"Why, it means," says I, "that he wants a game of billiards, the way any
other man does, once in a while."
She shook her head, mournful.
"Three years ago this Winter," says she, "only three short years ago,
every minute of the world that Russell had free, he wanted to spend with
me. That Winter before we were married, do you suppose that
anybody--_any_body could have got him to play billiards with him if he
could have been with me?"
I thought it over. "Well," I says, "no. Likely not. But then, you see,
he couldn't be with you every evening--and that just naturally give him
some nights off."
"'Some nights off,'" she says. "Oh, if you think _that_ is the way he
looks at it--There is no way in this world that I would rather spend my
evenings," she says, "than to sit here with my husband."
"Yes," I says, "I s'pose that's true. I s'pose that's true of most
wives. And it's something they've got to get over thinking is so
important."
She gasped. "Get over--" she says. "Then," says she, "they'll have to
get over loving their husbands."
"Oh, dear, no, they won't--no, they won't," says I. "But they'll have to
get over thinking that selfishness is love--for one thing. Most folks
get them awful mixed--I've noticed that."
But she broke down again, and was sobbing on the arm of the chair. "To
think," she says over, "that now it'll never, never be the same again.
From now on we're going to be just like other married folks!"
That seemed to me a real amazing thing to say, but I saw there wasn't
any use talking to her, so I just let her cry till it was time to go and
feed the baby. And then she sat nursing him, and breathing long, sobbing
breaths--and once I heard her say, "Poor, poor little Mother's boy!"
with all the accent on the relationship.
I walked back into the middle of the long, soft, wine-colored room,
trying to think if I s'posed I'd got so old that I couldn't help in a
thing like this, for I have a notion that there is nothing whatever that
gets the matter that you can't help some way if you're in the
neighborhood of it.
Delia was just shutting the outside door of the apartment. And she came
trotting in with her little, formal, front-door air.
"Two ladies to see you, Miss Marsh," she says. "Mis' Toplady and Mis'
Holcomb."
No sooner said than heard, and I flew to the door, all of a tremble.
"For the land and forevermore," says I. "Where from and what for?"
There they stood in the doorway, dressed, I see at first glance, in the
very best they'd got. Mis' Holcomb, that is the most backward-feeling of
any of our women, was a step behind Mis' Toplady, and had hold of her
arm. And Mis' Toplady was kind of tiptoeing and looking round cautious,
to see if something not named yet was all right.
"There ain't any company, is there?" she says, in a part-whisper.
"No," says I, "not a soul. Come on in."
"Well," says she, relaxing up on her bones, "I asked the girl, and she
says she'd see. What's the use of _being_ a hired girl if you don't know
who you've let in?"
"Sit down," says I, "and tell me what you're doing here, and why you've
come. Is anything the matter? I see there ain't, though--with you in
your best clothes. Throw off your things."
"Calliope," says Mis' Holcomb, "you'd never guess." She leaned forward
in her chair. "We ain't come up for a single thing," says she, "not a
thing!"
Mis' Toplady leaned forward, too. "And the fare a dollar and ninety-six
cents each way," says she, "and us a-staying at a hotel!"
"Go on," says I. "How long you going to be here?"
"Oh, mercy, only to-night," Mis' Holcomb says. "Why, the room is
two-fifty just for us to sleep in it. I told him we shouldn't be setting
in it a minute, but I guess he didn't believe me."
"Well, go on," says I. "Tell me what you've come for?"
Mis' Toplady leaned back and looked round her and sighed--and anybody
could of told that her sigh was pleased and happy.
"Calliope," says she, "we've run away to stay overnight and one day on
our chicken money, because we got so dead tired of home."
Mis' Holcomb just giggled out.
"It's a fact," she says. "We thought we'd come while you was here, for
an excuse. But we were just sick of home, and that's the truth."
I looked at them, stupefied, or part that. Mis' Toplady and Mame, that's
been examples of married contentment for thirty years on end,
hand-running! It begun to dawn on me, slow, what this meant, as Mis'
Toplady begun to tell me about it.
"You know, Calliope," she says, "the very best home in the world gets--"
Then I jumped up. "Hold on," I says. "You wait a minute. I'll be
straight back again."
