Lady Cassandra Part 18

"Not necessarily. It doesn't follow. I was at a musical At Home one evening last year, when a professional sang, 'Believe me if all those endearing young charms'--You know how it goes on!--'were to fade by to-morrow, etc., thou wouldst still be beloved, as this moment thou art, and around the dear ruins, each wish of my heart, would entwine itself faithfully still.' The hostess seized that moment to sail out of the room. She was a vast woman. Parts of her were engulfed by the doorway long before her head vanished from sight. She had numerous chins, but, imbedded in flesh, one could still trace a likeness to an ethereally fair daughter. The host took me by the arm, and pointed covertly to the door. '_My dear Ruins_!' he whispered beneath his breath. '_My dear Ruins_!' But there was love in his eyes, as well as fun. He loved his Ruins!"

"Bless him!" cried Grizel warmly. "May his tribe increase! But most men don't. So she must do her best. If she's fat, she diets, and it's harder for a middle-cla.s.s housewife to diet than for any creature on the face of the earth. Because why? She has to rack her brains every morning to think of nice things for other people to eat, and naturally she thinks of the things she likes best herself, and then she sallies forth and buys them, and smells the smell of their seasoning all afternoon, and at the great moment says, 'No thank you!' and eats minced beef. And when the poor dear catches hold of an infinitesimal crinkle in her gown, and calls upon those present to witness that she grows so thin that it hangs upon her,--they jeer, and laugh her to scorn. I've heard it. I've seen it. It's a heartrending sight."

"I'll promise faithfully not to jeer when you grow fat."

"I never shall," Grizel a.s.sured him. "Scrags are my line. Scrags are much easier to deal with. Scrags can always be mitigated if you lavish enough money; it's the plain coat and skirt that's the devil. I'd like to found a charity for the supply of draped garments to the thin wives of clergymen. _Can't_ you see them,--in navy-blue serge, with flannel s.h.i.+rts falling well in at the chest? It must have a depressing effect on the sermons! ... What was I talking of last! It's rather difficult to keep count."

"The superiority of middle-aged men over their wives. Wasn't that it?"

"I never said they were superior. They're not, but they look it, and that's an extra burden on the wives. It proves without any doubt soever that women's work is more exhausting than men's."

"Is this by any chance a suffragette lecture in disguise?"

"Certainly not. Who mentioned suffragettes? I'm talking of the old-fas.h.i.+oned women who stay at home, and look after their own affairs, and I'm sorry for them, and wonder they are not fifty times more stupid than they are, and I'm sorry I spoke. I said in my haste, 'They can talk of nothing but their servants.' Poor darlings! What wonder? Shut in from morning till night with two ap.r.o.ned fiends, who at any moment may reduce you to starvation, or poison you as you eat. (I don't care if my p.r.o.nouns _are_ mixed! I shall mix them if I like!) Suppose man had to live day and night mewed up with his clerk and office boy; suppose _you_ were followed wherever you went by grumbles and breakages, and a smell of onions, and daren't let go, in case you were left to clean the sink yourself! A woman said to me the other day, that after a lifelong struggle she could not for the life of her decide which was worse--a servant who thinks, or a servant who don't. Her housemaid _could_ think. She thought the laundry bill had been rather high the last few weeks, so she kept back a lot of table-linen what time a party of guests were expected. She was hurt about it when reproved, and said she could never do right. She couldn't... Martin! make up my mind for me.--Should I give Parsons notice or not?"

Martin elevated his eyebrows, and nodded once or twice with an air of enlightenment.

"Ah-ha! Now we come to it! I was waiting for the personal application.

Parsons, eh! Let me hear the case. Yours and Parsons's. Then I can judge."

Grizel rested both elbows on the table, and supported her chin in the hollow of her hands.

"Parsons," she said clearly. "Maud Emily, age twenty-six. Profession, House-parlourmaid. Religion, Anabaptist (I'm sure she's an Anabaptist, by the cut of her Sunday hat). Honest. Steady. Clean in her work and person. Willing and obliging. Can clean plate... Forgets everything.

Breaks the rest. Snores while waiting. Has feelings, and an invalid mamma, who, I feel it in my bones, will be tuk worse regularly on the afternoons of dinner parties. In every emergency, can be backed to do the worst possible thing... There! it's a problem for a society paper!

... _What should Mrs Beverley do_?"

"Mrs Beverley should exercise patience and self-control. She should speak gently to the poor girl, who no doubt is doing her best. First Prize awarded for this solution, a copy of Mrs Tupper's famous work, _The Blue Boy Darling_."

Grizel contemplated him frowningly.

