Miss Billy Married

by Eleanor H. Porter

  Bertram stared. A slow red stole to his forehead. It was his first experience of coming home to meet angry eyes that questioned his behavior—and he did not like it. He had been, perhaps, a little conscience-smitten when he saw how late he had stayed; and he had intended to say he was sorry, of course. But to be thus sharply called to account for a perfectly innocent good time with a couple of friends—! To come home and find Billy making a ridiculous scene like this—! He—he would not stand for it! He—

  Bertram's lips snapped open. The angry retort was almost spoken when something in the piteously quivering chin and white, drawn face opposite stopped it just in time.

  "Why, Billy—darling!" he murmured instead.

  It was Billy's turn to change. All the anger melted away before the dismayed tenderness in those dear eyes and the grieved hurt in that dear voice.

  "Well, you—you—I—" Billy began to cry.

  It was all right then, of course, for the next minute she was crying on Bertram's big, broad shoulder; and in the midst of broken words, kisses, gentle pats, and inarticulate croonings, the Big, Bad Quarrel, that had been all ready to materialize, faded quite away into nothingness.

  "I didn't have such an awfully good time, anyhow," avowed Bertram, when speech became rational. "I'd rather have been home with you."

  "Nonsense!" blinked Billy, valiantly. "Of course you had a good time; and it was perfectly right you should have it, too! And I—I hope you'll have it again."

  "I sha'n't," emphasized Bertram, promptly, "—not and leave you!"

  Billy regarded him with adoring eyes.

  "I'll tell you; we'll have 'em come here," she proposed gayly.

  "Sure we will," agreed Bertram.

  "Yes; sure we will," echoed Billy, with a contented sigh. Then, a little breathlessly, she added: "Anyhow, I'll know—where you are. I won't think you're—dead!"

  "You—blessed—little-goose!" scolded Bertram, punctuating each word with a kiss.

  Billy drew a long sigh.

  "If this is a quarrel I'm going to have them often," she announced placidly.

  "Billy!" The young husband was plainly aghast.

  "Well, I am—because I like the making-up," dimpled Billy, with a mischievous twinkle as she broke from his clasp and skipped ahead up the stairway.

  Chapter VIII - Billy Cultivates a "Comfortable Indifference"

  *

  The next morning, under the uncompromising challenge of a bright sun, Billy began to be uneasily suspicious that she had been just a bit unreasonable and exacting the night before. To make matters worse she chanced to run across a newspaper criticism of a new book bearing the ominous title: "When the Honeymoon Wanes A Talk to Young Wives."

  Such a title, of course, attracted her supersensitive attention at once; and, with a curiously faint feeling, she picked up the paper and began to read.

  As the most of the criticism was taken up with quotations from the book, it was such sentences as these that met her startled eyes:

  "Perhaps the first test comes when the young wife awakes to the realization that while her husband loves her very much, he can still make plans with his old friends which do not include herself.... Then is when the foolish wife lets her husband see how hurt she is that he can want to be with any one but herself.... Then is when the husband—used all his life to independence, perhaps—begins to chafe under these new bonds that hold him so fast.... No man likes to be held up at the end of a threatened scene and made to give an account of himself.... Before a woman has learned to cultivate a comfortable indifference to her husband's comings and goings, she is apt to be tyrannical and exacting."

  "'Comfortable indifference,' indeed!" stormed Billy to herself. "As if I ever could be comfortably indifferent to anything Bertram did!"

  She dropped the paper; but there were still other quotations from the book there, she knew; and in a moment she was back at the table reading them.