I run down the hall to the bedroom where Ellen was. She was just laying
the baby down--even in my hurry I stopped to think what a heavenly and
eternal picture that makes--a mother laying a baby down. There's
something in the stooping of her shoulders and the sweep of her skirt
and the tender drooping of her face, with the lamp-light on her hair,
that makes a picture out of every time a baby is laid in his bed. The
very fact that Ellen looked so lovely that way made me all the more
anxious to save her.
"Ellen," I says, "come out here, please."
I pulled her along, with her hair all loose and lovely about her
face--Ellen was a perfect picture of somebody's wife and a little baby's
mother. You never in the world would have thought of her as a human
being besides.
So then I introduced them, and I sat down there with them--the two I
knew so well, and the one I'd got to know so well so sudden. And two of
them were nearly sixty, and one was not much past twenty; but the three
of them had so much in common that they were almost like one person
sitting there with me, before the fire.
"Now," says I, "Mis' Toplady, go ahead. You needn't mind Ellen. She'll
understand."
After a little bit, Mis' Toplady did go ahead.
"Well, sir," Mis' Toplady said, "I dunno what you'll think of us, but
this is the way it was. I was sitting home by the dining-room table
with Timothy night before last. We had a real good wood fire in the
stove, and a tin of apples baking in the top, that smelled good. And the
lamp had been filled that day, so the light was extra bright. And there
was a little green wood in the fire that sort of sung--and Timothy set
with his shoes off, as he so often does evenings, reading his newspaper
and warming his stocking feet on the nickel of the stove. And all of a
sudden I looked around at my dining-room, the way I'd looked at it
evenings for thirty years or more, ever since we went to housekeeping,
and I says to myself, 'I hate the sight of you, and I wish't I was
somewheres else.' Not that I do hate it, you know, of course--but it
just come over me, like it has before. And as soon as my tin of apples
was done and I took them into the kitchen, I grabbed my shawl down off
the hook, and run over to Mis' Holcomb's. And when I shut her gate, I
near jumped back, because there, poking round her garden in the snow in
the dark, was Mame!
"So," Mis' Toplady continued, "we hung over the gate and talked about
it. And we came to the solemn conclusion that we'd just up and light out
for twenty-four hours. We told our husbands, and they took it
philosophic. Men understand a whole lot more than you give them credit
for. They know--if they're any _real_ good--that it ain't that you ain't
fond of them, or that you ain't thankful you're their wife, but that
you've just got to have things that's different and interesting and--and
tellable. Anyhow, that's the way Mame and I figgered it out. And we got
into our good clothes, and we came up to the city, and went to the
hotel, and got us a bowl of hot oyster soup apiece. And then we had the
street-car ride out here, and we'll have another going back. And we've
seen you. And we'll have a walk past the store windows in the morning
before train-time. And I bet when we get home, 'long towards night, our
two dining-rooms'll look real good to us again--don't you, Mame?"
"Yes, sir!" Mame says, with her little laugh again. "And our husbands,
too!"
I'd been listening to them--but I'd been watching Ellen. Ellen was one
of the women that aren't deceived by outside appearances, same as some.
Mis' Toplady and Mis' Holcomb didn't look any more like her city friends
than a cat's tail looks like a plume, but just the same Ellen saw what
they were and what they were worth. And when they got done:
"Do you mean you are going back to-morrow?" she says.
"Noon train," says Mame, "and be home in time to cook supper as natural
as life and as good as new."
Ellen kept looking at them, and I guessed what she was thinking: A
hundred miles they'd come for a change, and all they'd got was two
street-car rides and a bowl of oyster soup apiece and this call, and
they were going home satisfied.
All of a sudden Ellen sat up straight in her chair.
"See," she says, "it's only eight o'clock. Why can't the four of us go
to the theater?"
The two women sort of gasped, in two hitches.
"Us?" they says.
Ellen jumped up. "Quick, Calliope," she says. "Get your things on. Delia
can stay with the baby. I'll telephone for a taxi. We can decide what to
see on the way down. You'll go, won't you?" she asks 'em.
"Go!" says they, in one breath. "Oh--yes, _sir_!"
