Part 2

After a few years had passed, the wife developed intellectual tastes and took up a course of study. The husband was proud of her and encouraged her in her pursuits. He was very much occupied with business, and his wealth was on the increase. Two children had blessed the union, and he was very devoted to them.

He had never been a church-going man, but had helped charities and benevolent institutions, and he believed in God and immortality.

Meanwhile he lived in full enjoyment of all the things of earth. He liked a good meal, well cooked and served. He liked a good cigar. He enjoyed good company, music, cards, dancing, and fun and life. He had never sought unworthy friends, or low associates of either sex. But he wanted people about him who were optimistic, and who liked a good laugh, and he did not care for the very serious side of life.

He never read problem novels, or went to see problem plays, and he delighted in comic opera and humorous literature. For several years his wife had been his comrade in all these things. But as she developed intellectually, and as she studied into the metaphysical thought of the world, she seemed to be bored by the things which had once given her pleasure.

It did not occur to her that she could keep in touch with the human side of life, and with her husband's tastes, and still grow out into larger ideals.

She said one could not serve God and Mammon, or obey two masters. And she felt she must obey the call of her soul. She forgot that the call of love is also the call of the soul.

So her husband began to go to the comic opera and the social dance alone or with a man friend. And he began to find it difficult to converse with his wife on any subject of mutual interest. He felt she was greatly his superior, and he was ofttimes very lonely.

He did not give vent to many spontaneous witticisms as of old, and for the first time he felt he was ageing.

His wife talked of matters, and books, and theories of life which seemed a million miles away from his sphere of thought.

As time passed she grew more and more spiritual, and she tried to make him realise that he was on a very carnal plane, and that his whole understanding of life was wrong.

She indulged in long fasts; she went into her closet for meditation, when he was alone in the house; and she refused him the expressions of love which of old had been spontaneously given. She told him love was a thing of the spirit, that it needed no physical expression. She read from books of ancient lore, and tried to make him see that only by living in the spirit, wholly, could we make a place for ourselves in the great spiritual kingdoms of the universe, or develop our highest powers here.

For two long years the man tried to live on and make the best of his position, but the wife had undertaken an impossible task. She had striven to change a wholesome, happy, good-hearted, loving human being, into an intellectual æsthetic; to turn a wit into a profound philosopher; to paralyse normal and natural instincts and appetites, and to force the man to live only in the spirit, while yet in the body.

After two years the bad husband developed. He went where he found pleasure, mirth, good food, good company. He allowed his wife to go her way; he went his.

They met at the divorce court.

There was no trouble about her obtaining the divorce. Statutory grounds were given and proved. The children were given to the wife. The woman who had won him away from his wife, according to public comment, was a wholly inferior person.

Then it was remarked that his wife was always quite his superior; and that he had, by the natural law of the world, gone down to his own level. His wife received the sympathy of the whole community; and he was understood to be one of those bad men who are incapable of appreciating a good woman.

VI

The sixth bad husband was supposed to be quite a model young man until he married the girl who was too good for him.

She was too good for any man, so everybody said.

Such a pretty girl and a perfect housekeeper. Her mother had been an invalid, and the daughter had always taken care of the home after her mother died. She was a nurse for all the sick people in the neighbourhood; and so unselfish with her time, and strength, and money in doing for the poor.

The young man felt that he was rushing in where angels fear to tread, when he asked her to be his wife; and he regarded her as something little short of divinity.

He was a healthy, human man, and fond of all the comforts of home. When he saw what a perfect housekeeper she was, his heart welled full of gratitude to heaven for his good fortune.

Early orphaned, he had boarded from early boyhood. Perhaps, because he had never known a home, he had fallen into some careless ways. He excused himself in this manner when his wife first took him to task for leaving his hat on the centre table. He tried to remember that he must always hang his hat in the closet, where it had a peg of its own, but when he came in hurried with some special idea in mind, he found himself forgetting.

And again the quiet, but decisive voice of his wife reminded him. Then he sometimes forgot to wipe his feet on the doormat. When he did this, if the day was damp or dusty, he was made to repent it by seeing his wife follow him with a floor-cloth or duster, wiping where his feet had trod. When he rose from a chair and forgot to place it where it had been, against the wall, she set it back herself with a quick, prompt gesture, which made him realise his delinquency.

She often mentioned being very tired at night, too tired to go out with him because of the unnecessary work she had been obliged to do through the 'thoughtlessness of others.' He knew that 'others' meant himself.

His cigar ashes were a constant source of annoyance to her. He tried to put them in an ash-tray always; but sometimes they would fall or scatter. She brushed them up immediately. So he fell into the habit of going to the club to smoke. She was a most undemonstrative girl; and what he had taken for maidenly reserve, when he wooed her, proved to be an utter absence of affection in her nature.

She believed in duty; that was her great word.

One day when he accused her of not really loving him, she asked him to point to one thing where she had failed in her 'duty.'

Had she not kept his home in perfect order?

Had she not been economical in expenditures?

Had she not kept his name free from blemish?

Had she not--but at this juncture he went out and slammed the door.

And as he went he quoted from Kipling, saying: 'And now I know that she never will know, and never will understand.'

One day he fell ill with a hard cold; and then indeed she became the devoted wife. A better nurse never lived. She was simply delightful, while he was confined to the house as her patient.

But the moment he was up and out she became the nagging woman, with a mania for order, economy, and neatness; and all her tenderness and sweetness vanished into the acrid and severe manner of the thrifty housewife. She was a nurse and missionary and housekeeper--not a wife. And he was simply starving for love, for companionship, for good fellowship, for freedom, for happiness.

She was unable to see or understand his needs, beyond those of an orderly house, and a bank account which was not overdrawn. She was utterly devoid of the least touch of coquetry. Her severe, neat manner of dress indicated her temperament.

One day he complimented the appearance of a young woman who was given to plumes and ribbons, and who wore her hat with an air of one who knew she would be looked at by men.

'I think her type very loud and tasteless,' his wife said coldly. 'She is the kind of girl who would run her husband into debt without a qualm of conscience, in order to gratify her whims. But I begin to think that is the type of woman a man admires.'

All her judgments were severe. She had no mercy for any human frailty. A woman of that nature, who is perpetually nagging a man for leaving a book in the hammock, a hat on a table, cigar ashes on the floor, or a chair out of place, and who is cold and undemonstrative in her disposition, drives Cupid from the window, or else flings wide the door for his departure.

When Cupid went forth from this home the man went also.

And the world said:

'What a brute to desert that model woman! Such a housekeeper! Such a manager! And to think how she nursed him whenever he was sick!'

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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

Obvious printer errors have been corrected. Otherwise, the author's original spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been left intact.