Husbands seldom learn by experience to recognise the object of their instinctive desire. Just as a baby screams and reaches towards the plant in the middle of the table when it really needs to go into the kitchen and ask cook for milk with a little water in it—not too hot—so a man says to his wife: “I dislike your clothes intensely. I wish you would go and buy a sort of shawl arrangement and drape it round you like the figures you see on a Greek vase. That is the way women ought to dress.” The poor fish-faced lady with the innocent expression and wispy hair goes obediently to Derry and Toms’s and buys an expensive silk shawl which she arranges round her ill-balanced form in exact imitation of the lady on the vase in Edward’s room, and comes down to dinner. Then the real tragedy begins, and all about a shawl! What he really had before his mind was no more a shawl than it was an Inverness cape or a Moujik’s jacket. It was a confection which he had seen on a lady in the Park with a beautiful figure, and if his innocent old dear had bought the same model and put it on he would have called her shameless and abandoned. If he had more experience and fewer childish dreams he would address her as follows: “My dear, I wish that you would not dress in parti-coloured scraps that don’t fit. I cannot myself think what you would look nice in, but first stand up straight and do your hair, and then try on clothes until you find something that I tell you is right.”
It is the folly of either side trying to explain anything to the other that leads to bloodshed.
CHAPTER XII: CHRISTMAS
When I asked Ruth what about Christmas, she said that it was always a pleasant season and she hoped none of us would break down; it meant so much to do for all. So of course I asked whether it would be any help to have in Mrs. Muff to wash up while Ruth made the puddings. She agreed that would probably be the best plan, as it would be a pity if we were not able to enjoy ourselves when it came to the point. She herself was usually at her wits’ end about Christmas-time.
“But you love that, Ruth!” I said candidly, forgetting myself for the moment.
“I beg pardon, m’m?”
“It is your wits’ beginning that bothers you, isn’t it?” I explained. “I mean” (seeing her face darken) “it is a nuisance thinking of things, I know, I feel it myself. We shall be able to give our minds to it if Mrs. Muff is here.”
I then passed hastily on to other things: the puddings, for instance, which took complete possession of my kitchen for a time. I do not think they became as personal to Ruth as to me. For my taste they were made too much of; they and the mince-pies crowded out the place and I was thankful to get rid of them. Long before Christmas I looked forward to the day when they all would be dead—“Arthur, Henry, Claud, Stanley, Gordon, Livingstone, Howard, Percy, George, Gerald, Trafford, and Herbert,” I counted along the shelf, “and all the little Thompsons. Arthur and Henry we shall want for ourselves and the kitchen on Christmas Day, you might give Claud to Mrs. Muff, and let Mullins have Stanley. Gordon and Livingstone are smaller and will do for New Year’s Day, so that leaves six to kill before Easter——” I caught sight of Ruth’s face, pale and agitated. “I am so sorry,” I apologised. “You know they seem almost like children, we have taken such an interest in them.”
“Would you care for a cup of tea, m’m?” Ruth asked anxiously.
“By and by,” I said. “I don’t really care very much for food just now. What about the turkey?”