The Plain Man and His Wife by Arnold Bennett (ereader with dictionary .TXT) 📖

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"Alpha, the man who cuts off another man's hands is a ruffian. The man who cuts off a woman's hands is a scoundrel. There is no excuse for him--none whatever. And the kinder he is the worse he is. I repeat that you are the worst sort of scoundrel. Your family mourns you, and every member of it says what an angel of a father you were. But you were a scoundrel all the same. And at heart every member of the family knows it and admits it. Which is rather distressing. And there are thousands just like you, Alpha. Yes, even in England there are tens of thousands just like you....

"But you aren't dead yet. I was only asking you to conceive that you were.

"Believe me, my dear Alpha,

"Yours affectionately."

A long and violent epistle perhaps. You inquire in what spirit Alpha received it. The truth is, he never did receive it.


IV


You naturally assume that before the letter could reach him Alpha had been mortally struck down by apoplexy, double pneumonia, bullet, automobile, or some such enemy of joy, and that all the dreadful things which I had foreseen might happen did in fact happen, thus proving once more what a very wise friend I was, and filling me with justifiable pride in my grief. But it was not so. Alpha was not struck down, nor did his agreeable house topple over the metaphorical precipice. According to poetical justice he ought to have been struck down, just to serve him right, and as a warning to others--only he was not. Not merely the wicked, but the improvident and the negligent, often flourish like the green bay tree, and they keep on flourishing, and setting wisdom and righteousness at defiance in the most successful manner. Which, indeed, makes the life of a philosopher and sagacious adviser extremely difficult and ungrateful.

Alpha never received my letter because I never sent it. There are letters which one writes, not to send, but to ease one's mind. This letter was one of them. It would not have been proper to dispatch such a letter. Moreover, in the duties of friendship, as distinguished from the pleasures of friendship, speech is better, bolder, surer than writing. When two friends within hailing distance of each other get to exchanging epistles in order to settle a serious difference of opinion, the peril to their friendship is indeed grave; and the peril is intensified when one of them has adopted a superior moral attitude--as I had. The letters grow longer and longer, ruder and ruder, and the probability of the friendship surviving grows ever rapidly less and less. It is--usually, though not always--a mean act to write what you have not the pluck to say.

So I just kept the letter as a specimen of what I could do--if I chose--in the high role of candid friend.

I said to myself that I would take the first favourable occasion to hint to Mr. Alpha how profoundly, etc., etc.

The occasion arrived sooner than I had feared. Alpha had an illness. It was not alarming, and yet it was sufficiently formidable. It began with colitis, and ended with appendicitis and an operation. Soon after Alpha had risen from his bed and was cheerfully but somewhat feebly about again I met him at a club. He was sitting in an arm-chair in one of the huge bay-windows of the club, and gazing with bright interest upon the varied spectacle of the street. The occasion was almost ideal. I took the other arm-chair in the semicircle of the window. I saw at once by his careless demeanour that his illness had taught him nothing, and I determined with all my notorious tact and persuasiveness to point a moral for him.

And just as I was clearing my throat to begin he exclaimed, with a jerk of the elbow and a benevolently satiric smile:

"See that girl?"

A plainly-dressed young woman carrying a violin-case crossed the street in front of our window.

"I see her," said I. "What about her?"

"That's Omega's second daughter."

"Oh, Omega," I murmured. "Haven't seen him for ages. What's he doing with himself? Do you ever meet him nowadays?"

Said Mr. Alpha:

"I happened to dine with him--it was chiefly on business--a couple of days before I fell ill. Remarkably strange cove, Omega--remarkably strange."

"Why? How? And what's the matter with the cove's second daughter, anyway?"

"Well," said Alpha, "it's all of a piece--him and his second daughter and the rest of the family. Funny case. It ought to interest you. Omega's got a mania."

"What mania?"

"Not too easy to describe. Call it the precaution mania."

"The precaution mania? What's that?"

"I'll tell you."

And he told me.


V


"Odd thing," said Alpha, "that I should have been at Omega's just as I was sickening for appendicitis. He's great on appendicitis, is Omega."

"Has he had it?"

