Master of the Vineyard Part 17

"I suppose so. His ideal of a wife seems to be one who shall arrange and order his house, look after his clothing, provide for his material comfort, be there when he comes, sit at the head of his table, dressed in her best, when he deigns to honour dinner with his presence, ask no questions as to his comings or goings, keep still if he prefers to read either the morning or evening paper while he eats, and to refrain from annoying him by being ill, or, at least, by speaking of illness.

[Sidenote: Quiet Rebuke]

"I saw, once, a huge cocoa-husk door-mat, with the word 'Welcome' on it in big red letters. I've been sorry ever since that I didn't buy it, for it typified me so precisely. It would be nice, wouldn't it, to have at your front door something that exactly indicated the person inside, like the overture to a Wagner opera, using all the themes and _motifs_ that were coming? That's what I've been for six years, but, if a worm will turn, why not a wife?"

"If you'll excuse me for saying so," Madame answered, in a tone of quiet rebuke, "I don't think it was quite right to come away without letting him know you were coming."

"Why not?"

"He'll wonder where you are."

"I've had plenty of opportunity to wonder where he was."

"But what will he think, when he finds out you have gone?"

"He may not have noticed it. I have competent servants and they'll look after him as well or better than I do. If I had left a wax figure in the library, in one of my gowns, with its back to the door and its head bent over a book, I could have been well on my way to China before I was missed, or, rather, that I was among those not present. If he has found it out, it has been by the application of the same inductive methods by which I discover that he's not coming home to dinner."

[Sidenote: Do You Love Him?]

"Do you love him?" In the answer to that question lay Madame's solution of all difficulties, past and to come. To her, it was the divine reagent of all Life's complicated chemistry; the swift turning of the prism, with ragged edges breaking the light into the colours of the spectrum, to a point where refraction was impossible.

"I did," Edith sighed, "but marriage is a great strain upon love."

The silvery cadence of Madame's laughter rang through the house and echoed along the corridor. As though in answer, the clock struck ten, the canary sang happily, and a rival melody came from the kitchen, in cracked soprano, mercifully muted by distance and two closed doors.

"See what you've started," Edith said. "It's like the poem, where the magic kiss woke the princess, and set all the clocks to going and the little dogs to barking outside. Don't let me talk you to death--I've been chattering for considerably over an hour, and, very selfishly, of my own affairs, to the exclusion of everything else."

"But your affairs interest me extremely, I wish I knew of some way to help you."

"In the last a.n.a.lysis, of course, it comes to this--either go on and make the best of it, or quit."

[Sidenote: The Marriage Vow]

"Not--not divorce," breathed Madame. Her violet eyes were wide with horror.

"No," Edith answered, shortly, "not divorce. Separation, possibly, but not divorce, which is only a legal form permitting one to marry again.

Personally, I feel bound by the solemn oath I took at the altar, 'until death do us part,' and 'forsaking all others keep thee only unto me so long as we both shall live.' All the laws in the country couldn't make me feel right with my own conscience if I violated that oath."

"If the marriage service were changed," Madame said, nodding her approval, "it might be justified. If one said, at the altar, 'Until death or divorce do us part,' or 'Until I see someone else I like better,' there'd be reason for it, but, as it is, there isn't. And again, it says, 'Those whom G.o.d hath joined let no man put asunder.'"

"Those whom G.o.d hath joined no man can put asunder," Edith retorted, "but did G.o.d do it? It doesn't seem right to blame Him for all the pitiful mistakes that masquerade as marriage. Mother used to say," she resumed, after a little, "that when you're more miserable without a man than you think you ever could be with him, it's time to marry him, and when you're more miserable with him than you think you ever could be without him, it's time to quit."

[Sidenote: Envious Women]

"And," suggested Madame, "in which cla.s.s do you belong?"

"Both, I think--that is, I'm miserable enough to belong to both. I'm unhappy when he's with me and wretched when he isn't. As he mostly isn't, I'm more wretched than unhappy. In the small circle in which I move, I'm considered a very fortunate woman.

"Women who are compelled to be mendicants and who do not know that I have a private income, envy me my gowns and hats, my ability to ask a friend or two to luncheon if I choose, and the unfailing comfort of a taxicab if I'm caught in the rain. They think, if they had my gowns and my grooming, that they could win and keep love, which seems to be about all a woman wants. But these things are, in reality, as useless as painting the house when the thermometer is below zero and you need a fire inside to warm your hands by. I have imported gowns and real lace and furs and jewels and all the grooming I'm willing to take, but my soul is frozen and starved.

