THE FAULTLESS ADELINA
I HATE to admit a preference for doing things my own way simply because it is my own way after being advised to another and better one. It savors of obstinate narrow-mindedness.
But there is always at the back of one's mind the question whether the new and better way is better enough to compensate for the cost of changing, a point which is apt to remain obscure to your adviser. It all really depends, of course, on how old you are, and since we have given up going by calendar count, that is difficult to determine. We can make a guess at other people's ages, but scarcely at our own because we feel so many different ages all at one and the same time.
It was Adelina who drove me to these reflections. It was she, indeed, who first brought home to me the horrid suspicion that I might unconsciously be drifting behind the times, not to say graying about the temples of my mind, Adelina was herself so very modern, so very capable.
All our intimates congratulated us upon her installation, and we congratulated ourselves. It meant little less than a new lease of life. Breakfast was on time once more, and there was cooked porridge to it instead of the crispy things out of boxes we had been pretending so long that we preferred. Our eggs (when we could afford them) were of a delicate creamy consistency instead of the depressing solidification we had become accustomed to. And our appetites were stimulated by various little new combinations of which we partook with eagerness and gratitude. Of course the bills went up, but one mustn't look gift horses too closely in the mouth, especially those conferred by a discriminating providence in the shape of energetic Adelinas.
When I first saw Adelina, and the crisp elegance of her costume—I offered to call her by her second name, Miss Croake, but she was much too modern for that. She merely laughed and said to call her whatever we liked. Of course with a name like that one might well hesitate.
If it hadn't been for her grammar I might have suspected her of being a B. A. in disguise, seeking back-door material for articles on the inequalities of our industrial system, or something equally formidable. But her manner of speech saved the situation to me. It was the only point at which I wasn't cowed by a sense of her superiority, though, unfortunately, she didn't know that and I couldn't tell her.
Grammar is certainly a great moral support to one under some embarrassing situations.
It had always been my theory that the women who help in our households should be encouraged to attach themselves to the world without, to be persons in their own right as well as instruments of service to others. That is a responsibility domestic assistance entails, a point at which it vitally differs from the less personal relationship of the office or shop. The business-girl sells definite portions of her time and remains arbiter of the rest. The girl in what is called "service" enters her employer's household for practically all of her time, and her life while there is largely controlled and bounded by the character of that home. As she ministers to personal wants, so is she entitled to personal interest and aid in return. So at least it has seemed to me.
But I quickly found that any little extension of this kind that I had been able to make in previous connections, were superfluous in Adelina's case. She was quite able to look after herself, and indeed, I was by no means sure that the activities of my own social life would not have appeared both meager and tame to her. She was a member of several girls' clubs, she went to private dances, and sang in the choir of her church on Sundays. She had a fine voice and I began to feel conscious of a sneaking snobbishness in not asking her to sing for the family in the evenings after the dishes were done, while I played the accompaniments. But I didn't, whether from fear of what the family would say, or what she would do, I don't know. I am a miserable coward in spots, and the 20th century housekeeper in Canada gets past having any private feelings of her own, or at least, consulting them.
The arrangement of our Sunday as it related to culinary affairs had to be revised to fit in with Adelina's requirements. She was very cheerful about it. She didn't insist, she merely suggested. Cheerfulness was one of her strong points, as it is of all really modern people. Of course we rearranged ourselves with as good a semblance of it on our own part as we could muster. I cannot say that the excellence of our midday repast suffered at all. Adelina was far too capable to allow that. But it was attended by a certain sense of gloom unknown to us hitherto. Whether this was because Adelina waited on us in her best attire, or proceeded from the mere fact of her having been at Church when we hadn't, I cannot say. Superior virtue often does have a depressing effect, particularly when coupled, as it was in Adelina's case, with an invincible, though restrained, consciousness of the same. Situations you can explain are never quite so hard to bear as those you suffer in an atmosphere of delicately-tempered, but subtly reproachful silence.
Adelina had no faults and revealed no lapses—except the grammatical ones before alluded to, which, of course, had no humbling virtue, since she wasn't aware of them. Everything she did turned out well, and everything she elected not to do turned out better than if she had done it. Providence seemed always to favor her side. The weather-vane (like that of the Germans in the early days of the war) seemed ever to be pointing in her direction. Her mayonnaise was equal to mine (or accounted so) and made by a simpler process. Her blends of flour substitutes were varied, acceptable and afforded material for much conversation at the family board. Her repertoire in ringing the changes upon fish seemed inexhaustible, and when Mrs. Bland, who prides herself upon her all-sufficiency as a housekeeper, asked me for my recipe for caramel custard, I felt the climax had been reached. I soared in the reflected glory of Adelina's capability.
