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In: Romance·Novels·American Literature
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #12084.
The opening · free to read
"I WILL BE HAPPY! I WILL! I WILL!"
Today we were married.
I have said these words over and over to myself, and now I have written them, and the written characters seem as strange to me as the uttered words did. I cannot believe that I, Margaret Spencer, 27 years old, I who laughed and sneered at marriage, justifying myself by the tragedies and unhappiness of scores of my friends, I who have made for myself a place in the world's work with an assured comfortable income, have suddenly thrown all my theories to the winds and given myself in marriage in as impetuous, unreasoning fashion as any foolish schoolgirl.
I shall have to change a word in that last paragraph. I forgot that I am no longer Margaret Spencer, but Margaret Graham, Mrs. Richard Graham, or, more probably, Mrs. "Dicky" Graham. I don't believe anybody in the world ever called Richard anything but "Dicky."
On the other hand, nobody but Richard ever called me anything shorter than my own dignified name. I have been "Madge" to him almost ever since I knew him.
Dear, dear Dicky! If I talked a hundred years I could not express the difference between us in any better fashion. He is "Dicky" and I am "Margaret."
He is downstairs now in the smoking room, impatiently humoring this lifelong habit of mine to have one hour of the day all to myself.
My mother taught me this when I was a tiny girl. My "thinking hour," she called it, a time when I solved my small problems or pondered my baby sins. All my life I have kept up the practice. And now I am going to devote it to another request of the little mother who went away from me forever last year.
"Margaret, darling," she said to me on the last day we ever talked together, "some time you are going to marry--you do not think so now, but you will--and how I wish I had time to warn you of all the hidden rocks in your course! If I only had kept a record of those days of my own unhappiness, you might learn to avoid the wretchedness that was mine. Promise me that if you marry you will write down the problems that confront you and your solution of them, so than when your own baby girl comes to you and grows into womanhood she may be helped by your experience."
Poor little mother! Her marriage with my father had been one of those wretched tragedies, the knowledge of which frightens so many people away from the altar. I have no memory of my father. I do not know today whether he be living or dead. When I was 4 years old he ran away with the woman who had been my mother's most intimate friend. All my life has been warped by the knowledge. Even now, worshipping Dicky as I do, I am wondering as I sit here, obeying my mother's last request, whether or not an experience like hers will come to me.
A fine augury for our happiness when such thoughts as this can come to me on my wedding day!
Dicky is an artist, with all the faults and all the lovable virtues of his kind. A week ago I was a teacher, holding one of the most desirable positions in the city schools. We met just six months ago, two of the most unsuited people who could be thrown together. And now we are married! Next week we begin housekeeping in a dear little apartment near Dicky's studio.
Dicky has insisted that I give up my work, and against all my convictions I have yielded to his wishes. But on my part I have stipulated that I must be permitted to do the housework of our nest, with the occasional help of a laundress. I will be no parasite wife who neither helps her husband in or out of the home. But the little devils must be busy laughing just now. I, who have hardly hung up my own nightgown for years, and whose knowledge of housekeeping is mightily near zero, am to try to make home happy and comfortable for an artist! Poor Dicky!
I don't know what has come to me. I worship Dicky. He sweeps me off my feet with his love, his vivid personality overpowers my more commonplace self, but through all the bewildering intoxication of my engagement and marriage a little mocking devil, a cool, cynical, little devil, is constantly whispering in my ear: "You fool, you fool, to imagine you can escape unhappiness! There is no such thing as a happy marriage!"
Dicky has just 'phoned up from the smoking room to ask me if my hour isn't up. How his voice clears away all the miasma of my miserable thoughts! Please God, Dicky, I am going to lock up all my old ideas in the most unused closet of my brain, and try my best to be a good wife to you! I will be happy! I will! I WILL!
"I'll give you three guesses, Madge." Dicky stood just inside the door of the living room, holding an immense parcel carefully wrapped. His hat was on the back of his head, his eyes shining, his whole face aglow with boyish mischief.
