"You're not going out again this evening, are you, George?" Pretty
Mrs. Carson seemed on the point of dissolving in tears, but her liege
lord buttoned his coat indifferently, and began the usual search for
his hat. Having found it, he hesitated for a moment, then came and
stood before her. "See here, Kitty," he began, not unkindly; "we might
just as well understand this thing first as last. There's no use in
your speaking to me in that tone just because I choose to go out in
the evening. When I married you, I didn't expect to be tied to your
apron string, and I don't intend to be. I consider myself as free as
I was before I was married, and I am perfectly willing to accord the
same freedom to you. When you go out, I never ask you where you've
been, nor what time you came home, and I'd be glad to have you equally
considerate of me. Let's be sensible, Kitty. I hate tears and heroics.
See?" He stooped to kiss her, and then went off, whistling a jaunty air
meant to indicate extreme cheerfulness.
For three evenings of that week Mr. George Carson had sought relaxation
and entertainment away from his own fireside. This made the fourth, and
the wife of only six months' standing, had a heavy and joyless heart.
Twice before she had spoken of it,--the first time to be answered by a
laugh, the second time by very visible irritation, and to-night by the
very cool "understanding" chronicled above.
Kitty had made a marriage vow which was not in the ceremony, but which
was none the less sincerely meant. "Whatever happens," she said to
herself, "I simply will not nag."
She had read the journals for women, written and edited by men, and
this seemed to be the corner-stone of every piece of advice; moreover,
she believed in pretty gowns, good dinners, and bright conversation
with sentiment omitted.
"I can't think what it is," she meditated, during the long cheerless
evening. Mr. Carson's appetite had proved beyond question that the
dinner was good, and her pretty house gown was certainly becoming--and
then Kitty broke down and wept, for the gown was a new one and George
had not noticed it. On such trifles does the happiness of women depend!
In the journals for women, written and edited by men, great stress was
laid on the fact that after a woman was married, she must keep her
troubles to herself. She believed this, too, but the next day, her old
school friend, Helen Everett, happened in, and she sobbed out her woes
in the customary place--on the shoulder of a spinster--forgetting the
deterrent effect on the marriage license business.
"My dear," said that wise young person, "men simply will go out nights.
I shouldn't care myself--it leaves a nice long evening to read or
study, or embroider, or practice, and if Mr. Helen Everett didn't want
to stay with me, I'd be the last one to hint that I wanted him to."
"You're a man-hater, Helen," said Mrs. Carson, trying to smile,
"but I'm not. I want George to stay at home a part of the time.
Of course I'm willing for him to go out occasionally, for of all
things, I despise a 'sissy-man', but four or five evenings a
week--is--too--much!"
The dainty handkerchief came into use again.
"Philosophy teaches us," said Helen, reminiscently, "that people,
especially men, always want what they can't get." Kitty was reminded
of the scholarly tone in which Helen had delivered her thesis at
commencement. "To quote a contemporary essayist, 'If a mortal knows
that his mate cannot get away, he is often severe and unreasonable.'
There is also a good old doctrine to the effect that 'like cures like.'"
"Well?" said Kitty, enquiringly.
"I never put my fingers into anybody's matrimonial pie," resumed Helen,
"so I'll let you think out your own schemes to keep the charming Mr.
Carson under his own vine and fig tree, but you know I live only three
blocks away, and there are no followers in my camp. My brother would
take you home, any time you might care to come."
Kitty was silent.
"Think it over, dear," said Helen as she rose to go.
After several minutes of hard thought, Kitty arrived at Helen's
meaning. "This evening shall decide it," she said to herself. "If he
stays at home, I shall think that he cares just a little bit; but if he
doesn't, I'll make him care." There was a smouldering fire in Kitty's
brown eyes, that might at any time leap into a flame.
The pretty house gown appeared at dinner again, but George, seemingly,
took no notice of it. Moreover, immediately after the meal he found his
hat, and merely saying: "Bye-bye, Kitty," began the jaunty whistle. She
heard it as it grew fainter, and at last, only lost it in the distant
sound of a street car.
The emancipated husband had no particular place to go, and his present
nocturnal pilgrimage was undertaken purely in the interest of wifely
discipline. He dropped into his club, but found it dull; and perhaps
the thought of Kitty's sad little face tugged remorsefully at his
heartstrings, for he went home early.