  "No man, however fondly he loves his wife, likes to feel that she is everlastingly peering into the recesses of his mind, and weighing his every act to find out if he does or does not love her to-day as well as he did yesterday at this time.... Then, when spontaneity is dead, she is the chief mourner at its funeral.... A few couples never leave the Garden of Eden. They grow old hand in hand. They are the ones who bear and forbear; who have learned to adjust themselves to the intimate relationship of living together.... A certain amount of liberty, both of action and thought, must be allowed on each side.... The family shut in upon itself grows so narrow that all interest in the outside world is lost.... No two people are ever fitted to fill each other's lives entirely. They ought not to try to do it. If they do try, the process is belittling to each, and the result, if it is successful, is nothing less than a tragedy; for it could not mean the highest ideals, nor the truest devotion.... Brushing up against other interests and other personalities is good for both husband and wife. Then to each other they bring the best of what they have found, and each to the other continues to be new and interesting.... The young wife, however, is apt to be jealous of everything that turns her husband's attention for one moment away from herself. She is jealous of his thoughts, his words, his friends, even his business.... But the wife who has learned to be the clinging vine when her husband wishes her to cling, and to be the sturdy oak when clinging vines would be tiresome, has solved a tremendous problem."

  At this point Billy dropped the paper. She flung it down, indeed, a bit angrily. There were still a few more words in the criticism, mostly the critic's own opinion of the book; but Billy did not care for this. She had read quite enough—boo much, in fact. All that sort of talk might be very well, even necessary, perhaps (she told herself), for ordinary husbands and wives! but for her and Bertram—

  Then vividly before her rose those initial quoted words:

  "Perhaps the first test comes when the young wife awakes to the realization that while her husband loves her very much, he can still make plans with his old friends which do not include herself."

  Billy frowned, and put her finger to her lips. Was that then, last night, a "test"? Had she been "tyrannical and exacting"? Was she "everlastingly peering into the recesses" of Bertram's mind and "weighing his every act"? Was Bertram already beginning to "chafe" under these new bonds that held him?

  No, no, never that! She could not believe that. But what if he should sometime begin to chafe? What if they two should, in days to come, degenerate into just the ordinary, everyday married folk, whom she saw about her everywhere, and for whom just such horrid books as this must be written? It was unbelievable, unthinkable. And yet, that man had said—

  With a despairing sigh Billy picked up the paper once more and read carefully every word again. When she had finished she stood soberly thoughtful, her eyes out of the window.

  After all, it was nothing but the same old story. She was exacting. She did want her husband's every thought. She gloried in peering into every last recess of his mind if she had half a chance. She was jealous of his work. She had almost hated his painting—at times. She had held him up with a threatened scene only the night before and demanded that he should give an account of himself. She had, very likely, been the clinging vine when she should have been the sturdy oak.

  Very well, then. (Billy lifted her head and threw back her shoulders.) He should have no further cause for complaint. She would be an oak. She would cultivate that comfortable indifference to his comings and goings. She would brush up against other interests and personalities so as to be "new" and "interesting" to her husband. She would not be tyrannical, exacting, or jealous. She would not threaten scenes, nor peer into recesses. Whatever happened, she would not let Bertram begin to chafe against those bonds!

  Having arrived at this heroic and (to her) eminently satisfactory state of mind, Billy turned from the window and fell to work on a piece of manuscript music.

  "'Brush up against other interests,'" she admonished herself sternly, as she reached for her pen.

&nbs
p; Theoretically it was beautiful; but practically—

  Billy began at once to be that oak. Not an hour after she had first seen the fateful notice of "When the Honeymoon Wanes," Bertram's ring sounded at the door down-stairs.

  Bertram always let himself in with his latchkey; but, from the first of Billy's being there, he had given a peculiar ring at the bell which would bring his wife flying to welcome him if she were anywhere in the house. To-day, when the bell sounded, Billy sprang as usual to her feet, with a joyous "There's Bertram!" But the next moment she fell back.

  "Tut, tut, Billy Neilson Henshaw! Learn to cultivate a comfortable indifference to your husband's comings and goings," she whispered fiercely. Then she sat down and fell to work again.

  A moment later she heard her husband's voice talking to some one—Pete, she surmised. "Here? You say she's here?" Then she heard Bertram's quick step on the stairs. The next minute, very quietly, he came to her door.

  "Ho!" he ejaculated gayly, as she rose to receive his kiss. "I thought I'd find you asleep, when you didn't hear my ring."

  Billy reddened a little.

  "Oh, no, I wasn't asleep."