"Something will have to be done about your jokes! You have no sense of fitness. It drives me daft when a person jokes when I am worried. I'll laugh myself in a fortnight's time; with grace I'll laugh to-morrow, but I won't laugh to-day for all the jokes on earth, and I hate anyone who tries to make me do it. I'm not in the mood for jokes, and you ought to know it without being told."

"Sorry, Madam, but there seems something wrong with your theory. You want to be cheered when you are already cheered, and not to be cheered when you are in need of cheering."

"Silly jokes," Grizel said firmly, "do not cheer. They can be endured in periods of health. In periods of affliction they are the last straw which breaks the woman's back."

Martin chewed his bacon in dignified silence, while his wife c.o.c.ked a speculative eye at him to see if she had gone too far. Presently the two pairs of eyes met, and Grizel, made an extraordinary play with her eyebrows which gave the effect of contrition, and defiance, and injured innocence, and apologetic love, and half a dozen appealing sentiments rolled into one, whereat Martin shrugged, and cried, "You women!" and racked his brain to think what consolation to offer next.

"Cheer up, darling, we'll have a holiday next month. I've had a note from the agent to say we can have the house, and the Squire is keen to join. You'll enjoy the sea and unlimited powwows with Lady Ca.s.sandra, and, if you speak her fair, perhaps she'll take over the housekeeping, and set you free."

The mutual renting of a house near a seaside golf course had been in discussion for some time between the two households, but Grizel betrayed only a mitigated satisfaction in her husband's proposal.

"Ca.s.sandra knows nothing about housekeeping, and if she did I'm not going to give it up, just as there's a chance of getting a little credit. I'm getting quite a daisy at it now. Guess what you're going to have to-night? _Best end of the neck_! Cook suggested it, and I said, '_Whose_ neck?' She looked quite scared. Martin, did you know you had chops growing inside your neck? Isn't it thrilling?... I'm going to kiss you on the best end of your neck!"

She rose, and put her threat into execution, then sauntered over to an easy chair, and lit a cigarette.

"Of course, when you talk so sweetly about my talks with Ca.s.sandra, I know you are inwardly gloating on golf. You throw Ca.s.sandra to me as a sop, so that you may feel free, and have no scruples in leaving me day after day. Never mind! retribution will be yours. Poor angel! _how_ tired you will get of hours and hours of undiluted Squire..."

"I'm not so sure; he is a type, and I'm interested in types, and from the golfer's point of view, an approximate handicap covers a mult.i.tude of sins. And I don't propose to confine myself to Raynor. I asked Peignton to come down, and he was delighted."

Grizel frowned thoughtfully.

"I like Captain Peignton. It's n.o.ble of me, for he has never quite made up his mind to like me, but I'm not altogether sure that you were wise to ask him this time."

"For Heaven's sake why not?"

Martin's bewilderment was transparent. Grizel dropped her eyes, and played with her cigarette. A suspicious listener might have accused her of searching for a judicious reply.

"Well!--he's engaged. And I don't want her. She would be in the way."

"Is it necessary to ask her at all?"

"If he comes, yes. I think we ought."

Martin looked thoughtful in his turn. It was evident that, like his wife, he was not anxious for the society of Teresa Mallison, but after a moment's consideration he was ready with a solution.

"We'll ask her from Friday till Monday, at the end of his stay. Then they can travel home together. She will understand that he is asked primarily for golf. What on earth makes you imagine that he doesn't like you?"

Grizel pursed her lips.

"I think... _he_ thinks, I have more than my share!"

"Of--what?"

"Happiness."

Martin's face softened eloquently.

"So you have, darling. So you always will have. But that's thanks to yourself. And why should he grudge you your happiness, pray? Isn't he happy himself? Isn't his Teresa happy?"

"Oh, yes. Teresa is as happy as Teresa can be."

"Well, then!" exclaimed Martin conclusively, and dropped the subject.

He had wisely abandoned the effort of following his wife's nights of thought, and was for the moment more engrossed with his own. He glanced at the clock, and there fell over his face that restless, straining expression which Grizel had learned to recognise as a sign that work in the study was not going well. Being a wife she dared a question which from anyone else would have been an offence.

"Book dragging?"

"Badly."

"What's the trouble?"

"Come to a full stop. I know where I am, and I know where I want to get, but there's a middle distance to be filled in... filled, not padded... and ideas won't come. I need four or five chapters to give the characters time to--er--"

"I know." Grizel tilted her chin and a.s.sumed an expression of ferocious absorption. She would emerge from it presently and make suggestions, and none of the suggestions would be of the slightest use. Martin knew as much, but he lingered all the same because Grizel was Grizel, and whatever she said delighted him to hear.

"Make the heroine go into the park, and sit on a bench, and talk to an old man..."

"Yes."