Little Stories of Married Life

by Mary Stewart Cutting

“It’s the fourth time she has sent word that she was coming,” said his wife pensively. She was already forecasting the plan of action to be pursued in making ready for the expected guests.

When you are a young housekeeper with infants and only a nurse-maid besides the cook, a day’s company means the revolutionizing of the entire domestic machinery. In the city people carelessly come and go, and the household of the entertainer is put to no special preparation for them, but it is an unwritten law in the country that before the advent of the seldom guest “to spend the day” the entire domicile must be swept and garnished from top to bottom.

As Ethel Waring rubbed and polished and dusted she could but remember that she had gone through the process of cleaning three times before for Henry’s mother, who had always hitherto disappointed her. She prided herself on being really fond of her mother-in-law, and his sister Nan had been her particular friend, but Aunt Eliza and Mary Appleton were the kind of people—well, the kind of people that belonged to her husband’s family, and they always saw everything around the house. She cleaned now for the fourth time magnanimously. Since she had moved into the country, and went to and from the city two or three times a week, it had seemed odd to have her friends and relatives look upon the half-hour’s journey in train and ferry-boat as a mighty undertaking, to be planned for weeks ahead; and although she had been in her cottage over a year, she had not yet become used to this point of view, and still expected people to come after they had promised to.

There was something grimly sacrificial in her preparations now that upheld her in her disappointment; her husband could not remember her pleasure, but she was working her fingers off for his people. Yes, she had nothing to look forward to but neglect—and the worst of it was that he would not even know that he was neglecting her.

Perhaps, however, he did remember after all. She watched every word and gesture of his up to the very morning of their anniversary. He was so happy and merry and affectionate in his efforts to win her to smiles that she could hardly withstand the infectiousness of it. But she felt after his cheerful good-by as if the tragedy of her future years had begun.

There was, indeed, no time for the luxury of quiet wretchedness. The two children had to be bathed and put to bed for the morning nap, which both she and Beesy prayed might be a long one, so that the last clearing up might be done, and the table set, and the salad-dressing made, and the cream whipped for the jelly, and she herself dressed and in the drawing-room before twelve o’clock.

There was the usual panic when the butcher was late with the chickens, and the discovery was made that the green grocer had not brought what was ordered, and the usual hurried sending forth of Beesy to the village at the last moment for the missing lettuce, only to be told that “there was none in town this day”—a fact that smites the suburban housekeeper like a blow. But finally everything was ready, the table set to perfection, the drawing-room curtains drawn at their most effective angle, the logs burning on the andirons, the chairs set most cozily, and the vase of jonquils with their long, green stalks showing through the clear glass, giving a lovely brightness to the room in their hint of approaching spring. The babies, sweet and fresh, in the whitest of frocks, and hair curled in little damp rings, ran up and down and prattled beside the charmingly dressed, pretty mother, who sat with her embroidery in hand and who could not help feeling somewhat of a glow of satisfaction through her sadness. But after Harry had peeped out from the curtains some twenty times to see if grandmamma was coming, and little Marjorie had fallen down and raised a large bump on her forehead, and the one-o’clock train had come in, there was a certain change in the situation. The cook sent up word should she put on the oysters, and Mrs. Waring answered no, to wait until the next train, although that did not arrive until two o’clock. She pretended that her guests had missed the earlier train, but in her soul she felt the cold chill of certainty that they would not come.

As she sat eating her luncheon afterward in solitary state, and wishing that she knew any of her neighbors well enough to ask them to join her, she received a belated telegram from her husband: “Nan says party postponed; Aunt Eliza has headache.” She read it, and cast it from her scornfully.

And this was her wedding-day, passed in unnecessary work, futile preparation for people who didn’t care a scrap for her! Oh, if she had only been going in town that afternoon, as she had dreamed of doing, to have a little dinner with Henry at the Waldorf, or Sherry’s, or the St. Denis even—and go to a play afterward—she didn’t care where—and have just their own little happy foolish time over it all! She had hardly been anywhere since little Marjorie was born.

She was surprised to have a caller in the afternoon, a Mrs. Livermore. The visitor was a large, stout woman with very blond hair, who lived on the opposite corner. She was dressed in a magnificently florid style, and sat in the little drawing-room a large mass of purple cloth and fur and gleaming jet spangles, surmounted by curving plumes, that quite dwarfed Mrs. Waring’s slender elegance. She apologized profusely for not having called before, as illness had prevented her doing so, and sailed at once smoothly off into a sea of medical terms, giving such an intimate and minute account of the many diseases that had ravaged her that poor Mrs. Waring paled. The one bright spot in her existence seemed to have been her husband, whom she described as the most untiring of nurses.