Joking apart

Polly had invited several of us to meet a young bride. Mrs. Henry said that when her brother William heard of the party he said at once, “Of course you won’t go until you know who she was.” His sister assured him that it was a matter of indifference to us who the girl was; we all knew her husband, and that would speak for her.

“I don’t believe that was the end of Mr. William.” This was the little bait I offered her, and it landed a beauty.

“The end of William!” she exclaimed; “not a bit of it. He said that if the girl was a nonentity to begin with, marrying Mr. Spicer wouldn’t galvanize her into anything worthy of the name of life; and that if she was anybody before she married, the fact that we knew Mr. Spicer wouldn’t alter the shape of her immortal soul. And what do you think he said after that?” she added rather breathlessly.

“What?” we asked all together, with round eyes.

“That we were evidently going to meet to-day in the spirit of vultures on the track of food, and that if the girl happens to be rather dead stuff we shall probably like her better than if she is a frisky lamb!”

Mrs. Beehive confessed that she “didn’t quite follow his idea.” Polly, who was looking out of the window, remarked, “Mr. William would make the world an awful place if he had his way. Imagine the menus he would write! Your talking about carrion—well, you said something very like it—reminded me.—

We were talking like monkeys when the bride was announced. She was small and pale and pretty. We gave her tea, and then invited her to unbosom herself, which she did.

“Do you find it awfully dull when your husband goes down town in the morning?” she asked.

We looked at one another, and Mrs. Beehive, who is never at a loss, replied pompously, “No, I can’t say I have ever felt dull for a moment; not even when I was first married. I was always a great housekeeper, and attended to everything myself; and after I had paid the books and been to give my orders at the shops, the morning seemed to have flown.”

“Oh dear!” said the poor bride. Polly made a comforting little muddle with the cups and winked at me.

“And in the afternoons, of course, there were social duties,” continued good Mrs. Beehive. “My husband and I were, I think I may say, exceedingly popular, even in the early days.”

“Oh dear!” sighed the bride again, “but this is the first social duty I have had at all yet.”

“Well, don’t bear it unaided,” I said; “do let us help you if we can.”

“You don’t care for fancy work, do you?” asked Polly.

“No,” the poor girl said dolefully. “You see, I never had time for it at home. I used to ride and go out with my brothers a good deal, and there were always people straying in to talk.”

“But what about your cook?” I suggested. “I find that she fills my day so completely that I have no time to think, or to paint in water-colours.”

“My cook!” she said with astonishment. “Why, there are only ten minutes in the day when I am allowed to see her.”

“Now, look here,” I said; “you must learn this sooner or later, and we are all among friends—that is a ruse of hers, like an ogre pretending that he is out district-visiting all day, and that the little girls he brings home are orphans whom he is taking care of. She just does that to get your confidence. Then, by and by, she’ll begin inviting you down for a minute or two at a time——”

“Why, she did ask me to come down and look at the tomatoes to-day, just before I came out,” reflected the bride.

“That’s it!” I exclaimed, slapping my plate triumphantly. “To-day it was the tomatoes, to-morrow it will be the sausage-skewers: there will be one missing, and she will wish you to see for yourself, so that there can be no misunderstanding later on. The next day it will be two things: to smell the rabbits in the morning, and see whether you—a young, inexperienced child—think it wise to cook them——”

“But, my dear,” interrupted Mrs. Beehive, “surely there is no harm in that, and Mrs. Spicer would prefer to make sure.”

“Do you know how a rabbit ought to smell?” I asked the bride, in fairness, “because I don’t know to this day. It all seems to me equally uninviting.”

“I didn’t know they ought to smell at all,” the girl murmured.

“You’ve a lot to learn,” I said kindly. “Anyhow—rabbits in the morning, and in the afternoon, say, perhaps, that it is early closing day and she had forgotten that you would want butter.”

“Then what does one do?”

“Ah, that is what cook says that she prefers you should decide,” I concluded happily. “You won’t find the time heavy on your hands for very long, especially if anything turns up that you want to do.”

