He Fell In Love With His Wife, Edward Payson Roe [children's books read aloud .TXT] 📗

had been an intolerable burden to his neighbor, who had

taken advantage of his need and induced him to assume the burden through false

representation. To a man of Holcroft’s simple, straightforward nature, any

phase of trickery was intensely repugnant, and the fact that he had been

overreached in a matter relating to his dearest hopes galled him to the quick.

He possessed the strong common sense of his class; his wife had been like him

in this respect, and her influence had intensified the trait. Queer people

with abnormal manners excited his intense aversion. The most charitable view

that he could take of Mrs. Mumpson was that her mind—such as she had—was

unbalanced, that it was an impossibility for her to see any subject or duty in

a sensible light or its right proportions.

 

Her course, so prejudicial to her own interests, and her incessant and stilted

talk, were proof to his mind of a certain degree of insanity, and he had heard

that people in this condition often united to their unnatural ways a wonderful

degree of cunning. Her child was almost as uncanny as herself and gave him a

shivering sense of discomfort whenever he caught her small, greenish eyes

fixed upon him.

 

“Yet, she’ll be the only one who’ll earn her salt. I don’t see how I’m going

to stand ‘em—I don’t, indeed, but suppose I’ll have to for three months, or

else sell out and clear out.”

 

By the time he reached town a cold rain had set in. He went at once to the

intelligence office, but could obtain no girl for Mrs. Mumpson to

“superintend,” nor any certain promise of one. He did not much care, for he

felt that the new plan was not going to work. Having bartered all his eggs

for groceries, he sold the old stove and bought a new one, then drew from the

bank a little ready money. Since his butter was so inferior, he took it to

his friend Tom Watterly, the keeper of the poorhouse.

 

Prosperous Tom slapped his old friend on the back and said, “You look awfully

glum and chopfallen, Jim. Come now, don’t look at the world as if it was made

of tar, pitch, and turpentine. I know your luck’s been hard, but you make it

a sight harder by being so set in all your ways. You think there’s no place

to live on God’s earth but that old up-and-downhill farm of yours that I

wouldn’t take as a gift. Why, man alive, there’s a dozen things you can turn

your hand to; but if you will stay there, do as other men do. Pick out a

smart, handy woman that can make butter yaller as gold, that’ll bring gold,

and not such limpsy-slimsy, ghostly-looking stuff as you’ve brought me. Bein’

it’s you, I’ll take it and give as much for it as I’d pay for better, but you

can’t run your old ranch in this fashion.”

 

“I know it, Tom,” replied Holcroft ruefully. “I’m all at sea; but, as you say,

I’m set in my ways, and I’d rather live on bread and milk and keep my farm

than make money anywhere else. I guess I’ll have to give it all up, though,

and pull out, but it’s like rooting up one of the old oaks in the meadow lot.

The fact is, Tom, I’ve been fooled into one of the worst scrapes I’ve got into

yet.”

 

“I see how it is,” said Tom heartily and complacently, “you want a practical,

foresighted man to talk straight at you for an hour or two and clear up the

fog you’re in. You study and brood over little things out there alone until

they seem mountains which you can’t get over nohow, when, if you’d take one

good jump out, they’d be behind you. Now, you’ve got to stay and take a bite

with me, and then we’ll light our pipes and untangle this snarl. No backing

out! I can do you more good than all the preachin’ you ever heard. Hey,

there, Bill!” shouting to one of the paupers who was detailed for such work,

“take this team to the barn and feed ‘em. Come in, come in, old feller!

You’ll find that Tom Watterly allus has a snack and a good word for an old

crony.”

 

Holcroft was easily persuaded, for he felt the need of cheer, and he looked up

to Tom as a very sagacious, practical man. So he said, “Perhaps you can see

farther into a millstone than I can, and if you can show me a way out of my

difficulties you’ll be a friend sure enough.”

 

“Why, of course I can. Your difficulties are all here and here,” touching his

bullet head and the region of his heart. “There aint no great difficulties in

fact, but, after you’ve brooded out there a week or two alone, you think

you’re caught as fast as if you were in a bear trap. Here, Angy,” addressing

his wife, “I’ve coaxed Holcroft to take supper with us. You can hurry it up a

little, can’t you?”

 

Mrs. Watterly gave their guest a cold, limp hand and a rather frigid welcome.

But this did not disconcert him. “It’s only her way,” he had always thought.

“She looks after her husband’s interests as mine did for me, and she don’t

talk him to death.”

 

This thought, in the main, summed up Mrs. Watterly’s best traits.

 

She was a commonplace, narrow, selfish woman, whose character is not worth

sketching. Tom stood a little in fear of her, and was usually careful not to

impose extra tasks, but since she helped him to save and get ahead, he

regarded her as a model wife.