Of course, there were times when I felt uneasy it could hardly be otherwise. Periodic visitations to the larder I found were neither expected nor desired. I reasoned with myself. It is merely "interrupted habit," I said severely, "and a sign of on-coming age. You are growing inelastic. Accept the good the gods provide, and show yourself worthy of them."
So I went no more to the bread-box or refrigerator except when Adelina was out, and then these were always above reproach.
Adelina was out a good deal; nearly every evening, in fact, when it didn't rain and sometimes when it did. Her friends often brought her back in motors which champed and snorted under our bed-room windows with what seemed to me unnecessary violence considering the hour, which would be around 11.30 p.m. Not that I minded for myself at all, but only on the neighbors' account. They probably knew better what was going on than I did, and I hate to be an object of neighborhood interest. You could hear the clatter of voices through the stutters of the machine, and an occasional laugh—then Adelina would run up the front steps in great spirits. She always preferred the front steps on these occasions, and, of course, I said nothing. What was there to say? Aren't we living in the twentieth century, and fighting for democracy?
What really jarred on me was the exaggerated effect of silence with which Adelina made her way up to her own room after she remembered that it was 11.45, just as if the thunderous explosions from without had contributed nothing to our knowledge of her whereabouts. It is the indirect imputation of imbecility that most deeply wounds our feelings in this world.
"I am not going to take down the parlor curtains this spring," I said to Adelina, when we went over house-cleaning plans, "another tubbing will probably finish them, and if we leave them till fall, they will put us through one more season at least."
Adelina cast a meditative eye over the windows. There were four of them, large, old-fashioned windows more or less subdued by the voluminous folds of eight long lace curtains. She said nothing. A more suspicious mind might have gathered uneasiness from this fact, but I didn't. It never occurred to me but that Adelina would rejoice to be spared the toil and anxiety, incident upon the process of "doing up" four pair of extensive curtains advanced on the road to oblivion. But I had not yet exhausted the resources of Adelina's character.
When I descended to breakfast one fine morning a week or so later what were my feelings to behold the parlor windows denuded of their hangings, staring at me in that bald, harsh way windows have when their draperies are gone! After the first shock, I decided to wait before speaking with the vigor circumstances certainly invited, and during the progress of the meal had time to reflect that very probably the curtains were only being aired in the back yard, and it was a good thing I had held in.
But a subsequent visit to the laundry where Nooks was operating with her usual energy and determination, revealed at the first glance the tragic fact that all eight curtains were already in the tub, and at the mercy of those ruthless red arms. The uselessness of protest strove with my astonishment, rendering me dumb.
"Why I—there must be some mistake," I began when I recovered speech. "The curtains are getting so old, I'm afraid they may give way."
Nooks' steamy countenance beamed on me. "They'll be all right, Mum," she said optimistically, slithering the limp masses around in the suds. "Yuh c'n depend on it an' make yersef aisy, I won't riddle 'em no more 'n c'n be helped." Whereat realizing my helplessness, I shuddered and withdrew.
It has been my habit of late years to avoid active participation in scenes of domestic upheaval when it is possible. I perceived in Caroline's time that my presence affected little and was apt to be regarded as an intrusion. Even though my advice might be received in respectful silence, I was aware that it was ignored as soon as my back was turned. One has more power sometimes to set forces in motion than to control them, as Bismarck lived long enough to perceive and lament (and might have lamented still more if he had lived still longer).
I hesitated a moment on my way back through the kitchen. I could see Adelina in the front hall, swathed in apron and cap of vivid hue, armed with a broom also swathed, vigorously laying down the order of procedure to Ani, her Finnish understudy, in the loud tones we so futilely adopt in speaking to foreigners. Whether it was cowardice or wisdom, I don't know, but resigning the contest, I ignominously fled up the back stairs and let things take their course.
"It would do no good now," I reflected uneasily, "and it might do harm."
I deliberately dressed and went downtown. I lunched at the Ladies' Club, telephoning home that I wouldn't be back. I knew this would suit Adelina's plans, but I had to do it because it suited mine even better.
I did odds and ends until it was time for the War-work Committee in the afternoon, where there was such divergence of opinion about whether we needed the services of a professional cutter-out or not, and such a heated discussion over it that it quite "took my mind off." It was nearly six o'clock when I got home. I looked at the windows from the street corner, fully expecting to see the blinds drawn dismally down to hide their ugly bareness. But behold, they were smilingly, triumphantly up and snowy folds revealed within!