“Thank you very much indeed,” she said gratefully; “it is so good of you to tell me these things.”

“Is there anything else that troubles you?” asked Polly, holding out a piece of cake.

“No, I don’t think so—” the bride hesitated, and then, after a moment’s pause, threw this at us: “I suppose there isn’t really very much that one can have for breakfast, is there?”

“Just the bacon,” I remarked; “that is always as nice as anything.”

“Oh dear me,” said Mrs. Beehive, “surely we have got beyond those days when it was ‘bacon and eggs, eggs and bacon,’ every morning. The Americans have done so much for us there: all sorts of tempting little hot dishes can be made—and fruit; you should give your husband fruit, it is so good for him.”

“Paul won’t eat fruit,” said the bride.

“Well, then, try him with some light, vegetarian dishes,” said Mrs. Beehive, now quite in her element. “Onions farcies, tomatoes and cheese, ramekins of prawns, soufflés of liver, réchauffés of marrow on a hard-boiled egg, with soubise sauce——”

“Well, you see,” the perplexed little dear objected, “cook doesn’t come down much before half-past seven, and we breakfast at eight sharp, because Paul——”

“Make her,” Mrs. Beehive interposed, rolling her kid gloves into a hard ball.

“How big is your cook in her stockinged feet?” asked Polly.

“Oh, she is quite a little thing,” answered the innocent bride, “quite young, and very pleasant. But I couldn’t exactly go and fork her out of bed, could I? I shouldn’t like to.”

“Give her orders,” said Mrs. Beehive firmly, “and if she doesn’t obey them dismiss her.”

“No, no,” Polly and I almost shouted in the same breath, as we each laid a hand on an outlying knee of the bride. “Don’t do that! Never change anything but yourself,” said Polly. “Remember, dear, it is like the sun revolving round the earth—things are not what they seem. Never sack your cook, never leave your tradespeople, never be disillusioned in your friends, never divorce your husband. All the others you could get instead would be just the same, fixed and immovable like the sun. You can only shift yourself and look at them from another side——” Polly was quite breathless.

“Only the sun does move,” I said gloomily, “carrying us with it. ‘Soon will cook and I be lying each within our narrow bed,’ thank heaven!”

“You are letting your spirits run away with you, Martha,” said Mrs. Beehive, “and you are not helping Mrs.—er—at all.”

“But, then, aren’t all wives alike, too?” asked the bride, who had evidently been swallowing Polly’s metaphors whole, and feeling very uncomfortable.

“Certainly they are,” replied Polly; “at least they are all the same as each other, but they are never the same as themselves for long. But all the people, men, cooks, etc., whom we have to handle can be depended on to a certainty. That is why I suggest that any shifting which has to be done shall be done by ourselves if we want to be comfortable.”

“You are not a suffragette, are you?” the bride asked in alarm. “Paul can’t bear them.”

“Oh dear no,” said Polly airily. “If my dear Sisters in the Cook became a governing body they would be lost to me, because they would become part of the solid mass of things which you and I have to handle and walk round. It’s no good mixing or changing governing bodies. They’ll go on governing away just the same, and as fast as they do away with one thing another will crop up. Some one has to stay outside and see to things. Have some more tea?”

“And what about all the evil in the world?” demanded the round-eyed bride, “Paul says——”

“My husband takes a very peculiar view,” interrupted Mrs. Henry, who had not had her fair share by any means; we all felt that and made way. “He says that the evil arises—it is really very naughty of him—from our first parents having been driven out of Eden before they had had time to get enough apples. That if we were to know good and evil anyhow, we ought to know enough about it. I think he means that we are all being as clever as we are able, but that there is not enough intelligence in the world to cope with the demand: so he just does the best he can. But he talks a great deal of nonsense, of course, and doesn’t mean half he says.”

“I wish that Paul had a profession that would make him work at home,” the bride said presently. “If he were a clergyman, now, or an artist, just think how nice it would be!”