 

Holcroft shared in his opinion and sighed deeply as he sat down to supper.

“Ah, Tom!” he said, “you’re a lucky man. You’ve got a wife that keeps

everything indoors up to the mark, and gives you a chance to attend to your

own proper business. That’s the way it was with mine. I never knew what a

lopsided, helpless creature a man was until I was left alone. You and I were

lucky in getting the women we did, but when my partner left me, she took all

the luck with her. That aint the worst. She took what’s more than luck and

money and everything. I seemed to lose with her my grit and interest in most

things. It’ll seem foolishness to you, but I can’t take comfort in anything

much except working that old farm that I’ve worked and played on ever since I

can remember anything. You’re not one of those fools, Tom, that have to learn

from their own experience. Take a bit from mine, and be good to your wife

while you can. I’d give all I’m worth—I know that aint much—if I could say

some things to my wife and do some things for her that I didn’t do.”

 

Holcroft spoke in the simplicity of a full and remorseful heart, but he

unconsciously propitiated Mrs. Watterly in no small degree. Indeed, she felt

that he had quite repaid her for his entertainment, and the usually taciturn

woman seconded his remarks with much emphasis.

 

“Well now, Angy,” said Tom, “if you averaged up husbands in these parts I

guess you’d find you were faring rather better than most women folks. I let

you take the bit in your teeth and go your own jog mostly. Now, own up, don’t

I?”

 

“That wasn’t my meaning, exactly, Tom,” resumed Holcroft. “You and I could

well afford to let our wives take their own jog, for they always jogged steady

and faithful and didn’t need any urging and guiding. But even a dumb critter

likes a good word now and then and a little patting on the back. It doesn’t

cost us anything and does them a sight of good. But we kind of let the

chances slip by and forget about it until like enough it’s too late.”

 

“Well,” replied Tom, with a deprecatory look at his wife, “Angy don’t take to

pettin’ very much. She thinks it’s a kind of foolishness for such middle-aged

people as we’re getting to be.”

 

“A husband can show his consideration without blarneying,” remarked Mrs.

Watterly coldly. “When a man takes on in that way, you may be sure he wants

something extra to pay for it.”

 

After a little thought Holcroft said, “I guess it’s a good way to pay for it

between husband and wife.”

 

“Look here, Jim, since you’re so well up on the matrimonial question, why in

thunder don’t you marry again? That would settle all your difficulties,” and

Tom looked at his friend with a sort of wonder that he should hesitate to take

this practical, sensible course.

 

“It’s very easy for you to say, ‘Why don’t you marry again?’ If you were in

my place you’d see that there are things in the way of marrying for the sake

of having a good butter maker and all that kind of thing.”

 

“Mr. Watterly wouldn’t be long in comforting himself,” remarked his

wife.—“His advice to you makes the course he’d take mighty clear.”

 

“Now, Angy!” said Tom reproachfully. “Well,” he added with a grin, “you’re

forewarned. So you’ve only to take care of yourself and not give me a

chance.”

 

“The trouble is,” Holcroft resumed, “I don’t see how an honest man is going to

comfort himself unless it all comes about in some natural sort of way. I

suppose there are people who can marry over and over again, just as easy as

they’d roll off a log. It aint for me to judge ‘em, and I don’t understand

how they do it. You are a very practical man, Tom, but just you put yourself

in my shoes and see what you’d do. In the first place, I don’t know of a

woman in the world that I’d think of marrying. That’s saying nothing against

the women,—there’s lots too good for me,—but I don’t know ‘em and I can’t go

around and hunt ‘em up. Even if I could, with my shy, awkward ways, I

wouldn’t feel half so nervous starting out on a bear hunt. Here’s difficulty

right at the beginning. Supposing I found a nice, sensible woman, such as I’d

be willing to marry, there isn’t one chance in a hundred she’d look at an old

fellow like me. Another difficulty: Supposing she would; suppose she looked

me square in the eyes and said, ‘So you truly want a wife?’ what in thunder

would I say then?—I don’t want a wife, I want a housekeeper, a butter maker,

one that would look after my interests as if they were her own; and if I could

hire a woman that would do what I wish, I’d never think of marrying. I can’t

tell a woman that I love her when I don’t. If I went to a minister with a

woman I’d be deceiving him, and deceiving her, and perjuring myself

promiscuously. I married once according to law and gospel and I was married

through and through, and I can’t do the thing over again in any way that would

seem to me like marrying at all. The idea of me sitting by the fire and

wishing that the woman who sat on the t’other side of the stove was my first

wife! Yet I couldn’t help doing this any more than breathing. Even if there

was any chance of my succeeding I can’t see anything square or honest in my

going out and hunting up a wife as a mere matter of business. I know other

people do it and I’ve thought a good deal about it myself, but when it comes

to the point of acting