She was a merry-hearted, healthy girl, with superb colour, and the
figure of a young Venus. She was a belle, and much admired by many
worth-while men.
During her honeymoon, she wrote me a most charming letter speaking of
her happiness, and of her desire to make you an ideal wife.
You and Edna were my guests for a few days when your first child was a
year old. She seemed more beautiful than ever, with an added spiritual
charm, and you were the soul of devotion.
You are the type of man who pays a compliment as naturally as he
breathes, and whose vision is a sensitive plate which retains an
impression of every feminine grace. This impression is developed in the
memory-room afterward, and framed in your conversation.
The ordinary mind calls such a man a flirt, or, in common parlance, "a
jollier;" but I know you to be merely appreciative of womankind in
general, while your heart is beautifully loyal to its ideal. You are a
clean, wholesome man, who could not descend to intrigue. You are
fine-looking, and you possess a gift in conversing.
Of course women are attracted to you. Edna was proud of this fact, and
seemed to genuinely enjoy your popularity.
That was five years ago.
One year ago I visited your home. Edna was the mother of three children,
born during the first five years of marriage.
She had sacrificed her bloom to her babies, and was pallid and anaemic.
Her form had lost its exquisites curves, and she seemed years older than
her age--older indeed than you, although she is four years your junior.
It is a mere incident to be a father of three children. It is a lifetime
experience to be their mother. She had developed nerves, and tears came
as readily as laughter came of old.
She was devoted to her children, and felt a deep earnestness regarding
her responsibility as a mother. But she was still the intensely loving
wife, while you had sunk your rôle of lover-husband in that of adoring
father.
You did not seem to think of Edna's delicate state of health, or notice
her fading beauty. You regarded her as a faithful nurse for your
children, and whenever you spoke of her it was as the mother, not as the
sweetheart and wife.
When I mentioned the drain upon a woman's vitality to bring three robust
children into life in five years, you said it was only a "natural
function," and referred to the old-time families of ten and twelve
children. Your grandmother had fourteen, you said, and was the picture
of health at seventy-five.
My own grandmother gave ten children to the world. But we must recollect
how different was the environment in those days.
Our grandmothers lived in the country, and knew none of the strain and
excitement of these modern times. The high pressure of social and
financial conditions, as we know them, the effort to live up to the
modern standards, the congested city life and the expensive country
life, all these things make motherhood a different ordeal for our women
than our grandmothers. Where our grandfathers took their share of the
care and guidance of children, and the children came up in a wholesome
country fashion, our men to-day are so driven by the money gadfly that
they can only whirl around and around and attend "to business," and all
the care of the children falls upon the mother, or else upon the nurses
and governesses, who in turn are a care and a worry to the wife.
You assured me Edna had all the assistants in caring for her children
she wanted, but you did not realize that every paid employé in a
household is, as a rule, just so much more care to the mistress, not
less than a tax on the husband's purse and, consequently, on his time.
What Edna craves is _your_ love, _your_ attention, _your_ sympathy, not
the service of paid domestics. She wants you to notice her fading bloom,
and to take her in your arms and say, tenderly, "Little girl, we must
get those old roses back. And we must go away for a new honeymoon, all
alone, and forget every care, even if we forget the babies for a few
days."
One little speech like that, one little outing like that, would do more
toward driving away the demon of jealousy than all I could by a thousand
sermons and homilies.
I remember at your own board you made me uncomfortable talking about my
complexion, which you chose to say was "remarkable for a woman of my
age." And then you proceeded to describe some wonderful beauty you had
seen at the Country Club the day previous, and all the time I saw the
tears hidden back under the lids of Edna's tired eyes, and a hurt look
on her pale face. Do you imagine she was _jealous_ of your compliment to
me? or of your praise of the girl's beauty at the Country Club?
No, no, my dear Mr. Gordon, I know Edna too well to accuse her of such
petty feelings. She was only hurt at your lack of taste in accenting her
own lost bloom by needlessly emphasizing another's possession of what
had once been hers.
Yet she called upon the young lady that very day and invited her to
luncheon, and even then you indulged in pronounced admiration of the
guest's cheeks, gallantly requesting your wife to have the bouquet of
carnation pinks removed from the table, as they were so shamed by the
complexions of the ladies.
Of course it was gracefully worded in the plural, but your pallid wife
could not claim her share of it, and you should have realized the fact.
And the reason she could not was that she had sacrificed her health in
your service, in giving your children to you, and in losing her lover.
She adores her splendid babies, but she is still a woman and a
wife,--though you seem to ignore that she is anything but a mother.
Right about face, Mr. Gordon, and become the lover you were, and
jealousy will be driven from your threshold.
It is your own lack of thoughtfulness, your own tactless and tasteless
methods with your wife, which have caused the change in her manner. She
is not jealous, she is only lonely, heart-hungry, disillusioned.
You are less noble, less considerate, less tender, less sympathetic
than she believed. For the man to whom these adjectives can be applied
will guard, love, and cherish the wife of his youth, and the mother of
his children, before all other considerations; and he will understand
how sensitive a fading wife may be, and not confound that sensitiveness
with ignoble jealousy.
It is you, Charles Gordon, who must cure your wife of nerves, hysteria,
and incipient jealousy, not I.