THE BUSY-IDLE WOMAN
Mrs. Restless I shall call her. Not that she would object to my proclaiming her actual identity. In fact, I think she would prefer it, for she loves to be talked about; and, as for seeing her name in print, I fancy she would do much for the privilege, and then carefully cut out the page for the edification of her friends, and wonder how she had obtained, not merited, such publicity. Not merited, because she will confess to knowing all about that. Who but she does so much for everybody? Who is so active in every matter of public interest? Then why should not she deserve newspaper recognition, as much as Mrs. Montmorency Dazzle or Lady Capel-Courtney, who only occupy their time in the frivolous amusements of Society, and employ expensive dressmakers to win them paragraphs by making them “look well” in the fashionable material of the moment?
This is a sore point with little Mrs. Restless, for she really believes that her continuous occupiedness, in spite of the vast amount of nothing she achieves, is of infinite value to the community at large, and her own personal acquaintances in particular, whereas Mrs. Dazzle is of no use to any one, except, as an ornament for the ball-room, and a walking advertisement for her costumier. These are Mrs. Restless’s views, and she has very strong views on every subject, though perhaps they would not amount to much if subjected to the slightest analysis. But she does not know that; for she is always too busy to analyse anything. She is a woman of action, she will tell you; she must always “be up and doing.” And so she wastes a great deal of valuable time which might otherwise be devoted to idling that is worth living for, that is full of pleasurable suggestion, instead of commonplace and pretentious time-frittering; busy-idleness, in fact, which is neither the one thing nor the other, neither good idling nor good business.
Women seldom idle well; they do not understand the art. They make it too much of a business, and so miss the spirit of true idling. Now I reckon myself something of a connoisseur in this matter, for if there be one art with which I am familiar in all its branches, and on terms of perfect understanding, it is this art of idling. A fine art, look you, that must be studied with the same assiduity and sympathy as painting, poetry, music, love-making, lying, or any other of those accomplishments that have been reckoned among the fine arts. Your true idler is born, not made, but in the easy and happy evasion of work and its responsibilities he proves himself the artist. The obligation to effort is a necessity to him, but his art teaches him how to make a virtue of necessity by shunting the obligation on to pleasanter lines, while the effort fails naturally upon other shoulders which perhaps ought to bear it for some penance they have no doubt deserved. At least, your idler consoles himself so, if he concern himself at all about the matter. Thus, to idle artistically is not to vulgarly waste time, but to adorn it as with May-day garlands. And every one who cultivates this most delightful of arts may build himself a Castle of Pleasaunce in the midst of this workaday world, wherein he may joyously live at ease, and listen to the hearty songs of the toilers, who have never dreamed of Arcady, and who know nought but that each hour must produce its full profit of work.
But to return to Mrs. Restless. She is the busy-idle woman par excellence. To idle simply is impossible to her; she must always be indefinitely busy with definite results. There is seldom any uncertainty about the results, generally they are practically valueless, or not worth the trouble they have cost, but they occupy a great deal of time in achieving for all that. She will take up some charitable object, and go from place to place and worry all her friends and acquaintances in the cause, and at the end of her efforts she will find that, had she at first given a certain reasonable sum from her own pocket, she would not only have come off cheaper than she has by frittering out small payments, but she would have saved much trouble and time, which might have been more advantageously employed. If she plans any pleasure, she will, instead of enjoying it in the right, rational manner of the true idler, make so much fuss about it, and expend so much argument upon it, that it becomes a business and loses all semblance of pleasure.
Figuratively speaking, Mrs. Restless is in a chronic state of moral perspiration; effort oozes out of every pore of her being. She does not understand repose, but rather seems to have discovered the secret of perpetual motion. She cannot sit still. If in her drawing-room you be calmly and comfortably ensconced in a luxurious armchair, from which you feel convinced that wild horses would be powerless to drag you, Mrs. Restless will enter, dusting the back of a chair, or changing the position of some trivial ornament as she approaches. Then when you think she is actually settled for conversation, she will rise to rearrange an antimacassar at the further end of the room, and probably insist upon your assisting her to move the piano.
At the breakfast-table Mrs. Restless is very trying, for she will never allow a plate or dish, or any eating utensil, to remain in the position into which it naturally falls in the course of the meal. She plays therefore a perpetual game of draughts with the breakfast things. I remember on one occasion watching an amusing game. Mrs. Restless was discussing some philanthropic plan—she is nothing if not philanthropic—with an old gentleman, whose constant habit as he talked was to push everything by degrees into the middle of the table; but Mrs. Restless could not stand that, so she as persistently pushed everything back again, thus giving fresh play to the old gentleman’s idle fingers, while she was kept constantly occupied at this purposeless business. And this is typical of all that Mrs. Restless does.
