“SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE IS SAUCE FOR THE GANDER”
❦
“Oh, my dear!” cried her mother.
“I hope you have properly considered? He is charming, of course, but—well—he is such a club habitué.”
“What? Well, well!” exclaimed her father. “Bless me, Meg, I had no idea— Give me a kiss, if you have any to spare for your old dad now. Why, of course, I consent, if you care for him. Only tell Mr. Tyler I hear he spends too much time at his clubs.”
“Margaret! How nice!” ejaculated her sister. “I’ve liked him from the start, and hoped—people said he was too fond of his club ever to care to marry, and so I thought—but now it’s all right.”
“I knew he meant biz,” asserted her brother, “the moment he began to keep away from the club, and put in so much time with you.”
“I cannot tell you, my dearest Margaret (if I may call you that?),” wrote his mother, “how happy I am over what my dear boy has just told me. The luxury and ease of club life are now so great that I had almost feared Harry could not be weaned from them. But since he has chosen such a dear, beautiful, and clever girl, my worst anxiety is over.”
“You are indeed to be congratulated, niece,” declared her aunt. “He is a most eligible parti—good looks, position, and wealth. If you can only keep him away from his clubs, I am confident you will be a very happy and domestic couple.”
“I have been certain of it for weeks,” her dearest feminine friend assured her. “There isn’t a man I would rather have had you take, for he is so much at his club that I shall still see something of you.”
“Er, Miss Brewster,” said one of her rejected lovers, “let me offer you my best wishes. At the club we all swear by Harry, and we actually think of going into mourning over the loss. Er, the fellows are laying bets as to whether we shall ever see him there again. The odds are six to one on the club,—but the fellows don’t know you, you know.”
“I want to offer you my heartiest congratulations,” gushed the girl who had tried for him. “Mr. Tyler has always been one of my best friends, and I am sure you will be very happy. He isn’t, of course, very fond of women’s society, but— Have you asked him to resign from his clubs?”
⁂
“Don’t you want to sit down, Harry?” asked Margaret, making room on the little sofa beside the fire.
The young couple had enjoyed four months of ecstatic travel, thirty days of chaos while they settled their household goods, and then a recurring Indian-summer honeymoon of two months in front of their own fireside in the charmingly cosey library where the above remark was made. Upon this particular evening, however, Harry, in following his wife from the dining-room, took neither his customary seat beside his wife on the sofa nor lighted a cigar. On the contrary, he stood leaning against the mantel with anything but an expression or attitude of ease, and, noting this, Margaret had asked her question.
“Not to-night, dear,” said Harry. “The truth is—well—I met Parmlee on my way up town, and I—that is—he asked me to come round to the club this evening—and, well—I didn’t like to disappoint him. And then, a fellow mustn’t stag—that is—don’t you think, my darling, that it’s a mistake for married people to see too much of each other—and—”
“Oh, Harry!” cried Margaret, interrupting and rising. “You said you never could have enough—”
“And I can’t, dearest,” interrupted Harry, hurriedly. “But you know— Well—can’t you—”
“I feel as if it were the beginning of the end,” said Margaret, wildly.
“Now, my darling,” pleaded Harry, “do be reasonable. You know— There, don’t cry. I won’t go. Sit down here and let me tell you how much I love you.”
This occupied some time, but the clock never told on them, so it is impossible to say just how long. Presently Margaret said:
“Harry, did you really want to—to leave me?”
“Not a bit,” lied Harry. “It was only to keep my word to Parmlee.”
“I suppose it’s too late now?” questioned Margaret, hopefully.
“Late? Oh, no! Fun’s just beginning. But I’m going to stay with you, sweetheart.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then Margaret said: “If you want to go, I want you to do it, Harry.”
“Well,” responded Harry, rising, “if you insist, dearest.”
“I do,” assented Margaret, in the most faint-hearted of voices.
“That’s a darling!” said her husband. “It’s half-past nine, so you’ll only have a few minutes of loneliness before you go to bed.”
“I sha’n’t go to bed, Harry,” sighed Margaret, dolefully.
“Why, my darling,” protested Harry, a little irritably, “you don’t want to make me miserable thinking of you as here by yourself. Please be reasonable and don’t sit up for me. Leave me free to come home when I want.”
“Very well, Harry,” acceded Margaret, dutifully, “if you insist I won’t wait for your return.”
Harry took the charming face in his hands, and kissed each eyelid, and then the lips. “I don’t deserve such an angel,” he asserted, his conscience pricking him, “and— Oh, hang Parmlee!” he growled, as her eyes, a little misty, looked up into his own. However, she belonged to him, and there were plenty of evenings, and—well— “Good-night, my treasure,” he ended.
⁂
Margaret remained standing where Harry had left her until she heard the front door close; then she collapsed on the sofa and softly sobbed her sense of desertion and grief into the pillow. The warnings of her family and friends recurred to her, and added to the pain of the moment a direful dread of the future. Not knowing that most bachelors are regular club men merely because it is the nearest approach to home life they can attain, she dwelt on his having been apparently wedded to these comforters of men, before marriage, and inferred a return to his former daily frequenting of them.
Her grief was keen enough to prevent her from noticing that the front door was presently opened, and not till she heard a faint cough in the room did she raise her head from the pillow. It was to find a servant with his back turned to the sofa, occupied, apparently, in setting a chair in a position entirely unsuited to it,—a proceeding he made far more noisy than became a well-trained butler, and which he accompanied with two more coughs.
