Snobbishness is one of the causes which lead to the Eighth Year, and not the least among them. It is an essentially middle-class snobbishness, and has grown up, like a fungus growth, with that immense and increasing class of small, fairly well-to-do households who have come into being with the advance of material prosperity during the past twenty-five years, and with the progress of elementary education, and all that it has brought with it in the form of new desires for pleasure, amusement and more luxuries. These young husbands and wives who set up their little homes are not, as I have said, content to start on the same level as their parents in the first years of their married life. They must start at least on the level of their parents at the end of their married life, even a little in advance. The seeds of snobbishness are sown before marriage. The modern son pooh-poohs the habits of his old-fashioned father. They are not good enough for him. He has at least twice the pocket-money at school compared with the allowance of his father when he was a boy. He goes to a more expensive school and learns expensive habits. When he begins work he does not hand over most of his salary as his father used to hand over his salary a generation ago, to keep the family pot boiling. He keeps all that he earns, though he is still living at home, and develops a nice taste in clothes. One tie on week-days and another tie for Sundays are still good enough for the father, but the son buys ties by the dozen, and then has a passion for fancy socks, and lets his imagination rove into all departments of haberdashery. He is only a middle-class young man, but he dresses in the style of a man of fashion, adopts some of the pleasures of the man about town, and is rather scornful of the little house in the suburbs to which he returns after a bachelor’s dinner in a smart restaurant, or after a tea-party with gaiety girls. He becomes a “Nut,” and his evenings are devoted to a variety of amusements, which does away with a good deal of money. He smokes a special brand of cigarettes. He hires a motor-car occasionally for a spin down to Brighton. His mother and father are rather scared by this son who lives in a style utterly beyond their means.
The girl is a feminine type of the new style. She has adopted the new notions. At a very early age she is expert in all the arts of the younger generation, and at seventeen or eighteen has already revolted from the authority of her parents. She is quite a nice girl, naturally, but her chief vice is vanity. She is eaten up with it. It is a consuming passion. From the moment she gets out of bed in the morning for the first glimpse of her face in the looking-glass to the time she goes to bed after putting on some lip-salve and face enamel, she is absorbed with self-consciousness about her “looks.” Her face is always occupying her attention. Even in railway trains she keeps biting her lips to make them red. At every window she passes she gives a sidelong glance to see if her face is getting on all right. Her main ambition in life is to be in the fashion. She is greedy for “pretty things” and sponges upon her father and mother for the wherewithal to buy them, and she will not lay a little finger on any work in the kitchen or even make a bed, lest her hands should be roughened and because it would not be quite “lady-like.”
A pretty education for matrimony! A nice couple to set up house together Poor children of life, they are doomed to have a pack of troubles. Because as they began they go on, with the same ideas, with the same habits of mind, until they get a rude shock. Their little household is a shrine to the great god Snob. They are his worshippers. To make a show beyond their meansj or up to the very limit of their means, to pretend to be better off than they are, to hide any sign of poverty, to dress above their rank in life, to show themselves in places of entertainment, to shirk domestic drudgery, that is their creed.
In the old days, before the problem of the Eighth Year had arrived, the wives of men, the mothers of those very girls, kept themselves busy by hundreds of small duties. They made the beds, dusted the rooms, helped the servants in the kitchen, made a good many of their own clothes, mended them, altered them, cleaned the silver. But nowadays the wife of the professional man does none of these things if there is any escape from them. She keeps one servant at a time when her mother did without a servant. She keeps two servants as soon as her husband can afford an extra one, three servants if the house is large enough to hold them. Indeed, a rise in the social scale is immediately the excuse for an additional servant, and in the social status the exact financial prosperity of the middle-classes is reckoned by them according to the number of servants they keep. And whether it be two or three, the little snob wife sits in her drawing-room with idle hands, trying to kill time, getting tired of doing nothing, but proud of her laziness. And the snob husband encourages her in her laziness. He is proud of it, too. He would hate to think of his wife dusting, or cleaning, or washing up. He does not guess that this worship of his great god Snob is a devil’s worship, having devilish results for himself and her. The idea that women want work never enters his head. His whole ambition in life is to prevent his wife from working, not only when he is alive, but after he is dead. He insures himself heavily and at the cost of a great financial strain upon his resources in order that “if anything happens” his wife, even then, need not raise her little finger to do any work. But something “happens” before he is dead. The woman revolts from the evil spell of her laziness. She finds some work for her idle hands to do—good work or bad.
