When they could not go, or when they were not there, 'darling husband' was commissioned to be errand-boy. He was seldom enabled to finish his cigar or read his paper in the evening without being asked to go up or down stairs, to bring a chair, shawl, or book, or a box of bonbons for his wife's pleasure, or to run to the corner to get something she needed.
He became skilled in the work of a lady's maid in the continual demand made upon him to assist his wife in fastening her gowns.
After three years the situation in which the young man found himself began to prey upon his mind. For it grew worse instead of better.
'I am no longer a manly man,' he said to himself, 'I am not the head of a house; I am an employé of a pretty woman. I am a combination of lackey, valet, butler, head waiter, and maid of all work. I haven't even a half day or an evening off; not a regular weekly time I can call my own, as most domestics have—I am going to strike.'
But when he made his first protest his wife became hysterical and sent for her mother.
The mother said the husband was a brute to refuse to bring up the breakfast tray to a poor delicate woman, who had an inefficient and inconsiderate servant. Any man with half a heart, she said, would have shown sympathy and kindness in such a situation. One word led to another, until a very unpleasant condition of things existed in the household.
He told the mother-in-law that it was her daughter's fault that she could never keep a servant; that servants would leave when they were imposed upon and overworked, and that it might, in time, be possible for a husband to leave unless greater consideration was shown in the small matters of daily life.
He said there was no pleasure to be had in a house with a woman who made every human being under the roof a slave to her caprices, and who was so utterly selfish that she could not understand how any one might object to being ordered about on errands night and day.
This scene was only the beginning of perpetual scenes. The husband began to stay away in the evenings. He often remained away at dinner, and the neglected wife wept upon her mother's sympathetic bosom.
And in due course of time a separation and divorce occurred. Looking back over her married life, the wife was unable to see wherein she had failed. And everybody said she was such a beautiful woman; so faithful; so amiable; so accomplished, and so evidently fond of her husband.