If she goes into the garden, and you invite her to the tempting repose of a hammock which hangs under sun-shading boughs, or of a long wicker-chair which, surrounded by rose-trees, suggests the “idle dreaming of an empty day,” and into which, but for politeness sake, you would fain have flung yourself, will she enjoy the proffered luxuries of lounging restfulness? Not a bit of it. She cannot waste the opportunity of plucking dead leaves from the flower-bushes, sweeping fallen leaves from the gravel paths—all the gardener’s actual business. Heavens! you expect her next to take a duster and flip off all the casual dust from the trees, or dry the dew from the flowers. And meanwhile you have self-denyingly taken the less comfortable lounge, leaving the place of perfect repose vacant for this busy-idle woman, who will not enjoy it.
Mrs. Restless scorns the unintellectual and despises the frivolous. She believes herself to be the reverse of both, and entertains great opinions of her own mental powers. But, dear thing, she is naïvely superficial; she has, unfortunately, no time for reading, and—thank goodness!—she has no logic. If she had she would be unendurable, for she would wish to reason out her aggressive busying. Of course she firmly believes she is logical. What woman does not, and would not be offended if you hinted to the contrary? But, truly, a logical woman loses half the charm of her sex, for her moods must be consequent and responsible. Now, Mrs. Restless redeems much of her irritating faculty of idle occupation by her delightfully amusing inconsequence, of which, however, she is quite seriously unconscious. She will go off at a tangent without any provocation, which to the humorously inclined outsider frequently provides food for mirth, though to Mr. Restless the fact of not knowing what his wife’s irresponsible energy will prompt her to say and do next must be somewhat temper-trying. Nevertheless, he adores her, and when he is not reproving her in his practical way, while she attempts to argue his utter incapacity to understand her high-minded aims, they do a good deal of billing and cooing, though she is always too restless to enjoy even the repose of the melting, affectionate mood for many minutes together.
If her husband, to whom she is devotedly attached, comes home tired from his daily work, and inclined to rest in the society of his wife, she will fret him with the petty details of her day’s doings, of which he will not find much to approve, seeing that her “much ado about nothing” has perhaps involved the departure of a valuable servant, the estrangement of a useful acquaintance, or a quarrel with an excellent tradesman. Then she will have muddled up her engagements so that she is obliged to drag her unwilling husband from the much-needed quiet of his domestic hearth to some purposeless party, where boredom is inevitable.
In spite of her professed dislike to the idle members of the community, of the Society butterflies that flutter over the flowered fields of pleasure, Mrs. Restless is never happier than when she is going to parties, and theatres, and fêtes; but when she does so she speaks of it as a duty rather than an amusement, and grumbles that Society keeps her so busy. Not that she allows social occupations to interfere with her domestic cares. She has children, and they know it; and servants, and they know it. She never allows them to forget that they are her children and her servants. Not a detail concerning either escapes her, but she misses the general harmony in effect. She worries about everything and everybody, until I verily believe the infant in the cradle longs to find prussic acid in its bottle, if only to obtain a little peace.
And yet there is a great deal of good nature and fine feeling in Mrs. Restless, and half of her idle industry is due to her over-heartedness and her concern for the pleasure and welfare of others, coupled with an instinctive feeling of economy. She will spend a whole day and worry all her propinquious friends and relations in her endeavours to give away a ticket that has been sent to her for some theatrical or musical entertainment, in order that it shall not be wasted. “Somebody will be glad of it,” she thinks, and so any sacrifice of time and trouble must be made to find out who will. Kindness and generosity are at the bottom of most of her actions, but there is too much of the vexatious atmosphere of wasted energy and frittered time. She will take an infinite amount of trouble for an infinitely small result, and invariably in the interests of others; yet her genuine friends sincerely like her, and her relations are fond of her, though they laugh at her follies, and amiably ridicule her untimely and misplaced energies and her magnificent muddling. Her children love her, though she wearies them with over-carefulness and excessive attention; and her husband, on the whole, thinks himself a very fortunate individual, though he certainly would be content if his wife were a little less busy and a little more idle. There would then, perhaps, be more calm and comfort in his home.
On the whole, I feel that I frankly do not bear Mrs. Restless any grudge for not having fallen in with my matrimonial views years ago, when we were both in our teens, and I used to regard her enthusiasm about everything, and her ardent activity in the cause of, Heaven knows what, as something approaching the divine. And now I call it busy-idleness! Well, the illusions of youth give place to the illusions of age; but happily we have illusions always. Life would be terribly dull without them.
Mrs. Restless is, beyond a doubt, an excellent wife, as in the long ago of my boyhood I thought she would be; but I am glad she is another’s.