Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Alice and Theodore chuckled in corners. ‘Just see Papa making love to Mama! Isn’t it impressive?’

  Mrs Elder was certainly much impressed by it; and Mr Elder found that two half homes and half a happy wife, were really more satisfying than one whole home, and a whole unhappy wife, withering in discontent.

  In her new youth and gaiety of spirit, and her half-remorseful tenderness for him, she grew ever more desirable, and presently the Elder family maintained a city flat and a country home; and spent their happy years between them.

  THEIR HOUSE

  MR WATERSON’S house was small, owing to the smallness of his income, but it was clean, most violently and meticulously clean, owing to the proficiency of Mrs Waterson as a housekeeper.

  Mrs Waterson, in Mr Waterson’s house, presented at times the appearance of an Admiral commanding a catboat; at other times she resembled that strictly localized meteorological disturbance, a tempest in a teapot. While her children were young they had furnished something of an outlet for her energies. They were nice children, quiet like their father, conscientious like their mother, of good constitutions, and not difficult to ‘raise.’ But she had ‘raised’ them by main force none the less, and during their nonage Mr Waterson had some peace in his house. He had no room of course, nor thought of claiming any, but in such small space as was temporarily allowed him he could read — sometimes.

  Now the youngest boy had gone into business, and the youngest girl had suddenly married, using discretion in choice, and developing unexpected obstinacy in carrying out her decision. It is difficult to enforce authority upon a captive whose disobedience means escape.

  ‘You were married at sixteen yourself, mother,’ said Jennie junior, and took herself off.

  So Mrs Waterson at the age of thirty-nine was left to concentrate her abundant efficiency upon her home and her husband. The house submitted perforce, wearing a cowed and submissive look, with its window-shades drawn to the line, its parlor darkened, its floors scrubbed, swept, or drastically washed, according to their nature. Mr Waterson also submitted — one cannot blame one’s wife for being a good housekeeper, even a too good housekeeper.

  He was a just man, and a kind one, and so thoroughly imbued with the conviction that woman’s place is the home that he never dreamed of criticizing the way in which his wife filled it. Yet if ever a man was unhappy without knowing it, it was John Waterson. His was a studious soul, with the scholar’s love of quiet and indifference to dust. He was fitted for high-ceilinged, long-windowed, book-walled libraries, looking out on peaceful lawns, deep-shaded. He liked plenty of room about him, not only for books and papers, but for his personal collections and instruments, and for certain small experiments. Secretly he fostered ambitions for scientific research. Yet all the room he had at his command was one bookcase in the parlor, an oak desk in the attic, and the somewhat begrudged use of the dining-room table after the red cloth was on and the lamp lit, with the condition that he must clean up before going to bed. As for bedroom space, he had his half the bed, less than half the closet, and two drawers in the bureau, the under ones. As Mrs Waterson liked the window shut and he liked it open, as she wanted more bedclothing than he by a pair of blankets, as she liked to go to bed early and he late, they compromised by halfopening the window, dividing the blankets longitudinally, one lying awake or the other being waked up — and were both patiently uncomfortable.

  Now that the children were gone, there was really room for him if either of them had thought of having separate apartments, but they never did. The long-cramped Mrs Waterson eagerly arranged her daughter’s chamber as a ‘spare room,’ decked it with all their best, and shut it up. The boys’ room was only an attic anyhow and now became a much needed place of storage for Mr Waterson’s ‘clutter,’ as she called it. He called it, in his secret heart, his ‘study,’ but it was only an attic, hot in summer and cold in winter.

  ‘We ought to have a bigger house, Jennie,’ he observed one night, as he had done many times before.

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Waterson, faithfully inserting the we to take the edge off her remark, ‘when we can afford a bigger house we’ll have it.’

  She was standing by the bureau combing her thick brown hair, while he lay there, wide awake and a little rebellious, watching her. Of course he could have sat up later, but there were so many directions to remember about the lamp and the stove and the window and to put up all his papers, and not to stumble on the stairs and waken her — which he knew he should infallibly do — that he preferred to come to bed and be done with it.

  Hair is beautiful upon the head, smooth-coiled or softly flowing, and Mrs Waterson had ‘a fine suit of hair,’ but he never quite enjoyed the prosaic motions, swift and monotonous, with which she combed out the tangles, brushed it smooth, and braided it neatly for the night. When she cleaned the comb and wound the thin wisp of loose hairs around her fingers he always felt a sense of distaste — though he had never admitted it to himself. If she felt somewhat the same when he set his lean jaw askew to meet the razor, and masked his features in lather, or when the human form divine was in the ignominious attitude of pulling on a shirt, she never admitted it either. They had no complaint to make of one another, these good people. She was an irreproachable wife, albeit somewhat wearing, as good women often are; he was a model husband, though not pre-eminently successful as a ‘provider,’ which also is apt to occur. And they had loved each other for twenty-three years.

  That they still loved each other neither doubted, but the friction of personal dissimilarity in a too close intimacy had worn and bitten away that golden cord to the merest thread, all unobserved.

