What is it that binds Mr. and Mrs. Beehive together? The problem has fidgeted me for years. It has disturbed me in my work, and sometimes even caused me to overlook Mr. Jones’s iniquities until it was too late to do anything. I once asked Ruth why it is that married people remain with one another, and she said she supposed it was the evenings.
“What about the evenings?” I asked.
“Well, you see, m’m,” she said, “as you know yourself, there is not very much for unmarried girls as is anyways respectable to do in the evenings.”
“Yes, but the men, Ruth,” I said,“—mind the milk—it is boiling—thank you—why do they stay to be treated like children?”
“Well, m’m, I suppose it is because they are what you might call childish. Of course, you may say they do bring in the money, and some of them are very knowledgeable—such as master—but you’ll find they haven’t much idea of spending an evening profitably without they are married.”
It wouldn’t do to let them know, is a great phrase in every peaceful household. And it is quite true; it would never do at all. Husbands want reasons for everything and we know what that means! It is impossible to make them understand why some perfectly ordinary things cannot be done. We say, perhaps, light-heartedly enough, “I have such a headache, I wish I hadn’t to go out!” and he says, “Well, why do you go out?” Of course we reply that there is the fish to be got—it never came—and then it is his turn to say, “Why not send Ruth?” We explain that Ruth has to cook the dinner.
“But she can’t cook the fish before it comes.”
“But there are the other things?”
“Oh, never mind them, your head is the only thing that matters. Let Ruth go.”
We end by a detailed description of the cook’s afternoon and the havoc this slight disorganisation of the traffic would cause, knowing, of course, perfectly well that there is no reason why Ruth should not go except that she just can’t. Cooks don’t go for fish unless they offer to, and then they are not experienced enough. What we really want the man to do is to say he will go, but we don’t say this because it would end in his sending Ruth and thinking himself very clever. He would report that she was delighted to go and made no fuss whatever. Next day we should be made to feel that the unwritten law had been broken through our fault. We had taken a mean refuge behind the master, whose orders she could not refuse to obey. Things would be very uncomfortable for some time and she would very likely ask whether the master were going to undertake the housekeeping, because if so—etc. But it is impossible to explain all that at the time, so we are either cross because of the headache and conceal the cause, or else we are rude at once when he begins his suggestions, and then he says women are unreasonable and ought to take more exercise.