His Servant
by
OR DEBIT AND CREDIT
Mr. Blackwood was a wharfinger at Brooklyn and had married Miss Dankward, who brought him a dowry of modern ideas. To avoid seeing his beloved wife playing the part of his servant, Mr. Blackwood had taken rooms in a boarding house.
The wife, who had nothing whatever to do, spent the day in playing billiards and practising the piano, and half the night in discussing Women’s Rights and drinking whiskies and sodas.
The husband had a salary of five thousand dollars. He handed over his money regularly to his wife who took charge of it. She had, moreover, a dress allowance of five hundred dollars with which she did as she liked.
Then a baby arrived. A nurse was engaged who, for a hundred dollars, took upon her shoulders the sacred duties of the mother.
Two more children were born.
They grew up and the two eldest went to school. But Mrs. Blackwood was bored and had nothing with which to occupy her mind.
One morning she appeared at the breakfast table, slightly intoxicated.
The husband ventured to tell her that her behaviour was unseemly.
She had hysterics and went to bed, and all the other ladies in the house called on her and brought her flowers.
“Why do you drink so much whisky?” asked her husband, as kindly as possible. “Is there anything which troubles you?”
“How could I be happy when my whole life is wasted!”
“What do you mean by wasted? You are the mother of three children and you might spend your time in educating them.”
“I can’t be bothered with children.”
“Then you ought to be bothered with them! You would be benefiting the whole community and have a splendid object in life, a far more honourable one, for instance, than that of being a wharfinger.”
“Yes, if I were free!”
“You are freer than I am. I am under your rule. You decide how my earnings are to be spent. You have five hundred dollars pin money to spend as you like; but I have no pin money. I have to make an application to the cash-box, in other words, to you, whenever I want to buy tobacco. Don’t you think that you are freer than I am?”
She made no reply; she tried to think the question out.
The upshot of it was that they decided to have a home of their own. And they set up house-keeping.
“My dear friend,” Mrs. Blackwood wrote a little later on to a friend of hers, “I am ill and tired to death. But I must go on suffering, for there is no solace for an unhappy woman who has no object in life. I will show the world that I am not the sort of woman who is content to live on her husband’s bounty, and therefore I shall work myself to death….”
On the first day she rose at nine o’clock and turned out her husband’s room. Then she dismissed the cook and at eleven o’clock she went out to do the catering for the day.
When the husband came home at one o’clock, lunch was not ready. It was the maid’s fault.
Mrs. Blackwood was dreadfully tired and in tears. The husband could not find it in his heart to complain. He ate a burnt cutlet and went back to his work.
“Don’t work so hard, darling,” he said, as he was leaving.
In the evening his wife was so tired that she could not finish her work and went to bed at ten o’clock.
On the following morning, as Mr. Blackwood went into his wife’s room to say good morning to her, he was amazed at her healthy complexion.
“Have you slept well?” he asked.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because you are looking so well.”
“I–am–looking–well?”
“Yes, a little occupation seems to agree with you.”
“A little occupation? You call it little? I should like to know what you would call much.”
“Never mind, I didn’t mean to annoy you.”
“Yes, you did. You meant to imply that I wasn’t working hard enough. And yet I turned out your room yesterday, just as if I were a house-maid, and stood in the kitchen like a cook. Can you deny that I am your servant?”