‘I can’t finish your hair, madame,’ said Richardson quietly, but with immense decision. ‘I belong to the union and I can’t do another half-minute’s work till the strike is settled. I’m sorry to be disobliging.’
‘But this is inhuman!’ exclaimed Sophie tragically; ‘I’ve always been a model mistress and I’ve refused to employ any but union servants, and this is the result. I can’t finish my hair myself; I don’t know how to. What am I to do? It’s wicked!’
‘Wicked is the word,’ said Richardson; ‘I’m a good Conservative, and I’ve no patience with this Socialist foolery, asking your pardon. It’s tyranny, that’s what it is, all along the line, but I’ve my living to make, same as other people, and I’ve got to belong to the union. I couldn’t touch another hairpin without a strike permit, not if you was to double my wages.’
The door burst open and Catherine Malsom raged into the room.
‘Here’s a nice affair,’ she screamed, ‘a strike of household servants without a moment’s warning, and I’m left like this! I can’t appear in public in this condition.’
After a very hasty scrutiny Sophie assured her that she could not.
‘Have they all struck?’ she asked her maid.
‘Not the kitchen staff,’ said Richardson, ‘they belong to a different union.
‘Dinner at least will be assured,’ said Sophie, ‘that is something to be thankful for.’
‘Dinner!’ snorted Catherine, ‘what on earth is the good of dinner when none of us will be able to appear at it? Look at your hair◦– and look at me! or rather, don’t.’
‘I know it’s difficult to manage without a maid; can’t your husband be any help to you?’ asked Sophie despairingly.
‘Henry? He’s in worse case than any of us. His man is the only person who really understands that ridiculous new-fangled Turkish bath that he insists on taking with him everywhere.’
‘Surely he could do without a Turkish bath for one evening,’ said Sophie; ‘I can’t appear without hair, but a Turkish bath is a luxury.’
‘My good woman,’ said Catherine, speaking with a fearful intensity, ‘Henry was in the bath when the strike started. In it, do you understand? He’s there now.’
‘Can’t he get out?’
‘He doesn’t know how to. Every time he pulls the lever marked “release” he only releases hot steam. There are two kinds of steam in the bath, “bearable” and “scarcely bearable”; he has released them both. By this time I’m probably a widow.’
‘I simply can’t send away Gaspare,’ wailed Sophie; ‘I should never be able to secure another omelette specialist.’
‘Any difficulty that I may experience in securing another husband is of course a trifle beneath any one’s consideration,’ said Catherine bitterly.
Sophie capitulated. ‘Go,’ she said to Richardson, ‘and tell the Strike Committee, or whoever are directing this affair, that Gaspare is herewith dismissed. And ask Gaspare to see me presently in the library, when I will pay him what is due to him and make what excuses I can; and then fly back and finish my hair.’
Some half an hour later Sophie marshalled her guests in the Grand Salon preparatory to the formal march to the dining-room. Except that Henry Malsom was of the ripe raspberry tint that one sometimes sees at private theatricals representing the human complexion, there was little outward sign among those assembled of the crisis that had just been encountered and surmounted. But the tension had been too stupefying while it lasted not to leave some mental effects behind it. Sophie talked at random to her illustrious guest, and found her eyes straying with increasing frequency towards the great doors through which would presently come the blessed announcement that dinner was served. Now and again she glanced mirror-ward at the reflection of her wonderfully coiffed hair, as an insurance underwriter might gaze thankfully at an overdue vessel that had ridden safely into harbour in the wake of a devastating hurricane. Then the doors opened and the welcome figure of the butler entered the room. But he made no general announcement of a banquet in readiness, and the doors closed behind him; his message was for Sophie alone.
‘There is no dinner, madame,’ he said gravely; ‘the kitchen staff have “downed tools”. Gaspare belongs to the Union of Cooks and Kitchen Employés, and as soon as they heard of his summary dismissal at a moment’s notice they struck work. They demand his instant reinstatement and an apology to the union. I may add, madame, that they are very firm; I’ve been obliged even to hand back the dinner rolls that were already on the table.’
After the lapse of eighteen months Sophie Chattel-Monkheim is beginning to go about again among her old haunts and associates, but she still has to be very careful. The doctors will not let her attend anything at all exciting, such as a drawing-room meeting or a Fabian conference; it is doubtful, indeed, whether she wants to.
The Feast of Nemesis
‘It’s a good thing that Saint Valentine’s Day has dropped out of vogue,’ said Mrs Thackenbury; ‘what with Christmas and New Year and Easter, not to speak of birthdays, there are quite enough remembrance days as it is. I tried to save myself trouble at Christmas by just sending flowers to all my friends, but it wouldn’t work; Gertrude has eleven hot-houses and about thirty gardeners, so it would have been ridiculous to send flowers to her, and Milly has just started a florist’s shop, so it was equally out of the question there. The stress of having to decide in a hurry what to give to Gertrude and Milly just when I thought I’d got the whole question nicely off my mind completely ruined my Christmas, and then the awful monotony of the letters of thanks: “Thank you so much for your lovely flowers. It was so good of you to think of me.” Of course in the majority of cases I hadn’t thought about the recipients at all; their names were down in my list of “people who must not be left out”. If I trusted to remembering them there would be some awful sins of omission.’
‘The trouble is,’ said Clovis to his aunt, ‘all these days of intrusive remembrance harp so persistently on one aspect of human nature and entirely ignore the other; that is why they become so perfunctory and artificial. At Christmas and New Year you are emboldened and encouraged by convention to send gushing messages of optimistic goodwill and servile affection to people whom you would scarcely ask to lunch unless some one else had failed you at the last moment; if you are supping at a restaurant on New Year’s Eve you are permitted and expected to join hands and sing “For Auld Lang Syne” with strangers whom you have never seen before and never want to see again. But no licence is allowed in the opposite direction.’
‘Opposite direction; what opposite direction?’ queried Mrs Thackenbury.
‘There is no outlet for demonstrating your feelings towards people whom you simply loathe. That is really the crying need of our modern civilisation. Just think how jolly it would be if a recognised day were set apart for the paying off of old scores and grudges, a day when one could lay oneself out to be gracefully vindictive to a carefully treasured list of “people who must not be let off”. I remember when I was at a private school we had one day, the last Monday of the term I think it was, consecrated to the settlement of feuds and grudges; of course we did not appreciate it as much as it deserved, because after all, any day of the term could be used for that purpose. Still, if one had chastised a smaller boy for being cheeky weeks before, one was always permitted on that day to recall the episode to his memory by chastising him again. That is what the French call reconstructing the crime.’
‘I should call it reconstructing the punishment,’ said Mrs Thackenbury; ‘and, anyhow, I don’t see how you could introduce a system of primitive school-boy vengeance into civilised adult life. We haven’t outgrown our passions, but we are supposed to have learned how to keep them within strictly decorous limits.’