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Chapter III. The Conjugall Nuttalls.

“Upon my word,” said Mr. Nicholas Nuttall, apostro-phising a figure of Time, which, with a very long beard and a very long scythe, looked down upon him from the mantel-shelf; “upon my word, old daddy, you're a wonder. You are,” he continued, shaking his head at the figure; “there's no getting over you. You grow us up, you mow us down; you turn our hair black, you turn it white; you make us strong, you make us feeble; and we laugh at you, and wheeze at you, until the day comes when we can laugh and wheeze no more. Dear! dear! dear! To think that it should be thirty years since I saw him; that I should come out here, never thinking of him—we decided twenty years ago that he was dead—and that after being here only a month, I should hear of him in such a wonderful manner. So amazingly rich, too. What a handsome fellow he was, to be sure! I wonder if he is much altered. I wonder if he ever thinks of old times. I shall know him again, for certain, directly I clap eyes on him. He must have got grey by this time, though. Dear! dear! dear!”

And Mr. Nicholas Nuttall fell to musing over thirty years ago, fishing up from that deep well a hundred trifles, which brought pleasant ripples to his face. They had been buried so long that it might have been excused them had they been rusted; but they were not so. They came up quite bright, at his bidding, and smiled in his page 27 face. They twinkled in his eyes, those memories, and made him young again. In the glowing wood fire, rose up the pictures of his past life; his boyhood's home; his friends and playmates; days which contained some tender remembrance, which even now made his heart throb with pleasure; a woodland walk made into a loving remembrance by a simple pressure of a hand; faces, young as when he knew them; eyes which faded as he gazed at them; a short holiday, dotted with stars; hopes, ambitions, day-dreams: all passed before him, phantasmagorically, as he looked into the glowing wood fire?. The flowers in the garden of youth were blooming once again in the life of Mr. Nicholas Nuttall.

But his reverie was soon disturbed. For the partner of his bosom, Mrs. Nicholas Nuttall, suddenly bouncing into the room, and seating herself, demonstratively, in her own particular arm-chair, on the opposite side of the fire, puffed away his dreams in a trice.

Mrs. Nicholas Nuttall was a small woman. Mr. Nicholas Nuttall was a large man. Mrs. Nicholas Nuttall, divested of her crinolines and flounces and other feminine vanities, in which she indulged inordinately, was a very baby by the side of her spouse. In fact the contrast, to an impartial observer, would have been ridiculous. Her condition, when feathered, was that of an extremely ruffled hen, strutting about in offended majesty, in defiance of the whole poultry race. Un-feather her, and, figuratively, speaking, Mr. Nicholas Nuttall could have put Mrs. Nicholas Nuttall into his pocket—like a doll.

Yet if there ever was a man hopelessly under petticoat page 28 government; if there ever was a man, completely and entirely subjugated; if there ever was a man, prone and vanquished beneath woman's merciless thumb: that man was the husband of Mrs. Nicholas Tuttall. It is a singular fact, but one which may be easily ascertained by any individual who takes an interest in studying the physiology of marital life, that when a very small man espouses a very large woman, he is, by tacit consent, the king of the castle; it is an important unexpressed portion of the marriage obligation; and that, when a very small woman espouses a very large man, she rules him with a rod of iron, tames him, subjugates him, so to speak, until at length he can scarcely call his soul his own.

This was the case with the conjugality of the Nuttals. As was proven by the demeanor of the male portion of the bond. For no sooner had the feminine half (plus) seated herself opposite the masculine half (minus) than the face of Mr. Nicholas Nuttall assumed an expression of the most complete and perfect submission.

“I'm sure I don't know what to do, Mr. Nuttall,” preambled that gentleman's certainly better half; “this place will be the death of me, I'm certain. What crime I have committed that you should drag me out here, away from all my friends and relations, and all that sort of thing, I don't know. I suppose its a punishment for something dreadful, though I'm as unconscious as the babe unborn what it can be. But what I say is, I won't stand it, and I wish I had never been married!”

Considering that Mrs. Nicholas Nuttall had been married for twenty-five years, it was certainly rather late in the day for her to give utterance to such a wish. But page 29 as Mr. Nuttall had been told the same thing about six times a day, on an average, since his honeymoon, he received it upon the present occasion with equanimity. The first time he heard it, it was a shock to him; but since that time he had become resigned. So he merely put in an expostulatory “My dear”—being perfectly well aware that he would not be allowed to get any further.

