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The Tight Hand
by
II
The supreme crisis, to which the foregoing is a mere prelude, in the affairs of Mrs Garlick and Maria, was occasioned by the extraordinary performances of the Mayor of Bursley. This particular mayor was invested with the chain almost immediately upon the conclusion of a great series of revival services in which he had conspicuously figured. He had an earthenware manufactory half-way up the hill between Bursley and its loftiest suburb, Toft End, and the smoke of his chimneys and kilns was generally blown by a favourable wind against the windows of Mrs Garlick’s house, which stood by itself. Mrs Garlick made nothing of this. In the Five Towns they think no more of smoke than the world at large used to think of small-pox. The smoke plague is exactly as curable as the small-pox plague. It continues to flourish, not because smokiness is cheaper than cleanliness–it is dearer–but because a greater nuisance than smoke is the nuisance of a change, and because human nature in general is rather like Mrs Garlick: its notion of economy is to pay heavily for the privilege of depriving itself of something–mutton or cleanliness.
However, this mayor was different. He had emerged from the revival services with a very tender conscience, and in assuming the chain of office he assumed the duty of setting an example. It was to be no excuse to him that in spite of bye-laws ten thousand other chimneys and kilns were breathing out black filth all over the Five Towns. So far as he could cure it the smoke nuisance had to be cured, or his conscience would know the reason why! So he sat on the borough bench and fined himself for his own smoke, and then he installed gas ovens. The town laughed, of course, and spoke of him alternately as a rash fool, a hypocrite, and a mere pompous ass. In a few months smoke had practically ceased to ascend from the mayoral manufactory. The financial result to the mayor was such as to encourage the tenderness of consciences. But that is not the point. The point is that Mrs Garlick, re-entering her house one autumn morning after a visit to the market, paused to look at the windows, and then said to Maria:
“Maria, what have you to do this afternoon?”
Now Mrs Garlick well knew what Maria had to do.
“I’m going to change the curtains, mum.”
“Well, you needn’t,” said Mrs Garlick. “It’s made such a difference up here, there being so much less smoke, that upon my word the curtains will do another three months quite well!”
“Well, mum, I never did!” observed Maria, meaning that so shocking a proposal was unprecedented in her experience. Yet she was thirty-five.
“Quite well!” said Mrs Garlick, gaily.
Maria said no more. But in the afternoon Mrs Garlick, hearing sounds in the drawing-room, went into the drawing-room and discovered Maria balanced on a pair of steps and unhooking lace curtains.
“Maria,” said she, “what are you doing?”
Maria answered as busy workers usually do answer unnecessary questions from idlers.
“I should ha’ thought you could see, mum,” she said tartly, insolently, inexcusably.
One curtain was already down.
“Put that curtain back,” Mrs Garlick commanded.
“I shall put no curtain back!” said Maria, grimly; her excited respiration shook the steps. “All to save the washing of four pair o’ curtains! And you know you beat the washerwoman down to tenpence a pair last March! Three and fo’pence, that is! For the sake o’ three and fo’pence you’re willing for all Toft End to point their finger at these ‘ere windows.”
“Put that curtain back,” Mrs Garlick repeated haughtily.
She saw that she had touched Maria in a delicate spot–her worship of appearances. The mutton was simply nothing to these curtains. Nevertheless, as there seemed to be some uncertainty in Maria’s mind as to who was the mistress of the house, Mrs Garlick’s business was to dispel that uncertainty. It may be said without exaggeration that she succeeded in dispelling it. But she did not succeed in compelling Maria to re-hang the curtain. Maria had as much force of character as Mrs Garlick herself. The end of the scene, whose details are not sufficiently edifying to be recounted, was that Maria went upstairs to pack her box, and Mrs Garlick personally re-hung the curtain. One’s dignity is commonly an expensive trifle, and Mrs Garlick’s dignity was expensive. To avoid prolonging the scene she paid Maria a month’s wages in lieu of notice–L1, 13s, 4d. Then she showed her the door. Doubtless (Mrs Garlick meditated) the girl thought she would get another rise of wages. If so, she was finely mistaken. A nice thing if the servant is to decide when curtains are to go to the wash! She would soon learn, when she went into another situation, what an easy, luxurious place she had lost by her own stupid folly! Three and fourpences might be picked up in the street, eh? And so on.