On Being That Second Wife Yourself

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

JOHN and I were getting on in life; — into the early fifties and late forties. The two daughters were married and living in distant cities; the two boys were in college and never really at home any more.

We began our married life with happy poverty and had practiced New England thrift. I had enjoyed looking to the ways of my household and making us comfortable upon little money and much love. What joyous subterfuges and gay selfdenials !

But now we were in a “flat and uninteresting state of prosperity.” I had begun to realize that there was no longer any need for me to can tomatoes or make raspberry jam. There was time to do all the things I had longed to do during the years before; but what was the matter ?

I had thought that all through the hurry and hard work of our lives we had not only kept together, but had kept awake to the new things that make life: the new thoughts, the new poems. Was I sinking into the weariness of old age, that nothing seemed worth while any more ?

To be sure, John was deep in the results of a well-earned reputation. He was being made president of banks, president of The Club, and was put upon commissions for the public good where there was hard work and no pay. In short, he was being a true citizen, and I was unspeakably proud that he should serve his generation. Of course it took him away from home and we no longer read poetry in the evenings. Our habit for more than twenty years of having our “ Saturday afternoons out” had been given up. We had always done something pleasant together then. It had been a Paderewski matinée, or a drive to a certain beautiful place to find the bird’s-foot violets. It was always something, even if it were nothing but looking in the shop windows and playing what we would buy. This, too, had been crowded out with the poetry.

At about this time an old friend and neighbor who was in much the same walk of life married a second time, after being a widower a few years. I went to see the new wife with a sense of regret that the man had not found remembrance better than consolation; a little feeling of jealousy for the dead. I found things very different from what I expected. The changes in the house were not so marked in mere things as in a sense of ease and mental well-being; a subtle feeling of fuller life. How fresh and young she looked! Yet I knew she was quite as old as I, if not older. Was it her pretty clothes ? Did they give one a broader outlook on life ?

I came home feeling a little bitter and tired. It was always the way. The first wife worked hard, went without things, saved every penny possible, and then died, and her husband was happier with a new wife, who reaped where the first had sown. Evidently, I thought, it is high time I made way for my successor, who would go about with John, entertain people, and be charming and ornamental. I had outlived my time, and was useless and old and plain. All this was in very bad taste on my part, but it was very real.

Then I had a revelation. I — I, myself, would be John’s second wife! And I have! John likes it. I have smartened myself as to raiment in the first place, going to a French dressmaker who has skill (and prices) and knows how to make the most of my few good looks; because with me, to feel that I am properly clad means to forget myself and be at perfect ease. I have made no startling innovations in the household, only added another maid, of a high and trustworthy order, who could help out behind the scenes. We have a few guests much oftener, informally and easily. When John goes to Boston or New York for a few days, I go, too, and stay a day longer, and see more than he would think of doing if I were not there. We give ourselves more time, we do a few of the things we want to do. I am daily using Her for a pattern, and we have more life, more leisure. Certainly it is a more sane and rational existence than it was. It is Life, and not unto ourselves alone.

Sometimes at dinner, when I have said something John thinks clever, I catch his admiring glance, exactly as if I were his second wife. How much of it is owning to the pretty clothes ?