  Mr Waterson lay still and revolved his secret. Yes, he had better tell her now. The oldest boy, his father’s special pride, who had been graduated at twenty and stepped into congenial employment at once with a scientific institution, had sent home a letter with a startling proposition. Couldn’t father sell out his business, or let it temporarily, and go with an exploring expedition now forming? He, the son, could get him a small place, he thought, and he would so love to have Dad along. He knew it would be hard on mother, but couldn’t mother go to Jennie’s, now Jennie had a home?

  Mr Waterson had carried the letter in his pocket for some days, pondering hopelessly on this golden opportunity. All his life he had longed for such a chance. It meant a period of freedom, and his patient soul expanded at the thought — time to think, men to talk with who were interested in the same things, growth, study, perhaps some real discovery. But duty held him in his place. He must support his wife, maintain his home, carry on his business.

  Before answering, however, he meant to broach the subject to his wife. Perhaps he had a faint, unspoken hope that she might see a way for him to go. Perhaps he felt rather the need of her strong good sense to strengthen him in the way of duty and help him to refuse.

  So now, while she stood there, holding her hair in a firm clutch and dragging the comb through it with smart, tearing strokes — he always wondered that she had any hair left — he told her of Jack’s letter.

  She listened quietly, saying nothing till he had quite finished. Then, when her braid was plaited down to the thin diminishing end, she wrapped her blue kimono close about her and sat down on the edge of the bed, looking at him more lovingly than usual.

  ‘Why don’t you do it?’ she said, with her brisk smile. ‘It would do you good!’

  He was much surprised. ‘But, my dear — how can I? Here are you — and the house — and the business. If I could sell it—’ he added, with a flicker of hope.

  Mr Waterson kept a dry goods store, a quiet, reliable old-fashioned dry goods store, which brought in just enough from year to year, and never any more.

  ‘I can sell the business for you,’ said his wife cheerfully. ‘I’ll run it awhile, and sell it — to advantage. Just you try me!’

  He believed she could if she set her mind to it.

  ‘But the house — the expenses.’

&nb
sp; ‘I can manage the house, too. Just you try me, John. You put everything in my name and go! It’s the chance you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?’

  It was, without doubt, and he wanted it so much that her cheerful energy and determined optimism wrought him to the pitch of enthusiasm necessary for so great a step.

  He put all his property in his wife’s name, gave her power of attorney to attend to his affairs, drew half of their savings and started off on the expedition.

  He felt like a lad of twenty instead of a man of forty-five. The years rolled off from him with his responsibilities. Eager, clear-minded, full of hope and courage, more like a brother than a father with his son, he set forth with his face to the future.

  He had thought himself an elderly man. He felt now like a young one. He had thought himself in duty bound to work always for his wife and family. To his sudden amazement he found that the family cares he had carried for so long rolled off him like a forgotten burden. House, store, business obligations — they had disappeared.

  He did think a good deal about his wife at first. So ingrained was his conviction that women should stay at home that it did not seem right to think of her as running a store, and yet he knew she could do it, and do it well. That summer that he had broken his leg she had carried on the business for him most successfully. He wrote some letters of advice, growing shorter and farther apart as the weeks passed. Letters were always difficult and unsatisfying to him. They were even more so to her. She was a woman of deeds rather than words, even spoken ones, and written language was not at all her medium of expression. So she wrote presently to this effect:

  ‘Now, my dear husband, you really can’t advise from that distance. I’ve undertaken the business and it’s going nicely. You’re off on your expedition and that’s going nicely, I judge. Just dismiss this end from your mind, dear. Let’s make an agreement right now that if either one of us is sick or injured or needs the other in any way, we’ll write or wire at once, but so long as things go all right we won’t bother to write unless we feel like it. I know you love me, and I love you, and we’ll be glad to see each other again, but for now — just go and play!’

  So with a sense of deep though hardly recognized relief, John Waterson let all his personal ties fall loose, and only at rare intervals did he send brief, cheerful letters home, to tell of some wonderful new find they had made, some book he had read, some fruitful talk with other scholars, some work he contemplated. Scant as his opportunities had been, so earnest had been his study along the lines which interested him that he was able to hold his own among these scientists and even to contribute something to their discussions. Now and then he sent her newspaper reports in which the achievements of the expedition were recorded, and in which his own name occasionally appeared.

  As he receded from her daily sight, as his always rather perfunctory letters grew few and far between, and as she read of his doings and what others thought of him, he began to loom larger and more attractive in her mind. He would have been surprised indeed to know how she treasured those scant letters now, though far too proud to ask for more after she herself had proposed the lightening of their correspondence. From the first years of their marriage she had not loved her husband as she loved him now.

  Then when he wrote to her that there was a chance for him to go still farther, on a long voyage with explorations in another country, which might keep him away another year or two, it took all her strength to send just the right kind of a letter to ensure his going.

  ‘That’s fine, John,’ she said; ‘simply fine. I am so glad for you. I wouldn’t have you miss it for anything. Of course I hate to lose you for so long, but we’ve had twenty-three years together, and will have all the rest of our lives together; this is perhaps the only time you’ll ever have to go where you want to. It’s fine for Jack, too, and for you to be together. Don’t miss it on my account. Things are going on well here: the business is looking up; my health is fine. I may be able to sell the house — if I don’t hear from you to the contrary.’