“Don't my dear me,” interrupted Mrs. Nuttall, as he expected; he would have been puzzled what to say if she had not taken up the cue. “I'm tired of your my dearing and my-loving. What I say, once for all, is, that I won't stand it.”

Mr. Nuttall did not reply.

“There's Mary Plummer,” continued his lady; “yes, you may smile, sir, and insult me to my face; I went to school with her, and I knew how she would turn out; I wish you had her for your wife. The way she brings up her family is disgraceful; the girls are as untidy as can be. You should see the bedrooms in the middle of the day! And yet her husband indulges her in everything. She had three new bonnets last summer, and you begrudged me one, and said that my old one would do, with fresh trimming. He is something like a husband should be. He didn't drag his wife away from her home, after she had slaved for him all her life, and bring her out to a place where everything is topsy turvey, and ten times the price that it is anywhere else, and where people who are not fit for domestics are put over your heads. He didn't do this. Not he. He knows his duty as a husband and the father of a family, better.”

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Nicholas shrugged his shoulders. He did not know what else to do.

“Of course,” exclaimed Mrs. Nuttall. “Shrug your shoulders. A pretty thing for a man to do at such a time!”

My dear Maria,” he commenced again, despairingly.

“Will you let me speak, sir? You want to wear me into an early grave, I know you do. The way we poor women are put upon is shameful. But I'll not stand it, Nicholas. You had a design in bringing me out to this dreadful country, and I will not stand it. What did you bring me here for, Mr. Nuttall? Can you answer me that? Of course you can't. I'm sure the sufferings I endured on board that dreadful ship would have melted a heart of stone—but you've got no heart, Mr. Nuttall. I haven't been tied to you all these years without finding that out. Mamma always told me”——

“Don't drag mamma in again, Maria,” said Mr. Nuttall, in a disgusted voice. “She's been dead these fifteen years; it's time you let her rest.”

Mrs. Nuttall immediately dissolved into tears, and Mr. Nuttall shifted himself upon his chair, as if he was sitting upon pins and needles.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, sir,” she sobbed, “to speak to me in that way of my mamma. If she has been dead fifteen years I have not forgotten that I was her favorite daughter. Mamma always told me you did not care for me, and warned me against you. You want to make me forget what I was going to say, but you shan't. No, sir, I say again that the sufferings I endured on board that dreadful ship ought to have page 31 melted a heart of stone. What with walking with one leg longer than the other for three months, I'm sure I shall never be able to walk straight again. I often wondered when I woke up in a fright in the middle of the night, and found myself standing on my head in that horrible bunk, what I had done to meet with such treatment from you. Such a wife as I have been, too!”

In desperation, and utter absence of mind, Mr. Nuttall took out his cigar case.

“No, sir!” exclaimed Mrs. Nuttall. “No, sir! not in the parlor! If you want to smoke, go into the street. But you shall not smoke in the parlor. Thank heaven, I have not come to that! You have picked up enough filthy habits in this country, but I tell you again you shall not insult me to my face. And very nice your breath will smell to-night in the midst of your gay company. Not that they would care much, I dare say. Nice ideas they must have of the decencies of polite society!”

Mr. Nuttall sighed.

“There's Jane,” observed Mrs. Nuttall, approaching one of her grievances; “the best servant I ever had. At home she was quite satisfied with ten pounds a-year; and now, after our paying her passage out, she says she can't stop unless her wages are raised to—how much do you think, Nicholas?”

“I am sure I don't know, Maria,” he replied, meekly, but brightening up a little at this appeal.

“To thirty pounds. Thir-ty pounds,” said Mrs. Nuttall, elongating the numeral. “Do you know how you are going to meet these frightful expenses? I'm sure I page 32 don't. But mind, Nicholas, if we come to ruin, don't blame me for it. I told you all along what would be the result of your dragging us to the colonies. I pray that I may be mistaken; but I have never been mistaken yet. and you know it;” and Mrs. Nuttall spread out her skirts (she was always spreading out her skirts, as if she could not make enough of herself) complacently.

Mr. Nuttall knew perfectly well that it was only the incessant nagging of his better half that had brought them out to the colony; but he made no remark upon the point, and sat as still as a mouse, gazing humbly upon the household prophet.