"Not he! He's never had anything. But he informed me that before he went to Mexico last year he took the precaution of having his appendix removed, lest he might have acute appendicitis in some wild part of the country where there might be no doctor just handy for an operation. He's like that, you know. I believe if he had his way there wouldn't be an appendix left in the entire family. He's inoculated against everything. They're all inoculated against everything. And he keeps an elaborate medicine-chest in his house, together with elaborate typewritten instructions which he forced his doctor to give him--in case anything awful should happen suddenly. Omega has only to read those instructions, and he could stitch a horrible wound, tie up a severed artery, or make an injection of morphia or salt water. He has a thermometer in every room and one in each bath. Also burglar-alarms at all doors and windows, and fire extinguishers on every floor. But that's nothing. You should hear about his insurance. Of course, he's insured his life and the lives of the whole family of them. He's insured against railway accidents and all other accidents, and against illness. The fidelity of all his clerks is insured. He's insured against burglary, naturally. Against fire, too. And against loss of rent through fire. His plate-glass is insured. His bunch of keys is insured. He's insured against employers' liability. He's insured against war. He's insured against loss of business profits. The interest on his mortgage securities is insured. His wretched little automobile is insured. I do believe he was once insured against the eventuality of twins."

"He must feel safe," I said.

"Not the least bit in the world," replied Alpha. "Life is a perfect burden to him. That wouldn't matter so much if he didn't make it a perfect burden to all his family as well. They've all got to be prepared against the worst happening. If he fell down dead his wife would know just what to do. She knows all the details of his financial position exactly. She has to; he sees to that. He keeps her up to date in them every day. And she has to show him detailed accounts of the house as though it was a business undertaking, because he's so afraid of her being left helpless and incapable. She just has to understand that 'life is real, life is earnest,' and death more so.

"Then the children. They're all insured, of course. Each of the girls has to take charge of the house in turn. And they must all earn their own living--in case papa fell down dead. Take that second daughter. She hates music, but she has a certain mechanical facility with the fiddle, and so she must turn it into coin, in order to be on the safe side. Her instincts are for fine clothes, idleness, and responsibility. She'd take the risks cheerfully enough if he'd let her. But he won't. So she's miserable. I think they all are more or less."

"But still," I put in, "to feel the burden of life is not a bad thing for people's characters."

"Perhaps not," said Alpha. "But to be crushed under a cartload of bricks isn't likely to do one much good, is it? Why, Omega's a wealthy man, and d'you know, he must live on about a third of his income. The argument is, as usual, that he's liable to fall down dead--and insurance companies are only human--and anyhow, old age must be amply provided for. And then all his securities might fall simultaneously. And lastly, as he says, you never know what may happen. Ugh!"

"Has anything happened up to now?"

"Oh, yes. An appalling disaster. His drawing-room hearthrug caught fire six years ago and was utterly ruined. He got eleven dollars out of the insurance company for that, and was ecstatically delighted about it for three weeks. Nothing worse ever will happen to Omega. His business is one of the safest in the country. His constitution is that of a crocodile or a parrot. And he's as cute as they make 'em."

"And I suppose you don't envy him?"

"I don't," said Alpha.

"Well," I ventured, "let me offer you a piece of advice. Never travel in the same train with Mr. Omega."

"Never travel in the same train with him? Why not?"

"Because if there were a railway accident, and you were both killed on the spot, the world might draw comparisons between the effect on your family and the effect on his, and your family wouldn't like it."

We remained silent for a space, and the silence was dramatic. Nervously, I looked out of the window.

At length Alpha said:

"I suppose there is such a thing as the happy medium."

"Good-bye, Alpha." I rose abruptly. "Sorry, but I've got to go at once."

And I judiciously departed.



IV - IN HER PLACE

I


The plain man is not always mature and successful, as I have hitherto regarded him. He may be unsuccessful in a worldly sense; but from my present point of view I do not much care whether he is unsuccessful in that sense. I know that plain men are seldom failures; their very plainness saves them from the alarming picturesqueness of the abject failure. On the other hand, I care greatly whether the plain man is mature or immature, old or young. I should prefer to catch him young. But he is difficult to catch young. The fact is that, just as he is seldom a failure, so he is seldom young. He becomes plain only with years. In youth, even in the thirties, he has fanciful capricious qualities which prevent him from being classed with the average sagacious plain man. He slowly loses these inconvenient qualities, and develops into part of the backbone of the nation. And then it is too late to tell him that he is not perfect, simply because he has forgotten to cultivate the master quality of all qualities--namely, imagination. For imagination must be cultivated early, and it is just the quality that these admirable plain men lack.

By imagination I mean the power to conceive oneself in a situation which one is not actually in; for instance, in another person's place. It is among the sardonic humours of destiny that imagination, while positively dangerous in an ill-balanced mind and of the highest value in a well-balanced mind, is to be found rather in the former than in the latter. And anyhow, the quality is rare in Anglo-Saxon races, which are indeed both afraid and ashamed of it.

And yet could the plain,