Revelations of a Wife | Page 2

believe
anybody in the world ever called Richard anything but "Dicky."
On the other hand, nobody but Richard ever called me anything shorter
than my own dignified name. I have been "Madge" to him almost ever
since I knew him.
Dear, dear Dicky! If I talked a hundred years I could not express the
difference between us in any better fashion. He is "Dicky" and I am
"Margaret."
He is downstairs now in the smoking room, impatiently humoring this
lifelong habit of mine to have one hour of the day all to myself.
My mother taught me this when I was a tiny girl. My "thinking hour,"
she called it, a time when I solved my small problems or pondered my
baby sins. All my life I have kept up the practice. And now I am going
to devote it to another request of the little mother who went away from
me forever last year.
"Margaret, darling," she said to me on the last day we ever talked
together, "some time you are going to marry--you do not think so now,
but you will--and how I wish I had time to warn you of all the hidden
rocks in your course! If I only had kept a record of those days of my
own unhappiness, you might learn to avoid the wretchedness that was
mine. Promise me that if you marry you will write down the problems
that confront you and your solution of them, so than when your own
baby girl comes to you and grows into womanhood she may be helped
by your experience."
Poor little mother! Her marriage with my father had been one of those
wretched tragedies, the knowledge of which frightens so many people
away from the altar. I have no memory of my father. I do not know
today whether he be living or dead. When I was 4 years old he ran
away with the woman who had been my mother's most intimate friend.
All my life has been warped by the knowledge. Even now, worshipping
Dicky as I do, I am wondering as I sit here, obeying my mother's last
request, whether or not an experience like hers will come to me.

A fine augury for our happiness when such thoughts as this can come
to me on my wedding day!
Dicky is an artist, with all the faults and all the lovable virtues of his
kind. A week ago I was a teacher, holding one of the most desirable
positions in the city schools. We met just six months ago, two of the
most unsuited people who could be thrown together. And now we are
married! Next week we begin housekeeping in a dear little apartment
near Dicky's studio.
Dicky has insisted that I give up my work, and against all my
convictions I have yielded to his wishes. But on my part I have
stipulated that I must be permitted to do the housework of our nest,
with the occasional help of a laundress. I will be no parasite wife who
neither helps her husband in or out of the home. But the little devils
must be busy laughing just now. I, who have hardly hung up my own
nightgown for years, and whose knowledge of housekeeping is
mightily near zero, am to try to make home happy and comfortable for
an artist! Poor Dicky!
I don't know what has come to me. I worship Dicky. He sweeps me off
my feet with his love, his vivid personality overpowers my more
commonplace self, but through all the bewildering intoxication of my
engagement and marriage a little mocking devil, a cool, cynical, little
devil, is constantly whispering in my ear: "You fool, you fool, to
imagine you can escape unhappiness! There is no such thing as a happy
marriage!"
Dicky has just 'phoned up from the smoking room to ask me if my hour
isn't up. How his voice clears away all the miasma of my miserable
thoughts! Please God, Dicky, I am going to lock up all my old ideas in
the most unused closet of my brain, and try my best to be a good wife
to you! I will be happy! I will! I WILL!

II

THE FIRST QUARREL
"I'll give you three guesses, Madge." Dicky stood just inside the door of
the living room, holding an immense parcel carefully wrapped. His hat
was on the back of his head, his eyes shining, his whole face aglow
with boyish mischief.
"It's for you, my first housekeeping present, that is needed in every well
regulated family," he burlesqued boastfully, "but you are not to see it
until we have something to eat, and you have guessed what it is."
"I know it is something lovely, dear," I replied sedately, "but