  "But you didn't hear—" Bertram stopped abruptly, an odd look in his eyes. "Maybe you did hear it, though," he corrected.

  Billy colored more confusedly. The fact that she looked so distressed did not tend to clear Bertram's face.

  "Why, of course, Billy, I didn't mean to insist on your coming to meet me," he began a little stiffly; but Billy interrupted him.

  "Why, Bertram, I just love to go to meet you," she maintained indignantly. Then, remembering just in time, she amended: "That is, I did love to meet you, until—" With a sudden realization that she certainly had not helped matters any, she came to an embarrassed pause.

  A puzzled frown showed on Bertram's face.

  "You did love to meet me until—" he repeated after her; then his face changed. "Billy, you aren't—you can't be laying up last night against me!" he reproached her a little irritably.

  "Last night? Why, of course not," retorted Billy, in a panic at the bare mention of the "test" which—according to "When the Honeymoon Wanes"—was at the root of all her misery. Already she thought she detected in Bertram's voice signs that he was beginning to chafe against those "bonds." "It is a matter of—of the utmost indifference to me what time you come home at night, my dear," she finished airily, as she sat down to her work again.

  Bertram stared; then he frowned, turned on his heel and left the room. Bertram, who knew nothing of the "Talk to Young Wives" in the newspaper at Billy's feet, was surprised, puzzled, and just a bit angry.

  Billy, left alone, jabbed her pen with such force against her paper that the note she was making became an unsightly blot.

  "Well, if this is what that man calls being 'comfortably indifferent,' I'd hate to try the uncomfortable kind," she muttered with emphasis.

  Chapter IX - The Dinner Billy Tried to Get

  *

  Notwithstanding what Billy was disposed to regard as the non-success of her first attempt to profit by the "Talk to Young Wives;" she still frantically tried to avert the waning of her honeymoon. Assiduously she cultivated the prescribed "indifference," and with at least apparent enthusiasm she sought the much-to-be-desired "outside interests." That is, she did all this when she thought of it when something reminded her of the sword of destruction hanging over her happiness. At other times, when she was just being happy without question, she was her old self impulsive, affectionate, and altogether adorable.

  Naturally, under these circumstances, her conduct was somewhat erratic. For three days, perhaps, she would fly to the door at her husband's ring, and hang upon his every movement. Then, for the next three, she would be a veritable will-o'-the-wisp for elusiveness, caring, apparently, not one whit whether her husband came or went until poor Bertram, at his wit's end, scourged himself with a merciless catechism as to what he had done to vex her. Then, perhaps, just when he had nerved himself almost to the point of asking her what was the trouble, there would come another change, bringing back to him the old Billy, joyous, winsome, and devoted, plainly caring nothing for anybody or anything but himself. Scarcely, however, would he become sure that it was his Billy back again before she was off once more, quite beyond his reach, singing with Arkwright and Alice Greggory, playing with Tommy Dunn, plunging into some club or church work—anything but being with him.

  That all this was puzzling and disquieting to Bertram, Billy not once suspected. Billy, so far as she was concerned, was but cultivating a comfortable indifference, brushing up against outside interests, and being an oak.

  December passed, and January came, bringing Miss Marguerite Winthrop to her Boston home. Bertram's arm was "as good as ever" now, according to its owner; and the sittings for the new portrait began at once. This left Billy even more to her own devices, for Bertram entered into his new work with an enthusiasm born of a glad relief from forced idleness, and a consuming eagerness to prove that even though he had failed the first time, he could paint a portrait of Marguerite Winthrop that would be a credit to himself, a conclusive retort to his critics, and a source of pride to his once mortified friends. With his whole heart, therefore, he threw himself into the work before him, staying sometimes well into the afternoon on the days Miss Winthrop could find time between her social engagements to give him a sitting.

  It was on such a day, toward the middle of the month, that Billy was called to the telephone at half-past twelve o'clock to speak to her husband.

  "Billy, dear," began Bertram at once, "if you don't mind I'm staying to luncheon at Miss Winthrop's kind request. We've changed the pose—neither of us was satisfied, you know—but we haven't quite settled on the new one. Miss Winthrop has two whole hours this afternoon that she can give me if I'll stay; and, of course, under the circumstances, I want to do it."

