They and I Part 13

"One thing in this world to be thankful for, at all events, and that is that we don't live in Ditchley-in-the-Marsh," he would growl ten minutes later from the other side of it.

"Sounds a bit damp," the good woman would reply.

"Damp!" he would grunt, "who minds a bit of damp! Good for you. Makes us Englishmen what we are. Being murdered in one's bed about once a week is what I should object to."

"Do they do much of that sort of thing down there?" the good woman would enquire.

"Seems to be the chief industry of the place. Do you mean to say you don't remember that old maiden lady being murdered by her own gardener and buried in the fowl-run? You women! you take no interest in public affairs."

"I do remember something about it, now you mention it, dear," the good woman would confess. "Always seems such an innocent type of man, a gardener."

"Seems to be a special breed of them at Ditchley-in-the-Marsh," he answers. "Here again last Monday," he continues, reading with growing interest. "Almost the same case-even to the pruning knife. Yes, hanged if he doesn't!-buries her in the fowl-run. This is most extraordinary."

"It must be the imitative instinct a.s.serting itself," suggests the good woman. "As you, dear, have so often pointed out, one crime makes another."

"I have always said so," he agrees; "it has always been a theory of mine."

He folds the paper over. "Dull dogs, these political chaps!" he says.

"Here's the Duke of Devonshire, speaking last night at Hackney, begins by telling a funny story he says he has just heard about a parrot. Why, it's the same story somebody told a month ago; I remember reading it.

Yes-upon my soul-word for word, I'd swear to it. Shows you the sort of men we're governed by."

"You can't expect everyone, dear, to possess your repertoire," the good woman remarks.

"Needn't say he's just heard it that afternoon, anyhow," responds the good man.

He turns to another column. "What the devil! Am I going off my head?"

He pounces on the eldest boy. "When was the Oxford and Cambridge Boat-race?" he fiercely demands.

"The Oxford and Cambridge Boat-race!" repeats the astonished youth.

"Why, it's over. You took us all to see it, last month. The Sat.u.r.day before-"

The conversation for the next ten minutes he conducts himself, unaided.

At the end he is tired, maybe a trifle hoa.r.s.e. But all his bad temper is gone. His sorrow is there was not sufficient of it. He could have done with more.

Woman knows nothing of simple mechanics. A woman thinks you can get rid of steam by boxing it up and sitting on the safety-valve.

"Feeling as I do this morning, that I'd like to wring everybody's neck for them," the average woman argues to herself; "my proper course-I see it clearly-is to creep about the house, asking of everyone that has the time to spare to trample on me."

She coaxes you to tell her of her faults. When you have finished she asks for more-reminds you of one or two you had missed out. She wonders why it is that she is always wrong. There must be a reason for it; if only she could discover it. She wonders how it is that people can put up with her-thinks it so good of them.

At last, of course, the explosion happens. The awkward thing is that neither she herself nor anyone else knows when it is coming. A husband cornered me one evening in the club. It evidently did him good to talk.

He told me that, finding his wife that morning in one of her rare listening moods, he had seized the opportunity to mention one or two matters in connection with the house he would like to have altered; that was, if she had no objection. She had-quite pleasantly-reminded him the house was his, that he was master there. She added that any wish of his of course was law to her.

He was a young and inexperienced husband; it seemed to him a hopeful opening. He spoke of quite a lot of things-things about which he felt that he was right and she was wrong. She went and fetched a quire of paper, and borrowed his pencil and wrote them down.

Later on, going through his letters in the study, he found an unexpected cheque; and ran upstairs and asked her if she would not like to come out with him and get herself a new hat.

"I could have understood it," he moaned, "if she had dropped on me while I was-well, I suppose, you might say lecturing her. She had listened to it like a lamb-hadn't opened her mouth except to say 'yes, dear,' or 'no, dear.' Then, when I only asked her if she'd like a new hat, she goes suddenly raving mad. I never saw a woman go so mad."

I doubt if there be anything in nature quite as unexpected as a woman's temper, unless it be tumbling into a hole. I told all this to d.i.c.k. I have told it him before. One of these days he will know it.

"You are right to be angry with me," Robina replied meekly; "there is no excuse for me. The whole thing is the result of my own folly."

Her pathetic humility should have appealed to him. He can be sympathetic, when he isn't hungry. Just then he happened to be hungry.

"I left you making a pie," he said. "It looked to me a fair-sized pie.

There was a duck on the table, with a cauliflower and potatoes; Veronica was up to her elbows in peas. It made me hungry merely pa.s.sing through the kitchen. I wouldn't have anything to eat in the town for fear of spoiling my appet.i.te. Where is it all? You don't mean to say that you and Veronica have eaten the whole blessed lot!"

There is one thing-she admits it herself-that exhausts Veronica's patience: it is unjust suspicion.

"Do I look as if I'd eaten anything for hours and hours?" Veronica demanded. "You can feel my waistband if you don't believe me."

"You said just now you had had your lunch," d.i.c.k argued.

"I know I did," Veronica admitted. "One minute you are told that it is wicked to tell lies; the next-"

"Veronica!" Robina interrupted threateningly.

"It's easy for you," retorted Veronica. "You are not a growing child.

You don't feel it."

"The least you can do," said Robina, "is to keep silence."

"What's the good," said Veronica-not without reason. "You'll tell them when I've gone to bed, and can't put in a word for myself. Everything is always my fault. I wish sometimes that I was dead."

"That I were dead," I corrected her. "The verb 'to wish,' implying uncertainty, should always be followed by the conditional mood."

"You ought," said Robina, "to be thankful to Providence that you're not dead."

"People are sorry when you're dead," said Veronica.

"I suppose there's some bread-and-cheese in the house," suggested d.i.c.k.

"The baker, for some reason or another, has not called this morning,"

Robina answered sweetly. "Neither unfortunately has the grocer.

Everything there is to eat in the house you see upon the table."

"Accidents will happen," I said. "The philosopher-as our friend St.

Leonard would tell us-only smiles."

"I could smile," said d.i.c.k, "if it were his lunch."

"Cultivate," I said, "a sense of humour. From a humorous point of view this lunch is rather good."

"Did you have anything to eat at the St. Leonards'?" he asked.

"Just a gla.s.s or so of beer and a sandwich or two," I admitted. "They brought it out to us while we were talking in the yard. To tell the truth, I was feeling rather peckish."

d.i.c.k made no answer, but continued to chew bacon-rind. Nothing I could say seemed to cheer him. I thought I would try religion.