If only those idle women would find some good work to do the Eighth Year would lose its terrors. And there is so much good work to do if they would only lay their hands to it! If they cannot get in touch with God, they can at least get in touch with humanity. At their very doors there is a welter of suffering, struggling humanity craving for a little help, needing helping hands, on the very edge of the abyss of misery, and slipping down unless they get rescued in the nick of time. In the mean streets of life, in the hospitals, at the prison gates, in the reformatories, in the dark haunts of poverty, there are social workers striving and toiling and moiling in the service of all these seething masses of human beings. But there are too few of them, and the appeals for volunteers in the ranks of the unpaid helpers are not often answered. They are hardly ever answered from the class of women who have least in the world to do, and most need of such kinds of work. Many of these women have good voices. They sing little drawing-room ballads quite well, until they get sick of the sound of their own singing in their lonely little drawing-rooms. But they do not think of singing in the hospitals, and the workhouse wards, where their voices would give joy to suffering people, or miserable people who do not often hear the music of life. These women have no children. They have shirked the pains of childbirth. But they might help to give a little comfort and happiness to other mothers’ children, to shepherd a small flock for a day’s outing in the country, to organize the children’s playtime, to nurse the sick baby now and then. These idle women remember their own girlhood and its dreams. They remember their own innocence, the shelter of their home-life. It would be good for them if they gave a little loving service to the girls in the working-quarters of the great cities, and went down into the girl-clubs to play their dance tunes, to keep them out of the streets, to give them a little innocent fun in the evenings. These lazy women cry out that they are prisoners in upholstered cages. But there are many prisoners in stone cells, who at the prison gates, on their release, stand looking out into the cold gray world, with blank, despairing eyes, with no prospect but that of crime and vice, unless some unknown friend comes with a little warmth of human love, with a quick sympathy and a ready helpfulness. Here is work for workless women who are well-to-do. They are unhappy in their own homes, because they are tired of its trivialities, tired of its little luxuries, bored to death with themselves because they have no purpose in life. But in the mean streets round the corner they would find women still clinging with extraordinary courage to homes that have no stick of furniture in them, amazingly cheerful, although instead of little luxuries they have not even the barest necessities of life, unwearied, indefatigable, heroic in endurance, though they toil on sweated wages. The women of the well-to-do middle-classes drift apart from their husbands because perhaps they have irritable little habits, because they do not understand all the yearnings in their wives’ hearts, because they have fallen below the old ideals of their courting days. But here in the slums these women with a grievance would find other women loyal to their husbands who come home drunk at nights, loyal through thick and thin to husbands who “bash” them when they speak a sharp word, loyal to the death to husbands who are untamed brutes with only the love of the brute for its mate. There is no problem of the Eighth Year in Poverty Court, only the great problems of life and death, of hunger and thirst and cold, of labor and want of work. Here in the mean streets of the world is the great lesson that want of work is the greatest disaster, the greatest moral tragedy, that may happen to men and women.
If the idle women of the little snobdoms would come forth from their houses and flats, they would see that lesson staring them in the face, with a great warning to themselves. And if they would thrust aside their selfishness and learn the love of humanity, it would light a flame in their hearts which would kindle the dead ashes of their disillusionment and burn up their grievances, and make a bonfire of all their petty little troubles, and make such a light in their lives as would enable them to see the heroic qualities of ordinary duties bravely done, and of ordinary lives bravely led. Here they would find another way of escape from the perils of the Eighth Year, and a new moral health for their hearts and brains.
It is only now and then that some woman is lucky enough to find this way out, for snobbishness enchains them, and it is difficult to break its fetters.
When the woman has once taken flight, or is hesitating before taking her flight, in the Eighth Year, it is an almost hopeless business for the husband to call her back. Whenever she is called back, it is by some outside influence, beyondhissphere of influence, by some sudden accident, by some catastrophe involving both of them, or by some severe moral shock, shaking the foundations of their little home like an earthquake. There are cases in which the woman has been called back by the sudden smash-up of her husband’s business, by financial ruin. In his social ladder-climbing he is too rash. One of the rungs of the ladder breaks beneath his feet and he comes toppling down. Owing to this deadly competition of modern life, he loses his “job.” It is given to a younger or better man, or to a man with a stronger social pull. He comes home one day with a white face, trembling, horribly scared, afraid to break the news to a woman who has not been helpful to him of late, and of whose sympathy he is no longer sure. He believes that this misfortune is the last straw which will break their strained relations. He sees the great tragedy looming ahead, hearing down upon him. But, curiously enough, this apparent disaster is the salvation of both of them. The despair of her husband calls to the woman’s loyalty. All her grievances against this man are suddenly swallowed up in the precipice which has opened beneath his feet. All her antagonism is broken down and dissolved into pity. Her self-pride is slain by this man’s abasement. His weakness, his need of help, his panic-stricken heart cry to her. After all their drifting apart, their indifference to each other, their independence, he wants her again. He wants her as a helpmeet. He wants any courage she can give him, any wisdom. And she is glad to be wanted. She stretches out her hands to him. They clasp each other, and there is no longer a gulf beneath their feet; misfortune has built a bridge across the gulf which divided them. More than that, all the little meannesses of their life, all the petty selfishness of their days, all the little futile things over which they have wrangled and jangled are thrust on one side, and are seen in their right perspective. The things that matter, the only things that matter, are seen, perhaps, for the first time, clearly, in a bright light, now that they are face to face with stem realities. The shock throws them off their pedestals of conceit, of self-consciousness, of pretence. They stand on solid ground. The shock has broken the masks behind which they hid themselves. It has broken the hard crust about their hearts. It has shattered the idol which they worshipped, the idol of the great god Snob.
And so they stare into each other’s soul, and take hands again like little children, abandoned by the Wicked Uncles of life, and they grope their way back to primitive things, and begin the journey again. They have found out that this new comradeship is better even than the old romantic love of their courting days. They have discovered something of the great secret of life. They are humbled. They make new pledges to each other, pick up the broken pieces of their hopes and dreams and fit them together again in a new and sounder scheme. This time, in some cases, they do not leave the baby out of the business. The wife becomes a mother, and the child chases away all the ghosts which haunted her in the Eighth Year. She no longer wants to take flight. She has been called back.
It is nearly always some accident like this which calls the wife back, some sudden, startling change in the situation, caused by outside influences, or by the hand of Fate. Sometimes it is an illness which overtakes the husband or wife. Holding hands by the bedside, they stare into the face of Death, and again the trivialities of life, the pettiness of their previous desires, the folly of their selfishness, the stupidity of their little snobdom, are revealed by the whisperings of Death, and by its warnings. The truth of things stalks into the bedroom where the husband, or the wife, lies sleeping on the borderland. About the sick bed the weeping woman makes new vows, tears wash out her vanity, her self-conceit. Or, kneeling by the side of the woman whose transparent hand he clasps above the coverlet, the husband listens to the little voice within his conscience, and understands, with a great heartache, the pitiful meaning of the domestic strife which seemed to have killed his love for the woman for whose life now he makes a passionate cry. In the period of convalescence, after Death has stolen away, when life smiles again through the open windows, that man and woman get back to sanity and to wisdom beyond that of common-sense. They begin again with new ideals. Perhaps in a little while one of the rooms becomes a nursery. They get back to the joy of youth, once more the woman has been called back.
