Little Stories of Married Life

by Mary Stewart Cutting

In the Married Quarters

MR. BROOKTON RIVERS watched the spark at the end of his cigar as he held the short stub between his thumb and forefinger. It was going out. While he had had that cigar to smoke his mind had been at rest, for he knew that he was going to sit in that particular angle in the piazza until he finished it, which would be about half-past eight. After that—what?

He threw away the cigar and leaned meditatively forward to catch a glimpse of the moon as it rose over the patch of straggling woods next to the Queen Anne cottage opposite him. It showed a deserted piazza, and a man and his wife and two small children walking past it. The man walked with the heavy, shuffling steps of a laborer, and the woman, in a white shirt-waist and a dragging skirt, held one child by the hand, while the other, in tiny trousers, toddled bow-leggedly behind. As they vanished down the street, two silent men on bicycles sped past, their little lamps twinkling in the shadows; then half a dozen more, laughing and calling to each other, then a swiftly driven buggy that sent the dust flying up on the vines that were already laden with it. The prevailing smell of the humid night was of damp weeds. It was also very hot.

There were no lights in the house opposite, nor in the one next to it, or in the one next to that, nor were there any, as he knew without seeing, in either of the houses next to his own. From farther down the street came the sound of a jangling piano, obstructed intermittently by the loud, unvaried barking of a melancholy dog. From nearer by the persistent wail of a very young infant, protesting already against existence in such a hot world, became more and more unbearable each instant. Mr. Rivers absent-mindedly killed three feasting mosquitoes at a blow, and rose to his feet with determination. He could stay here no longer. Should he go out, or retire to his room in the doubtful comfort of extreme negligee, and read?

It will, of course, be evident to the meanest suburban intelligence that the month was August, and that Mrs. Rivers was away, as were most of her immediate neighbors, enjoying a holiday by either mountains or seashore. Rivers could see in imagination how glorious this moonlight became as the waves rolled into its path and broke there on the wet sands into a delicious rush and swirl of silvery sparkling foam. He could smell the very perfume of the sea, and feel the cold breath that the water exhales with one’s face close down by it, no matter how warm the night. It had been a pretty bad day in town. He was glad, very glad, that Elizabeth had the change. She needed it. He had said this stoutly to himself many times in the last six weeks, and knew that it was true. She had protested against going, and only yielded at last for the children’s sake and in wifely obedience to lawful masculine authority. He had insisted on sleeping in the house alone, in defiance of her pleading, alleging an affinity for his own bed, his own belongings, and an individual bath tub. A woman came once a week to sweep and straighten up the house. He had repeatedly declared there would be really nothing to do after business hours but to go around and enjoy himself. He had made her almost envious of these prospective joys. He would take little trips to Manhattan Beach with “the boys” and go to Bronxville to see Tom Westfield, as he had been meaning to for five years, and visit the roof garden with the Danas, who were on from St. Louis, and take dinner at the Café Ruritania. On the between nights he would visit the neighbors. All these things he had done, more or less disappointingly, but what should he do to-night?

“I beg your pardon, Rivers, but have you any paregoric in the house? We’ve got to get something to quiet the baby.”

A tall, thin, wearied-looking young man had come up the steps, hidden by the vines in which dwellers in a mosquito country are wont to picturesquely embower themselves, defiant of results.

“Why, how are you, Parker?” said Rivers cordially. “Paregoric is it that you want? Come inside, and we’ll have a look for it, old man.” He led the way, scratching matches as he went to relieve the darkness, dropping them on the floor as they went out, and finally lighting the gas in the butler’s pantry.

“My wife keeps the medicines on the top shelf here to be out of the way of the children,” he explained. “I don’t know about the paregoric, though. I seem to remember that she didn’t believe much in using it for babies.”