Poor Amelia, in her bedroom, in the chilly December dusk, sopped her
eyes with cold water and looked in the glass. "I _mustn't_ cry any
more," she said to herself, despairingly--"they're so red now!"
A door opened down-stairs, and there was a burst of laughter; and Mrs.
Dilworth, in the cold twilight, went on sopping her eyes. Tom and the
girls evidently didn't need her. "They could get along just as well
without me. And if the Lord would take me, Tom could--could--so he
could--"
Her soul was dumb, even to itself; but she knew what it was that Tom
"could" do.
And she knew it without bitterness. Like every other woman whose love
for her husband has in it the maternal element (and most good women's
love has this element), she had always felt that if she died Thomas
ought to marry again; but this simple creature went one ahead of that
rather elementary feeling, and specified: she was willing to have him
marry _her_.
"If the Lord would only remove me," said poor Milly, looking miserably
in the glass at her plump figure, which showed no indications of
removal. Her eyes were hopelessly red; she didn't see how she could
possibly go down to supper. But of course she had to go down. The
mother of a family and the mistress of one servant must go down to
supper, no matter what the condition of her eyes may be. She slunk
into her seat behind her teacups, and scarcely dared to look about her
noisy, hungry circle, still less at her Thomas, who was smiling to
himself, but who did not share his amusement with his family. Still,
when he suddenly said something about the refreshment of talking to
intelligent people, it was not hard to guess the direction of his
thoughts. "It sharpens your brains up," said Thomas. "I was going to
suggest, Milly, that you should ask Helen Hayes to tea again; but she's
got company; and when they leave she's going off to make a visit to
some of her relations, she tells me."
Amelia's mild lips tightened silently. So they had been together
again. Her hand shook as she poured out another cup of tea for her
Thomas, who took that moment to say, with all a husband's candor, that
she was getting fatter than ever. "I thought you were starving
yourself to get thin, Milly?" he said, smiling. Milly smiled, too,
faintly; but she was saying to herself: "What did they talk about? How
long were they together? Oh, if I could only be taken away!"
It would be interesting to follow the processes of a mind like Mrs.
Dilworth's: how did a wife and mother of children reach the point of
feeling that her family would be better off without her? Anybody in
Old Chester could have told her such a belief was folly, and wicked
folly at that. But it seemed just plain reason to Milly Dilworth: "I'm
not necessary to anybody. Thomas likes somebody younger. He can't
marry her because I'm alive; he could marry her (and she would be good
to the children) if I were not here. But I _am_!" she would end,
hopelessly.
Morning after morning, as she went about her household duties, or when
before tea she sat in her little, old rocking-chair, mending the family
stockings, she used to break herself against the hopelessness of the
situation: She was there; and unless the Lord would remove her (any
other sort of removal was impossible to her devout imagination) Tom
could not have what he wanted--yes, and needed, too. For it was at
this period that Mrs. Dilworth recognized, what most wives of men do
recognize at one time or another, that although being a wife and mother
is the only vocation of a married woman, being a husband and father is
only one of many vocations of a married man. Hence the companionship
of an eminently worthy wife is almost never enough for the male
creature. When this harsh truth burst upon Milly, she wiped her eyes
on the stocking she was mending and groaned aloud. But she did not
rail against the fact, nor did she attempt to deny it; wherein she
showed a superfeminine intelligence. She only said to herself that
Thomas could not have what he wanted while she was alive; yet she
couldn't, it seemed, die, although she was so miserable that she didn't
know how she lived! It was at this point that she began to make wild
schemes to relieve the situation: Suppose she asked that Hayes girl to
come and make them a visit? But no--a man wants more than to just look
at a pretty girl across the table. Suppose she went away herself and
made a visit, and asked Miss Helen Hayes to come and keep house for
her? (Like all good wives, Milly had no hesitation in offering up
another woman to the pleasure of her lord.) No; people would talk
about Tom if she did that.... The amount of it was, poor Milly,
although she did not know it, was really planning that Thomas should
have two wives at the same time--and, dear me! how that would simplify
things! There would be the old, sensible, matter-of-fact wife to mend
his stockings and order his good dinner and nurse him through the
indigestion consequent upon the dinner--the old, anxious wife, who has
had the children and reared them, who has planned and economized and
toiled with him, who has borne the burden and heat of the day at his
side--the prosaic wife, who gives, unasked, such good advice. Every
one will admit that this elderly person has been, and (to a limited
degree) still is, a necessity to every Thomas. But sometimes Thomas
thinks, in his simple way, that it would be pleasant to have the
luxuries as well as the necessities of life; to have, for instance, a
young wife--a pretty wife, clever and light-hearted and gayly
tyrannical; a wife who never knew enough to advise anybody, who should
be a relaxation and a refreshment, _and just a little bit of a fool_;
for, as every intelligent (unmarried) woman knows, men like fools;
feminine fools. Of course the trouble is that if you supply a wife for
two sides of a man's character--for utility, so to speak, and for
diversion--he may, not unreasonably, demand that every side and angle
and facet of his jewel-like nature have its own feminine setting. That
was probably Solomon's idea. Well, well! the time is not yet for this
reasonable arrangement; and it is possible that trade in galvanized
buckets will never warrant its extensive existence.