“Thirty pounds a-year for a servant-of-all-work!” continued the lady. “Preposterous! The best thing we can do, if that's the way they're paid, is all of us to go out as servants-of-all-work, and lay by a provision for children.”

A. vision of himself, in feminine attire, floor-scrubbing on his knees, flitted across the disturbed mind of Mr. Nuttall.

“She must have the money, I suppose. I know who has put her up to it; it is either the baker's or the butcher's man. The two noodles are hankering after her, and she encourages them. I saw the pair of them at the back-gate last night, and she was flirting with them nicely. You must give information to the police, Nicholas, and have them locked up.”

“Locked up!” exclaimed Mr. Nuttall.

“Certainly. Do you think the police would allow such goings-on at home? If she goes away, and gets married, I shall be in a nice situation. It would be like page 33 losing my right hand. I tell you what this place is, Mr. Nuttall—it's demoralising, that's what it is.”

“There's as good fish in the sea, Maria,” observed Mr. Nuttall——

“No, there isn't,” said Mrs. Nuttall, snapping him up so sharply that he gave a sudden jump. “I don't believe in your proverbs. I suppose you will say that of me when I am dead and gone. You are a nice affectionate lot, you men!” and she elevated her nose at an alarming angle. “Then can you tell me what to wear this evening, Mr. Nuttall? I don't know, in this outlandish colony, whether we are expected to dress ourselves like Christians or aboriginals.”

“The last would certainly be inexpensive, but it would scarcely be decent, Maria,” remarked Mr. Nuttall, slily.

“That may be very witty, Mr. Nuttall,” responded his lady, loftily; “but it is hardly an observation a man should make to his own wife. Though for what you care about your wife's feelings I would not give that,” and she snapped her fingers, disdainfully.

From long and sad experience, Mr. Nicholas Nuttall had learned the wisdom of saying as little as possible upon such occasions as the present. Indeed, he would sometimes lose all consciousness of what was parssing, or would find himself regarding it as an unquiet dream from which he would presently awake. But Mrs. Nuttall was always equal to the occasion; and now, as she observed him relapsing into a dreamy state of inattention, she cried, sharply,

“Nicholas!”

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“Yes, my dear,” he responded, with a jump, as if half a dozen needles had been smartly thrust into a tender part.

“Are you attending to me?”

“Certainly, my dear,” he replied, briskly.

“Then why do you not answer me?”

“What do you wish to know?” he inquired, submissively.

“What do I wish to know? I wish you to direct me as you ought to do, as the father of your family, and the head of your household. You know I am only too willing to obey you.”

“You're very good,” he murmured.

“What am I to wear this evening?” she asked.

“Your usual good taste, Maria,” he commenced——

“Oh, bother my good taste,” she interrupted. “You know that we are to meet your brother to-night, and I am only anxious to do you credit. Not that I shan't be a perfect fright, for I haven't a dress fit to put on my back. If I wasn't such a good contriver, we should look more like paupers than respectable people.”

“What's the use of talking in that way? You always have what you want.”

“Of course. These are the thanks a slaving wife gets for stinting herself of the commonest necessaries. My black silk has been turned three times already; and my pearl grey—you ought to know what a state that is in, for you spilt the port wine over it yourself. Is your brother very rich, Nicholas?”

“They say so, Maria; he has got stations, and thousands of sheep and cattle. He is a squatter, you know.”

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“A what?” she screamed.

“A squatter.”

“What a dreadful thing!” she exclaimed. “What a shocking calamity! Is he always squatting, Nicholas?”

“My dear!” said Nicholas, amazed.

“Not that it matters much,” she continued, not heeding him; “he may squat as long as he likes, if he has plenty of money, and assists you as a brother should. Thank heaven! none of my relations ever squatted. Has he been squatting long, Nicholas?”

“For ever so many years,” he replied.

“What a disagreeable position! Why, his legs must be quite round. You ought to thank your stars that you have a wife who doesn't squat”——

But observing a furtive smile playing round her husband's lips, she rose, majestically, and said,

“I shall not waste my conversation upon you any longer. I suppose the cab will be here at half-past nine o'clock; everybody else, of course, will go in their own carriages.” (Here she took out her watch, and consulted it.) “Bless my soul! it is nearly seven o'clock now. I have barely three hours to dress!”

And she whisked out of the room, leaving Mr Nuttall, nothing loth, to resume his musings.