Revelations of a Wife | Page 2

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 come to your dinner. It is getting cold."
Dicky looked a trifle hurt as he followed me to the dining room. I knew what he expected--enthusiastic curiosity and a demand for the immediate opening of the parcel, I can imagine the pretty enthusiasm, the caresses with which almost any other woman would have greeted a bridegroom of two weeks with his first present.
But it's simply impossible for me to gush. I cannot express emotion of any kind with the facility of most women. I worshipped my mother, but I rarely