CHAPTER XXII: CHARITY
A few years after she left the cradle, Anne came to the decision that, whatever else she did, she would not be charitable. I found that this meant, more explicitly, that she would not wear a bonnet, nor gloves that were too long in the fingers.
I wonder what it feels like to be one of the poor, and realise that one’s only callers are sure to be people who wear gloves that are too long in the fingers. I am never at home to that kind of visitor myself, but for those who have to answer the door in person there can be no escape. Also, how distressing it must be when the visitor sits down and remarks how clever we have been to make this poky room so nice, and are those our husband’s socks? How many does he get through in the week? I tried it on Mrs. Van Dieman one day, because I know she has a district. My entrance was ratherspoilt by the butler being obliged to show me in, but after he had shut the door I tripped up to Mrs. Van Dieman with my most sympathetic smile and said: “What a sweet outlook you have. It must be such a comfort in your sordid life to be able to grow flowers.” I explained that I was district-visiting, and she happened to be first on my list to-day. “I hope your poor husband has been keeping less intoxicated lately?” I added.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said coldly.
“Well, well, we must take the good with the bad, I suppose, and be thankful if he has his health,” I said, shaking my head gloomily, “but you must tell him from me that I hope that he is going to try to keep straight now. And you, dear Mrs. Van Dieman, must try to be less extravagant; they tell me you spend a great deal on dress, you know. I am sure you gave as much for that little thing you have on as I am able to spend in the whole year on my clothes—though it is very pretty, of course.”
Mrs. Van Dieman did not seem to understand about my district, and when I explained again she said it was quite different with that sort of people; they had no one to advise them, and it made a break in the day having some one to take an interest. All the same, I thought I would persevere. There ought not to be one law for the rich and another for the poor, so I said I would continue my visits, and hoped to find her in a better frame of mind next time I called.
I then went to the rector’s house and was shown into his study. He was busy doing accounts.
“Ah, good morning, rector,” I said, “glad to see you at work. I just called round to have a chat with you. Now tell me, do you find yourself well and satisfactorily shepherded here?”
“Pardon me, I think there must be some mistake,” said my dear Mr. Tracy.
“No, indeed,” I said, “no mistake. I only wanted to be a help, if possible. Youare in my district, you know, and it is my duty to find out if your spiritual welfare is being attended to. I should be sorry if you suffered from neglect of anything I could do to help or advise.”
“It is very good of you, Mrs. Molyneux,” he replied, though he seemed rather embarrassed. “Of course, I am only too grateful for any assistance, but, indeed, I hardly understand——”
“Well, then,” I said, “let us sit down and talk it over. Do you find you get enough mental stimulus in the town?”
“Do you mean that there is a lack of culture?” he asked. “Because if so you have put your finger on the weakest point in our society. I find an extraordinary lack of enthusiasm for anything really great in literature or painting or music. It is quite deplorable; it has evidently struck you——”
“It has, indeed.” (This was the most successful visit I had paid.) “I should be so glad if there were anything in that direction that I could throw light upon for you.”
“I didn’t know that you were an authority on these things, Mrs. Molyneux,” he said, greatly impressed.
“I am not,” I answered. “I don’t know anything about any of them, but you are in my district, so I was bound to come and take an interest in you, wasn’t I?”
The dear thing was so nice about it, and talked so charmingly about the Pre-Raphaelites, and theSaturday Review, and the ungracefulness of crinolines, that I felt there was no room in him for improvement, so I would go to some more deserving case. I called next upon Mr. Figgins who writes books. I found him writing in his study.
“Good afternoon, Figgins, hard at work as usual,” I began.
He was very nice to me, and pretended he was not at all busy, so I sat down on the edge of my chair, and looked about.
“This is my day for the district,” I said, “and I knew I should find you at home just now. I suppose you are beginning to makeplenty of money with your books? I hope you are putting some of it by.”
Mr. Figgins looked at me rather curiously, and said he would order tea.
“No, no, by and by, Figgins,” I said, stopping him on his way to the bell; “by and by, when we have had our little chat. You know money is a great responsibility, and I sometimes think that you do not quite realise this with regard to your dear wife; you know, when the husband makes money just in order to gamble it away it means that he and his self-respect are rapidly going down the hill together. It is quite time you began to think about your old age, and what would happen to the boys if the bread-winner were called away.”
“I wish you would tell me what it is,” said Mr. Figgins. “If you are rehearsing a play I will help you, but I must have the book and know all about it—you can’t go on like this.”
“But I have told you,” I insisted. “I am district-visiting and you are in my parish, so I have to take you on a certain day and youhave to sit and listen to me. I am going to poke all round your room presently and leave some literature.”
That really angered him, and he became dreadfully polite. At last we compromised, he agreeing to take me home in his motor if I would stop and have tea first, but I was pledged to leave his income and his habits alone.
