Little Stories of Married Life

by Mary Stewart Cutting

“That was different.” Mr. Belmore’s tone conveyed a permanent satisfaction with his own case. “If every woman were like you, petty—I never could stand Edith, she’s one of your clever girls; there’s something about her that always sets my teeth on edge. As for Wilson—oh, Wilson’s just a usual kind of a fool, like myself. Hello, where are my newspapers—and what in thunder makes it so cold? You don’t mean to say you’ve got the window open?”

Mrs. Belmore had a habit of airing the rooms in the morning, which her husband approved of theoretically, and combated intensely in practice. After the window was banged shut she could hear him rattling at the furnace below to turn on an extra flow of heat before settling down once more in comfort. Although the April sun was bright, there was still a chill in the air.

She looked in upon him, gowned and bonneted for church, sweet and placid of mien, followed by two little girls, brave in their Sunday best, all big hats and ribboned hair, and little starchy ruffles showing below their brown coats. Mrs. Belmore stooped over her husband’s chair to kiss him good-by.

“You won’t have to talk to Edith and Alan at all,” she said as if continuing the conversation from where they had left off. “All we have to do is to let them have the parlor or the library. They’ll entertain each other.”

“Oh, don’t you bother about that. Now go ahead or you’ll be late, and don’t forget to say your prayers for me, too. That’s right, always go to church with your mother, girlies.”

“I wish you were going, too.” Mrs. Belmore looked at her husband lingeringly.

“I wish I were, petty,” said Mr. Belmore with a prompt mendacity so evidently inspired by affection that his wife condoned it at once.

She thought of him more than once during the service with generous satisfaction in his comfortable morning. She wished she had thought it right to remain at home, too, as she did sometimes, but there were the children to be considered. But she and Herbert would have the afternoon together, and take part of it to see about planting the garden, a plot twenty feet square in the rear of the suburban villa.

The Sunday visit to the garden was almost a sacrament. They might look at it on other days, but it was only on Sunday, beginning with the early spring, that husband and wife strolled around the little patch together, first planning where to start the summer crop of vegetables and afterwards watching the green things poking their spikes up through the mold, and growing, growing. He did the planting and working in the long light evenings after he came home, while she held the papers of seeds for him, but it was only on Sunday that he could really watch the green things grow, and learn to know each separate leaf intimately, and count the blossoms on the beans and the cucumbers. From the pure pleasure of the first radish, through all the various wiltings and shrivelings incident to amateur gardening in summer deluge and drought, to the triumphant survival of tomato plants and cucumber vines, running riot over everything in the fall of the year, the little garden played its old part as paradise to these two, who became more fully one in the watching of the miracle of growth. When they gathered the pears from the little tree in the corner of the plot, before the frost, and picked the few little green tomatoes that remained on the dwindling stems, it was like garnering a store of peaceful happiness. Every stage of the garden was a romance. Mrs. Belmore could go to church without her husband, but to have him survey the garden without her would have been the touch beyond.

It must be horrid, anyway, she thought, to have to go every morning into town in those smoky cars and crowded ferry-boats; just to run into town twice a week tired her out. Now he would have finished the paper—now little Dorothy would have come in, red cheeked from her walk, to kiss daddy before her nap—now he must be pottering around among his possessions and looking out for her. She knew so well how he would look when he came to the door to meet her. The sudden sight of either one to the other always shed a reflected light, like the glow of the sun. It was with a feeling of wonder that she marked its disappearance, after a brief gleam, as he not only opened the door, but came out on the piazza to greet her, and closed it behind him.