Under One Flag Part 40

Mrs Bloxam was in her own sitting-room. I found her there. I had worked myself into something approaching a state of indignation. I produced Tyler's handbill with a sort of flourish.

"Henrietta, some scoundrel has been taking liberties with your name."

"Mr Bloxam!"

She was engaged on some needlework of a domestic character, from which she looked up at me with an air of apparent surprise.

"I shall cause immediate legal proceedings to be taken against the man who has acted in a manner calculated to bring you and myself into public contempt."

"To what man do you allude?"

"To the man who put your name on this."

I gave her Tyler's handbill. She looked it up and down, very carefully, as it seemed to me.

"I fail to see what there is here to which you have any reason to take objection."

"Nothing there! When the impertinent rascal has dared to put you forward as one of Crookenden's puppets."

"If he has done so, he is to blame, for I certainly am no one's puppet.

I have merely availed myself of that of which you have so freely availed yourself, the right to call my soul my own."

"Henrietta! I don't understand what you mean."

"And yet it is simple enough. Ever since I have been able to think on such subjects at all, I have had my own views on the subject of education--true education as opposed to false. When I see such creatures as Broadbridge and Tyler endeavouring to promulgate their hideous notions and notorious malpractices in the place in which I live, I cannot refuse to listen to the call of duty which summons me, both as a Christian and a woman of education and refinement, to take my stand against them."

"Then am I to gather that that name--that your name--that my name--is there by your authority?"

"Your name, certainly not. My name, undoubtedly."

"But have you forgotten that I am myself a candidate?"

"So, I am sorry to say, I have been given to understand."

"I represent the cause of progress and advance."

"Both, I imagine, in the direction of the public-house. I am credibly informed that since your candidature there has been more drunkenness in Copstone than has ever been known before in the annals of the parish."

It was a monstrous thing to say. Yet I wished that my a.s.sociates had been teetotallers, and that we could have had the use of the parish room.

"Henrietta, I will not characterise the statement which you have just now made. I content myself by taking up my position as head of this household to prohibit your pursuing any farther the dangerous pathways along which your feet have been induced to stray by the Jesuitical teachings of an insidious foe."

"Speak English, Augustus, if you please, at home. Rodomontade, if you choose, where n.o.body understands you, or wants to. Here say plainly what you mean."

"I forbid you to carry the farce of your candidature any farther."

"That I readily undertake to do. I promise you it shall be no farce."

"Farce or no farce, I command you to take your name from off that list." I regret to say that Henrietta snapped her fingers in the air.

"Am I to understand that you snap your fingers at the expression of my wishes?"

"You have not even troubled yourself to do that. You have known all along what my wishes were, yet you have chosen to entirely ignore my most sacred aspirations."

"Henrietta, the husband is the head of the wife."

"Who says so? Your friend Tyler? It is notorious that he scoffs at the sanct.i.ty of the marriage tie."

"Don't call that man my friend."

"No? Do you authorise me to state in public that you repudiate his friendship?"

"I won't chop phrases with you. I will merely remind you that at the altar you promised me obedience."

"Suppose you were to instruct me to commit murder, would you consider it my duty to carry the promise even so far?"

"I am not instructing you to commit murder."

"You are requesting me to do something a.n.a.logous, to murder all that is best and n.o.blest in the parish of Copstone."

"That's an outrageous falsehood."

She stood up.

"Of course, if you accuse me of deliberate untruth--"

"You won't get out of it like that. I tell you, frankly, that if you are not careful I shall go straight to Crookenden and tell him with my own lips that I have forbidden you to stand."

"He knows already that you would forbid me. They all know it. It is because of that knowledge they have urged me to take up the position I have done, and to persist in it; in the hope that my action may do something to mitigate the evil example which you are setting to the parish."

"This is awful. When I stood beside you at the altar I never thought that you would speak and behave to me like this--never!"

"Nor I that I should be constrained to such a course. You may, however, easily make the situation more tolerable."

"How?"

"By withdrawing your candidature."

"Indeed! Now I see the point at which the whole thing's aimed.

Crookenden has egged you on to make a public exhibition of yourself in order to drive me from the righteous stronghold which I have occupied.

I see the Jesuit hand."

She shrugged her shoulders as calmly as if we were discussing the question of thick or clear soup for dinner.

"You see things which do not exist. It is a condition of a certain mental state. There is one thing I should like to say. I have been told that courtesy is the characteristic note of English politics. That men may sit on opposite sides of the House and yet be very good friends both in and out of it. I hope that may be the same with us. You have taken up the cry of 'Beer and the "Fox and Hounds,"' I that of the 'Bible and Clean Living.' Let each admit that the other may be actuated by conscientious motives. Then we shall still be good friends, though we may agree to differ."

It was no use talking to such a woman, not the slightest. We all have to bear our burdens, and I bore mine, though I never supposed that it would have taken the shape of being opposed by my own wife in an election for the School Board. As a matter of fact, it was unendurable--yet I bore it. Not only did she persist in her candidature, but she carried it on with a degree of activity which was little less than astounding. The contest afforded considerable entertainment to the parish. From the public interest point of view there might have been only two candidates--she and I. It was a subject of constant comment in the public prints. "Husband and wife oppose each other at a School-Board election. Amusing situation. Lively proceedings." That was the sort of headline which confronted me in I do not know how many papers.

Some of my colleagues actually chose to regard me as responsible for Mrs Bloxam's conduct. It is a painful moment when a man, of a naturally sensitive disposition, has to state in public that his wife is acting in direct defiance of his wishes. And the delicacy of his position is intensified when his hearers begin to criticise her conduct. It is in accordance with the fitness of things to abuse your opponent; but when your opponent is your own wife, it is an open question whether, even if you are ent.i.tled to abuse her yourself, your a.s.sociates have a right to do so too. It is obviously a problem of an exceedingly complicated character, and one which, I believe, has never been properly thrashed out. I shall never forget my sensations when, at a meeting at the "Fox and Hounds," Tyler began to call Henrietta names. I had to stop him.