Mrs. Figgins came in while we were having tea. We explained what I had come about. She said it was a thing that ought to be done more, that she was right down glad I had spoke straight to Figgins, and she hoped now that he would begin and make a change for the better.
“But, my dear,” she said, “what we want here is a mothers’ meeting. It is all very well to tell one lot of mothers not to give a new-born baby stewed rhubarb, but it is equally necessary to tell mothers like Mrs. Van Dieman not to give their infants raw theory. I have to hold the next meeting of the Parents’ Guild in my house. Will you come and do a little district-visiting there?”
I promised her that although James would not wish me to initiate any form of outrage, I would back her up in any she liked to commit. The meeting was held during the next week. I arrived early, and we awaited events together. Presently the door-bell rang. We peeped vulgarly through the window. There was a terrible thing upon the door-step—all face, like my enemy the fish before it is filleted—it had the same lifeless eye, and a flat hat balanced on the top like a sheet of note-paper. It was looking round in a dreadful vacant manner waiting for admission. I remembered a story heard in my infancy about some children who had a stepmother with a glass eye and a wooden tail. We were told how their flesh used to creep with horror when they heard her coming upstairs. In another minute she would be in the room. We darted to our places and listened with beating hearts to the pat-pat on the stairs.
“Mrs. Flockson,” said the maid.
“Quite a large membership now, havewe not?” said Mrs. Flockson, sitting down in an attitude of faded gloom that infected us both like a disease. I began to be conscious of my back, and my legs, and petticoats and things that I was usually unaware of. “I shall be so interested to hear what Miss Jamieson has to say about children’s toys. It is so important, is it not?”
“I don’t think so,” said Mrs. Figgins crisply. “I don’t think it is at all important, but they would have it. I had much rather they had spoken about children’s manners; they are dreadful in this neighbourhood.”
“Yes, of course, some are very bad,” sighed Mrs. Flockson, “but it is so difficult, isn’t it, to know just where to draw the line without being too severe. They say now it is so important that the character should be developed along its natural lines. It is so difficult not to impose one’s own individuality too much, and yet to preserve the idea of everything that is sweet and gracious.”
Now, if I had been alone I could have managed her perfectly. I could have kept Mrs. Flockson happy without doing her an atom of harm, but Mrs. Figgins is so abrupt.
“I can’t stop to think about individuality when a child is gobbling and talking nonsense at the same time,” she said. “I tell it at once, ‘Don’t eat like a pig,’ and then it doesn’t. I don’t care whether I am imposing my individuality or that of any other self-respecting person who wishes to eat with Christians.”
Several more people came in then. They were mostly badly dressed, and evidently put all their money on expression so far as charm was concerned; but then when people are very much in earnest about things that are of no consequence, and have as much consciousness as rabbits, and are not very healthy, it is difficult to make them look nice.
Miss Jamieson, a capable pink lady in a well-made dress with irrelevant trimming, spoke for half an hour on the question of children’s toys. She told us what toys ought to mean, and the qualities they ought tofoster in the child. How, if his taste were trained in this manner, he would more easily distinguish the good from the bad later on. I asked whether a good taste in dolls acquired in the nursery would help my son not to fall in love with the wrong kind of minx. I did not put it in just those words, but Miss Jamieson did not give me much comfort. She smiled kindly, and said my question hardly came within the scope of her paper, but she was sure a taste in dolls would help very much, only boys did not play much with dolls, did they?
Then some one got up and said there was just one question she would like to ask, and that was, when Miss Jamieson recommended us to get those beautifully modelled animals for the nursery—she would ask presently for the address where they could be got—was there any one particular animal more than another that she recommended? And was it better to begin with the tame animals, as being less alarming, and work gradually up to the jungle animals, or would that be givingthe child a wrong idea of evolution, as, of course, the wild animals did come first, didn’t they?
Miss Jamieson disposed of this lady by saying that, so long as they were animals of noble instinct, she did not think it mattered in what order they came, but she thought that unpleasant animals, such as the glutton or the sloth, should be kept for more advanced study.
Other inquiries, such as whether a Noah’s Ark were bad in case it biased the mind towards the dogmatic side of religion, instead of dwelling on the larger and more comprehensive issues, and whether playing at soldiers ever resulted in the child becoming brutalised, were dealt with in their turn, and then a vote of thanks to Miss Jamieson was proposed, seconded, and carried, and we had tea.
On the way home I passed a house where a young friend of mine lives with his barbarous parents. I felt it my duty to ask how his father was.
“We ain’t seen ’im for three days,” said Jimmy. “He’s been on the drunk and pawned everything in the ’ouse—’e’s a fat-’ead, ’e is.”
I thought, as I walked home, that Mrs. Flockson perhaps exaggerated the difficulty that parents may have in preserving all that is sweet and gracious without imposing their own individuality too much upon their children.