Chapter 52 Chapter 48 Housework

Without compromising my deadlines at the newspaper, I toiled on the book; it came out and was a success.Although I feel acutely the thunder of praise, and I don't doubt that I appreciate my own accomplishments more than anyone else, I don't get carried away by them.In observing human temperament, I have always found that a man who has some just cause for trusting himself never buys the confidence of others by showing it off in front of others.For this reason, I respect myself without being arrogant, and the more praise I receive, the more I encourage myself to work hard to be worthy.

Although all parts of this book are my memoirs, I did not intend here to tell the history of my own fiction.Those novels speak for themselves, and I leave them to speak for themselves.When I mention them occasionally, it is only because they are part of my progress. Then, with some grounds for believing that I became a writer both by talent and by chance, I wrote with confidence.Without that ground or belief, I must give up writing and devote my energies to something else.I must have wanted to discover: what talent and opportunity would actually make me be, only that and nothing else. I had been very successful in publishing in newspapers and elsewhere, and when I gained new success I thought I had reason not to attend those dreadful debates.So, one very merry evening, I took note for the last time of the bagpipes of the Parliament, which I never heard again; but, from the papers, I still learned that there was no great change in the long session. , still (perhaps more) some old tunes played over and over again.

Now I'm writing about a year and a half into my marriage.After several different implementations, I have given up housekeeping as futile.We let the housework take its course, and hired a little servant to manage it.The little fellow's main function was to quarrel with the cook, and in that he was a real Whittington, except that he had no cat and no chance of being mayor. -------- ① Refers to a tedious speech in parliament. ②The mayor of London in the 14th century. It is said that he was born in poverty and became rich by selling a cat—his only property—to an African king. It seemed to me that he was always living under the beating of pot lids like hailstones.His existence is a struggle.At the most inopportune times—say, when we had a little dinner party, or when a few friends came over in the evening—he would yell for help, staggering out of the kitchen, chased by flying irons.We wanted to fire him, but he had a lot of affection for us and wouldn't go.As soon as we made a sign that we wanted to end the relationship with him, he cried so hard, because he was so good at crying, we had to keep him.He had no mother—I found no relation to him, except one of his sisters; and as soon as we took him from his sister, she went off to America, and he was like a drop-off. Terrible kids living in our house like that.He was very sensitive to his own misfortune, and now and then he wiped his eyes with his sleeve, or stooped to hold his nose with the corner of a handkerchief.He never took the little handkerchief whole out of his pocket, always used it sparingly, kept it hidden.

The root of all my troubles is this wretched little servant whom I hire for ten pounds six shillings a year.I watched him grow up, he grew up little by little like a red flower bean; I was worried that he would start to shave, become bald, and sometimes spontaneously.I see no hope of getting rid of him.I've often thought how annoying he'd be when he was an old man. I was amazed at the way in which this unfortunate fellow got me out of trouble, by stealing Dora's watch--which, like everything else we had, had no fixed place--sold it for money, and then gave the money All spent riding back and forth on the outside of the coach between London and Ux Bridge - he's always been that brainless.On his fifteenth journey, as far as I remember, he was caught and sent to Bow Street, and four shillings and sixpence were found out of him, and an old fife which he could not play at all.

If he hadn't repented, the shock and the unhappiness it caused me would have been much less.But he did repent, and in a special way—not all at once, but in pieces, little by little.For example, the day after I had to testify, he revealed a basket in the basement.We believed the basket was full of wine, when in reality there were only empty bottles and corks.We thought he had said all the bad things he knew about cooks and that he should be relieved.Unexpectedly, a day or two later, out of conscience, he revealed that one of the cook's little girls came to fetch our bread every morning.He also confessed how he himself had been bribed by the milkman to supply him with coal.After another two or three days, the police authorities informed me that he confessed that there was beef tenderloin in the kitchen waste and bed sheets in the rag bag.A short time later he gave another confession of a completely different nature—admitted that he knew the whole scheme of the liquor delivery man's plan to burglarize our house, and the man was immediately arrested.I am so ashamed to be such a victim, I would rather pay him more, ask him to stop talking, or go and pay a big bribe for him to let him go.But he doesn't know anything about it, and he thinks every new confession is a repayment if not a favor, which is really annoying!

Later, as soon as I saw a police officer coming with new information, I ran away and hid.I did not end this furtive life until he was tried and sentenced to exile.But that's it, he can't make people safe yet, he keeps writing to us, saying he wants to see Dora before he leaves.So Dora went to see him.When Dora found herself in the iron bars, she fainted.In short, I cannot live in peace until he is escorted away.Later, I heard that he was a shepherd in some "country" place, but I don't know where. All this made me reflect seriously and gave me new insights into our mistakes.Though I was very considerate of Dora, I had to tell her one night.