In no time, or thereabouts, we found ourselves down-stairs packing into
the taxicab. I was just as much excited as anybody--I hadn't been to a
play in years. Ellen told us what there was as we went down, but they
might have been the names of French cooking for all they meant to us,
and we left it to her to pick out where we were to go.
When we followed her down the aisle of the one she picked out, just
after the curtain went up, where do you think she took us? _Into a box!_
It was so dark that Mis' Toplady and Mame never noticed until the
curtain went down, and the lights came up, and we looked round.
As for me, I could hardly listen to the play. I was thinking of these
two dear women from the village, and what it meant to them to have
something different to do. But even more, I was watching Ellen, that had
set out to make them have a good time, and was doing her best at it,
getting them to talk and making them laugh, when the curtain was down.
But when the curtain was up, it seemed to me that Ellen wasn't listening
to the play so very much, either.
Before the last act, Ellen had to get back to the baby, so we left the
two of them there and went home.
"Alone in the box!" says Mame Holcomb, as we were leaving. "My land, and
my hat's trimmed on the wrong side for the audience!"
"Do we have to go when it's out?" says Mis' Toplady. "Won't they just
leave us set here, on--and on--and on?"
I remember them as I looked back and saw them, sitting there together.
And something, I dunno whether it was the wedding-trip poplin dress, or
the thought of the two dining-rooms where they'd set for so long, or of
the little lark they'd planned, sort of made a lump come and meet a word
I was trying to say.
We'd got out to the entry of the box, when somebody came after us, and
it was little bit of Mame Holcomb, looking up with eyes bright as a blue
jay's at the feed-dish.
"Oh," she says to Ellen, "I ain't half told you--neither of us has--what
this means to us. And I wanted you to know--we both of us do--that the
best part is, you so sort of _understood_."
Ellen just bent over and kissed her. And when we came out in the hall,
all light and red carpet, I see Ellen's eyes were full of tears.
And when we got in the taxicab: "Ellen," I says, "I thank you, too--ever
so much. You did understand. So did I."
"I don't know--I don't know," she says "But, Calliope, how in the world
do you understand that kind of thing?"
So I said it, right out plain:
"Oh," I says, "I guess sheer because I've seen so much unhappiness, and
on up to divorce, come about sole because married folks _will_ hunt in
couples perpetual, and not let themselves be just folks."
When we got home--and we hadn't said much more all the way there--as we
opened the living-room door, I saw that we'd got there first, before
Russell. I was glad of that. Ellen ran right down the hall to the baby's
room, and I took off my things and went down to the end of the room
where the couch was, to lay down till she came back.
I must have dozed off, because I didn't hear Russell come in. The first
I knew, he was standing with his back to the fire, filling his pipe. So
I looked in his face, when he didn't know anybody was looking.
He had evidently walked home, and had come in fresh and glowing and
full of frosty air, and his cheeks were ruddy. He was smiling a little
at something or other, and altogether he looked not a bit like the tired
man that had come home that night to dinner.
Then I heard the farther door click, and Ellen's step in the hall.
He looked toward the door, and I saw the queerest expression come in his
face. Now, there was Russell, a man of twenty-seven or eight, a grown
man that had lived his independent life for years before he had married
Ellen. And yet, honestly, when he looked up then, his face and his eyes
were like those of a boy that had done something that he had been
scolded for. He looked kind of apologetic and explanatory--a look no man
ought to be required to look unless for a real reason. It seems
so--ignominious for a human being to have to look like that when they
hadn't done a thing wrong.
My heart sank some. I thought of the way Ellen had been all slumped down
in that easy chair, crying and taking on. And I waited for her to come
in, feeling as if all the law and the prophets hung on the next few
minutes--and I guess they did.
She'd put on a little, soft house-dress, made you-couldn't-tell-how, of
lace, with blue showing through, kind of like clouds and the sky. But it
was her face I looked at, because I remembered the set look it had when
she'd told Russell good-by. And when I see her face now there in all
that sky-and-clouds effect, honest, it was like a star.
"Hello, dear," she says, kind of sweet and casual, "put a stick of wood
on the fire and tell me all about it."
I tell you, my heart jumped up then as much as it would of if I'd heard
her say "I will" when they were married. For this was their new minute.