If none of these “accidents” happen, if some great influence like this does not thrust its way into the lives of this husband and wife during the crisis of the Eighth Year, if the woman is not caught up by some great enthusiasm, or if she can find no work for the idle hands to do, giving her new and absorbing interests to satisfy her heart and brain, then the Eighth Year is a fatal year, and the President of the Divorce Court has a new case added to his list, or the family records of the country chronicle another separation, or another woman goes to prison for arson or bomb-throwing. Because the laws of psychology are not so erratic as the world imagines. They work out on definite lines. Certain psychological forces having been set in motion, they lead inevitably to certain results. When once a woman has lost her interest in her home and husband, when she has become bored with herself, when she has a morbid craving for excitement and adventures, when she has become peevish and listless and hungry-hearted, she cannot remain in this condition. Those forces within her are tremendously powerful. They must find some outlet. They must reach a definite time of crisis when things have got to happen. These vague yearnings must be satisfied, somehow, anyhow. The emptiness of her heart must be filled by something or other. She will search round with wondering, wistful eyes, more desperate day by day, until she finds the thing, however evil it may be, however dangerous. She must still that throbbing brain of hers, even if she has to take drugs to do so. In spite of all the poison laws, she will find some kind of poison, some subtle and insidious drug to give her temporary cure, a period of vitality, a thrill of excitement, a glittering dream or two, a relief from the dulness which is pressing down upon her with leaden weights. She knows the penalty which follows this drug-taking—the awful reaction, the deadly lethargy that follows, the nervous crises, the loss of will-power, but she is prepared to pay the price because for a little while she gets peace, and artificial life. The family doctors know the prevalence of those drug-taking habits. They know the cause of them, they have watched the pitiful drama of these women’s lives. But they can do nothing to cut out the cause. Not even the surgeon’s knife can do that; their warnings fall on deaf ears, or are answered by a hysterical laugh.
As I have shown, there are other forms of drug-taking not less dangerous in their moral effects. If the woman does not go to the chemist’s shop, she goes to the darkened room of the clairvoyant and the crystal-gazer, or to the spiritualistic séance, or to the man who hides his time until the crisis of the Eighth Year delivers the woman into his hands.
Here, then, frankly and in detail, I have set out the meaning of this dangerous year of married life, and have endeavored, honestly, to analyze all the social and psychological forces which go to make that crisis. It is, in some measure, a study of our modern conditions of life as they prevail among the middle-classes, so that the problem is not abnormal, but is present, to some extent, in hundreds of thousands of small households to-day. All the tendencies of the time, all the revolutionary ideas that are in the very air we breathe, all this modern spirit of revolt against disagreeable duties, and drudgery, and discipline, the decay of religious authority, the sapping of spiritual faith, the striving for social success, the cult of snobbishness, the new creed of selfishness which ignores the future of the race and demands a good time here and now, the lack of any ideals larger than private interests and personal comforts, the ignorance of men and women who call themselves intellectual, the nervous irritability of husbands and wives who live up to the last penny of their incomes, above all the childlessness of these women who live in small flats and suburban villas, and their utter laziness, all those signs and symptoms of our social sickness lead up, inevitably, and with fatal logic, to the tragedy of the Eighth Year.
In the drawing-room of a flat in Intellectual Mansions, S. W., there was an air of quietude and peace. No one would have imagined for a moment that the atmosphere was charged with electricity, or that the scene was set for a drama of emotional interest with tragic potentialities. It seemed the dwelling-place of middle-class culture and well-to-do gentility.
The room was furnished in the “New Art” style, as seen in the showrooms of the great stores. There were sentimental pictures on the walls framed in dark oak. The sofa and chairs were covered in a rather flamboyant chintz. Through the French windows at the back could be seen the balcony railings, and, beyond, a bird’s-eye view of the park. A piano-organ in the street below was playing the latest ragtime melody, and there was the noise of a great number of whistles calling for taxis, which did not seem to come.
In a stiff-backed arm-chair by the fireplace sat an elderly lady, of a somewhat austere appearance, who was examining through her spectacles the cover of a paper backed novel, depicting a voluptuous young woman; obviously displeasing to her sense of propriety. Mrs. Heywood’s sense of propriety was somewhat acutely developed, to the annoyance, at times, of Mollie, the maid-servant, who was clearing away the tea-things in a bad temper. That is to say, she was making a great deal of unnecessary clatter.
Mrs. Heywood ignored the clatter, and concentrated her attention on the cover of the paper-backed book. It seemed to distress her, and presently she gave expression to her distress.
“Dear me! What an improper young woman!”
Mollie’s bad temper was revealed by a sudden tightening of the lips and a flushed face. She bent across an “occasional” table and peered over the old lady’s shoulder, and spoke rather impudently.
“Excuse me, ma’am, but that’smynovel, if you don’t mind.”
“Idomind,” said Mrs. Heywood. “I was shocked to find it on the kitchen dresser.”
Molly tossed her head, so that her white cap assumed an acute angle.
“I was shocked to see that it had gone from the kitchen dresser.”
Then she lowered her voice and added in a tone of bitter grievance—
“Blessed if one can call anything one’s own in this here flat.”
“It’s not fit literature foranyyoung girl,” said Mrs. Heywood severely. She looked again at the flaunting lady with an air of extreme disapproval.