"My love," said I, "it pains me to think that our lack of order and order is a burden not only to ourselves (to which we are accustomed), but to others." "You have been quiet for a long time, and now you are going to be naughty again!" said Dora. "No, my dear! Let me show you what I mean." "I don't think I need know," said Dora. "I want you to know, though. Put down the jeep." Dora touched mine with Kip's, and said "poor" in an effort to alter my seriousness; but she did not succeed.She ordered Jeep to enter the tower, then sat there holding my hand, looking at me helplessly.

"Actually, my dear," I began, "we have an infection in us, and we infect everyone around us." Had it not been for Dora's expression of eagerness to know whether I should propose a new vaccination or some other remedy to improve our unsanitary conditions, I should have gone on with the metaphor.So I restrained myself and explained what I meant in plain words. "By not learning to be more cautious, my darling," said I, "we have not only lost our money and our comfort, and sometimes even our peace; People are bad, which shows that there is a serious responsibility problem on our part. I began to suspect that it was not one party's fault, so these people are bad because we are not very good."

"Oh, what a serious crime," cried Dora, with wide-eyed eyes. "You mean you saw me steal a gold watch! Oh!" "My dearest," I advised, "don't talk nonsense! Who mentioned a gold watch?" "You," said Dora at once, "you know you do it. You say I'm no good, and compare me with him." "Compared to who?" I asked. "And that little servant," whimpered Dora, "oh, you cruel man, comparing your beloved wife with a condemned little servant! Why didn't you tell me this before you were married? You Cruel man, why didn't you say then that you thought I was worse than a little servant in exile? Oh, how bad you think of me! Oh, my God!"

"Here, Dora, my love," I said, trying to remove the little handkerchief she pressed from her eyes, "you are ridiculous, and quite mistaken. In the first place, this Not true." "You used to say he was a dishonest man," whimpered Dora, "and now you say that about me! Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do!" "My dear girl," said I, "I really beg you, please understand, and hear what I have just said and what I am saying now. My dear Dora, if we do not know how to do our duty to those we employ, They'll never know how to do our duty to us. I'm afraid we give people the opportunity to make mistakes, which should never be offered. Even if we don't mean to, but because we like it, we like it - we don't Don't like it, but we seem to want to be so careless about housekeeping that we have no right to go on. We do make people bad, and we should think about it. I can't help thinking about it. Dora, I can't Get rid of this rumination, sometimes I get very upset about it. Hey honey, that's what it is.

