite glad to see that my exertions were not thrown away upon him, for he told me, that it was very wrong of me in my state to go fatiguing myself in that way, and that he wished I would make the servant do it. On which I said that if he expected Susan to take any pride about the look of the furniture he was mightily mistaken, and he would find himself eaten up alive in less than no time, if I wasn’t continually slaving myself to death for him as I was.
Edward was in quite a good humour, for he had won his cause like a clever lawyer, as he certainly is, though, as he said, all the facts, and the law, and justice of the case, were dead against him. So, when I broke to him the impending calamity of Mrs. Yapp’s visit, he took it much better than I had expected, for he laughed, and said he should like to see how old Mother Yapp and Mrs. B—ff—n would get on with one another; for he expected they would come together like two highly-charged thunder-clouds, and go off with a tremendous explosion, which would have the effect of clearing the air of his house, so that he would be left in a perfect heaven. And then the jocular monster tittered, and said that if he had been doomed to have only one mother-in-law, it was clear that he must have ended his days in a madhouse, but that as Providence had blessed him with two, he was as happy as a man who had married an orphan; for as mothers-in-law were the invariable negatives of domestic happiness, it was clear that two of them must make his home an affirmative paradise; adding that one was the poison and the other the antidote, so that, thank Heaven, now, if at any time he was suffering from an over-dose of mother-in-law B—ff—n, he had only to make up his mind to swallow a little of mother-in-law Yapp, and he would be all right again in no time; for the bitter alkali of the one would correct the acidity of the other, and drive off the dreadful effects of both in a twinkling. Then he went on giggling and railing at mothers-in-law in general, and at my dear mother, and the mother of his first wife, in particular, till I lost all patience with him; for he declared that a whole avalanche of treatises had been written on the origin of evil, and a mountain of rubbish shot into the British Museum about the cause of sorrow in this world; but it was very plain, and he had no doubt about it himself, that misery first came in with mothers-in-law, who he considered, to have been sent on earth to try the resignation of Man, and to prevent the over-population of the world, by setting them up as warnings to persons about to marry—in the same way as the horrors of dyspepsia and gout were designed, simply as a means of keeping persons from the excesses of the table. It was all very well to talk about Job’s extraordinary patience, but what he wanted to know was, had Job ever been scourged with a mother-in-law, because if not, it was very clear that his powers of endurance had not been taxed to the full. And he had the wickedness to say, that it was all a pack of rubbish and a cruel imposition for the law to declare that a man couldn’t marry his grandmother—or his mother—or his wife’s mother—or his wife’s sister—for the plain truth was, that when a man married a woman, he married her whole family. But I couldn’t put up with him any longer, when he protested, that if he had his way, he would have an act passed for the total abolition of all mothers-in-law, and insert a clause, that whenever a couple were joined together in holy matrimony, immediately after the wedding breakfast, the mother of the bride should offer herself up as a willing sacrifice, to perfect the happiness of the bridegroom, in the same way as the Hindoo widows immolated themselves out of regard to the husband. On which I very properly told him that he ought to be ashamed of himself to talk in that way of those poor benighted savages, and I begged that he would hold his tongue if he couldn’t find anything better to talk about, saying that his trip out of town seemed to have turned his head; and asking him how he himself would like what he had proposed, if, supposing I was to be blessed with a daughter, and had to be put out of the way when she got married, all for the sake of completing the happiness, as he called it, of some big-whiskered fellow, that I didn’t care twopence about. But it was useless speaking to him, for he only said that he should be delighted to see me setting so good an example.
As I saw that my gentleman was in one of his nasty, teasing, facetious moods, I thought it best to turn the conversation, which I very cleverly did by asking him what kind of a woman Mrs. Yapp was, when he burst out laughing again, assuring me that she was a very nice woman, only she was too fond of her medicine-bottle, and was dreadfully addicted to doctor’s stuff; for she took pills as if they were green peas, and seemed to have as strong a penchant for powders as other people had for snuff. And he considerably alarmed me by saying that the worst of it was, she had a strange conviction that all her friends stood as much in need of medicine as she did, as she was never happy unless she could prevail upon some one to try some of her filthy potions or lotions, and which she always would have it were just the things one wanted; and really she herself had swallowed so much rhubarb, and senna, and camomile, in her time, that she had a complexion for all the world like a Margate slipper, although she would tell you, that if it wasn’t for what she had taken, she would never have had a bit of colour in her cheeks. When she came up to town last time, she wouldn’t let Edward drink a drop of tea; for she would insist that the green was made up of verdigris, and that the black was all coloured with lead, and that the only way to ensure a long life was to take two or three cups of good strong nettle or dandelion for breakfast every morning, and which, she said, she highly recommended for family use. He cautioned me, however, above all things, never to allow her to persuade me to try any of her nostrums, for that he verily believed she had physicked her daughter into an early grave, and that if I allowed her to go playing any pranks with the very fine constitution I have of my own, I should find that her powder and pills would bring me down as safe as powder and shot. So I told him that he wouldn’t catch me taking any of her nasty messes, and I hoped and trusted that he would get her out of the house as soon as ever he possibly could.