“Disgusting!”
Mollie rattled the tea-things violently.
“It’s good enough for the mistress, anyhow.”
Mrs. Heywood was surprised.
“Surely she did not lend it to you?”
“Well—not exactly,” said Mollie, with just a trace of embarrassment. “I borrowed it. It’s written by her particular friend, Mr. Bradshaw.”
“Mr. Bradshaw! Surely not?”
The old lady wiped her spectacles rather nervously.
“A very nice-spoken gentleman,” said Mollie, “though he does write novels.”
Mrs. Heywood looked at the author’s name for the first time and expressed her astonishment.
“Good gracious! So it is.”
Mollie laughed as she folded up the tea-cloth. She had gained a little triumph, and scored off the “mother-in-law,” as she called the elderly lady, in the kitchen.
“Oh, he knows a thing or two, he does, my word!”
She winked solemnly at herself in the mirror over the mantelshelf.
“Hold your tongue, Mollie,” said Mrs. Heywood sharply.
“Servants are not supposed to have any tongues. Oh, dear no!”
With this sarcastic retort Mollie proceeded to put the sugar-basin into the china-cupboard, but seemed to expect a counter-attack. She was not disappointed.
“Mollie!” said Mrs. Heywood severely, looking over the rims of her spectacles.
“Now what’s wrong?”
“You have not cleaned the silver lately.”
“Haven’t I?” said Mollie sweetly.
“No,” said Mrs. Heywood. “Why not, I should like to know?”
Mollie’s “sweetness” was suddenly embittered. She spoke with ferocity.
“If you want to know, it’s because I won’t obey two mistresses at once. There’s no liberty for a mortal soul in this here flat. So there!”
“Very well, Mollie,” said Mrs. Heywood mildly. “We will wait until your mistress comes home. If she has any strength of mind at all she will give you a month’s notice.”
Mollie sniffed. The idea seemed to amuse her.
“The poor dear hasn’t any strength of mind.”
“I am surprised at you, Mollie.”
“That’s why she has gone to church again.”
Mrs. Heywood was startled. She was so startled that she forgot her anger with the maid.
“Again? Are you sure?”
“Well, she had a look of church in her eyes when she went out.”
“What sort of a look?” asked Mrs. Heywood.
“A stained-glass-window look.”
Mrs. Heywood spoke rather to herself than to Mollie.
“That makes the third time to-day,” she said pensively.
Mollie spoke mysteriously. She too had forgotten her anger and impudence. She dropped her voice to a confidential tone.
“The mistress is in a bad way, to my thinking. I’ve seen it coming on.”
“Seen what coming on?” asked the elderly lady.
“She sits brooding too much. Doesn’t even pitch into me when I break things. That’s a bad sign.”
“A bad sign?”
“I’ve noticed they’re all taken like this when they go wrong,” said the girl, speaking as one who had had a long experience of human nature in Intellectual Mansions, S. W. But these words aroused the old lady’s wrath.
“How dare you!” said Mrs. Heywood. “Leave the room at once.”
“I must tell the truth if I died for it,” said Mollie.
The two women were silent for a moment, for just then a voice outside called, “Clare! Clare!” rather impatiently.
“Oh, Lord!” said Mollie. “There’s the master.”
“Clare!” called the voice. “Oh, confound the thing!”
“I suppose he’s lost his stud again,” said Mollie. “He always does on club nights. I’d best be off.”
She took up the tea-tray and left the room hurriedly, just as her master came in. It was Mr. Herbert Heywood, generally described by his neighbors as being “Something in the City”—a man of about thirty, slight, clean-shaven, boyish, good-looking, with nervous movements and extreme irritability. He was in evening clothes with his tie undone.
“Plague take this tie!” he growled, making use of one or two un-Parliamentary expressions. Then he saw his mother and apologized.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, mother. Where’s Clare?”
Mrs. Heywood answered her son gloomily.
“I think she’s gone to church again.”
“Again?” said Herbert Heywood. “Why, dash it all—I beg your pardon, mother—she’s always going to church now. What’s the attraction?”
“I think she must be unwell,” said Mrs. Hey-wood. “I’ve thought so for some time.”
“Oh, nonsense! She’s perfectly fit.... See if you can tie this bow, mother.”
Mrs. Heywood endeavored to do so, and during the process her son showed great impatience and made irritable grimaces. But he returned to the subject of his wife.
“Perhaps her nerves are a bit wrong. Women are nervy creatures.... Oh, hang it all, mother, don’t strangle me!... As I tell her, what’s the good of having a park at your front door—Oh, thanks, that’s better.”
He looked at himself in the glass, and dabbed his face with a handkerchief.
“Of course I cut myself to-night. I always do when I go to the club.”
“Herbert, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood rather nervously.
“I—I suppose Clare is not going to bless you with a child?”
“In this flat!”
Herbert was startled and horrified. It was a great shock to him. He gazed round the little drawing-room rather wildly.
“Oh, Lord!” he said presently, when he had calmed down a little. “Don’t suggest such a thing. Besides, she is not.”
“Well, I’m nervous about her,” said Mrs. Heywood.
“Oh, rats, mother! I mean, don’t be so fanciful.”
“I don’t like this sudden craving for religion, Herbert. It’s unhealthy.”
“Devilish unhealthy,” said Herbert.
He searched about vainly for his patent boots, which were in an obvious position. It added to his annoyance and irritability.
“Why can’t she stay at home and look after me? I can’t find a single damn thing. I beg your pardon, mother.... Women’s place is in the home.... Now where on earth——”
He resumed his search for the very obvious patent boots and at last discovered them.
“Oh, there they are!”