Hurriedly wiping her eyes, Margaret asked, “What is it, Craig?”
With his eyes carefully focussed to see everything but his mistress’s face, the man came forward and held out his tray.
Almost mechanically she took the card upon it, and after a mere glance she directed,—“Say that Mrs. Tyler is not receiving this evening, and begs to be excused.”
Left alone once more, the young wife sat down upon a stool near the fire, and looked into the blaze, idly twirling the card. “I wonder,” she soliloquised presently, “if he would have done the same.” Again she lapsed into meditation, for a few minutes; then suddenly she sat up straight, with an air of sudden interest which was clearly derived from her own thoughts. A moment later, she gave a short, hesitating laugh. “If I only dared! I wonder if he would? Men are—” she said disconnectedly; but even as she spoke, her face softened. “Poor dear!” she murmured tenderly. Yet the words of pity melted into another laugh, and this time merriment and not guilt was as the dominant note. Springing to her feet with vivacity, she sped into the hall, and placed the card on the tray, and that in turn conspicuously on the hatrack. A second action consisted in turning on all the electric lights of the chandelier. This done, she touched the bell.
“You may close the house, Craig,” she ordered, when the servant responded to the summons, “but as Mr. Tyler has gone to his club, I wish you to leave these lights just as they are. I prefer that he should not come home to a darkened house, so don’t turn out one.” Giving one last glance, half merry and half guilty, at the bit of pasteboard put in so prominent a position, Margaret lightly tripped upstairs, humming something to herself.
⁂
Meantime Harry had wended his way to the club.
“Hello, Tyler!” said the man his wife had refused. “Don’t mean to say you’ve actually ceased to be one of the ‘submerged tenth?’ How and where is your superior moiety?”
“When I left Mrs. Tyler before her fire, ten minutes ago, she was very well.”
“By George, if I had as clever and pretty a wife I don’t think I should dare to leave her alone. I should be afraid of the other men.”
Harry turned away to hide his frown, but as he went towards the door of the billiard room, rejoined: “Perhaps it wouldn’t be safe with your wife.” To himself he carolled gleefully: “That cuts both ways.”
“But you are not afraid, I understand,” called the man, irritatingly, “so I take it you won’t mind if I drop round there for a few moments this evening, eh?”
“Certainly not,” responded Harry, suavely, but gritting his teeth. “Hang the fellow,” he muttered. “How do such cads ever get into decent clubs? As if Margaret’s refusing him twice wasn’t enough to make him understand that she doesn’t want him round!”
Tyler’s anger was quickly forgotten in the warm reception his cronies gave him, and a tumbler of “unsweetened” and a cue quickly made him forget both the incident and the passing hours. Not till the marker notified the players that the time limit had come did he wake to the fact that it was two o’clock.
With a sense of guilt the husband hurried home. In the hallway, as he took off hat and coat, he noticed the card, and picked it up. “So he did come,” he growled, with a frown. “I hope Meg had gone to bed before he got here. Not, of course, that it really matters,” he went on. “She told me she never could endure him, so he’s welcome to call as often as he likes to be snubbed.” To prove how little he cared, the husband crushed the card viciously, and tossed it on the floor.
The light in Margaret’s room was burning low, Harry noticed when he had ascended the stairs, and, peeping in, he saw that she was sleeping peacefully. Entering quietly, he looked at her for a moment, thinking with a little pang that he had given her pain. “You don’t deserve such an angel,” he said aloud. “See how she has done just what you asked her to do, with never a word of— There isn’t another woman who would have taken it so sweetly. You’re an ass! And for what? Four hours of—of nothing, when I might have been with her.” He leaned down to very softly kiss a stray curl, and went towards his own room, while saying: “How pretty and dainty she is! She’s worth all the clubs in the world!” What was more, for a minute he believed it.
The moment Harry was gone Margaret opened her eyes very wide, rose softly, and looked at the clock. Then she went back to bed, smiling demurely.
⁂
The next morning, when Harry entered the breakfast room a little late, he was received with a kiss, and no word of reproach. Margaret chatted over the meal in her usual entertaining, happy mood, telling him the news she had already extracted from the morning’s paper.
“She’s too clever ever to nag a man,” thought Harry, and assured that he was not to be taken to task, he became equally amiable, and told her whom he had seen at the club, and of his score.
“I’m glad you had such a pleasant evening!” said Margaret, sweetly. “I hope you didn’t stay so late as to tire yourself.”
“I didn’t notice the time,” fibbed Harry, “but probably I was in by twelve.”
“Oh, no, dear,” said Margaret, pleasantly, “for I didn’t get home till after one myself, and you weren’t back then.”
⁂
Twenty times Harry has tried to persuade his wife into acknowledging that she spoke in jest, but Margaret only looks at him with wideopen, questioning eyes, as innocent as a child’s. Her husband firmly believes that she went to bed ten minutes after he left the house, and always ends his unsuccessful attempts to get her to confess the fact by taking Margaret in his arms and telling her of his belief. This faith his wife rewards with a tender kiss, but only a kiss, and still maintains her demure silence.
Harry spends no more evenings at the club, and every woman who knows him holds him up to other men as an ideal married Benedick.