I hastened on. When I stepped into the cool, fresh parlor, and saw how renovated and sweet and inviting it was, I found my wrath giving place to astonishment. By what necromancy had Adelina achieved this? Closer scrutiny moreover revealed surprisingly few holes to be darned, considering.
I went upstairs in a perplexed frame of mind. Adelina had deliberately disobeyed me and with every appearance of carrying things to a successful conclusion. I wondered how I ought to meet such a situation. I hope, as I said in the beginning, that I am not so narrow-minded as to refuse to accept a better way than my own simply because it isn't my own. But there are other and more subtle considerations. I had become sufficiently well acquainted with Adelina to know that if I made any condemnatory remarks upon her having taken the matter so vigorously into her own hands, she would simply gaze past me with that quiet look of one who knows and is satisfied to know, her own mind. I should feel about six years old and retire with the assumption of a dignity there was nothing visible to support.
If, on the other hand, I came down heavy and upbraided Adelina with breaking my express orders—well, she might go so far as to shrug. She would in her mind, anyway, and leave me the sense of being an unreasonable self-opinionated, narrow-minded cat, or kitten, at the very least.
On the whole, it seemed better not to say anything, and this was the course I finally adopted—or shrunk into, rather. But it left me with a frustrated, wrung-out sort of feeling that didn't contribute to self-respect.
Now this brings me to the crux of the tale. How far shall we resign the ordering and arranging of our own particular bit of earth to the domination of another? How far should experience and age give way before the triumphant advance of confident youth? In short, how far should I give in to Adelina? If she hadn't been superior, of course, the matter would be simplified. But she was superior (in certain respects) and she knew it. What she didn't know, and what complicated the situation (it generally is what people don't know that complicates the situation) was that there is such a thing as reflex action; that her advance necessitated my retreat, her strengthening in a realm that didn't belong to her, my relative weakening. It's a very complex world. We fumble through it as best we can, fumbling away most of our happiness in the process. That's why age is wont to grow reluctant and timorous. It fears to tread down what it cannot revive.
I watched the reins of my household gradually being transferred to Adelina's tightening grasp, with growing dismay. It was all so imperceptibly done (on her part), that there was no outstanding point to take hold of. I recalled the remark of a gentle old lady I knew who in her infrequent observations generally hit the nail square on the head, "What I say is, where will it lead to?"
The increasing length of our accounts, the substitution of dishes leaning to Adelina's preferences instead of ours, and the more rapid pace of life generally under Adelina's exhilarated sway, led me to a very frequent revolving of that question, "Where will it lead to?" To a drastic change of some sort, I knew, but on whose initiative I knew not. Could I summon strength of will and courage to discharge Adelina? And on what grounds?—for being a paragon with the potential rights and privileges of a paragon? Must I lay myself open to the charge of not being able to live with my superiors? Of preferring the gratification of my personal pride to the comfort and well-being of my household? That, I knew, was the aspect in which it would present itself to Adelina, and in which she, in her turn, would present it to the world at large.
But it was Adelina herself (of course) who solved the problem. She took the bull by the horns, gently but capably. She broke it to me that she felt obliged to accept an eligible position that had been offered to her nearer the church around which so many of her constantly growing social responsibilities centered. She kindly suggested that she would remain until I had secured a substitute. She was sorry, so sorry, to leave us, but it really became inevitable, she hardly had a choice.
I endeavored to conceal the radiance that I knew must illumine my countenance. I murmured what I could of regret, and the effort we should make to bear up under the blow. But I lost no time in instituting a search for the substitute. We parted amicably with mutual assurances of regard and but slightly concealed sympathy on her part, and once more the green blade of fresh hope sprung anew in the parched area of my heart.
But Adelina's deepest thrust was reserved until after her departure. She was much too discreet to "say things," and I might have hesitated to believe this had it not come to me by so direct and unquestionable a route and been so in keeping with Adelina's character. It was the milkman from whom it first emanated. The milkman and Adelina had been on good terms. His visits were too prolonged for any other construction and his rubicund countenance too animated as he chirruped to his horse in haste from the side path after leaving our back door. No, it could not be doubted. I saw it all in a glance-once it had been mentioned to me.
Adelina left us because we didn't keep a motor-car. We were not sufficiently up to date. When I told the Professor he said, "Nonsense," with that particular inflection he keeps for news of an unwelcome or doubtful character. But I noticed that he looked serious.