He glanced at the clock, and expressed the opinion that he would be late for the club if he did not “look sharp.” Then a little tragedy happened, and he gave a grunt of dismay when a bootlace broke.
“Oh, my hat! Why doesn’t Clare look after my things properly?”
Mrs. Heywood asked another question, ignoring the broken bootlace.
“Need you go to the club to-night, Herbert?”
Herbert was both astonished and annoyed at this remark.
“Of course I must. It’s Friday night and the one little bit of Bohemianism I get in the week. Why not?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mrs. Heywood meekly. “Except that I thought Clare is feeling rather lonely.”
“Lonely?” said Herbert. “She has you, hasn’t she?”
“Yes, she has me.”
Mrs. Heywood spoke as though that might be a doubtful consolation.
“Besides, what more does she want? She has her afternoon At Homes, hasn’t she?”
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood, still more doubtfully.
“And she can always go to a matinée if she wants to, can’t she?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Then I have taken out a subscription to Mudie’s for her, haven’t I?”
Herbert Heywood spoke as though his wife had all the blessings of life, as though he had provided her with all that a woman’s heart might desire. But Mrs. Heywood interrupted his catalogue of good things.
“I think she reads too many novels,” she said.
“Oh, they broaden her mind,” said Herbert. “Although, I must confess they boremeto death.... Now what have I done with my cigarette-case?”
He felt all over his pockets, but could not find the desired thing.
“Oh, the curse of pockets!”
“Some of them are very dangerous, Herbert.”
“What, pockets?”
“No, novels,” said Mrs. Heywood. “Look at this.”
She thrust under his eyes the novel with the picture of the flaming lady.
“Gee whizz!” said Herbert, laughing. “Oh, well, she’s a married woman.”
“Do you see who the author is, Herbert?” Herbert look, and was astonished.
“Gerald Bradshaw, by Jove! Does he write this sort of muck?”
“He has been coming here rather often lately. Especially on club-nights, Herbert.” Herbert Heywood showed distinct signs of annoyance.
“Does he, by Jove? I don’t like the fellow. He’s a particularly fine specimen of a bad hat.”
“I’m afraid he’s an immoral man,” said Mrs. Heywood.
Herbert shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, Clare can take care of herself.”
“I wonder,” said Mrs. Heywood, as though she were not at all sure. “My dear, I think you ought to keep an eye on your wife just now.”
Herbert Heywood took his eye-glass out of a fob pocket and fumbled with it.
“Keep an eye on her, mother?”
“She is very queer,” said Mrs. Heywood. “I can’t do anything to please her.”
“Well, there’s nothing strange in that,” said Herbert. Then he added hastily—
“I mean it’s no new symptom.”
Mrs. Heywood stared at her son in a peculiar, significant way.
“She looks as if something is going to—happen.”
Herbert was really startled.
“Happen? How? When?”
“I can’t exactly explain. She appears to be waiting for something—or some one.”
Herbert was completely mystified.
“I didn’t keep her waiting this evening, did I?”
“I don’t mean you, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood.
“No?—Who, then?” asked Herbert.
Mrs. Heywood replied somewhat enigmatically. She gave a deep sigh and said—
“We women are queer things!”
“Queer isn’t the word,” said Herbert.
He stared at the carpet in a gloomy, thoughtful way, as though the pattern were perplexing him.
“Perhaps you’re right about the novels. They’ve been giving her notions, or something.”
Mrs. Heywood crossed the room hurriedly and went over to a drawer in a cabinet, from which she pulled out a number of pamphlets.
“Herbert,” she said solemnly, “she doesn’t read only novels. Look here. Look at all these little books. She simply devours them, Herbert, and then hides them.”
“Naturally, after she has devoured them,” said Herbert irritably. “But what the deuce are they?”
He turned them over one by one, reading out the titles, raising his eyebrows, and then whistling with surprise, and finally looking quite panic-stricken.
“Women’s Work and Wages. Oh, Lord! John Stuart Mill onThe Subjection of Women. The Ethics of Ibsen. Great Scott!The Principles of Eugenics.... My hat!”
“Quite so, Herbert,” said Mrs. Heywood, with a kind of grim satisfaction in his consternation.
“I don’t mind her reading improper novels,” said Herbert, “but I draw the line at this sort of stuff.”
“It’s most dangerous.”
“It’s rank poison.”
“That’s what I think,” said Mrs. Heywood.
“Where did she get hold of them?” asked Herbert.
Mrs. Heywood looked at her son as though she had another startling announcement.
“From that woman, Miss Vernon, the artist girl who lives in the flat above.”
“What, that girl who throws orange-peel over the balcony?”
“Yes, the girl who is always whistling for taxis,” said Mrs. Heywood.
“What, you mean the one who complained about my singing in the bath?”
“Yes, I shall never forgive her for that.”
“Said she didn’t mind if I sang in tune.”
“Yes, the one who sells a Suffragette paper outside Victoria Station.”
“It’s the sort of thing she would do,” said Herbert, with great sarcasm.
“I never liked her, my dear,” said Mrs. Heywood.
“Confound her impudence! As if a British subject hasn’t an inalienable right to sing in his bath! She had the cheek to say I was spoiling her temper for the rest of the day.”
Mrs. Heywood laughed rather bitterly. “She looks as if she had a temper!”
Herbert gave the pamphlets an angry slap with the back of his hand and let them fall on the floor.
“Do you mean to sayshehas been giving Clare these pestilential things?”
“I saw her bring them here,” said Mrs. Hey-wood.
“Well, they shan’t stay here.”
Herbert went to the fireplace and took up the tongs. Then he picked up the pamphlets as though they might bite and tossed them into the flames.
“Beastly things! Burn, won’t you?”
He gave them a savage poke, deeper into the fire, and watched them smolder and then break into flame.