The lights were low in the drawing-room, she always left them so for
him. "Must have gone to bed about nine," he mused. He went up-stairs,
expecting to hear her say: "Is that you, dear?" But no sound of any
sort greeted him. The house was as silent as a tomb. After a few
minutes, it became evident that she was not at home, and he sat down
with a book to await her arrival.
It seemed strange, someway, without her,--perhaps because her
gown hung from the back of a chair. It was a soft pretty thing of
pinky-yellow--he mentally decided that must be the colour--trimmed with
creamy lace and black velvet ribbon. It was a very pretty gown--a most
adorable gown.
It was half-past eleven, when Kitty came home humming the chorus of a
popular song. She started in apparent surprise when she saw him. "Oh,
it's you, is it?" she said indifferently.
"Certainly it's me," he responded irritably. "Whom did you expect to
see here?"
Kitty laughed pleasantly, and drew off her gloves. Her tailor-made gown
fitted her to perfection, it was his favorite colour, too, and her
collar and cuffs were irreproachable.
"Where have you been, Kitty?" he asked in a different tone.
"Oh, just out," she responded with a yawn. "Where have you been?"
"Humph," responded Mr. Carson.
The following evening, she appeared at dinner in the same severe gown.
She was very pleasant and chatted on topics of current interest quite
as if he were a casual acquaintance. She watched him with evident
uneasiness afterward, and he was certain that he detected a faint shade
of relief on her face when he commenced hunting for his hat.
Before ten he came home, and as he half suspected, Kitty was out. His
irritation grew until he was afraid to trust himself to speak, so he
pretended to be asleep, when she came home.
The cloud on the matrimonial horizon grew larger. Outwardly Kitty
was kind and considerate, and her vigilant care for his comfort was
in no way lessened. His things were kept in order and something he
particularly liked was always on the table, but the old confidence was
gone and in its place was something that he hesitated to analyse.
She went out every night, now. More than once she had left him with
a laconic "Bye-bye," and he had spent a miserable evening before an
unsympathetic fire. He learned to detest the severely correct gowns
that she always wore now.
"I say, Kit," he said as he rose from the table, "don't you want to go
to the theatre to-night?"
"Can't," she returned shortly, "much obliged for the 'bid' though."
George Carson's hair rose "like quills upon the fretful porcupine."
He had a horror of slang from feminine lips, and he had been drawn to
Kitty in the first place, because she never used it. "Bid!" Oh, Heavens!
He paid no attention to her cheerful farewell when she left him. He
poked the fire morosely, smoked without enjoying it, and at last cast
about for something to read. One of the Journals for women, written and
edited by men, lay on the table, and he grasped it as the proverbial
drowning man is wont to clutch the proverbial straw.
He consulted the pages of the oracle anxiously, and he learned that it
was not wise to marry a man who had served a term in the penitentiary,
that it was harmless enough for either man or woman to kiss a lady
cousin, but that a man cousin must be kept at a fixed and rigid
distance--that it was wrong for cousins to marry, and that it was not
only immoral, but very dangerous to bleach or dye the hair.
No rule of conduct was specified for the man whose wife went out
nights, and he wandered aimlessly into the street. The light and cheer
of the club house seemed inopportune, like mirth at a funeral, and
he retired into a distant corner to think. His intimates hailed him
joyously, but were met with marked coldness. One of them, more daring
than the rest, laid a sympathetic hand upon his shoulder.
"What's the matter, old man?"
"Oh, the deuce," growled George, "can't you let a fellow alone?"
He was glad that he got home before Kitty did, for he could pretend to
be asleep when she came in. He knew it would be only a pretence, and
until midnight he listened for her latch-key in the door. It was long
after twelve, when a carriage stopped at the door, and then he heard a
manly voice say: "Good night, Mrs. Carson."
"Good night, Johnnie," she returned, "and thank you for a pleasant
evening."
"Johnnie!" Who in creation was "Johnnie?"
But there was no time to wonder, for Kitty's foot was on the stair,
and in a frame of mind not usually favourable to repose, he simulated
sleep.
There was a beautiful bracelet at her plate the following evening.
"Oh, how sweet!" she said, with evident pleasure in her eyes.
"Aren't you going to put it on?" he asked, when she laid it aside.
"Oh, yes," she answered brightly, "only I can't wear it with this gown.
Bracelets don't go well with linen cuffs."