  "Of course," echoed Billy. Billy's voice was indomitably cheerful.

  "Thank you, dear. I knew you'd understand," sighed Bertram, contentedly. "You see, really, two whole hours, so—it's a chance I can't afford to lose."

  "Of course you can't," echoed Billy, again.

  "All right then. Good-by till to-night," called the man.

  "Good-by," answered Billy, still cheerfully. As she turned away, however, she tossed her head. "A new pose, indeed!" she muttered, with some asperity. "Just as if there could be a new pose after all those she tried last year!"

  Immediately after luncheon Pete and Eliza started for South Boston to pay a visit to Eliza's mother, and it was soon after they left the house that Bertram called his wife up again.

  "Say, dearie, I forgot to tell you," he began, "but I met an old friend in the subway this morning, and I—well, I remembered what you said about bringing 'em home to dinner next time, so I asked him for to-night. Do you mind? It's—"

  "Mind? Of course not! I'm glad you did," plunged in Billy, with feverish eagerness. (Even now, just the bare mention of anything connected with that awful "test" night was enough to set Billy's nerves to tingling.) "I want you to always bring them home, Bertram."

  "All right, dear. We'll be there at six o'clock then. It's—it's Calderwell, this time. You remember Calderwell, of course."

  "Not—Hugh Calderwell?" Billy's question was a little faint.

  "Sure!" Bertram laughed oddly, and lowered his voice. "I suspect once I wouldn't have brought him home to you. I was too jealous. But now—well, now maybe I want him to see what he's lost."

  "Bertram!"

  But Bertram only laughed mischievously, and called a gay "Good-by till to-night, then!"

  Billy, at her end of the wires, hung up the receiver and backed against the wall a little palpitatingly.

  Calderwell! To dinner—Calderwell! Did she remember Calderwell? Did she, indeed! As if one could easily forget the man that, for a year or two, had proposed marriage as regularly (and almost as lightly!) as he had torn a monthly leaf from his calendar! Besides, was it not he, too, who had said that Be
rtram would never love any girl, really; that it would be only the tilt of her chin or the turn of her head that he loved—to paint? And now he was coming to dinner—and with Bertram.

  Very well, he should see! He should see that Bertram did love her; her—not the tilt of her chin nor the turn of her head. He should see how happy they were, what a good wife she made, and how devoted and satisfied Bertram was in his home. He should see! And forthwith Billy picked up her skirts and tripped up-stairs to select her very prettiest house-gown to do honor to the occasion. Up-stairs, however, one thing and another delayed her, so that it was four o'clock when she turned her attention to her toilet; and it was while she was hesitating whether to be stately and impressive in royally sumptuous blue velvet and ermine, or cozy and tantalizingly homy{sic} in bronze-gold crêpe de Chine and swan's-down, that the telephone bell rang again.

  Eliza and Pete had not yet returned; so, as before, Billy answered it. This time Eliza's shaking voice came to her.

  "Is that you, ma'am?"

  "Why, yes, Eliza?"

  "Yes'm, it's me, ma'am. It's about Uncle Pete. He's give us a turn that's 'most scared us out of our wits."

  "Pete! You mean he's sick?"

  "Yes, ma'am, he was. That is, he is, too—only he's better, now, thank goodness," panted Eliza. "But he ain't hisself yet. He's that white and shaky! Would you—could you—that is, would you mind if we didn't come back till into the evenin', maybe?"

  "Why, of course not," cried Pete's mistress, quickly. "Don't come a minute before he's able, Eliza. Don't come until to-morrow."

  Eliza gave a trembling little laugh.

  "Thank you, ma'am; but there wouldn't be no keepin' of Uncle Pete here till then. If he could take five steps alone he'd start now. But he can't. He says he'll be all right pretty quick, though. He's had 'em before—these spells—but never quite so bad as this, I guess; an' he's worryin' somethin' turrible 'cause he can't start for home right away."

  "Nonsense!" cut in Mrs. Bertram Henshaw.