“Pestilential nonsense!... That’s a good deed done, anyhow!”
Mrs. Heywood was rather scared.
“I am afraid Clare will be very angry.”
“Angry! I shall give her a piece of my mind. She had no right to conceal these things.” He spoke with dignity. “It isn’t honorable.”
“No,” said Mrs. Heywood, “but all the same, dear, I wish you hadn’t burned the books.”
“I should like to burn the authors of ‘em,” said Herbert fiercely. “However, they’ll roast sooner or later, that’s a comfort.”
“You had better be careful, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood rather nervously. “Clare is in a rather dangerous frame of mind just now.”
“Clare will have to learn obedience to her husband’s wishes,” said Herbert. “I thought she had learned by this time. She’s been very quiet lately.”
“Too quiet, Herbert. It’s when we women are very quiet that we are most dangerous.” Herbert was beginning to feel alarmed. He did not like all these hints, all these vague and mysterious suggestions.
“Good Lord, mother, you give me the creeps. Why don’t you speak plainly?”
Mrs. Heywood was listening. She seemed to hear some sounds in the hall. Suddenly she retreated to her arm-chair and made a pretence of searching for her knitting.
“Hush!” she said. “Here she comes.”
As she spoke the words, the door opened slowly and Clare came in. She was a tall, elegant woman of about thirty, with a quiet manner and melancholy eyes in which there was a great wistfulness. She spoke rather wearily—
“Not gone yet, Herbert? You’ll be late for the club.”
Herbert looked at his wife curiously, as though trying to discover some of those symptoms to which his mother had alluded.
“I’m afraid that’s your fault,” he said.
“My fault?”
“Surely you ought to stay at home sometimes and help me to get off decently,” said Herbert in an aggrieved way. “You know perfectly well my tie always goes wrong.”
Clare sighed; and then smiled rather miserably.
“Why can’t men learn to do their own ties? We’re living in the twentieth century, aren’t we?”
She took off her hat, and sat down with it in her lap.
“Oh, how my head aches to-night.”
“Where have you been?” asked Herbert
“Yes, dear, wherehaveyou been?” asked Mrs. Heywood.
“I’ve been round to church for a few minutes,” said Clare.
“What on earth for?” asked Herbert impatiently.
“What does one go to church for?”
“God knows!” said Herbert bitterly.
“Precisely. Have you any objection?”
“Yes, I have.”
Herbert spoke with some severity, as though he had many objections.
“I don’t object to you going to your club,” said Clare.
“Oh, that’s different.”
“In what way?” asked Clare.
“In every way. I am a man, and you’re a woman.”
Clare Heywood thought this answer out. She seemed to find something in the argument.
“Yes,” she said, “it does make a lot of difference.”
“I object strongly to this religious craze of yours,” said Herbert, trying to be calm and reasonable. “It’s unnatural. It’s—it’s devilish absurd.”
“It may keep me from—from doing other things,” said Clare.
She spoke as though the words had some tragic significance.
“Why can’t you stay at home and read a decent novel?”
“It is so difficult to find adecentnovel. And I am sick of them all.”
“Well, play the piano, then,” said Herbert.
“I am tired of playing the piano, especially when there is no one to listen.”
“There’s mother,” said Herbert.
“Mother has no ear for music.”
Mrs. Heywood was annoyed at this remark. It seemed to her unjust.
“How can you say so, Clare? You know I love Mozart.”
“I haven’t played Mozart for years,” said Clare, laughing a little. “You are thinking of Mendelssohn.”
“Well, it’s all the same,” said Mrs. Heywood.
“Yes, I suppose so,” said Clare very wearily. She drooped her head and shut her eyes until suddenly she seemed to smell something.
“Is there anything burning?”
“Burning?” said Herbert nervously.
“There is a queer smell in the flat,” said Clare.
Herbert stood with his back to the fire, and sniffed strenuously. “I can’t smell anything.”
“It’s your fancy, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood.
“It’s the smell of burned paper,” said Clare quite positively.
“Do you think so?” said her mother-in-law.
“Burned paper?” said Herbert.
Clare became suspicious. She leaned forward in her chair and stared into the fireplace.
“What are all those ashes in the grate?” she said.
“Oh, yes,” said Herbert, as though he had suddenly remembered. “Of course Ihavebeen burning some papers.”
“What papers?” asked Clare.
“Oh, old things,” said Herbert rather hurriedly. “Well, I had better be off. Goodnight, mother.”
He kissed her affectionately and said:
“Don’t stay up late. I have taken the key, Clare.”
“I hope it will fit the lock when you come back,” said Clare.
She spoke the words very quietly, but for some reason they raised her husband’s ire.
“For heaven’s sake don’t try to be funny, Clare.”
“I wasn’t trying,” said Clare very calmly. For a moment Herbert hesitated. Then he came back to his wife and kissed her.
“I think we are both a bit irritable to-night, aren’t we?”
“Are we?” said Clare.
“Nerves,” said Herbert, “the curse of the age. Well, good-night.”
Just as he was going out, Mollie, the maidservant, came in and said:
“It’s Miss Vernon, ma’am.”
“Oh,” said Clare. She glanced at her husband for a moment and theft said:
“Well, bring her in, Mollie.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Mollie, going out of the room again.
“Great Scott!” exclaimed Herbert, in a sudden excitement. “It’s that woman who flings her beastly orange-peel into my window boxes. Clare, I strongly object——”
Clare answered him a little passionately: “Oh, I am tired of your objections.”
“She’s not a respectable character,” said Herbert.
“Hush, Herbert!” said Mrs. Heywood.
As she spoke the girl who had been called Madge Vernon entered the room.