She didn't even take it from the table after dinner, as he noted with
a pang. Almost immediately she came in with her hat on and stood
leisurely drawing on her gloves.
"You're not going out again to-night, are you Kitty?" he asked.
"See here, George," she returned, "we might just as well understand
this thing, first as last. There's no use in you speaking to me in that
tone, just because I choose to go out in the evening. When I married
you, I didn't intend to be tied to your apron string--I suppose, I
should say, suspender, and I don't intend to be. I consider myself
as free as I was before I was married, and I am perfectly willing to
accord the same freedom to you. When you go out I never ask you where
you have been, or what time you came home, and I'd be glad to have you
equally considerate of me. See?"
Without other farewell, she slammed the outer door. He was petrified
with astonishment. Were such words ever before addressed by a
tyrannical wife to a devoted husband? In the midst of his trouble, the
door-bell rang. Friends of his and of Kitty's had come to call.
"Where's Kit?" asked Mrs. Clay, after they had chatted a moment.
"She's gone out a minute--yes--no--that is--I don't know," returned
George incoherently.
Mr. Clay's ready tact came to the rescue and he picked up a program
which lay on the table, half hidden by a magazine.
"Tannhauser," he said cheerfully, "with Gadski as Elizabeth! So you
went Tuesday night? We wanted to go, but there were no seats left. How
early did you get yours?"
"I--ah--yes--Gadski as Elizabeth--that is--rather early. Yes, she was
very fine," said George miserably. The stunning revelation had come
to him that on Tuesday night--the evening in which he had heard the
carriage and the voices, Kitty had been to the opera with another man!
And it seemed to fairly paralyse his powers of speech. After a little
while the guests politely departed, wondering what in the world was the
matter with the Carsons.
"Is he crazy?" asked Mrs. Clay.
"Looks like it," answered her husband concisely.
Carson went up-stairs and searched the closet until he found the
pinky-yellow gown with the black velvet bows. He sat down with the
pretty fluffy thing in his hands. A delicate odour of violets clung
to it--Kitty always had violets around her--and the scent seemed like
a haunting memory of a happy past, when he had a wife who wore soft
womanly things--who loved to have him kiss her, and never went out
nights.
With a sudden rush of tenderness he held the little gown close, but
it yielded him no caress in return, and he flung it bitterly aside,
feeling as he did so, that he sat among the ashes of a desolate and
forsaken home.
He grew white and worn in the days that followed. He knew dimly what a
grave might mean, since he felt the hurt of a living loss.
He wandered through the lonely rooms evening after evening. The sight
of her dainty fluffy things made him suffer keenly, and a tiny jewelled
slipper he found on the floor almost unmanned him.
He no longer went to the club, but sat at home among Kitty's things
while she went out as usual. One evening, after saying "good-bye" she
caught her gown on a rocker, and turned back to free herself.
He was sitting before the fire, his elbow resting on his knee, and
his chin in the palm of his hand. It was a saddened face that Kitty
saw, with all the joy and youth gone out of it. The flickering light
made the lines of pain very distinct, and her heart smote her at the
realisation of what she had done. Quickly she ran up-stairs and took
off her tailor-made costume. When she came down, he was sitting as she
had left him, unhearing, unseeing and unheeding.
As she came toward him, he looked up. At the first sight of her in the
pinky-yellow gown, he rubbed his eyes as if he had seen wrongly. She
came nearer to him, smiling, her hands outstretched, and he sprang to
his feet. "Kitty," he cried, "are you going to stay at home to-night?"
"To-night, and always, dear, if you want me," she replied.
"Want you--Oh, my little wife!" he said brokenly, and gathered her into
his arms.
They had a long talk after that, and Kitty explained that she had been
spending her evenings with Helen Everett, who was writing a book, and
reading it to her, chapter by chapter as it was finished.
"Who is Johnnie?" demanded George abruptly.
"Helen's brother. He's only a boy, but he's a very nice one, and he
takes us to all sorts of lovely places."
After a moment she continued wistfully: "Helen's awfully clever--books,
colleges, degrees, and everything."
"And you have only me," said George, laughing, and drawing her closer.
"You're enough, if I can only keep you," she returned mischievously.
His face grew very grave. "I have been a thoughtless brute, sweetheart.
Forgive me," he said kissing her fondly. "And know all men by these
presents, I hereby confer upon you the degree of Mistress of Arts."