Back Aa

Revelations of a Wife

<h2 id="id01460" style="margin-top: 4em">XXI</h2> <h5 id="id01461">LIFE'S JOG-TROT AND A QUARREL</h5> Life went at a jog-trot with me for a long time after the departure for France of the Braithwaites and Miss Sonnot. My mother-in-law missed her daughter, Mrs. Braithwaite, sorely. I believe if it had not been for her pride in her brilliant daughter and her famous son-in-law she would have become actually ill with fretting. I found my hands full in devising ways to divert her mind and planning dishes to tempt her delicate appetite. Because of her frailty and consequent inability to do much sightseeing, or, indeed, to go far from the house, Dicky and I spent a very quiet winter. Our evenings away from home together did not average one a week. And Dicky very rarely went anywhere without me. "What a Darby and Joan we are getting to be!" he remarked one night as we sat one on each side of the library table, reading. His mother, as was her custom, had gone to bed early in the evening. "Yes! Isn't it nice?" I returned, smiling at him. "Ripping!" Dicky agreed enthusiastically. Then, reflectively, "Funniest thing about it is the way I cotton to this domestic stunt. If anyone had told me before I met you that I should ever stand for this husband-reading-to-knitting-wife sort of thing I should have bought him a ticket to Matteawan, pronto." He stopped and frowned heavily at me, in mimic disapproval. "Picture all spoiled," he declared, sighing. "You are not knitting. Why, oh, why are you not knitting?" "Because I never shall knit," I returned, laughing, "at least not in the evening while you are reading. That sort of thing never did appeal to me. Either the wife who has to knit or sew or darn in the evening is too inefficient to get all her work done in daylight, or she has too much work to do. In the first case, her husband ought to teach her efficiency; in the second place, he ought to help do the sewing or the darning. Then they could both read." "Listen to the feminist?" carolled Dicky; then with mock severity: "Of course, I am to infer, madam, that my stockings are all properly darned?" "Your inference is eminently correct," demurely. "Your mother darned them today." What I had told him was true. His mother had seen me looking over the stockings after they were washed, and had insisted on darning Dicky's. I saw that she longed to do some little personal service for her boy, and willingly handed them over. Dicky threw back his head and laughed heartily. Then his face sobered, and he came round to my side of the table and sat down on the arm of my chair. "Speaking of mother," he said, rumpling my hair caressingly, "I want to tell you, sweetheart, that you've made an awful hit with me the way you've taken care of her. Nobody knows better than I how trying she can be, and you've been just as sweet and kind to her as if she were the most tractable person on earth." He put his arms around me and bent his face to mine. "Pretty nice and comfy this being married to each other, isn't it?" "Very nice, indeed," I agreed, nestling closer to him. My heart echoed the words. In fact, it seemed almost too good to be true, this quiet domestic cove into which our marital bark had drifted. The storms we had weathered seemed far past. Dicky's jealousy of my brother-cousin, Jack Bickett; my unhappiness over Lillian Underwood—those tempestuous days surely were years ago instead of months. Now Jack was "somewhere in France," and I had a queer little premonition that somewhere, somehow, his path would cross that of Miss Sonnot, the little nurse, who had gone with Dr. Braithwaite's, expedition, and who for years had cherished a romantic ideal of my brother-cousin, although she had never met him. Lillian Underwood was my sworn friend. With characteristic directness she had cut the Gordian knot of our misunderstanding by telling me, against Dicky's protests, all about the old secret which her past and that of my husband shared. After her story, with all that it revealed of her sacrifice and her fidelity to her own high ideals, there never again would be a doubt of her in my mind. I was proud of her friendship, although, because of my mother-in-law's prejudice against them, Dicky and I could not have the Underwoods at our home. Our meetings, therefore, were few. But I had an odd little feeling of safety and security whenever I thought of her. I knew if any terrible trouble ever came to me I should fly to her as if she were my sister. My work at the Lotus Study Club was going along smoothly. At home Katie was so much more satisfactory than the maids I had seen in other establishments that I shut my eyes to many little things about which I knew my mother-in-law would have been most captious. But my mother-in-law's acerbity was softened by her weakness. We grew quite companionable in the winter days when Dicky's absence at the studio left us together. Altogether I felt that life had been very good to me. So the winter rolled away, and almost before we knew it the spring days came stealing in from the South, bringing to me their urgent call of brown earth and sprouting things. I was not the only one who listened to the message of spring. Mother Graham grew restless and used all of her meagre strength in drives to the parks and walks to a nearby square where the crocuses were just beginning to wave their brave greeting to the city. The warmer days affected Dicky adversely. He seemed a bit distrait, displayed a trifle of his earlier irritability, and complained a great deal about the warmth of the apartment. "I tell you I can't stand this any longer," he said one particularly warm evening in April, as he sank into a chair, flinging his collar in one direction and his necktie in another. "I'd rather be in the city in August than in these first warm days of spring. What do you say to moving into the country for the summer? Our month is up here the first, anyway, and I am perfectly willing to lose any part of the month's rent if we only can get away." "But, Dicky," I protested, "unless we board, which I don't think any of us would like to do, how are we going to find a house, to say nothing of getting settled in so short a time?" To my surprise, Dicky hesitated a moment before answering. Then, flushing, he uttered the words which brought my little castle of contentment grumbling about me and warned me that my marital problems were not yet all solved. "Why, you see, there won't be any bother about a house. Miss Draper has found a perfectly bully place not far from her sister's