“How a man can stand it! How she can stand it, common little thing as she is, I don’t know!” the wife cried to herself.
She meant this dictating business, this ten hours a day intercourse, à deux, with nothing but a pencil between them, and a flow of words.
What was to be done? Matters, instead of improving, had grown worse. The little secretary had brought her mother and sister into the establishment. The mother was a sort of cook-housekeeper, the sister was a sort of upper maid — she did the fine laundry, and looked after ‘his’ clothes, and valeted him beautifully. It was really an excellent arrangement. The old mother was a splendid plain cook, the sister was all that could be desired as a valet de chambre, a fine laundress, an upper parlour-maid, and a table-waiter. And all economical to a degree. They knew his affairs by heart. His secretary flew to town when a creditor became dangerous, and she always smoothed over the financial crisis.
‘He’, of course, had debts, and he was working to pay them off. And if he had been a fairy prince who could call the ants to help him, he would not have been more wonderful than in securing this secretary and her family. They took hardly any wages. And they seemed to perform the miracle of loaves and fishes daily.
‘She’, of course, was the wife who loved her husband, but helped him into debt, and she still was an expensive item. Yet when she appeared at her ‘home’, the secretarial family received her with most elaborate attentions and deference. The knight returning from the Crusades didn’t create a greater stir. She felt like Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth, a sovereign paying a visit to her faithful subjects. But perhaps there lurked always this hair in her soup! Won’t they be glad to be rid of me again!
But they protested No! No! They had been waiting and hoping and praying she would come. They had been pining for her to be there, in charge: the mistress, ‘his’ wife. Ah, ‘his’ wife!
‘His’ wife! His halo was like a bucket over her head.
The cook-mother was ‘of the people’, so it was the upper-maid daughter who came for orders.
“What will you order for to-morrow’s lunch and dinner, Mrs. Gee?”
“Well, what do you usually have?”
“Oh, we want you to say.”
“No, what do you usually have?”
“We don’t have anything fixed. Mother goes out and chooses the best she can find, that is nice and fresh. But she thought you would tell her now what to get.”
“Oh, I don’t know! I’m not very good at that sort of thing. Ask her to go on just the same; I’m quite sure she knows best.”
“Perhaps you’d like to suggest a sweet?”
“No, I don’t care for sweets — and you know Mr. Gee doesn’t. So don’t make one for me.”
Could anything be more impossible! They had the house spotless and running like a dream; how could an incompetent and extravagant wife dare to interfere, when she saw their amazing and almost inspired economy! But they ran the place on simply nothing!
Simply marvellous people! And the way they strewed palm branches under her feet!
But that only made her feel ridiculous.
“Don’t you think the family manage very well?” he asked her tentatively.
“Awfully well! Almost romantically well!” she replied. “But I suppose you’re perfectly happy?”
“I’m perfectly comfortable,” he replied.
“I can see you are,” she replied. “Amazingly so! I never knew such comfort! Are you sure it isn’t bad for you?”
She eyed him stealthily. He looked very well, and extremely handsome, in his histrionic way. He was shockingly well-dressed and valeted. And he had that air of easy aplomb and good humour which is so becoming to a man, and which he only acquires when he is cock of his own little walk, made much of by his own hens.
“No!” he said, taking his pipe from his mouth and smiling whimsically round at her. “Do I look as if it were bad for me?”
“No, you don’t,” she replied promptly: thinking, naturally, as a woman is supposed to think nowadays, of his health and comfort, the foundation, apparently, of all happiness.
Then, of course, away she went on the back-wash.
“Perhaps for your work, though, it’s not so good as it is for you,” she said in a rather small voice. She knew he couldn’t bear it if she mocked at his work for one moment. And he knew that rather small voice of hers.
“In what way?” he said, bristles rising.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she answered indifferently. “Perhaps it’s not good for a man’s work if he is too comfortable.”
“I don’t know about that!” he said, taking a dramatic turn round the library and drawing at his pipe. “Considering I work, actually, by the clock, for twelve hours a day, and for ten hours when it’s a short day, I don’t think you can say I am deteriorating from easy comfort.”
“No, I suppose not,” she admitted.
Yet she did think it, nevertheless. His comfortableness didn’t consist so much in good food and a soft bed, as in having nobody, absolutely nobody and nothing to contradict him. “I do like to think he’s got nothing to aggravate him,” the secretary had said to the wife.
“Nothing to aggravate him!” What a position for a man! Fostered by women who would let nothing ‘aggravate’ him. If anything would aggravate his wounded vanity, this would!
So thought the wife. But what was to be done about it? In the silence of midnight she heard his voice in the distance, dictating away, like the voice of God to Samuel, alone and monotonous, and she imagined the little figure of the secretary busily scribbling shorthand. Then in the sunny hours of morning, while he was still in bed — he never rose till noon — from another distance came that sharp insect noise of the typewriter, like some immense grasshopper chirping and rattling. It was the secretary, poor thing, typing out his notes.
That girl — she was only twenty-eight — really slaved herself to skin and bone. She was small and neat, but she was actually worn out. She did far more work than he did, for she had not only to take down all those words he uttered, she had to type them out, make three copies, while he was still resting.