But all this is very frivolous compared to the reality of this poor
woman's pain, a pain that finally evolved a plan which, although less
picturesque than the harem, was of the same grade in the eye of the
law, though, curiously enough, not in her own eye. She could not, as
she expressed it to herself, be dead, so that her Thomas might have his
wish; _but he could think she was dead_.
When this extraordinary idea came into Milly Dilworth's head, she felt
as one imprisoned in darkness who sees, far off, the glimmer of
daylight. He "could think she was dead!" And if he thought so, of
course there could be nothing wrong in his marrying "_her_." (Miss
Hayes's moral status did not enter into Milly's calculations.)
The light in her darkness dazzled poor Milly at first, and the way was
not clear. It took two weeks of further thought to decide upon the
step, and then to evolve its details; but one need not go into them as
Milly did.... As she sat at her work, day after day, she thought her
plan out slowly and toilsomely. At first she kept balking at the
enormity of it. Then some chance word would betray Tom's admiration
for brains, and she would beat and spur her mind up to her project
again.... And at last she accepted it.... Once accepted, the thing
was settled. Her mind had about as much flexibility as a bar of lead,
and there was no changing it. It only remained to decide upon the
details. This she did slowly and painfully. Each step was planned,
each contingency arranged for.
And by-and-by the day came to act.
The night before, at supper, Mrs. Dilworth, her hands stumbling among
her teacups, said, faintly, "I'm going over to the other side of the
river to-morrow to order some chickens from Mrs. Kensy."
"That Kensy house is right by the railroad station," Ned said,
scowling; "I don't believe she has any hens."
"Yes, she has, Neddy," said Mrs. Dilworth.
Edwin frowned blackly. "I do wish you wouldn't call me by that absurd
name, mother."
"I keep forgetting, Neddy dear."
Edwin held up his hands despairingly.
"What are you two people talking about?" demanded Thomas.
"I'm going to walk over, across the ice, to the Bend, to-morrow," said
Milly.
"Walk!" her husband protested. "What do you walk for? It's cold as
Greenland on the ice, and, besides, they were cutting at the pool by
the Bend; you don't want to go that way, Milly. Take the stage round."
Mrs. Dilworth crumbled a piece of bread with shaking fingers, and said
nothing.
"What time are you going, mother?" inquired Edwin.
"In the afternoon, about four."
"Why, you went there only two days ago," Edwin said, irritably. "I saw
you on the back road carting a big bundle."
"It would have been more to the point if you'd done the carting for
your mother," Tom Dilworth said, sharply.
His wife paled suddenly at that word about a bundle, but the subject
was not pursued. Edwin said, grumbling, that he didn't see what
possessed his mother to choose such an hour. "It's too dark for a lady
to be out," Edwin protested.
"Too dark for a--_grandmother_!" his father said. "Don't you criticise
your mother, young man." And then he added: "Look out for the places
where the men were cutting, Milly. It hasn't frozen over yet."