"Tell me," said I, "what kind of a wife have you?"
"She"s the same as any one else"s wife to look at, but I fancy the other women must be different to live with."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because you can hear men laughing and singing in every public-house that you"d go into, and they wouldn"t do that if their wives were hard to live with, for n.o.body could stand a bad comrade. A good wife, a good brother, a good neighbour--these are three good things, but you don"t find them lying in every ditch."
"If you went to a ditch for your wife----!" said I.
He pursed up his lips at me.
"I think," said I, "that you need not mind the neighbours so very much for no one can spy on you but yourself. If your mind was in a gla.s.s case instead of in a head it would be different; and no one can really rule and regulate you but yourself, and that"s well worth doing."
"Different people," said he shortly, "are made differently."
"Maybe," said I, "your wife would be a good wife to some other husband, and your brother might be decent enough if he had a different brother."
He wrinkled up his eyes and looked at me very steadily--
"I"ll be saying good-bye to you, young man," said he, and he raised his hammer again and began to beat solemnly on the stones.
I stood by him for a few minutes, but as he neither spoke nor looked at me again I turned to my own path intending to strike Dublin by the Paps of Dana and the long slopes beyond them.
II
One day he chucked his job, put up his tools, told the boss he could do this and that, called hurroo to the boys, and sauntered out of the place with a great deal of dignity and one week"s wages in cash.
There were many reasons why he should not have quitted his work, not the lightest of them being that the food of a wife and family depended on his sticking to it, but a person who has a temper cannot be expected to have everything else.
Nothing makes a man feel better than telling his employer that he and his job can go bark at one another. It is the dream of a great many people, and were it not for the glamour of that idea most folk would commit suicide through sheer disgust. Getting the "sack" is an experience which wearies after the first time. Giving the sack is a felicity granted only to a few people. To go home to one"s wife with the information that you have been discharged is an adventure which one does not wish to repeat, but to go home and hand her thirty shillings with the statement that you have discharged yourself is not one of the pleasantest ways of pa.s.sing time.
His wife"s habits were as uncertain as her temper, but not as bad. She had a hot tongue, a red head, a quick fist and a big family--ingredients to compose a peppery dish. They had been only a short time married when she gave her husband to understand that there was to be only one head of that household, and that would not be he. He fought fiercely for a position on the executive but he did not get it. His voice in the household economy, which had commenced with the lordly "Let this be done," concluded in the timidly bl.u.s.tering "All right, have it your own way."
Furthermore, the theory that a woman is helpmate to a man was repugnant to her. She believed and a.s.serted that a man had to be managed, and she had several maxims to which she often gave forcible and contemptuous utterance--
"Let a man go his own road to-day and he will be shaking hands with the devil to-morrow.
"Give a man his head and he"ll lose it.
"Whiskers and sense were never found in the same patch.
"There"s more brains in one woman"s finger than there is in the congregated craniums of a battalion of men folk.
"Where there is two men there"s one fight. Where there"s three there"s a drinking match, two fights and a fine to be paid."
But while advocating peace at any price and a tax on muscles that were bigger than a fly"s knuckle she was herself a warrior of the breed of Finn and strong enough to scare a pugilist. When she was angry her family got over the garden wall, her husband first. She did not think very much of him, and she told him so, but he was sufficient of a man not to believe her.
For a long time he had been a dissatisfied person, leading a grumpy existence which was only made bearable by gusts of solitary blasphemy.
When a man curses openly he is healthy enough, but when he takes to either swearing or drinking in secret then he has travelled almost beyond redemption point.
So behold our man knocking at the door, still warmed by the fray with his late employer, but with the first tremors of fear beginning to tatter up and down his spine.
His wife opened the door herself. She was engaged in cleaning the place, a duty in which she was by no means remiss, one of the prime points in her philosophy being that a house was not clean until one"s food could be eaten off the floor. She was a big comely woman, but at the moment she did not look dainty. A long wisp of red hair came looping down on her shoulders. A smear of soot toned down the roses of her cheek, her arms were smothered in soap suds, and the fact that she was wearing a pair of her husband"s boots added nothing to her attractions.
When she saw her husband standing in the doorway at this unaccustomed hour she was a little taken aback, but, scenting trouble, she at once opened the attack--
"What in the name of heaven brings you here at this hour of the day, and the place upset the way it is? Don"t walk on the soap, man, haven"t you got eyes in your head?"
"I"m not walking on the soap with my head," he retorted, "if I was I"d see it, and if it wasn"t on the floor it wouldn"t be tripping folk up. A nice thing it is that a man can"t come into his own house without being set slipping and sliding like an acrobat on an iceberg."
"And," cried his wife, "if I kept the soap locked up it"s the nice, clean house you"d have to come into. Not that you"d mind if the place was dirty, I"ll say that much for you, for what one is reared to one likes, and what is natural is pleasant. But I got a different rearing let me tell you, and while I"m in it I"ll have the clean house no matter who wants the dirty one."
"You will so," said he, looking at the soapy water for a place to walk on.
"Can"t you be coming in then, and not stand there framed in the doorway, gawking like a fool at a miracle."
"I"ll sail across if you"ll get a ca.n.a.l boat or a raft," said he, "or, if the children are kept out of sight, I"ll strip, ma"m, and swim for it."
His wife regarded him with steady gloom.
"If you took the smallest interest in your home," said she, "and were less set on gallivanting about the country, going to the Lord knows where, with the Lord knows who, you"d know that the children were away in school at this hour. Nice indeed the places you visit and the company you keep, if the truth were known--walk across it, man, and wipe your feet on the kitchen mat."
So he walked into the kitchen, and sat down, and, as he sat, the last remnants of his courage trembled down into his boots and evaporated.
His wife came in after him--she drooped a speculative eye on her lord--
"You didn"t say what brought you home so early," said she.
When a hard thing has to be done the quickest way is generally the best way. It is like the morning bath--don"t ruminate, jump in, for the longer you wait the more dubious you get, and the tub begins to look arctic and repellent.
Some such philosophy as this dictated his att.i.tude. He lugged out his week"s wages, slapped it on the table, and said--
"I"ve got the sack."
Then he stretched his legs out, pushed his fists deep into his trouser pockets, and waited.
His wife sat down too, slowly and with great care, and she stared in silence at her husband--
"Do you tell me you have lost your employment?" said she in a quiet voice.
"I do, then," said he. "I chucked it myself. I told old Whiskers that he could go and boil his job and his head together and sell the soup for cat-lap."
"You threw up your situation yourself."
"You"ve got the truth of it, ma"m," he rejoined.
"Maybe you"d be telling me what you did the like of that for?"