Then comes marriage, and all is changed. They enter into a world of discords and désagréments. They have to grow long nails and to sharpen their teeth; they have to haggle with shopkeepers, fight their servants; whereas the husbands, those sluggard kings of creation, smack their lips over their dinners, and lounge in their easy-chairs, and talk politics with their friends, and smile, and smile, unconscious of the struggles and passions that rage downstairs.
The eyes that, in the girl, looked at the beauties of creation, in the married woman search out delinquencies in their domestics, and defects in the household furniture. The eyes that looked for violets now peer for cobwebs; that lingered lovingly on the sunset glow, now examine the coal-bill; and the ear that listed to the song of Philomel, is now on the alert for a male voice in the kitchen. The nose that of old inhaled the perfume of the rose, now pokes into pots and pans in quest of dripping.
From what has been said above, the reader may conclude that the position of the wife, though a belligerent one, is at all events regal. She is queen of the house, and if she has trouble with her servants, it is as a sovereign who has to resist revolutionary movements among her subjects.
No more mistaken idea can well be entertained. As the Pope writes himself, 'Servant of the servants of Heaven,' so does the lady of the house subscribe herself servant of the servants of the establishment. If she searches into their shortcomings, remonstrates, and resents them, it is as the subject criticising, murmuring at, and revolting personally against the tyranny of her oppressors. So far from being the head of the house, she is the door-mat, trampled on, kicked, set at nought, obliged to swallow all the dirt that is brought into the house.
Marriage had produced a change in Philip. It had made him less stony, angular, formal. Matrimony often has a remarkable effect on those who enter into it, reducing their peculiarities, softening their harshnesses, and accentuating those points of similarity which are to be found in the two brought into close association, so that in course of time a singular resemblance in character and features is observable in married folk. In an old couple there is to be seen occasionally a likeness as that of brother and sister. This is caused by their being exposed to the same caresses and the same strokes of fortune; they are weathered by the same breezes, moistened by the same rains. In addition to the exterior forces moulding a couple, comes the reciprocal action of the inner powers—their passions, prejudices—so that they recoil on each other. They come to think alike, to feel alike, as well as to look alike. The man unconsciously loses some of his ruggedness, and the woman acquires some of his breadth and strength. They become in some measure reflectors to each other, the light one catches is cast on and brightens the other, and they mirror whatever passes along the face of the other.
The subtle, mysterious modelling process had begun on Philip, although but recently married. Janet was no longer in the house; she had returned to France, and as her constitution was delicate had followed advice, and gone to the South for the winter.
Mrs. Sidebottom and the captain had shaken off the dust from their feet against Mergatroyd, and had returned to their favourite city, York, where they resumed the interrupted gyrations about the whirlpool of fashionable life, and Mrs. Sidebottom made her usual rushes, still ineffectual, at its centre.
Consequently, Philip was left to the undisturbed influence of Salome, and this influence affected him more than he was conscious of, and would have allowed was possible. He was very happy, but he was not the man to confess it, least of all to his wife. As a Canadian Indian deems it derogatory to his dignity to express surprise at any wonder of civilization shown him, so did Philip consider that it comported with his dignity to accept all the comforts, the ease, the love that surrounded him as though familiar with them from the beginning. Englishmen who have been exposed to tropic suns in Africa, have their faces shrivelled and lined. When they returned to England, in the soft, humid atmosphere the flesh expands, and drinks in moisture at every pore. The lines fade out, and the flesh becomes plump. So did the sweet, soothing influence of Salome, equable as it was gentle, fill, relax, refresh the spirit of Philip, and restore to him some of the lost buoyancy of youth. Salome was admirably calculated to render him happy, and Philip was not aware of the rare good fortune which had given him a wife who had the self-restraint to keep her crosses to herself. That is not the way with all wives. Many a wife makes a beast of burden of her husband, lading him with crosses, heaping on his shoulders not only her own, great or small, but also all those of her relatives, friends and acquaintances. Such a wife cracks a whip behind her good man; drives him through the town, stopping at every house and calling, 'Any old crosses! Old crosses! Old crosses! Chuck them on; his back is broad to bear them!' precisely as the scavenger goes through the streets with his cart and burdens it with the refuse of every house. Many a wife takes a pride in thus breaking the back, and galling the sides, and knocking together the knees of her husband with the crosses she piles on his shoulders.
As we walk through the wilderness of life, burrs adhere to the coat of Darby and to the skirts of Joan. Why should not each carry his or her own burrs, if they refuse to be picked off and thrown away? Why should Joan collect all hers and poke them down the neck of Darby, and expect him to work them down his back from the nape to the heel? Little thought had Philip how, unperceived and by stealth, Salome sought the burrs that adhered to him, removed them and thrust them into her own bosom, bearing them there with a smiling face, and leaving him unconscious that he had been delivered from any, and that they were fretting her.
We men are sadly regardless of the thousand little acts of forethought that lighten and ease our course. We give no thanks, we are not even aware of what has been done for us. Nevertheless, our wives do not go unrewarded, though unthanked, for what they have done or borne; their gentle attentions have served to give us a polish and a beauty we had not before we came into their tender hands.