“What on earth she gets out of it,” thought the wife, “I don’t know. She’s simply worn to the bone, for a very poor salary, and he’s never kissed her, and never will, if I know anything about him.”
Whether his never kissing her — the secretary, that is — made it worse or better, the wife did not decide. He never kissed anybody. Whether she herself — the wife, that is — wanted to be kissed by him, even that she was not clear about. She rather thought she didn’t.
What on earth did she want then? She was his wife. What on earth did she want of him?
She certainly didn’t want to take him down in shorthand, and type out again all those words. And she didn’t really want him to kiss her; she knew him too well. Yes, she knew him too well. If you know a man too well, you don’t want him to kiss you.
What then? What did she want? Why had she such an extraordinary hang-over about him? Just because she was his wife? Why did she rather ‘enjoy’ other men — and she was relentless about enjoyment — without ever taking them seriously? And why must she take him so damn seriously, when she never really ‘enjoyed’ him?
Of course she had had good times with him, in the past, before — ah! before a thousand things, all amounting really to nothing. But she enjoyed him no more. She never even enjoyed being with him. There was a silent, ceaseless tension between them, that never broke, even when they were a thousand miles apart.
Awful! That’s what you call being married! What’s to be done about it? Ridiculous, to know it all and not do anything about it!
She came back once more, and there she was, in her own house, a sort of super-guest, even to him. And the secretarial family devoting their lives to him.
Devoting their lives to him! But actually! Three women pouring out their lives for him day and night! And what did they get in return? Not one kiss! Very little money, because th
ey knew all about his debts, and had made it their life business to get them paid off! No expectations! Twelve hours’ work a day! Comparative isolation, for he saw nobody!
And beyond that? Nothing! Perhaps a sense of uplift and importance because they saw his name and photograph in the newspaper sometimes. But would anybody believe that it was good enough?
Yet they adored it! They seemed to get a deep satisfaction out of it, like people with a mission. Extraordinary!
Well, if they did, let them. They were, of course, rather common, ‘of the people’; there might be a sort of glamour in it for them.
But it was bad for him. No doubt about it. His work was getting diffuse and poor in quality — and what wonder! His whole tone was going down — becoming commoner. Of course it was bad for him.
Being his wife, she felt she ought to do something to save him. But how could she? That perfectly devoted, marvellous secretarial family, how could she make an attack on them? Yet she’d love to sweep them into oblivion. Of course they were bad for him: ruining his work, ruining his reputation as a writer, ruining his life. Ruining him with their slavish service.
Of course she ought to make an onslaught on them! But how could she? Such devotion! And what had she herself to offer in their place? Certainly not slavish devotion to him, nor to his flow of words! Certainly not!
She imagined him stripped once more naked of secretary and secretarial family, and she shuddered. It was like throwing the naked baby in the dust-bin. Couldn’t do that!
Yet something must be done. She felt it. She was almost tempted to get into debt for another thousand pounds, and send in the bill, or have it sent in to him, as usual.
But no! Something more drastic!
Something more drastic, or perhaps more gentle. She wavered between the two. And wavering, she first did nothing, came to no decision, dragged vacantly on from day to day, waiting for sufficient energy to take her departure once more.
It was spring! What a fool she had been to come up in spring! And she was forty! What an idiot of a woman to go and be forty!
She went down the garden in the warm afternoon, when birds were whistling loudly from the cover, the sky being low and warm, and she had nothing to do. The garden was full of flowers: he loved them for their theatrical display. Lilac and snowball bushes, and laburnum and red may, tulips and anemones and coloured daisies. Lots of flowers! Borders of forget-me-nots! Bachelor’s buttons! What absurd names flowers had! She would have called them blue dots and yellow blobs and white frills. Not so much sentiment after all!
There is a certain nonsense, something showy and stagey about spring, with its pushing leaves and chorus-girl flowers, unless you have something corresponding inside you. Which she hadn’t.
Oh, heaven! Beyond the hedge she heard a voice, a steady rather theatrical voice. Oh, heaven! He was dictating to his secretary in the garden. Good God, was there nowhere to get away from it!
She looked around: there was indeed plenty of escape. But what was the good of escaping? He would go on and on. She went quietly towards the hedge, and listened.
He was dictating a magazine article about the modern novel. “What the modern novel lacks is architecture.” Good God! Architecture! He might just as well say: What the modern novel lacks is whalebone, or a teaspoon, or a tooth stopped.
Yet the secretary took it down, took it down, took it down! No, this could not go on! It was more than flesh and blood could bear.
She went quietly along the hedge, somewhat wolf-like in her prowl, a broad, strong woman in an expensive mustard-coloured silk jersey and cream-coloured pleated skirt. Her legs were long and shapely, and her shoes were expensive.
