Let us now hear some more of what Mrs. Henry really, really thinks.
“You know,” she says, “children are a great tie.” I wish that some one would explain exactly what they mean by this remark. Suppose that children are a tie to bind Mrs. Henry down from those wild flights of adventure and the freedom of the buccaneer to which she is naturally prone, well, what a pity! However, we all admit that they are a great tie. Their childish thoughts are such a dull field in which to confine the brilliancy of mamma’s reflections on Hall Caine or the ladies whom she knows, or our spiritual nature in general. Of course they are not nearly so great a tie to a man.
Now Henry has got so used to looking at things in one way that he would agree to this proposition, because he knows quite well that he never in his life sat up with baby, no matter what was wrong, while Mrs. Henry never left the children at all if they were ill; and she never got away for a whole morning like he did. Why, he could fritter away the whole day at the office and never be called off for anything! But then, if the chemical attraction that brought him and her together had contained a spark of anything like laughter, he would have made his own ribs ache and hers too when she said that children were no tie to a man. If they tie her to the house what else, in heaven’s name, ties him to the office? Isn’t he bound to his stool by cords woven of school bills, doctor’s and dentist’s bills, rent for larger, airier premises, the elaborate “summer out” in seaside lodgings instead of the cheap holidays in god-painted solitudes before the nursery days?
But then, as Mrs. Henry so justly says, a man never thinks of these things. Perhaps it is as well that he doesn’t or we might none of us be here, either to write or read this captious book.
Such analytical thoughts do not amuse the Henrys, and quite rightly. He sometimes had freakish moments, and gay imaginings flew high through his head thirty years ago. There were all sorts of merry firework stuff ready to burst into Catherine-wheels and “God Bless our Home,” if anyone had brought a little living spark of fire to set it off. But Mrs. Henry does not think in that way. There never seems to be anything to laugh at that she can see, although she enjoys a joke as much as anybody.
But what is so amusing about the whole thing is that under the canvas umbrella behind the molehill where Mrs. Henry lives, there is a strange life that is quite beyond Henry altogether. There are large qualities like unselfishness, innocence, courage. In case of fire or flood Mrs. Henry would save all the children, or even Henry himself, at the cost of her life, without a thought beyond annoyance at the incompetence of men who build houses that catch fire like flannelette.
Virtues like those would be brilliant objects if they were taken into the air and allowed to mix freely with vices, so that we could have a good look at both and decide which we prefer, honestly and without prejudice on either side. If, instead of stuffing all the vices into a box where they get mouldy and breed maggots, and instead of keeping all the virtues folded up with a string round them and a macintosh over the top, they were both taken out and used as occasion offered, Mr. and Mrs. Henry might find it necessary to approach one another enough to hand things backwards and forwards. And so they might eventually get talking, and neither be quite beyond the other any more.
CHAPTER IV: THE SECOND SISTER’S HUSBAND
Going into town one day I met two people on the road. One was a gloomy-looking elderly woman in a bonnet and the kind of things that go with bonnets; the other was a young, probably married, girl, who walked by her side, and on whom the burden of conversation seemed to lie. The burden was heavy, but, if it had not been, neither of the women could have handled it. I used to wonder why the commercial travellers who called at our door never had any needles smaller than a small sausage-skewer. Then one day a quite nice woman with whom I was sewing remarked, “It’s no use giving me a needle like that, my dear, I should be dropping it all the time; I should never know I had it in me hand.” The same thing happens in conversation. Many people do not know it is there unless you cut it a bit thick “so as they can get a hold of it.” And not only must they be able to grasp it, but it must stay quietly where it is for some time. It must be a sort of parcel that you can carry in your arms and then hand to some one else. None of that juggling with balls, which some author speaks of as a desirable form of conversation.