The Road to Understanding
Copyright© 2024 by Eleanor H. Porter
Chapter 5: The Wife
Helen Denby had never doubted her ability to be a perfect wife. As a girl, her vision had pictured a beauteous creature moving through a glorified world of love and admiration, ease and affluence.
Later, at the time of her marriage to Burke Denby, her vision had altered sufficiently to present a picture of herself as the sweet good-angel of the old Denby Mansion, the forgiving young wife who lays up no malice against an unappreciative father-in-law. Even when, still later (upon their return from their wedding trip and upon her learning of John Denby’s decree of banishment), the vision was necessarily warped and twisted all out of semblance to its original outlines, there yet remained unchanged the basic idea of perfect wifehood.
Helen saw herself now as the martyr wife whose superb courage and self-sacrifice were to be the stepping-stones of a husband’s magnificent success. She would be guide, counselor, and friend. (Somewhere she had seen those words. She liked them very much.) Unswervingly she would hold Burke to his high purpose. Untiringly she would lead him ever toward his goal of “making good.”
She saw herself the sweet, loving wife, graciously presiding over the well-kept home, always ready, daintily gowned, to welcome his coming with a kiss, and to speed his going with a blessing. Then, when in due course he had won out, great would be her reward. With what sweet pride and gentle dignity would she accept the laurel wreath of praise (Helen had seen this expression somewhere, too, and liked it), which a remorseful but grateful world would hasten to lay at the feet of her who alone had made possible the splendid victory—the once despised, flouted wife—the wife who was to drag him down!
It was a pleasant picture, and Helen frequently dwelt upon it—especially the sweet-and-gentle-dignity-wife part. She found it particularly soothing during those first early days of housekeeping in the new apartment.
Not that she was beginning in the least to doubt her ability to be that perfect wife. It was only that to think of things as they would be was a pleasant distraction from thinking of things as they were. But of course it would be all right very soon, anyway, —just as soon as everything got nicely to running.
Helen did wonder sometimes why the getting of “everything nicely to running” was so difficult. That a certain amount of training and experience was necessary to bring about the best results never occurred to her. If Helen had been asked to take a position as stenographer or church soloist, she would have replied at once that she did not know how to do the work. Into the position of home-maker, however, she stepped with cheerful confidence, her eyes only on the wonderful success she was going to make.
To Helen housekeeping was something like a clock that you wound up in the morning to run all day. And even when at the end of a week she could not help seeing that not once yet had she got around to being the “sweet, daintily gowned wife welcoming her husband to a well-kept home,” before that husband appeared at the door, she still did not doubt her own capabilities. It was only that “things hadn’t got to running yet.” And it was always somebody else’s fault, anyway, —frequently her husband’s. For if he did not come to dinner too early, before a thing was done, he was sure to be late, and thus spoil everything by her trying to keep things hot for him. And, of course, under such circumstances, nobody could expect one to be a sweet and daintily gowned wife!
Besides, there was the cookbook.
“Do you know, Burke,” she finally wailed one night, between sobs, “I don’t believe it’s good for a thing—that old cookbook! I haven’t got a thing out of it yet that’s been real good. I’ve half a mind to take it back where I got it, and make them change it, or else give me back my money. I have, so there!”
“But, dearie,” began her husband doubtfully, “you said yourself yesterday that you forgot the salt in the omelet, and the baking powder in the cake, and—”
“Well, what if I did?” she contended aggrievedly. “What’s a little salt or baking powder? ‘Twasn’t but a pinch or a spoonful, anyhow, and I remembered all the other things. Besides, if those rules were any good they’d be worded so I couldn’t forget part of the things. And, anyhow, I don’t think it’s very nice of you to b-blame me all the time when I’m doing the very best I can. I told you I couldn’t cook, but you said you’d like anything I made, because I did it, and—”
“Yes, yes, darling, and so I do,” interrupted the remorseful husband, hurriedly. And, to prove it, he ate the last scrap of the unappetizing concoction on his plate, which his wife said was a fish croquette. Afterwards still further to show his remorse, he helped her wash the dishes and set the rooms in order. Then together they went for a walk in the moonlight.