home." "Miss Draper has found a house for us!" I echoed Dicky's words in blank astonishment. His bit of news was so unexpected, amazement was the only feeling that came to me for a moment or two. "Well, what's the reason for the awful astonishment?" demanded Dicky, truculently. "You look as if a bomb had exploded in your vicinity." He expressed my feeling exactly. I knew that Miss Draper had become a fixture in his studio, acting as his secretary as well as his model, and pursuing her art studies under his direction. But his references to her were always so casual and indifferent that for months I had not thought of her at all. And now I found that Dicky had progressed to such a degree of intimacy with her that he not only wished to move to the village which she called home, but had allowed her to select the house in which we were to live. I might be foolish, overwrought, but all at once I recognized in Dicky's beautiful protégé a distinct menace to my marital happiness. I knew I ought to be most guarded in my reply to my husband, but I am afraid the words of my answer were tipped with the venom of my feeling toward the girl. "I admit I am astonished," I replied coldly. "You see, I did not know it was the custom in your circle for an artist's model to select a house for his wife and mother. You must give me time to adjust myself to such a bizarre state of things." I was so furious myself that I did not realize how much my answer would irritate Dicky. He sprang to his feet with an oath and turned on me the old, black angry look that I had not seen for months. "That's about the meanest slur I ever heard," he shouted. "Just because a girl works as a model every other woman thinks she has the right to cast a stone at her, and put on a how-dare-you-brush-your-skirt-against-mine sort of thing. You worked for a living yourself not so very long ago. I should think you would have a little Christian charity in your heart for any other girl who worked." "It strikes me that there is a slight difference between the work of a high school instructor in history, a specialist in her subject, and the work of an artist's model," I returned icily. "But, laying all that aside, I should have considered myself guilty of a very grave breach of good taste if I had ventured to select a house for the wife of my principal, unasked and unknown to her." "Cut out the heroics, and come down to brass tacks," Dicky snarled vulgarly. "Why don't you be honest and say you're jealous of the poor girl? I'll bet, if the truth were known, it isn't only the house she selected you'd balk at. I'll bet you wouldn't want to go to Marvin at all for the summer, regardless that I've spent many a comfortable week in that section, and like it better than any other summer place I know." Through all my anger at Dicky, my disgust at his coarseness, came the conviction that he had spoken the truth. I was jealous of Grace Draper, there was no use denying the fact to myself, however strenuously I might try to hide the thing from Dicky. I told myself that I hated Marvin because it held this girl, that instead of spending the summer there I wished I might never see the place again. I was angrier than ever when the knowledge of my own emotion forced itself upon me, angry with myself for being so silly, angry with Dicky for having brought such provocation upon me! I let my speech lash out blindly, not caring what I said: "You are wrong in one thing—right in another. I am not jealous of Miss Draper. To tell you the truth, I do not care enough about what you do to be jealous of you. But I would not like to live in Marvin for this season—I never counted in my list of friends a woman who possesses neither good breeding nor common sense, and I do not propose to begin with Miss Draper." Dicky stared at me for a moment, his face dark and distorted with passion. Then, springing to his feet, he picked up his collar and tie and went into his room. Returning with fresh ones, he snatched his hat and stick and rushed to the door. As he slammed it after him I heard another oath, one this time coupled with a reference to me. I sank back in the big chair weak and trembling. "Well, you have made a mess of it!" My mother-in-law's voice, cool and cynical, sounded behind me. I felt like saying something caustic to her, but there was something in her tones that stopped me. It was not criticism of me she was expressing, rather sympathy. Accustomed as I was to every inflection of her voice, I realized this, and accordingly held my tongue until she had spoken further. "I'll admit you've had enough to make any woman lose her control of herself," went on Dicky's mother, with the fairness which I had found her invariably to possess in anything big, no matter how petty and fussy she was over trifles. "But you ought to know Richard better than to take that way with him. Give Richard his head and he soon tires of any of the thousand things he proposes doing from time to time. Oppose him, ridicule him, make him angry, and he'll stick to his notion as a dog to a bone." She turned and walked into her own room again. I sat miserably huddled in the big chair, by turn angry at my husband and remorseful over my own hastiness. "Vot I do about dinner, Missis Graham?" Katie's voice was subdued, sympathetic and respectful. I realized that she had heard every word of our controversy. The knowledge made my reply curt. "Keep it warm as long as you can. I will tell you when to serve it." Katie stalked out, muttering something about the dinner being spoiled, but I paid no heed to her. My thoughts were too busy with conjectures and forebodings of the future to pay any attention to trifles. The twilight deepened into darkness. I was just nerving myself to summon Katie and tell her to serve dinner when the door opened and Dicky's rapid step crossed the room. He switched on the light, and then coming over to me, lifted me bodily out of my chair. "Was the poor little girl jealous?" he drawled, with his face pressed close to mine. "Well, she shall never have to be jealous again. We won't live in Marvin, naughty old town, full of beautiful models. We'll just go over to Hackensack or some nice respectable place like that." At first my heart had leaped with victory. Dicky had come back, and he was not angry. Then as his lips sought mine, and I caught his breath, my victory turned to ashes. The regret or repentance which had driven my husband back to my arms had not come from his heart but from the depths of a whiskey glass. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.