"It's for you, my first housekeeping present, that is needed in every well regulated family," he burlesqued boastfully, "but you are not to see it until we have something to eat, and you have guessed what it is."
"I know it is something lovely, dear," I replied sedately, "but come to your dinner. It is getting cold."
Dicky looked a trifle hurt as he followed me to the dining room. I knew what he expected--enthusiastic curiosity and a demand for the immediate opening of the parcel, I can imagine the pretty enthusiasm, the caresses with which almost any other woman would have greeted a bridegroom of two weeks with his first present.
But it's simply impossible for me to gush. I cannot express emotion of any kind with the facility of most women. I worshipped my mother, but I rarely kissed her or expressed my love for her in words. My love for Dicky terrifies me sometimes, it is so strong, but I cannot go up to him and offer him an unsolicited kiss or caress. Respond to his caresses, yes! but offer them of my own volition, never! There is something inside me that makes it an absolute impossibility.
"What's the menu, Madge? The beef again?"
Dicky's tone was mildly quizzical, his smile mischievous, but I flushed hotly. He had touched a sore spot. The butcher had brought me a huge slab of meat for my first dinner when I had timidly ordered "rib roast," and with the aid of my mother's cook book and my own smattering of cooking, my sole housewifely accomplishment, I had been trying to disguise it for subsequent meals.
"This is positively its last appearance on any stage," I assured him, trying to be gay. "Besides, it's a casserole, with rice, and I defy you to detect whether the chief ingredient be fish, flesh or fowl."
"Casserole is usually my pet aversion," Dicky said solemnly. Look not on the casserole when it is table d'hote, is one of the pet little proverbs in my immediate set. Too much like Spanish steak and the other good chances for ptomaines. But if you made it I'll tackle it--if you have to call the ambulance in the next half-hour."
"Dicky, you surely do not think I would use meat that was doubtful, do you?" I asked, horror-stricken. "Don't eat it. Wait and I'll fix up some eggs for you."
Dicky rose stiffly, walked slowly around to my side of the table, and gravely tapped my head in imitation of a phrenologist.
"Absolute depression where the bump called 'sense of humor' ought to be. Too bad! Pretty creature, too. Cause her lots of trouble, in the days to come," he chanted solemnly.
Then he bent and kissed me. "Don't be a goose, Madge," he admonished, "and never, never take me seriously. I don't know the meaning of the word. Come on, let's eat the thing-um bob. I'll bet it's delicious."
He uncovered the casserole and regarded the steaming contents critically. "Smells scrumptious," he announced. "What's in the other? Potatoes au gratin?" as he took off the cover of the other serving dish. "Good! One of my favorites."
He piled a liberal portion on any plate and helped himself as generously. He ate heartily of both dishes, ignoring or not noticing that I scarcely touched either dish.
For I was fast lapsing into one of the moods which my little mother used to call my "morbid streaks" and which she had vainly tried to cure ever since I was a tiny girl.
Dicky didn't like my cooking! He was only pretending! Dicky was disappointed in the way I received the announcement of his present! Probably he soon would find me wanting in other things.
As I took our plates to the kitchen and brought on a lettuce and tomato salad with a mayonnaise dressing over which I had toiled for an hour, I was trying hard to choke back the tears.
When I brought on the baked apples which I had prepared with especial care for dessert, Dick gave them one glance which to my oversensitive mind looked disparaging. Then he pushed back his chair.
"Don't believe I want any dessert today. The rest of the dinner was so good I ate too much of it. Eat yours and I'll undo your surprise."
"Whatever in the world?" I began as Dicky lifted the lid and revealed a big Angora cat. Then my voice changed. "Why, Dicky, you don't mean--" But Dicky was absorbed in lifting the cat out.
"Isn't she a beauty?" he said admiringly. But I was almost into the dining room.
"I suppose she is," I replied faintly, "but surely you do not intend her for me?"
"Why not?" Dicky's tone was sharper than I had ever heard it. He set the cat down on the floor and she walked over to me. I pushed her away gently with my foot as I replied:
"Because I dislike cats--intensely. Besides, you know cats are so unsanitary, always carrying disease--"
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