“My dear, you don’t know what you are saying,” Mrs. Henry assured her. “My husband works at home, and there are times when I would pay anyone any sum to take him away, and let him join the Morris Dancers, or anything that would take him into the open air.”

“Really!” said the bride. “But can’t you take him out yourself if he needs exercise?”

Mrs. Henry snorted. “It is not that I care whether he needs exercise or not,” she said, “but I should be thankful to have the house to myself sometimes. If I so much as start the sewing-machine in the room over his head, he comes out like an animal from its den, and says he can’t think of a word with that noise going on. Or if Bella is turning out the room either above or below him, he complains that she is throwing rocks about, and he can’t keep his papers on the table. If we clean the passage outside his room, and the carpet-sweeper happens to touch his door once, he flies out in a rage; and I can’t talk to anyone in the drawing-room without his hearing. Then either he wants his meals taken to the study, or else he comes down and won’t let the children speak; and he slops the gravy all about, and wants the meal hurried through so that he can begin to smoke—and I do draw the line at smoking at meals, don’t you, Mrs.—er—?”

“Oh no,” said the amiable little bride, “my husband might fill all the dishes with smoke if he liked, and I would turn out the rooms myself if only he would stay at home; but it is so dull being alone.”

“Well, my dear,” said Polly, “if there were a way to preserve your present superfluous loneliness in water-glass or screw-topped bottles, I’d buy it off you with pleasure, or, better still, make you keep it to use later. You’ll want it.”

“We are dining out to-night for the first time,” said the bride, cheering up at the prospect; “and then, perhaps, I shall get to know a few people.” We felt that it would be only right to take the top off this dream as well, and to show her the realities which lay beneath. “Oh, I expect you’ll have plenty of callers by and by,” said Mrs. Beehive. (“The better to see you, my dear,” I added in my mind, remembering Red Riding Hood.)

“Don’t pour out all your soul on the carpet after dinner, there’s a dear,” said kindly Polly.

“What do you mean?” the victim asked, beginning to get frightened.

“Well,” I suggested, “if anyone asks you whether you have early tea in the morning, and whether your husband finds that he can manage with four clean shirts a week, put them off with some excuse——”

Polly broke in earnestly, “And don’t let out any little theories you may have formed about living or anything, and don’t answer when they ask if this was your first offer of marriage, and——”

“And,” I interrupted across her, “don’t say if you like games, or you will be placarded as a champion hockey-player. Don’t admit that you can read, write, cipher, walk, ride, drive, see, hear, taste, smell, get in a temper, or play on any instrument, or that you ever wash, eat, sleep, cry, laugh, or thread a needle. Admit nothing, deny nothing, express no hopes or fears, acknowledge no creed. There is only one subject on God’s earth which you can broach without danger to your reputation, and that is the weather. If you find yourself being led into an expression of opinion about anything, throw the evil thing from you and take up the weather where you left it—and may heaven defend you.”

“One more thing,” said Polly; “and mind what I say, or you’ll regret it. If anyone offers you a footstool or a cushion behind your back, kick it away and sit up, whatever you feel like.”

“But I do very often feel tired,” said the bride.

“Never mind,” replied Polly, with inexorable breeziness, “sit up; lock the gates; put your tongue out. If the rabble once gets into your heart, they’ll sack the place and use everything in it to your disadvantage.”

Mrs. Henry was tying her veil and thinking about something else, but Mrs. Beehive looked, somehow, as if she had eaten too much. The little bride hurriedly looked at the clock and exclaimed: “Oh how late! Paul will be back; I must fly! Thank you a thousand times for all your kindness and advice. I can’t believe all you said just now, but I expect you didn’t mean it, did you?”

She wrung our hands and disappeared. Mrs. Beehive and Mrs. Henry summoned a taxi and drove off together.

“Why were you so frank, Polly?” I asked when we were alone. “I am always pleased to back you up, but do you think it is any good?”

“Of course not,” said Polly; “I should have bitten my tongue out if it were. But, anyway, we shan’t have it on our consciences that we didn’t warn her.”