But the mother-in-law is helpless. She cannot escape from the lamentable situation. She must always remain a hindrance, because she needs a roof over her head, and there is no other roof, and she is dependent for her daily bread upon the son who is faithful to her, though he is irritable, moody and sharp of speech, because of the fretfulness of his wife.
This is the eternal tragedy of the mother-in-law, which is turned into a jest by the red-nosed comedian to get the laughter from “the gods.” It is also a tragedy to the daughter-in-law, who could shriek aloud sometimes when the presence of the elderly woman becomes intolerable.
Many things are becoming intolerable to the young wife. Her nerves are out of order. Sometimes she feels “queer.” She cannot explain how queer she feels, even to herself. She says bitter things to her husband, and then hates herself for doing so. She has a great yearning for his love, but is very cold when he is in a tender mood. She cannot understand her own moods. She only knows that she is beginning to get frightened when she thinks of the long vista of years before her. She cannot go on like this always. She cannot go on like this very long. She is getting rather hysterical. She startles her husband by laughing in a queer shrill way when he expresses some serious opinions, or gives vent to some of his conventional philosophy, about women, and the duties of married life, and the abomination of the Suffragettes. But he does not see her tears. He does not see her one day, when suddenly, after she has been reading a Mudie’s novel, page after page, without understanding one word, tears well up into her eyes, and fall upon the pages, until she bends her head down and puts her hands up to her face, and sobs as though all her heart had turned to tears.
CHAPTER VI
It is the Eighth Year. The wife does not know the significance of that. The husband goes on his way without seeing the ghosts that have invaded his little household. He is too busy to see. The whole energy of his mind now is devoted to the business of his life. He must earn money, more money, still more money, because expenses still keep increasing, by leaps and bounds. He finds it more and more difficult to cut his coat according to his cloth. He is often surprised because with a much larger income he seems to be just as “hard up” as when he started the adventure of marriage. He wonders, sometimes, whether the game is worth the candle. What does he get out of it? Precious little. Not much fun. In the evenings he is tired, although his brain is still worrying over the details of his work, over his business disappointments and difficulties, and plans. Now and again he is surprised at the strange quietude and lassitude of his wife. He catches a look of tragedy in her eyes, and it startles him for a moment, so that he asks her if she is feeling unwell. She laughs, in a mirthless way, and seems to resent the question. “Perfectly well, thanks,” she says. He shrugs his shoulders. He cannot bother about a woman’s whims and moods. Women are queer kittle-cattle. He can’t make ‘em out. Even his own wife is a perfect mystery to him. It is a pity they get on each other’s nerves so much. What more does she want? He has given her everything a woman may desire—a beautiful little home, many little luxuries, plenty of pin-money. He does not stint her. It is he that does the stinting. He is always working for her so that she may play. However—work is best. To do our job in life is the best philosophy.
So the husband has on one side the passing suspicion that something is wrong with his wife, and the wife hides her heart from him.
Something is wrong with her. Everything is wrong, though she does not know why and how. She feels lonely—horribly lonely in spite of all her friends. She feels like a woman alone in a great desert with no other human soul near her, thrust back upon her own thoughts, brooding over her own misery. There is a great emptiness in her heart, and she has a great hunger and a great thirst of soul which she cannot satisfy. Nothing satisfies that empty, barren heart of hers, that throbbing brain. She has finished with Mudie’s novels. She can find no satisfaction in them. She revolts from the tittle-tattle of her women friends. That is no longer amusing. She finds no pleasure in the beauty of her face. It is no longer beautiful. She hates the sight of her face in the glass. She is afraid of those big wistful eyes which stare at her. She is sick to death of dressing herself up. How futile it is! How utterly vain and foolish!
She is haunted with ghosts; the ghosts of What-Might-Have-Been. They whisper about her, so that she puts her hands to her ears, when she is alone in her drawing-room. Faces peer at her, with mocking eyes, or with tempting eyes—the faces of men who might have been her lovers, baby faces of unborn children. Little hands flutter about her heart, pluck at her, tease her. The ghosts of her girlhood crowd about her, the ghosts of dead hopes, of young illusions, of romantic dreams. She thrusts them away from her vision. She puts her hands before her eyes, and moans a little, quietly, so that the servants in the kitchen shall not hear.