She was a bright, cheery girl, dressed plainly in a tailor-made coat and skirt, with brown boots.
“I thought I would look in for half-an-hour,” she said very cheerfully to Clare. “If you are busy, send me packing, my dear.”
“I am never busy,” said Clare. “I have nothing in the world to do.”
“Oh, that’s rotten!” said Madge. “Can’t you invent something? How are you, Mrs. Heywood?”
She shook hands with the old lady, who answered her greeting with a rather grim “Good evening.”
“Herbert is going out to-night,” said Clare. “By the way, you don’t know my husband.”
Madge Vernon looked at Herbert Heywood very sweetly.
“I have heard him singing. How do you do?”
Herbert was not at all pleased with her sweetness.
“Excuse me, won’t you?” he said. “I am just off to my club.”
“Don’t you take your wife with you?” asked Miss Vernon.
“My wife! It’s a man’s club.”
“Oh, I see. Men only. Rather selfish, isn’t it?”
Herbert Heywood was frankly astonished.
“Selfish? Why selfish? Well, I won’t stop to argue the point. Good-night, Clare. Doubtless you will enjoy Miss Vernon’s remarkable and revolutionary ideas.”
“I am sure I shall,” said Clare.
Mrs. Heywood followed her son to the door.
“Be sure you put a muffler round your neck, dear.”
Herbert answered his mother in a low voice, looking fiercely at Madge Vernon.
“I should like to twist it round somebody else’s neck!”
“I will come and find it for you, dear.”
The two young women were left alone together, and Clare brought forward a chair.
“Sit down, won’t you? Here?”
A moment later the front door was heard to hang and at the sound of it Madge laughed a little.
“Funny things, husbands! I am sure I shouldn’t know what to do with one.”
Clare smiled wanly.
“One can’t do anything with them.”
“By the by,” said Madge, “I have brought a new pamphlet for you. The ‘Rights of Wives.’”
Clare took the small book nervously, as though it were a bomb which might go off at any moment.
“I have been reading those other pamphlets.”
“Pretty good, eh?” said Madge, laughing. “Eye-openers! What?”
“They alarm me a little,” said Clare. “Alarm you?” Madge Vernon was immensely amused. “Why, they don’t bite!”
“Yes, they do,” said Clare. “Here.” She put her hand to her head as if it had been wounded.
“You mean they give you furiously to think? Well, that’s good.”
“I’m not sure,” said Clare. “Since I began to think I have been very miserable.”
“Oh, that will soon wear off,” said Madge Vernon briskly. “You’ll get used to it.”
“It will always hurt,” said Clare.
Madge Vernon smiled at her.
“I made a habit of it.”
“It’s best not to think,” said Clare. “It’s best to go on being stupid and self-satisfied.”
Clare’s visitor was shocked.
“Oh, not self-satisfied! That is intellectual death.”
“There are other kinds of death,” said Clare. “Moral death.”
Madge Vernon raised her eyebrows.
“We must buck up and do things. That’s the law of life.”
“I have nothing to do,” said Clare, in a pitiful way.
“How strange! I have such a million things to do. My days aren’t long enough. I am always pottering about with one thing or another.”
“What kind of things?” asked Clare wistfully.
Madge Vernon gave her a cheerful little laugh.
“For one thing, it’s a great joke having to earn one’s own living. The excitement of never knowing whether one can afford the next day’s meal! The joy of painting pictures—which the Royal Academy will inevitably reject. The horrible delight of burning them when they are rejected.... Besides, I am a public character, I am.”
“Are you? How?” asked Clare.
“A most notorious woman. I’m on the local Board of Guardians and all sorts of funny old committees for looking after everything and everybody.”
“What do you do?”
Clare asked the question as though some deep mystery lay in the answer.
“Oh, I poke up the old stick-in-the-muds,” said Madge Vernon, “and stir up no end of jolly rows. I make them do things, too; and they hate it. Oh, how they hate it!”
“What things, Madge?”
“Why, attending to drains, and starving widows, and dead dogs, and imbecile children, and people ‘what won’t work,’ and people ‘what will’ but can’t.”
Clare laughed at this description and then became sad again.
“I envy you! I have nothing on earth to do, and my days are growing longer and longer, so that each one seems a year.”
“Haven’t you any housework to do?” asked Madge.
“Not since my husband could afford an extra servant.”
Miss Vernon made an impatient little gesture.
“Oh, those extra servants! They have ruined hundreds of happy homes.”
“Well, we have only got one now,” said Clare. “The other left last night, because she couldn’t get on with my mother-in-law.”
“They never can!” said Miss Vernon.
“Anyhow, Herbert doesn’t think it ladylike for me to do housework.”
Madge Vernon scoffed at the idea.
“Ladylike! Oh, this suburban snobbishness! How I hate the damn thing! Forgive my bad language, won’t you?”
“I like it,” said Clare.
Miss Vernon continued her cross-examination.
“Don’t you even make your own bed? It’s awfully healthy to turn a mattress and throw the pillows about.”
“Herbert objects to my making beds,” said Clare.
“Don’t you make the puddings or help in the washing up?”
“Herbert objects to my going into the kitchen,” said Clare.
“Don’t you ever break a few plates?”
Clare smiled at her queer question.
“No, why should I?”
“There’s nothing like breaking things to relieve one’s pent-up emotions,” said Miss Vernon, with an air of profound knowledge.
“The only thing I have broken lately is something—here,” said Clare, putting her hand to her heart.
Miss Vernon was scornful.
“Oh, rubbish! The heart is unbreakable, my dear. Now, heads are much easier to crack.”
“I think mine is getting cracked, too,” said Clare.
She put her hands to her head, as though it were grievously cracked.
Madge Vernon stared at her frankly and thoughtfully.
