Men, Women, and Ghosts | Page 4

as a sleepy bird. It was so pleasant to do nothing but be happy!
I believe that at this time Dr. Sharpe loved his wife as unselfishly as he knew how. Harrie often wrote me that he was "very good." She was sometimes a little troubled that he should "know so much more" than she, and had fits of reading the newspapers and reviewing her French, and studying cases of hydrophobia, or some other pleasant subject which had a professional air. Her husband laughed at her for her pains, but nevertheless he found her so much the more entertaining. Sometimes she drove about with him on his calls, or amused herself by making jellies in fancy moulds for his poor, or sat in his lap and discoursed like a bobolink of croup and measles, pulling his whiskers the while with her pink fingers.
All this, as I have said, was before the first baby came.
It is surprising what vague ideas young people in general, and young men in particular, have of the rubs and jars of domestic life; especially domestic life on an income of eighteen hundred, American constitutions and country servants thrown in.
Dr. Sharpe knew something of illness and babies and worry and watching; but that his own individual baby should deliberately lie and scream till two o'clock in the morning, was a source of perpetual astonishment to him; and that it,--he and Mrs. Sharpe had their first quarrel over his persistence in calling the child an "it,"--that it should invariably feel called upon to have the colic just as he had fallen into a nap, after a night spent with a dying patient, was a phenomenon of the infant mind for which he was, to say the least, unprepared.
It was for a long time a mystery to his masculine understanding, that Biddy could not be nursery-maid as well as cook. "Why, what has she to do now? Nothing but to broil steaks and make tea for two people!" That whenever he had Harrie quietly to himself for a peculiarly pleasant tea-table, the house should resound with sudden shrieks from the nursery, and there was always a pin in that baby, was forever a fresh surprise; and why, when they had a house full of company, no "girl," and Harrie down with a sick-headache, his son and heir should of necessity be threatened with scarlatina, was a philosophical problem over which he speculated long and profoundly.
So, gradually, in the old way, the old sweet habits of the long honeymoon were broken. Harrie dreamed no more on the cliffs by the bright noon sea; had no time to spend making scarlet pictures in the little bathing-suit; had seldom strength to row into the sunset, her hair loose, the bay on fire, and one to watch her from the shore. There were no more walks up the beach to dinner; there came an end to the drives in the happy twilight; she could not climb now upon her husband's knee, because of the heavy baby on her own.
The spasms of newspaper reading subsided rapidly; Corinne and Racine gathered the dust in peace upon their shelves; Mrs. Sharpe made no more fancy jellies, and found no time to inquire after other people's babies.
One becomes used to anything after a while, especially if one happens to be a man. It would have surprised Dr. Sharpe, if he had taken the pains to notice,--which I believe he never did,--how easily he became used to his solitary drives and disturbed teas; to missing Harrie's watching face at door or window; to sitting whole evenings by himself while she sang to the fretful baby overhead with her sweet little tired voice; to slipping off into the "spare room" to sleep when the child cried at night, and Harrie, up and down with him by the hour, flitted from cradle to bed, or paced the room, or sat and sang, or lay and cried herself, in sheer despair of rest; to wandering away on lonely walks; to stepping often into a neighbor's to discuss the election or the typhoid in the village; to forgetting that his wife's conversational capacities could extend beyond Biddy and teething; to forgetting that she might ever hunger for a twilight drive, a sunny sail, for the sparkle and freshness, the dreaming, the petting, the caresses, all the silly little lovers' habits of their early married days; to going his own ways, and letting her go hers.
Yet he loved her, and loved her only, and loved her well. That he never doubted, nor, to my surprise, did she. I remember once, when on a visit there, being fairly frightened out of the proprieties by hearing her call him "Dr. Sharpe." I called her away from the children soon after, on pretence of helping me unpack.