Oh, don't be a fool. " Dora wouldn't let me take the little handkerchief away.She sat there, hiding behind a handkerchief, whimpering and saying: If I feel uneasy, why am I getting married?Why didn't I say the day before I went to church that I better not go because I knew I'd be upset?If I couldn't stand her, why didn't I send her to her aunt in Putney, or to Julia Mills in India?Julia must have been glad to see her, and must not have thought of her as a little servant in exile; Julia would never have called her that.In short, Dora was so distressed that it troubled me too.It seemed to me that it would be useless to make any further efforts of this kind, even if they were mild. I have to use another method. What other way? "Cultivate her mind!" It's an ordinary saying, always sounding optimistic and hopeful.So I decided to mold Dora's mind. I started right away.When Dora was childish and I was trying to pander to her, I tried to look serious—disturbing her, and disconcerting myself.I talked to her about my thinking, and read her Shakespeare, and she was terribly tired.I also pretended to give her a little useful common sense or a reasonable opinion--when I said it, she jumped up in fright, as if it were some firecrackers.However much I tried to cultivate my younger wife's mind casually and naturally, I found that she always felt my motives intuitively, and immediately felt deeply troubled.It was especially evident that she thought Shakespeare a terrible eccentric.This edification was carried out with great difficulty. I didn't force Traddles to come and help me, but when he came to see me I set off my mines, in order to teach Dora indirectly.The quantity and quality of the knowledge I thus gave Traddles was enormous, but it had no effect other than to keep Dora depressed and constantly apprehensive that it would be her turn.I found myself so much a teacher, a snare, a trap; I played the spider to Dora, the fly, constantly jumping out of my burrow, and frightened her. I still hoped that through this transition period Dora and I would come to terms and that I could shape her mind as I wished, so I persisted for several months.But I finally found that, while all this time I had been covered with determination like a porcupine or a hedgehog with spines, the results were pretty much nothing.I began to think that perhaps Dora's mind had been molded and set. After further consideration, I felt that my above conjecture was very likely to be true, so I gave up my easy-to-say but difficult idea, determined to be satisfied with my wife's current situation in the future, and no longer wanted to use any method to reform her.In my heart I was tired of my own cleverness, and afraid to see my darling restrained; so one day I bought her a pair of earrings and a collar for Jeep, and brought her home to please her. Dora was really happy about these two little gifts, and kissed me happily.But there is still a shadow among us--a faint though--and I am determined to get rid of it.If that shadow must have a place, I'll keep it in my own chest. I sat on the couch and put earrings on my wife next to me; then I told her I was afraid we hadn't gotten along so well lately and it was my fault.I do think so, and it is true. "The truth is, Dora, my life," I said, "I tried to be wise." "Makes me smart too," said Dora timidly, "doesn't it, Fatty?" I nodded in response to the question she raised her eyebrows beautifully, and kissed the open mouth. "It's no use," said Dora, shaking her head, jingling her earrings. "You know what a little fellow I am, and what I wanted you to call me in the first place. If you can't do that, I'm afraid You wouldn't like me either. You dare say you didn't think about it sometimes, when it was best—" "What, my dear?" for she would not go on. "Nothing!" said Dora. "Nothing?" I repeated. She put her arms around my neck, laughed, and called herself after a goose she loved, and hid her face on my shoulder.Her curly hair was so thick that it was hard to push them away to show her face. "I didn't think it would be better not to cultivate my little wife's thoughts in the first place?" I laughed at myself, "Is that the problem? Yes, of course I thought about it." "That's what you wanted to do?" cried Dora. "Oh, what a dreadful child!" "But I won't try again," I said. "Because I love her in her true colors very much!" "Don't lie—really?" asked Dora, drawing closer to me. "Why should I change something my darling has had for so long?" said I. "You can never be better than you are, my dear Dora; Just get back to normal and be happy." "Be merry!" said Dora at once. "Yes! All day long! You don't mind a little mistake, do you?" "No, no," I said, "we ought to do our best." "You don't tell me we screw other people up anymore," Dora coaxed me; "do you? Because, you know, it's a nuisance." "No, no," I said. "It seems to me much better to be stupid than unhappy, isn't it?" said Dora. "Dora for what she is is better than anything else in the world." "In the world! Ah, Fatty, that place is huge!" She shook her head, turned her bright, cheerful eyes to me, kissed me, laughed, and skipped off to put Kip on a new collar. Thus ended my last transformation of Dora.I was not happy while it was going on; I could not bear my solitary intelligence alone, nor could I reconcile this attempt at reformation with her request to be a doll-wife.I resolved to improve our conduct as quietly as possible by myself; but I already expected my strength to be weak; otherwise I would degenerate into a spider always waiting in a corner. The shadow I mentioned is no longer between us, it is completely in my heart.How did the shadow fade away? Old unpleasant feelings expanded in my life.If anything, the feeling has changed, it's deeper than before.But that feeling is not very clear, like a faintly sad piece of music heard at night.I love my wife very much, and I am also happy; but the happiness I had vaguely expected in the past is not what I am enjoying now, and there is always something missing. In order to fulfill the promise I made to myself, to reflect my thoughts from the book, I looked back at it carefully and revealed its secrets.I still—as I always have—see what I miss as my childhood fantasies, as unattainable, and it pains me as naturally as anyone else to discover this.But I know that it would be better for me if my wife could help me a little more and share my thoughts that no one else shares, and it is possible. I am wonderfully balanced between two irreconcilable conclusions, without a clear awareness of their opposition to each other.One of them is: what I feel is universal and inevitable; the other is: it is personal and can vary.Thinking of the unfulfilled dreams of my childhood, and of the better circumstances I had had in my manhood, I saw before my eyes the contented days I had spent with Agnes in that lovely old house, as if they were only Like a ghost that can continue to exist in another world but can never