his reflections ran somewhat thus:
“surely a simple matter to keep enough coffee in the house! a schoolgirl could do it! and yet they let themselves run short of coffee! i ask for nothing out of the way. i make no inordinate demands on the household. but i do like good coffee. and i can’t have it! strange! as for that mutton—one would think there was no clock in the kitchen. one would think that nobody had ever cooked a leg of mutton before. how many legs of mutton have they cooked between them in their lives? scores; hundreds; i dare say thousands. and yet it hasn’t yet dawned on them that a leg of mutton of a certain weight requires a certain time for cooking, and that if it is put down late one of two things must occur—either it will be undercooked or the dinner will be late! simple enough! logical enough! four women in the house (three servants and the wicked, negligent mrs. omicron), and yet they must needs waste a leg of mutton through nothing but gross carelessness! it isn’t as if it hadn’t happened before! it isn’t as if i hadn’t pointed it out! but women are amateurs. all women are alike. all housekeeping is amateurish. she (mrs. omicron, the criminal) has nothing in this world to do but run the house—and see how she runs it! no order! no method! has she ever studied housekeeping scientifically? not she! does she care? not she! if she had any real sense of responsibility, if she had the slightest glimmering of her own short-comings, she wouldn’t have started on the ring question. but there you are! she only thinks of spending, and titivating herself. i wish she had to do a little earning. she’d find out a thing or two then. she’d find out that life isn’t all moonstones and motor-cars. ring, indeed! it’s the lack of tact that annoys me. i am an ill-used man. all husbands are ill-used men. the whole system wants altering. however, i must keep my end up. and i will keep my end up. ring, indeed! no tact!”
he fostered a secret fury. and he enjoyed fostering it. there was exaggeration in these thoughts, which, he would admit next day, were possibly too sweeping in their scope. but he would maintain the essential truth of them. he was not really and effectively furious against mrs. omicron; he did not, as a fact, class her with forgers and drunken chauffeurs; indeed, the fellow loved her in his fashion. but he did pass a mature judgment against her. he did wrap up his grudge in cotton-wool and put it in a drawer and examine it with perverse pleasure now and then. he did increase that secretion of poison which weakens the social health of nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand married lives—however delightful they may be. he did render more permanent a noxious habit of mind. he did appreciably and doubly and finally impair the conjugal happiness—for it must not be forgotten that in creating a grievance for himself he also gave his wife a grievance. he did, in fine, contribute to the general mass of misunderstanding between sex and sex.
if he is reading this, as he assuredly is, mr. omicron will up and exclaim:
“my wife a grievance! absurd! the facts are incontrovertible. what grievance can she have?”
the grievance that mr. omicron, becoming every day more and more the plain man, is not exercising imagination in the very field where it is most needed.
what is a home, mr. omicron? you reply that a home is a home. you have always had a home. you were born in one. with luck you will die in one. and you have never regarded a home as anything but a home. your leading idea has ever been that a home is emphatically not an office nor a manufactory. but suppose you were to unscale your eyes—that is to say, use your imagination—try to see that a home, in addition to being a home, is an office and manufactory for the supply of light, warmth, cleanliness, ease, and food to a given number of people? suppose you were to allow it to occur to you that a home emphatically is an organization similar to an office and manufactory—and an extremely complicated and delicate one, with many diverse departments, functioning under extremely difficult conditions? for thus it in truth is. could you once accomplish this feat of imaginative faculty, you would never again say, with that disdainful accent of yours: “mrs. omicron has nothing in the world to do but run the house.” for really it would be just as clever for her to say: “mr. omicron has nothing in the world to do but run the office.”
i admit heartily that mrs. omicron is not perfect. she ought to be, of course; but she, alas! falls short of the ideal. yet in some details she can and does show the way to that archangel, her husband. when her office and manufactory goes wrong, you, mr. omicron, are righteously indignant and superior. you majestically wonder that with four women in the house, etc., etc. but when you come home and complain that things are askew in your masculine establishment, and that a period of economy must set in, does she say to you with scorn: “don’t dare to mention coffee to-night. i really wonder that with fourteen (or a hundred and forty) grown men in your establishment you cannot produce an ample and regular income?” no; she makes the best of it. she is sympathetic. and you, mr. omicron, would be excessively startled and wounded if she were not sympathetic. put your imagination to work and you will see how interesting are these comparisons.
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