"Sit here," he says, and pulled her down to the big chair, and sat on
the low chair beside her, where I'd seen him first. Only now, the baby
wasn't there--it was just the two of them.
"Did you beat them all to pieces?" she asks, still with that blessed,
casual, natural way of hers.
He smiled, sort of pleased and proud and humble. "I did," he owns up.
"You're my wife, and I can brag to you if I want to. I walloped 'em."
He told her about the game, saying a lot of things that didn't mean a
thing to me, but that must have meant to her what they meant to him,
because she laughed out, pleased.
"Good!" she says. "You play a corking game, if I do say it. Do you know,
you look a lot better than you did when you came home to dinner? I hate
to see you look tired like that."
"I feel fit as a fish now," says he. "There's something about an evening
like that with half a dozen of 'em--it isn't the game. It's the--oh, I
don't know. But it kind of--"
He petered off, and she didn't make the mistake of agreeing too hard or
talking about it too long. She just nodded, and pretty soon she told him
some little thing about the baby. When he emptied his pipe, she said she
thought she'd go to bed.
But when she got up, he reached up and pulled her back in the chair
again, and moved so that he set with his cheek against hers. And he
says:
"I've got something to tell you."
She picked up his hand to lean her head on, and says, "What? Me?"--which
I'd noticed was one of the little family jokes, that no family should be
without a set of.
"Do you know, Ellen," he said, "to-night, when I went out to go over to
Beldon's, I thought you didn't like my going."
"You did?" she says. "What made you think that?"
"The way you spoke--or looked--or kissed me. I don't know. I imagined
it, I guess," says he. "And--I've got something to own up."
She just waited; and he said it out, blunt:
"It made me not want to come home," says he.
"Not want to come home?" she says over, startled.
He nodded. "Lacy and Bright both left Beldon's before I did," he says.
"I thought probably--I don't know. I imagined you were going to be
polite as the deuce, the way I thought you were when I went out."
"Oh," she says, "was I that?"
"So when Lacy and Bright made jokes about what their wives'd say if they
didn't get home, I joined in with them, and laughed at the 'apron
strings.' That's what we called it."
She moved a little away. "Did you do that?" she said. "Oh, Russell, I
should hate that. I should think any woman would hate it."
"I know," he says. "I'm dead sorry. But I wanted you to know. And,
dear--"
He got up and stood before her, with her hands crushed up in his.
"I want you to know," he says, kind of solemn, "that the way you are
about this makes me--gladder than the dickens. Not for the reason you
might think--because it's going to make it easy to be away when I want
to. But because--"
He didn't say things very easy. Most men don't, except for their little
bit of courting time.
"Well, thunder," he said, "don't you see? It makes me so sure you're my
_wife_--and not just married to me."
She smiled up at him without saying anything, but I knew how balm and
oil were curing the hurt that she thought she'd had that night when he
went out.
"I've always thought of our each doing things--and coming home and
telling each other about them," he says, vague.
"Of _my_ doing things, too?" she asks, quick.
"Why, yes--sure. You, of course," he says, emphatic. "Haven't you seen
that I want you to do things sometimes, without me tagging on?"
"Is that the way you look at it?" she says, slow.
He gave her two hands a gay little jerk, and pulled her to her feet.
"Why," he said, "you're a person. And I'm a person. If we really love
each other, being married isn't only something _instead_. It's something
_plus_."
"Russell," she says, "how did you find that out?"
"I don't know," he says. "How does anybody find out anything?"
I'll never forget the way Ellen looked when she went close to him.
"By loving somebody enough, I think," she says.
That made him stop short to wonder about something.
"How did you find out, if it comes to that?" he asks.
"What? Me?" she says. "Oh, I found out--by special messenger!"
Think of Mis' Toplady and Mame being that, unbeknownst!
They turned away together, and walked down the room. The fire had burned
down, and everything acted like eleven-o'clock-at-night. It made a nice
minute. I like to think about it.
"To-morrow morning," she told him, "I'm going to take Calliope and two
friends of hers to the dog show. And you--don't--have--to--come. But
you're invited, you know."
He laughed like a boy.
"Well, now, maybe I _can_ drop in!" says he.