be resurrected here. Sometimes I think: what might have happened if Dora and I had never known each other?What will happen again?But she and I were so one and inseparable that the fantasy had no meaning, and soon disappeared like a gossamer floating in the air. I have always loved her.All that I am describing now slumbers, wakes, and sleeps again in the depths of my mind.All this left no trace on me, and I see no influence of it on anything I said or did.I bore all our little sorrows, and worked according to my plan; Dora held the pen; and we both thought we adjusted our work to the needs of the facts.She truly loves me and is proud of me.In her letters to Dora, Agnes sometimes wrote very warm words, expressing the pride and interest that old friends felt when they heard my growing popularity and read my books as if they were listening to me. At this time, Dora read the words aloud with tears of joy in her bright eyes, and said I was a lovely and clever and famous big boy. "The first false impulse of the uncultivated heart." These words of Mrs. Strong's words kept coming to my mind at this moment, and they almost always stuck in my mind.I often wake up in the middle of the night thinking about those words; I remember even seeing them on the wall in my dreams.For, I knew then, that when I first loved Dora, my heart was uncultivated; and if my heart had been uncultivated, I should never have secretly felt it when we were married. "In marriage, there is no greater disparity than the difference of thought and belief." I remember that too.I had tried very hard to make Dora fit me, but it turned out to be impossible.I had but to adapt myself to Dora, to share with her what I could, and be happy; I had all the burdens I had to carry upon my shoulders, and still be happy.When I start to think, my heart begins to acquire the cultivation it deserves.With this cultivation, I was much happier in the second year than in the first; and, better still, it filled Dora's life with sunshine. However, during that year, Dora's body was not so healthy.I had hoped that there were hands more dexterous than mine to help mold her personality, I had hoped that she would have a baby smiling face in her arms so that my baby wife could grow up, but this is impossible. The little angel flew around in front of the door of its little prison, and then flew away freely. "When I can run about as I used to, Auntie," said Dora, "I'll make the jeep race. He's grown dull and lazy now." "I'm afraid, my dear," said my aunt, working peacefully beside her, "that he's sicker than that. He's getting old, Dora." "Do you think it's old?" said Dora in alarm. "Oh, how strange it looks. Jeep's going to grow old!" "This is the pain that we can't live without, little man," said my aunt happily; "to be honest, I also feel that I feel this pain more than before." "But Kip," said Dora, looking at Kip sympathetically, "even little Kip! Oh, poor thing!" "I guess it'll last a long time, Flower," said Auntie, patting Dora's face.At this time Dora leaned over from the couch to look at Jeep, and Jeep also struggled to stand up on his hind legs to express his response, "This winter, spread a piece of flannelette in its house. When spring comes, it will recover like a spring flower." I won’t be surprised if I’m angry. Bless the puppy!” my aunt said loudly, “If it has nine lives like a cat, even if all those lives are lost at once, it will use its last strength to fight I call it, I believe it!" Dora had helped him onto the sofa.It really hated my aunt so much that it couldn't stand up on the sofa, so it barked at my aunt so hard that it turned sideways.The more my aunt looked at it, the more it barked at her; for my aunt had recently put on spectacles, and for some incomprehensible reason it thought it right to attack them. Dora reassured him so much that Kip lay down beside her.When it was quiet, Dora took one of its long ears with her hand again and again, thinking, "Even little Jeep is not spared! Oh, poor thing!" "His lungs are strong," said my aunt cheerfully, "and her hatred has not diminished in the least. No doubt he will live for many years. But if you want a dog to race you, little flower, he will not Appropriate for that activity. I can get you a dog." "Thank you, Auntie," said Dora weakly, "but no more, sorry!" "No more?" My aunt said, taking off her glasses. "I can't have any dogs but Kip," said Dora. "That would be so sorry to Kip! Besides, I can't make friends with any other dog except Kip; because the other dogs didn't know me before I was married, and didn't greet Big Fat when he first came to my house." Bark. I'm afraid I don't like any other dog but Kip, Auntie." "Of course," my aunt said, patting her face, "you're right." "You're not angry, are you?" said Dora, "are you?" "Ha, what a sensitive little baby!" My aunt bent down to her affectionately and said, "I thought I'd be angry!" "No, no, I don't really think so," said Dora at once, "but I'm a little tired, and I get a little confused--I've always been a little confused, you know. But when it comes to Jeep, I It's even more confusing. It's known all about me, hasn't it, Kip? Because it's changed a little, I've been cold on it, and I can't stand it—isn't it, Kip?" Kip cuddled closer to its owner, licking her hand lazily. "You're not old enough to leave your master, are you, Kip?" said Dora, "and we can be together a little longer!" On the following Sunday my fair Dora came down to dinner and saw old Traddles--he always dined with us on Sundays--and she was so glad.We all thought that in a few days she would be running around like she used to.But after a few days, she still couldn't run or walk.She looked beautiful and happy, but her nimble little feet, which used to dance around Kip, became heavy and refused to move much. Every morning, I carried her downstairs and carried her upstairs at night.She put her arms around my neck and laughed like I was doing it for a bet.Kip yelled and danced around us, ran at the forefront, and turned back to watch us panting when we reached the stairs.My aunt, the nicest and kindest nurse, always followed us with a pile of shawl pillows.Mr. Dick would never cede the candle-bearer to any living man.Traddles was always looking up from the bottom of the stairs, and was responsible for bringing the news of Dora's jokes to the loveliest girl in the world.We were a very happy team, and my baby wife was the happiest of the team. Sometimes, though, when I hold her and feel her lighten in my arms, I have a terrible sense of loss, as if I'm headed toward a snow country that I don't even know will freeze my life. ice.I tried hard not to think about or validate this feeling until one night, when it was very strong in me, I was sitting alone at my desk when I heard my aunt say goodbye to her loudly, "Goodbye, little flower." I thought, oh, what an inauspicious name, for the flowers withered while they were still blooming on the tree!I burst into tears.