“Are the hens all dead?” you inquire.
“Oh, no, m’m, I don’t think so.”
“Very well then, squeeze them and go away.”
And then when the same old scrambled eggs, too heavily salted, come up next morning for breakfast she will have the effrontery to say that you ordered them!
What does the perfect woman do in these circumstances? Does she put down her occupation and say, “Dear me, cook, what a pity, isn’t it! What shall we do?” and does cook reply, “It is a pity, isn’t it, m’m! I don’t know what to suggest, I’m sure. Would you like a nice egg?” and then does the perfect woman say, “Well, you know we had eggs yesterday, cook, but I don’t see what else we are to do. It’s very awkward. But you can’t have anything nicer than eggs, can you? Suppose you get some eggs, and if you tell me when they arrive I will come down and look at them.” I believe it is this quality that makes women easier to rear than men. You can’t kill them by ordinary methods.
There is one more form of torture which no quiet home ought to be without if there is a contemplative enemy to be destroyed. It is called the torture by vivacity. The sort of thing you get in this book, only worse. The victim is put down in any ordinary chair, rather too near the fire if possible, and then the torturer begins. “What plays did you see when you were up in town? Can’t remember! Well you are! You ought to have seen Such-and-such. Do you know the story? There’s a man who’s tremendously in love with a girl and she won’t have him. Eileen Protheroe takes the part—don’t you admire her? of course you do—what nonsense! Don’t try to be clever—that’s your way. Well, she’s absolutely splendid in this. She comes on in a wonderful dress of pale champagne with heliotrope, most beautifully draped, and her hair done wonderfully under a small hat. Well, she won’t have him, but she tries for Tom—let me see—what is his name? What was the name of that friend of yours whom you used to see sometimes in Buxton? Awfully smart, in a brown suit—oh, you must remember—Well, this man reminded me of him—you must know whom I mean—don’t be silly. Anyhow this man is just like him——”
My pen has fallen off the table in a fit and is panting on the mat, protesting that it cannot run another inch.
CHAPTER III: THE MARRIAGE OF HENRY
It must be funny to have the partner of one’s life say, “You are quite beyond me, Henry dear, altogether.” It must give one such a shock, although of course it is true. Henry is so far removed from Mrs. Henry that if they manage to keep within calling distance of one another all their lives they are said to be “quite an idyllic couple.” We all know that if two people are knocking about idly in a field, one of them looking for golf balls or beetles or a lost trifle from the pocket, the other sewing or aimlessly preoccupied with thoughts about moth in the cupboards or the drawing in of the days, their conversation is not likely to be either profound or meaty; nor can it be even that interchange of feather-weight looks and intonations which are the pollen of mutual understanding. Mr. and Mrs. Henry’s life is very like this sort of knocking about together in a field. Sometimes Henry wanders off and says something with a little more ginger to it, and then Mrs. Henry is exceedingly offended, and complains that he is quite beyond her altogether.
The Henrys have not drifted apart lately; they are as near together now as ever they were. In fact, they are far less likely to drift apart now than they were at first. They are kept together by the strong tie of habit, and, some say, by public opinion. Others maintain that although public opinion prevents Henry from ever thinking of bolting, if he did entertain the thought public opinion would have less hold upon him than would his deep-rooted habit of staying with his wife. Thirty years ago they were kept together by a different tie, which might easily have been broken had either of them thought to break it. The tie was a sort of chemical affinity fortified by conscience. Love in all its expressions is more like something chemical than anything else, and the chemical experiment of Mr. and Mrs. Henry’s marriage was, at one time, a very touch-and-go business. Chemical affinity caught them as they meandered at a garden-party; it kept them together at several subsequent entertainments, just because neither of them were the sort of atoms that are so—I don’t know the right expression; it may be volatile, I call it impulsive—as ever to unglue themselves from the atom they chance to unite with, unless under great provocation from some other very masterful atom.