It was a beautiful walk, and it quite restored Helen to good nature. They went up on West Hill (where Helen particularly loved to go), and they laid wonderful plans of how one day they, too, would build a big stone palace of a home up there—though Burke did say that, for his part, he liked Elm Hill quite as well; but Helen laughed him out of that “old-fashioned idea.” At least he said no more about it.
They talked much of how proud Burke’s father was going to be when Burke had made good, and of how ashamed and sorry he would be that he had so misjudged his son’s wife. And Helen uttered some very sweet and beautiful sentiments concerning her intention of laying up no malice, her firm determination to be loving and forgiving.
Then together they walked home in the moonlight; and so thrilled and exalted were they that even the cheap little Dale Street living-room looked wonderfully dear. And Helen said that, after all, love was the only thing that mattered—that they just loved each other. And Burke said, “Yes, yes, indeed.”
The vision of the sweet, daintily gowned wife and the perfect home was very clear to Helen as she dropped off to sleep that night; and she was sure that she could begin to realize it at once. But unfortunately she overslept the next morning—which was really Burke’s fault, as she said, for he forgot to wind the alarm clock, and she was not used to getting up at such an unearthly hour, anyway, and she did not see why he had to do it, for that matter—he was really the son of the owner, even if he was called an apprentice.
This did not help matters any, for Burke never liked any reference to his position at the Works. To be sure, he did not say much, this time, except to observe stiffly that he would like his breakfast, if she would be so good as to get it—as if she were not already hurrying as fast as she could, and herself only half-dressed at that!
Of course the breakfast was a failure. Helen said that perhaps some people could get a meal of victuals on to the table, with a hungry man eyeing their every move, but she could not. Burke declared then that he really did not want any breakfast anyway, and he started to go; but as Helen only cried the more at this, he had to come back and comfort her—thereby, in the end, being both breakfastless and late to his work.
Helen, after he had gone, spent a blissfully wretched ten minutes weeping over the sad fate that should doom such a child of light and laughter as herself to the somber rôle of martyr wife, and wondered if, after all, it would not be really more impressive and more soul-torturing-with-remorse for the cruel father-in-law, if she should take poison, or gas, or something (not disfiguring), and lay herself calmly down to die, her beautiful hands crossed meekly upon her bosom.
Attractive as was this picture in some respects, it yet had its drawbacks. Then, too, there was the laurel wreath of praise due her later. She had almost forgotten that. On the whole, that would be preferable to the poison, Helen decided, as she began, with really cheerful alacrity, to attack the messy breakfast dishes.
It was not alone the cooking that troubled the young wife during that first month of housekeeping. Everywhere she found pitfalls for her unwary feet, from managing the kitchen range to keeping the living-room dusted.
And there was the money.
Helen’s idea of money, in her happy, care-free girlhood, had been that it was one of the common necessities of life; and she accepted it as she did the sunshine—something she was entitled to; something everybody had. She learned the fallacy of this, of course, when she attempted to earn her own living; but in marrying the son of the rich John Denby, she had expected to step back into the sunshine, as it were. It was not easy now to adjust herself to the change.
She did not like the idea of asking for every penny she spent, and it seemed as if she was always having to ask Burke for money; and, though he invariably handed it over with a nervously quick, “Why, yes, certainly! I don’t mean you to have to ask for it, Helen”; yet she thought she detected a growing irritation in his manner each time. And on the last occasion he had added a dismayed “But I hadn’t any idea you could have got out so soon as this again!” And it made her feel very uncomfortable indeed.
As if she were to blame that it took so much butter and coffee and sugar and stuff just to get three meals a day! And as if it were her fault that that horrid cookbook was always calling for something she did not have, like mace, or summer savory, or thyme, and she had to run out and buy a pound of it! Didn’t he suppose it took some money to stock up with things, when one hadn’t a thing to begin with?
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