PAGE 8
The Foolish Virgin
by
The day before, she had been to Forest Hill, had seen Mrs. Halliday, and entered into an engagement. At midday on the morrow she arrived at the house which was henceforth to be her home, the scene of her labours.
Sheer stress of circumstance accounted for Mrs. Halliday’s decision. Geoffrey Hunt, a dispassionate observer, was not misled in forming so high an opinion of his friend’s wife. Only a year or two older than Rosamund, Mrs. Halliday had the mind and the temper which enable woman to front life as a rational combatant, instead of vegetating as a more or less destructive parasite. Her voice declared her; it fell easily upon a soft, clear note; the kind of voice that expresses good-humour and reasonableness, and many other admirable qualities; womanly, but with no suggestion of the feminine gamut; a voice that was never likely to test its compass in extremes. She had enjoyed a country breeding; something of liberal education assisted her natural intelligence; thanks to a good mother, she discharged with ability and content the prime domestic duties. But physically she was not inexhaustible, and the laborious, anxious years had taxed her health. A woman of the ignorant class may keep house, and bring up a family, with her own hands; she has to deal only with the simplest demands of life; her home is a shelter, her food is primitive, her children live or die according to the law of natural selection. Infinitely more complex, more trying, is the task of the educated wife and mother; if to conscientiousness be added enduring poverty, it means not seldom an early death. Fatigue and self-denial had set upon Mrs. Halliday’s features a stamp which could never be obliterated. Her husband, her children, suffered illnesses; she, the indispensable, durst not confess even to a headache. Such servants as from time to time she had engaged merely increased her toil and anxieties; she demanded, to be sure, the diligence and efficiency which in this new day can scarce be found among the menial ranks; what she obtained was sluttish stupidity, grotesque presumption, and every form of female viciousness. Rosamund Jewell, honest in her extravagant fervour, seemed at first a mocking apparition; only after a long talk, when Rosamund’s ingenuousness had forcibly impressed her, would Mrs. Halliday agree to an experiment. Miss Jewell was to live as one of the family; she did not ask this, but consented to it. She was to receive ten pounds a year, for Mrs. Halliday insisted that payment there must be.
“I can’t cook,” Rosamund had avowed.”I never boiled a potato in my life. If you teach me, I shall be grateful to you.”
“The cooking I can do myself, and you can learn if you like.”
“I should think I might wash and scrub by the light of nature?”
“Perhaps. Good will and ordinary muscles will go a long way.”
“I can’t sew, but I will learn.”
Mrs. Halliday reflected.
“You know that you are exchanging freedom for a hard and a very dull life?”
“My life has been hard and dull enough, if you only knew. The work will seem hard at first, no doubt. But I don’t think I shall be dull with you.”
Mrs. Halliday held out her work-worn hand, and received a clasp of the fingers attenuated by idleness.
It was a poor little house; built–of course–with sham display of spaciousness in front, and huddling discomfort at the rear. Mrs. Halliday’s servants never failed to urge the smallness of the rooms as an excuse for leaving them dirty; they had invariably been accustomed to lordly abodes, where their virtues could expand. The furniture was homely and no more than sufficient, but here and there on the walls shone a glimpse of summer landscape, done in better days by the master of the house, who knew something of various arts, but could not succeed in that of money-making. Rosamund bestowed her worldly goods in a tiny chamber which Mrs. Halliday did her best to make inviting and comfortable; she had less room here than at Mrs. Banting’s, but the cleanliness of surroundings would depend upon herself, and she was not likely to spend much time by the bedside in weary discontent. Halliday, who came home each evening at half-past six, behaved to her on their first meeting with grave, even respectful, courtesy; his tone flattered Rosamund’s ear, and nothing could have been more seemly than the modest gentleness of her replies.