“Look here,” she said, after a little silence, “I tell you whatyouwant. It’s a baby. Why don’t you have one?”
“Herbert can’t afford it,” said Clare. Madge Vernon raised her hands.
“Stuff and nonsense!” she said.
“Besides,” said Clare in a matter-of-fact way, “they don’t make flats big enough for babies in Intellectual Mansions.”
Madge Vernon looked round the room, and frowned angrily.
“No, that’s true. There’s no place to keep a perambulator. Oh, these jerry builders! Immoral devils!”
There was a silence between the two women. Both of them seemed deep in thought.
Then presently Clare said: “I feel as if something were going to happen; as if something must happen or break.”
“About time, my dear,” said Madge. “How long have you been married?”
“Eight years,” said Clare, in a casual way. Madge Vernon whistled with a long-drawn note of ominous meaning.
“The Eighth Year, eh?”
“Yes, it’s our eighth year of marriage.”
“That’s bad,” said Madge. “The Eighth Year! You will have to be very careful, Clare.”
Clare was startled. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“Haven’t you heard?” said Miss Vernon.
“Heard what?”
“I thought everybody knew.”
“Knew what?” asked Clare anxiously.
Madge Vernon looked at her in a pitying way.
“It’s in the evidence on the Royal Commission on Divorce.”
“What is?”
“About the Eighth Year.”
“What about it?” asked Clare. She was beginning to feel annoyed. What was Madge hiding from her?
“Why,” said Madge, “about it being the fatal year in marriage.”
“The fatal year?”
The girl leaned forward in her chair and said in a solemn way:
“There are more divorces begun in the Eighth Year than in any other period.”
Clare Heywood was scared.
“Good gracious!” she said, in a kind of whisper.
“It’s a psychological fact,” said Madge. “I work it out in this way. In the first and second years a wife is absorbed in the experiment of marriage and in the sentimental phase of love. In the third and fourth years she begins to study her husband and to find him out. In the fifth and sixth years, having found him out completely, she makes a working compromise with life and tries to make the best of it. In the seventh and eighth years she begins to find out herself, and then——”
“And then?” asked Clare, very anxiously.
Clare Heywood was profoundly disturbed.
“Well, then,” said Madge, “there is the devil to pay!”
“Dear God!” she cried.
“You see, it’s like this. If a woman has no child she gets bored... . She can’t help getting bored, poor soul. Her husband is so devoted to her that he provides her with every opportunity for getting bored—extra servants, extra little luxuries, and what he calls a beautiful little home. Ugh!” She stared round the room and made a face.
“He is so intent on this that he nearly works himself to death. Comes home with business thoughts in his head. Doesn’t notice his wife’s wistful eyes, and probably dozes off to sleep after supper. Isn’t that so?”
“Yes,” said Clare. “Horribly so.”
“Well, then, having got bored, she gets emotional. Of course the husband doesn’t notice that either.He’snot emotional. He is only wondering how to make both ends meet. But when his wife begins to get emotional, when she feels that something has broken here” (she put her hand to her heart), “when she feels like crying at unexpected moments and laughing at the wrong time, why then——”
“What?” asked Clare.
“Why, then, it’s about time the husband began to notice things, or things will begin to happen to his wife which he won’t jolly well like. That’s all!”
Clare Heywood searched her friend’s face with hungry eyes.
“Why, what will his wife do?”
“Well, there are various alternatives. She either takes to religion——”
“Ah!” said Clare, flushing a little.
“Or to drink——”
“Oh, no!” said Clare, shuddering a little.
“Or to some other kind of man,” said Madge very calmly.
Clare Hey wood was agitated and alarmed.
“How do you know these things?” she asked.
“Oh, I’ve studied ‘em,” said Madge Vernon cheerfully. “Of course there’s always another alternative.”
“What’s that?” asked Clare eagerly.
“Work,” said Madge Vernon solemnly.
“What kind of work?”
“Oh, any kind, so long as it’s absorbing and satisfying. Personally I like breaking things. One must always begin by breaking before one begins building. But it’s very exciting.”
“It must be terribly exciting.”
“For instance,” said Madge, laughing quietly, “it’s good to hear a pane of glass go crack.”
“How does it make you feel?” asked Clare Heywood.
“Oh,” said Madge, “it gives one a jolly feeling down the spine. You should try it.”
“I daren’t,” said Clare.
“It would do you a lot of good. It would get rid of your megrims. Besides, it’s in a good cause.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said Clare.
“It’s in the cause of woman’s liberty. It’s in the cause of all these suburban wives imprisoned in these stuffy little homes. It lets in God’s fresh air.”
Clare rose and moved about the room. “It’s very stuffy in here,” she said. “It’s stifling.” At this moment Mollie came in the room again, and smiled across at her mistress, saying: “Mr. Bradshaw to see you, ma’am.”
Clare was obviously agitated. She showed signs of embarrassment, and her voice trembled when she said:
“Tell him—tell him I’m engaged.”
“He says he must see you—on business,” said Mollie, lingering at the door.
“On business?”
“That’s what my young man says when he whistles up the tube,” said Mollie.
Madge Vernon looked at her friend and said rather “meaningly”: “Don’t youwantto see him? If so I shouldn’t if I were you.”
“Oh, yes,” said Clare, trying to appear quite cool. “If it’s on business.”
“Very well, ma’am,” said Mollie. As she left the room she said under her breath: “I thought you would.”
“Do you have business relations with Mr. Bradshaw?” asked Madge Vernon.
“Yes,” said Clare; “no.... In a sort of way.”
“I thought he was a novelist,” said Madge.
“So he is.”
“Dangerous fellows, novelists.”
“Hush!” said Clare. “He might hear you.”