CHAPTER X: THE CHARWOMAN
Two-and-sixpence a day is what it costs me to have the pleasure of Mrs. Muff’s society. She came at half-past eight and began at once on a bit of breakfast.
“I beg pardon, m’m,” said Ruth, when Mrs. Muff had been with us for a week (she came on Mondays and Tuesdays and did the rough washing), “but do I understand that Mrs. Muff is to have anything special ordered in for her breakfast?”
“It depends,” I said. “Is a charwoman fed on special food like a gold-fish? Won’t she thrive unless we give her ant’s eggs or boiled Indian meal?”
“I couldn’t say, I’m sure, m’m.” Ruth glanced angrily in the direction of the washhouse where Mrs. Muff was urging us in quavering tones to abide with her. “She had an egg this morning like the rest of us,but she said she wouldn’t be responsible if it happened again, as they always disagreed with her.”
“Ah, but these are fresh ones,” I said. “Did you explain it to her? Perhaps she had never tried them before; it makes all the difference.”
Ruth suggested that I had better speak to her myself, so I gathered up my skirts and “webbed it,” as an elegant friend of mine puts it, over the wet floor to Mrs. Muff and touched her on the shoulder.
“Good morning, Mrs. Muff,” I shouted. The song ceased. An amiable little cherry face with a sharp nose, vegetable eyes, and four teeth, by no means whole, whisked round upon me out of the steam.
“I can only abide with you for a minute, dear Mrs. Muff,” I bawled, “but I came to ask whether you had everything you wanted.”
“Oh, yes, thank you, m’m, indeed—unless it were that you could see your way to a new wash-tub; this one leaks somethingawful. If you thought of getting a man in to see to it he would tell you.”
“I know what he would tell me,” I replied, “I say—I know what he would tell me. I have heard it before.”
“And what was that, m’m?” Mrs. Muff inquired intelligently with one dripping hand behind her ear.
“I can’t explain,” I shouted, “it would take too long, but it made him whistle a great deal, and I don’t think the whistling did the tub any good, so we got a new one, and that is the one you are using—it is quite new—I can’t get another just yet.”
“Oh, quite so, m’m, quite so, I only thought I would mention it. I can manage splendidly, but this soap don’t seem to get up much of a lather. Where I was in my last place I did all the master’s shirts, and the table-cloths, and the sheets, and the pillow-cases. I made a splendid job of it; got a fine lather we did, and all with Cross and Blackwell’s soap, nothing else; I never put nothing to it, no soda nor chemicals; Idon’t hold with them. Just the plain soap. Now I’ll just show you this soap if you can be troubled—beg pardon, it’s me left ear—if you’ll excuse me I’ll turn round—now then, what was it, m’m?”
“By and by,” I screamed, “but what about your breakfast?”
“Oh, don’t you trouble about that, m’m,” she assured me, “anything will do for me. Just what you are having yourselves, m’m. A bit of bread is all I need. I always say so long as we ’ave bread we’ve no need to complain. It’s a pity you don’t ’appen to have a better drying ground, isn’t it, m’m? You could do with a nice field. Always seems to make the things sweeter to my mind with plenty o’ fresh air; but, bless you, I can manage. I’ll give them an extra rub and they’ll look every bit as well. I’m accustomed to make things do as best I can, with me ’usband being an invalid. I was a splendid cook at one time, used to cook every bit of what ’e ’ad, I did indeed, and wash too—washed everything for the children—andin me last place we ’ad everything to do, the table-cloths, and the sheets, and the——”
The washhouse was full of steam, so she did not notice my escape. Through the open window I could hear that she supposed me to be still with her. Presently there was an abrupt pause and the hymn began again.
I told Ruth next morning that I thought she had misjudged Mrs. Muff; she seemed a good-natured old lady, and used to putting up with things. I was informed that she had carried on something dreadful that morning, wanting three courses for breakfast, besides jam and coffee; said tea wasn’t fit stuff to begin the day on, there was nothing strengthening about it. “And she’s calling the soap for everything,” Ruth added; “says she can’t wash with it, and there is no place to dry the clothes—perhaps you wouldn’t mind speaking to her.”
She was out on the back lawn this time hanging out the clothes. Some eccentricflannel garments flaunted defiance, with one leg in the air, and Mrs. Muff sang:
“At the sign of triumphSatan’s host doth flee——”
“At the sign of triumphSatan’s host doth flee——”
“At the sign of triumphSatan’s host doth flee——”
“At the sign of triumph
Satan’s host doth flee——”
“Certainly it does,” I said to myself, and turning up my sleeves I walked out.
“Mrs. Muff,” I began, “what is all this again about breakfast and soap?”
Mrs. Muff in tears was worse than anything I had imagined to be possible. The only thought that enabled me to proceed was that Ruth in tears would be less harrowing but far more terrible. As usual, pity was conquered by fear, and I saw myself as an egg-thirsty tyrant standing (with Ruth behind me) belabouring the prostrate body of poor musical Mrs. Muff with a bar of Gossage’s Tallow Crown. Neither “Primrose Glory” (I think that was the name of her soap) nor fried fish were ever mentioned between us again. Ruth generously added half a cold pie to the peace contract, and I contributed a blue serge suit dear to James’sheart. It is always satisfactory to work in minor interests with great ones and to combine generosity with one’s own advantage.
Imagination is sometimes thought to belong to a high order of intelligence. I believe it often depends upon absence of education. A great mind may so use its education that it only provides a wider field for the imagination, just as the marvellous digestion of a goat can adapt all sorts of inedible stuff to a useful end, but it is difficult to improve on the brilliant fancy of quite ordinary children and illiterate old ladies. If Mrs. Muff had had a normally adult intelligence or the least smattering of science, she would never have expected me to believe that the numerous handkerchiefs that got lost in the wash had gone down the grid. We lost six in one week and ten in the next, and still the water flowed peacefully away, nor ever tarried for a moment round Mrs. Muff’s ill-protected roots. I gave orders that if she would make such a messshe must stand on a foot-stool, which she reluctantly did; but if her explanation about the grid had contained a tenth part of fact she would have been standing knee-deep in a lake in no time. If Mrs. Muff had not been so deaf I should have told her some of the explanations that I have heard children give for natural phenomena, and asked whether they seemed to her at all remarkable. A nice child of my acquaintance, who invariably comes to dinner with dirty finger-nails, has given me quite a lot of imaginative pleasure. Once (she was reproved and sent back each time) it was the cold weather that had made them black; another day—the next, I believe—it was the thunder; the last time I went there to lunch it was because she had been hanging down her hands, and her mother commented upon the curious fact that the week before it had been because she was reaching up to do her hair. I myself have been told that the plates were sooty because the plumber was in the house, that the fresh eggs were bad because of the time of year,and I have waited to complete my collection of “facts that every housewife ought to know,” until I am assured that the cat has had an unusual number of kittens on account of the range.