  He really felt a little ashamed to leave her so long, but she seemed so happy, and so — well, he was almost nettled by her serene assurance that she could run the business as well as he could.

  Jack was eager to have him go.

  ‘Oh, come on, Dad! Mother’s all right. She’s having the time of her life. Jennie’s there, you know, in case anything should happen, but mother’s never sick. And Walter’s doing well in the city; he’d help out if she got in trouble with the business. Come along!’

  So Mr Waterson, already strengthened and stimulated by congenial occupation, went over seas with the party. He wrote few letters, but he did find time to write a monograph on the single branch of the single subject of which he now really knew as much as any one man, and when this monograph was read at a great international convention, and printed, and praised far and wide by those who knew enough to appreciate it, he sent the accounts of it, with the paper itself, to his wife, and felt that he had not lived in vain.

  It was four years before he returned to his home city. Two feelings strove within him, making him alternately happy and miserable. One was a homesick longing for his wife, his house even — almost his store. The other was a shuddering disinclination to go back to what, in this light, looked like a prison. He, who had been a man among men for so long, to go back and be told to shut windows and lock doors and wind clocks — things he always forgot to do, unless so told; he, who had strayed for thousands of miles, with his own luggage and accumulating papers and specimens — he wondered ruefully where he should put them — now dreaded with a real horror to reconfine himself to the bookcase in the parlor, the desk in the attic, the two bureau drawers.

  Mrs Waterson meanwhile had had four years to work in, at work which, to her sincere surprise, she had found more congenial than that of forever recooking similar food and reclearing the same rooms, clothes and dishes.

  She ran the store a few months on its old lines, then sent for an efficiency expert and spent several days in close consultation with him. She was not content with his report on the store, but asked him his opinion on other businesses in the town, and paid for it.

  ‘Rather an expensive young man, wasn’t he?’ a conservative friend inquired.

  ‘The most profitable visitor I ever had,’ she replied with decision.

  She drew more profit from his visit than his direct advice. Hers was a mind that saw the principle of things. She grasped the simple secret of ‘efficiency’ and proceeded to apply it.

  If Mr Waterson had left his business behind him as one dropping a burden, Mrs Waterson left her housekeeping as one escaping from a treadmill. Her natural energies had now for the first time room for full action. Her store blossomed with sudden changes, wisely planned. She enlarged here, altered there, added new features. It became, in a modest way, a department store. To the ‘gents’ furnishing’ department she added a hand laundry — a laundry so safe and sanitary, so quick and clean, that it doubled her trade in that line. If the laundry itself was no great profit — and it was not at first — it added greatly to the profits of the business. With the laundry went naturally a mending-bureau; that grew swiftly into a plain-sewing, and that into a dressmaking establishment, all in connection with the background of dry goods.

  Exulting in her new freedom, proving her power and finding it increase with use, Mrs Waterson used her first year’s profits to add to her building and to acquire an interest in a grocery store next door. The second year she bought out a small hotel which had utterly failed to pay. She made it pay. She knew the kind of manager to hire, and how to manage him, she had her own house-furnishing department to draw on, her grocery business, and her laundry, now solidly flourishing.

  The third year saw her department store and her hotel paying handsomely, with a bank account rolling up steadily. She had sold their house, in the second year of her husband’s absence, to good advantage, and bought a larger lot, rather on the outskirts of the town, with a lo
ng slope down to a quiet river and numbers of old trees. The house on it was of no value, and as soon as she saw her way clear she had it torn down and began to build.

  Never in her life had she been so happy, not even when love’s fulfillment had for a while stilled that insistent urge within her which always had demanded more to do. Doubtless if she had not had her pleasant family life to look back on, her satisfactory children to be proud of, and her husband — for whom she longed increasingly — to look forward to, all this joyful exertion and new pride would have had its empty side, and left her often lonely. But her domestic conscience was clean; her woman’s heart had given and taken to the full, and she found time to enjoy Jennie’s baby almost as much as any other grandmother.

  Jennie’s husband she learned fully to approve of. He was now a general manager in her big store, doing excellent work, and drawing a much higher salary than he had before. The business ran on well, with only such risks and difficulties as roused her to fresh courage and resource.

  The house rose with speed. She had been slow and careful in its planning, and now urged the work to completion. He was coming — she wanted it ready for him.

  Mr Waterson had not written since announcing the probable date of their return. Why should he? He was coming as fast as letters could, and, if he was delayed here and there, why so would the letters have been. He was coming as fast as he could, and as the slow miles passed, the thoughts of home, the thoughts of her, grew steadily sweeter.

  When at last he was on the steamer, with only the ocean between them, the thoughts grew into keen longings. He wanted to see home again, the pleasant town where he had so many friends, where he felt now he could hold his head higher after his scientific honors. He wanted to see his daughter, and his new granddaughter, described as a wonder of the world. Most of all he wanted to see his wife.