"My house," she went on, "isn't a mansion, but it has all the comforts anyone could reasonably require. As far as my taste can discover, it's artistic and even unusual. The dinner my cook sends up every night is as good, or better than any first-cla.s.s hotel can serve, though it may not be quite so elaborate.

[Sidenote: The One Thing Lacking]

"I myself am not so bad to look at, I am well dressed, and never untidy.

I am disgustingly well, which is fortunate, for most men hate a sick woman. If I have a headache I don't speak of it. I neither nag nor fret nor scold, and I even have a few parlour tricks which other people consider attractive. For six years, I have given generously and from a full heart everything he has seemed to require of me.

"I've striven in every way to please him, adapting myself to his tastes.

I've even been the sort of woman men call 'a good fellow,' admiringly among women and contemptuously among themselves. And, in return, I have nothing--not even the fairy gold that changes to withered leaves when you take it into the suns.h.i.+ne."

"You seem to have a good deal, dear--youth and health and strength and sufficient income. How many women would be glad to have what you have?"

"I want love," cried Edith, piteously. "I want someone to care for me--to be proud of me for what I am and the little things I can do! If I painted a hideous dog on a helpless china plate, I'd want someone to think it was pretty. If I cooked a mess in the chafing-dish or on the stove, I'd want someone to think it was good, just because I did it! If I embroidered a red rose on a pink satin sofa cus.h.i.+on, or painted a Winter scene on a wooden snow-shovel and hung it up in the parlour, I'd want someone to think it was beautiful. If I wrote a limerick, I'd want someone to think it was clever. I want appreciation, consideration, sympathy, affection! I'm starving for love, I'm dying for it, and I'd go across the desert on my knees for the man who could give it to me!"

[Sidenote: Kisses Cla.s.sified]

"Perhaps he cares," said Madame, consolingly, "and doesn't show it."

"You can tell by the way a man kisses you whether he cares or not. If he doesn't kiss you at all, he doesn't care and doesn't even mind your knowing it. If he kisses you dutifully, without a trace of feeling, and, by preference, on your cheek or neck, he doesn't care but thinks he ought to, and hopes you won't find out that he doesn't. But, if he cares--ah, how it thrills you if he cares!"

Madame's violet eyes grew dim. "I know," she said, brokenly, "for I had it all once, long ago. People used to say that marriage changes love, but, with us, it only grew and strengthened. The beginning was no more the fulness of love than an acorn is the oak tree which springs from it.

We had our trials, our differences, and our various difficulties, but they meant nothing.

[Sidenote: It May Come]

"I've had almost all the experiences of life," she continued, clearing her throat. "The endless cycle of birth and death has pa.s.sed on its way through me. I've known poverty, defeat, humiliation, doubt, grief, discouragement, despair. I've had illness and death; I've borne children only to lose them again. I've worked hard and many times I've had to work alone, but I've had love, though all I have left of it is a sunken grave."

"And I," answered Edith, "have had everything else but love. Believe me, I'd take all you've had, even the grave, if I could have it once."

"It may come," said Madame, hopefully.

Edith shook her head. "That's what I'm afraid of."

"How so? Why be afraid?"

"You see," she explained, "I'm young yet and I'm not so desperately unattractive as my matrimonial experiences might lead one to believe. I haven't known there was another man on earth except my husband, but his persistent neglect has made me open my eyes a little, and I begin to see others, on a far horizon. Red blood has a way of answering to red blood, whether there are barriers between or not, and if I loved another man, and he were unscrupulous----"

"But," objected the older woman, "you couldn't love an unscrupulous man."

[Sidenote: Like the Circus]

"Couldn't I? My dear, when I see the pitiful specimens of manhood that women love, the things they give, the sacrifices they make, the neglect and desertions they suffer from, the countless humiliations they strive to bear proudly, I wonder that any one of us dares to look in the mirror.

"It's the eternal woman-hunger for love that makes us what we are, compels us to endure what we do, and keeps us all door-mats with 'Welcome' printed on us in red letters. Eagerly trustful, we keep on buying tickets to the circus, and never discover until we're old and grey, that it's always exactly the same entertainment, and we're admitted to it, each time, by a different door.

"Sometimes we see the caged wild animals first, and again, we arrive at the pink-lemonade stand; or, up at the other end, where the trapezes are, or in the middle, opposite the tank. Sometimes the band plays and sometimes it doesn't, but all you need in order to be thoroughly disillusioned is to stay to the concert, which bears about the same relation to the circus that marriage does to your antic.i.p.ations."

"Are you afraid," laughed Madame, "that you'll buy another ticket?"