With a curious wolf-like stealth she turned the hedge and looked across at the small, shaded lawn where the daisies grew impertinently. ‘He’ was reclining in a coloured hammock under the pink-flowering horse-chestnut tree, dressed in white serge with a fine yellow-coloured linen shirt. His elegant hand dropped over the side of the hammock and beat a sort of vague rhythm to his words. At a little wicker table the little secretary, in a green knitted frock, bent her dark head over her note-book, and diligently made those awful shorthand marks. He was not difficult to take down, as he dictated slowly, and kept a sort of rhythm, beating time with his dangling hand.
“In every novel there must be one outstanding character with which we always sympathise — with whom we always sympathise — even though we recognise it — even when we are most aware of the human frailties — ”
Every man his own hero, thought the wife grimly, forgetting that every woman is intensely her own heroine.
But what did startle her was a blue bird dashing about near the feet of the absorbed, shorthand-scribbling little secretary. At least it was a blue-tit, blue with grey and some yellow. But to the wife it seemed blue, that juicy spring day, in the translucent afternoon. The blue bird, fluttering round the pretty but rather common little feet of the little secretary.
The blue bird! The blue bird of happiness! Well, I’m blest, — thought the wife. Well, I’m blest!
And as she was being blest, appeared another blue bird — that is, another blue-tit — and began to wrestle with the first blue-tit. A couple of blue birds of happiness, having a fight over it! Well, I’m blest!
She was more or less out of sight of the human preoccupied pair. But ‘he’ was disturbed by the fighting blue birds, whose little feathers began to float loose.
“Get out!” he said to them mildly, waving a dark-yellow handkerchief at them. “Fight your little fight, and settle your private affairs elsewhere, my dear little gentlemen.”
The little secretary looked up quickly, for she had already begun to write it down. He smiled at her his twisted whimsical smile.
“No, don’t take that down,” he said affectionately. “Did you see those two tits laying into one another?”
“No!” said the little secretary, gazing brightly round, her eyes half-blinded with work.
But she saw the queer, powerful, elegant, wolf-like figure of the wife, behind her, and terror came into her eyes.
“I did!” said the wife, stepping forward with those curious, shapely, she-wolf legs of hers, under the very short skirt.
“Aren’t they extraordinarily vicious little beasts?” said he.
“Extraordinarily!” she re-echoed, stooping and picking up a little breast-feather. “Extraordinarily! See how the feathers fly!”
And she got the feather on the tip of her finger, and looked at it. Then she looked at the secretary, then she looked at him. She had a queer, were-wolf expression between her brows.
“I think,” he began, “these are the loveliest afternoons, when there’s no direct sun, but all the sounds and the colours and the scents are sort of dissolved, don’t you know, in the air, and the whole thing is steeped, steeped in spring. It’s like being on the inside; you know how I mean, like being inside the egg and just ready to chip the shell.”
“Quite like that!” she assented, without conviction.
There was a little pause. The secretary said nothing. They were waiting for the wife to depart again.
“I suppose,” said the latter, “you’re awfully busy, as usual?”
“Just about the same,” he said, pursing his mouth deprecatingly.
Again the blank pause, in which he waited for her to go away again.
“I know I’m interrupting you,” she said.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I was just watching those two blue-tits.”
“Pair of little demons!” said the wife, blowing away the yellow feather from her finger-tip.
“Absolutely!” he said.
“Well, I’d better go, and let you get on with your work,” she said.
“No hurry!” he said, with benevolent nonchalance. “As a matter of fact, I don’t think it’s a great success, working out of doors.”
“What made you try it?” said the wife. “You know you never could do it.”
“Miss Wrexa
ll suggested it might make a change. But I don’t think it altogether helps, do you, Miss Wrexall?”
“I’m sorry,” said the little secretary.
“Why should you be sorry?” said the wife, looking down at her as a wolf might look down half-benignly at a little black-and-tan mongrel. “You only suggested it for his good, I’m sure!”
“I thought the air might be good for him,” the secretary admitted.
“Why do people like you never think about yourselves?” the wife asked.
The secretary looked her in the eye.
“I suppose we do, in a different way,” she said.
“A very different way!” said the wife ironically. “Why don’t you make him think about you?” she added, slowly, with a sort of drawl. “On a soft spring afternoon like this, you ought to have him dictating poems to you, about the blue birds of happiness fluttering round your dainty little feet. I know I would, if I were his secretary.”
There was a dead pause. The wife stood immobile and statuesque, in an attitude characteristic of her, half turning back to the little secretary, half averted. She half turned her back on everything.
The secretary looked at him.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I was doing an article on the Future of the Novel.”
“I know that,” said the wife. “That’s what’s so awful! Why not something lively in the life of the novelist?”
There was a prolonged silence, in which he looked pained, and somewhat remote, statuesque. The little secretary hung her head. The wife sauntered slowly away.
“Just where were we, Miss Wrexall?” came the sound of his voice.
The little secretary started. She was feeling profoundly indignant. Their beautiful relationship, his and hers, to be so insulted!
But soon she was veering down-stream on the flow of his words, too busy to have any feelings, except one of elation at being so busy.
Tea-time came; the sister brought out the tea-tray into the garden. And immediately, the wife appeared. She had changed, and was wearing a chicory-blue dress of fine cloth. The little secretary had gathered up her papers and was departing, on rather high heels.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 685
