The End of the World | Page 6

resistance. His dignity required a show of
resistance. But it was only a show. He always meant to surrender in the
end. Whenever his wife ceased her fire of small-arms and herself hung
out the flag of truce, he instantly capitulated. As in every other dispute,
so in this one about the discharge of the "miserable, impudent
Dutchman," Mrs. Anderson attacked her husband at all his weak points,
and she had learned by heart a catalogue of his weak points. Then,
when he was sufficiently galled to be entirely miserable; when she had
expressed her regret that she hadn't married somebody with some heart,
and that she had ever left her father's house, for her father was always
good to her; and when she had sufficiently reminded him of the lover
she had given up for him, and of how much he had loved her, and how
miserable she had made him by loving Samuel Anderson--when she
had conducted the quarrel through all the preliminary stages, she

always carried her point in the end by a coup de partie somewhat in
this fashion:
"That's just the way! Always the way with you men! I suppose I must
give up to you as usual. You've lorded it over me from the start. I can't
even have the management of my own daughter. But I do think that
after I've let you have your way in so many things, you might turn off
that fellow. You might let me have my way in one little thing, and you
would if you cared for me. You know how liable I am to die at any
moment of heart-disease, and yet you will prolong this excitement in
this way."
Now, there is nothing a weak man likes so much as to be considered
strong, nothing a henpecked man likes so much as to be regarded a
tyrant. If you ever hear a man boast of his determination to rule his own
house, you may feel sure that he is subdued. And a henpecked husband
always makes a great show of opposing everything that looks toward
the enlargement of the work or privileges of women. Such a man insists
on the shadow of authority because he can not have the substance. It is
a great satisfaction to him that his wife can never be president, and that
she can not make speeches in prayer-meeting. While he retains these
badges of superiority, he is still in some sense head of the family.
So when Mrs. Anderson loyally reminded her husband that she had
always let him have his own way, he believed her because he wanted to,
though he could not just at the moment recall the particular instances.
And knowing that he must yield, he rather liked to yield as an act of
sovereign grace to the poor oppressed wife who begged it.
"Well, if you insist on it, of course, I will not refuse you," he said; "and
perhaps you are right." He had yielded in this way almost every day of
his married life, and in this way he yielded to the demand that August
should he discharged. But he agreed with his wife that Julia should not
know anything about it, and that there must be no leave-taking allowed.
The very next day Julia sat sewing on the long porch in front of the
house. Cynthy Ann was getting dinner in the kitchen at the other end of
the hall, and Mrs. Anderson was busy in her usual battle with dirt. She

kept the house clean, because it gratified her combativeness and her
domineering disposition to have the house clean in spite of the
ever-encroaching dirt. And so she scrubbed and scolded, and scolded
and scrubbed, the scrubbing and scolding agreeing in time and rhythm.
The scolding was the vocal music, the scrubbing an accompaniment.
The concordant discord was perfect. Just at the moment I speak of there
was a lull in her scolding. The symphonious scrubbing went on as usual.
Julia, wishing to divert the next thunder-storm from herself, erected
what she imagined might prove a conversational lightning-rod, by
asking a question on a topic foreign to the theme of the last march her
mother had played and sung so sweetly with brush and voice.
"Mother, what makes Uncle Andrew so queer?"
"I don't know. He was always queer." This was spoken in a staccato,
snapping-turtle way. But when one has lived all one's life with a
snapping-turtle, one doesn't mind. Julia did not mind. She was curious
to know what was the matter with her uncle, Andrew Anderson. So she
said:
"I've heard that some false woman treated him cruelly; is that so?"
Julia did not see how red her mother's face was, for she was not
regarding her.
"Who told you