Mr. Wimple was shaving soap into the laundry tub, but he stopped when she entered and sang at her: “And why did the maid leave?”
“You know why she left, Ferd.”
“She left,” chanted Ferdinand, poking the twins' clothing viciously with a wooden paddle, “because …” But what Mr. Wimple said, and the way he said it, falls naturally into the freer sort of verse:
“She left [sang Mr. Wimple]
Because her discontent …
Her individual discontent,
Which is a part of the current general discontent
Of all the labouring classes …
Was constantly aggravated
By your jarring personality,
Mrs. Wimple!
There is no harmony in this house,
Mrs. Wimple;
No harmony!”
Mrs. Wimple replied in sordid prose:
“She left because she was offered more money elsewhere, and we couldn't afford to meet the difference.” Something like a sob vibrated through Mr. Wimple's opulent voice as he rejoined:
“Nellie, that is a blow that I did not look for! You have stabbed me with a poisoned weapon! Yes, Nellie, I am poor! So was Edgar Poe. What the world calls poor! I shall, in all likelihood, never be rich … what the world calls rich. But I have my art! I have my ideals! I have my inner life! I have my dreams! Poor? Poor? Yes, Nell! Poor! So was Robert Burns! I am poor! I make no compromise with the mob. Nor shall I ever debase my gift for money. No! Such as I am, I shall bear the torch that has been intrusted to me till I fall fainting at the goal! I have a message. To me it is precious stuff, and I shall not alloy it with the dross called gold. Poor? Yes, Nell! And you have the heart to cast it in my teeth! You, Nellie! You, from whom I once expected sympathy and understanding. You, whom I chose from all the world, and took into my life because I fancied that you, too, saw the vision! Yes, Elinor, I dreamed that once!”
II
Mr. Wimple achieved pathos … almost tragedy. To a trivial mind, however, the effect might have been somewhat spoiled by the fact that in his fervour he gesticulated wildly with the wooden paddle in one hand and an undergarment belonging to Ronald in the other. The truly sensitive soul would have seen these things as emphasizing his pathos.
Mrs. Wimple, when Mr. Wimple became lyric in his utterance, often had the perverse impulse to answer him in a slangy vernacular which, if not actually coarse, was not, on the other hand, the dialect of the aesthete. For some months now, she had noticed, whenever Ferdinand took out his soul and petted it verbally, she had had the desire to lacerate it with uncouth parts of speech. Ordinarily she frowned on slang; but when Ferdinand's soul leaped into the arena she found slang a weapon strangely facile to her clutch.
“Coming down to brass tacks on this money thing, Ferdy,” said Mrs. Wimple, “you're not the downy peach you picture in the ads. I'll tell the world you're not! You kid yourself, Ferdy. Some of your bloom has been removed, Ferdy. Don't go so far upstage when you speak to me about the dross the world calls gold. The reason we can't afford a maid now is because you got swell-headed and kicked over that perfectly good magazine job you used to have. You thought you were going to get more limelight and more money on the lecture platform. But you've been a flivver in the big time. Your message sounds better to a flock of women in somebody's sitting room full of shaded candles and samovars, with firelight on the antique junk, than it does in Carnegie Hall. You've got the voice for the big spaces all right, but the multitude doesn't get any loaves and fishes from you. Punk sticks and nuances—the intime stuff—that's your speed, Ferdy. I don't want to put any useless dents into your bean, but that message of yours has been hinted at by other messengers. 1 stick around home here and take care of the kids, and I've never let out a yell before. And you trot around to your soul fights and tea fests and feed your message to a bunch of dolled-up dames that don't even know you have a wife. I'm not jealous … you couldn't drag me into one of those perfumed literary dives by the hair … I got fed up with that stuff years ago. But as long as we're without a maid because you won't stick to a steady job, you'll do your share of the rough stuff around the house. I'll say you will! You used to be a good sport about that sort of thing, Ferdy, but it looks to me as if you were getting spoiled rotten. You've had a rush of soul to the mouth, Ferdy. Those talcum-powder seances of yours have gone to your head. You take those orgies of refinement too seriously. You begin to look to me like you had a streak of yellow in you, Ferdy … and if I ever see it so plain I'm sure of it, I'll leave you flat. I'll quit you, Ferdy, twins and all.”
“Quit, then!” cried Mr. Wimple.
And then the harplike voice burst into song again, an offering rich with rage:
“Woman!
So help me all the gods,
I'm through!
Twins or no twins,
Elinor Wimple,
I'm through!
By all the gods,
I'll never wash another dish,
Nor yet another set of underwear!”
And Mr. Wimple, in his heat, brought down the wooden paddle upon the pile of dishes in the sink, in front of his wife. The crash of the broken china seemed to augment his rage, rather than relieve it, and he raised the paddle for a second blow.
“Ferd!” cried his wife, and caught at the stick.
Mr. Wimple, the aesthete, grabbed her by the arm and strove to loosen her grasp upon the paddle.
“You're bruising my arm!” she cried. But she did not release the stick. Neither did Ferdinand release her wrist. Perhaps he twisted it all the harder because she struggled, and was not conscious that he was doing so … perhaps he twisted it harder quite consciously. At any rate, she suddenly swung upon him, with her free hand, and slapped him across the face with her wet dishcloth.
At that they started apart, both more than a little appalled to realize that they had been engaged in something resembling a fight.
Without another word the bird of song withdrew to smooth his ruffled plumage. He dressed himself carefully, and left the apartment without speaking to his wife again. He felt that he had not had altogether the best of the argument. There was no taste of soap in his mouth, for he had washed his lips and even brushed his teeth … and yet, psychically, as he might have said himself, he still tasted that dishcloth.
But he had not walked far before some of his complacence returned. He removed his hat and ran his fingers through his interesting hair, and began to murmur lyrically:
“By Jove!
I have a way with women!
There must be something of the Cave Man in me
Yes, something of the primeval!”
In his pocket was a little book of his own poems, bound in green and gold. As he had remarked to Mrs. Wimple, he was to deliver his message that afternoon.
III
Mrs. Watson's apartment (to which Ferdinand betook himself after idling a couple of hours at his club) was toward the top of a tall building which overlooked great fields