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_ Saxon had been clear-eyed all her days, though her field of
vision had been restricted. Clear-eyed, from her childhood days
with the saloonkeeper Cady and Cady's good-natured but unmoral
spouse, she had observed, and, later, generalized much upon sex.
She knew the post-nuptial problem of retaining a husband's love,
as few wives of any class knew it, just as she knew the
pre-nuptial problem of selecting a husband, as few girls of the
working class knew it.
She had of herself developed an eminently rational philosophy of
love. Instinctively, and consciously, too, she had made toward
delicacy, and shunned the perils of the habitual and commonplace.
Thoroughly aware she was that as she cheapened herself so did she
cheapen love. Never, in the weeks of their married life, had
Billy found her dowdy, or harshly irritable, or lethargic. And
she had deliberately permeated her house with her personal
atmosphere of coolness, and freshness, and equableness. Nor had
she been ignorant of such assets as surprise and charm. Her
imagination had not been asleep, and she had been born with
wisdom. In Billy she had won a prize, and she knew it. She
appreciated his lover's ardor and was proud. His open-handed
liberality, his desire for everything of the best, his own
personal cleanliness and care of himself she recognized as far
beyond the average. He was never coarse. He met delicacy with
delicacy, though it was obvious to her that the initiative in all
such matters lay with her and must lie with her always. He was
largely unconscious of what he did and why. But she knew in all
full clarity of judgment. And he was such a prize among men.
Despite her clear sight of her problem of keeping Billy a lover,
and despite the considerable knowledge and experience arrayed
before her mental vision, Mercedes Higgins had spread before her
a vastly wider panorama. The old woman had verified her own
conclusions, given her new ideas, clinched old ones, and even
savagely emphasized the tragic importance of the whole problem.
Much Saxon remembered of that mad preachment, much she guessed
and felt, and much had been beyond her experience and
understanding. But the metaphors of the veils and the flowers,
and the rules of giving to abandonment with always more to
abandon, she grasped thoroughly, and she was enabled to formulate
a bigger and stronger love-philosophy. In the light of the
revelation she re-examined the married lives of all she had ever
known, and, with sharp definiteness as never before, she saw
where and why so many of them had failed.
With renewed ardor Saxon devoted herself to her household, to her
pretties, and to her charms. She marketed with a keener desire
for the best, though never ignoring the need for economy. From
the women's pages of the Sunday supplements, and from the women's
magazines in the free reading room two blocks away, she gleaned
many idess for the preservation of her looks. In a systematic way
she exercised the various parts of her body, and a certain period
of time each day she employed in facial exercises and massage for
the purpose of retaining the roundness and freshness, and
firmness and color. Billy did not know. These intimacies of the
toilette were not for him. The results, only, were his. She drew
books from the Carnegie Library and studied physiology and
hygiene, and learned a myriad of things about herself and the
ways of woman's health that she had never been taught by Sarah,
the women of the orphan asylum, nor by Mrs. Cady.
After long debate she subscribed to a woman's magazine, the
patterns and lessons of which she decided were the best suited to
her taste and purse. The other woman's magazines she had aceess
to in the free reading room, and more than one pattern of lace
and embroidery she copied by means of tracing paper. Before the
lingerie windows of the uptown shops she often stood and studied;
nor was she above taking advantage, when small purchases were
made, of looking over the goods at the hand-embroidered underwear
counters. Once, she even considered taking up with hand-painted
china, but gave over the idea when she learned its expensiveness.
She slowly replaced all her simple maiden underlinen with
garments which, while still simple, were wrought with beautiful
French embroidery, tucks, and drawnwork. She crocheted fine
edgings on the inexpensive knitted underwear she wore in winter.
She made little corset covers and chemises of fine but fairly
inexpensive lawns, and, with simple flowered designs and perfect
laundering, her nightgowns were always sweetly fresh and dainty.
In some publication she ran across a brief printed note to the
effect that French women were just beginning to wear fascinating
beruffled caps at the breakfast table. It meant nothing to her
that in her case she must first prepare the breakfast. Promptly
appeared in the house a yard of dotted Swiss muslin, and Saxon
was deep in experimenting on patterns for herself, and in sorting
her bits of laces for suitable trimmings. The resultant dainty
creation won Mercedes Higgins' enthusiastic approval.
Saxon made for herself simple house slips of pretty gingham, with
neat low collars turned back from her fresh round throat. She
crocheted yards of laces for her underwear, and made Battenberg
in abundance for her table and for the bureau. A great
achievement, that aroused Billy's applause, was an Afghan for the
bed. She even ventured a rag carpet, which, the women's magazines
informed her, had newly returned into fashion. As a matter of
course she hemstitched the best table linen and bed linen they
could afford.
As the happy months went by she was never idle. Nor was Billy
forgotten. When the cold weather came on she knitted him
wristlets, which he always religiously wore from the house and
pocketed immediately thereafter. The two sweaters she made for
him, however, received a better fate, as did the slippers which
she insisted on his slipping into, on the evenings they remained
at home.
The hard practical wisdom of Mercedes Higgins proved of immense
help, for Saxon strove with a fervor almost religious to have
everything of the best and at the same time to be saving. Here
she faced the financial and economic problem of keeping house in
a society where the cost of living rose faster than the wages of
industry. And here the old woman taught her the science of
marketing so thoroughly that she made a dollar of Billy's go half
as far again as the wives of the neighborhood made the dollars of
their men go.
Invariably, on Saturday night, Billy poured his total wages into
her lap. He never asked for an accounting of what she did with
it, though he continually reiterated that he had never fed so
well in his life. And always, the wages still untouched in her
lap, she had him take out what he estimated he would need for
spending money for the week to come. Not only did she bid him
take plenty but she insisted on his taking any amount extra that
he might desire at any time through the week. And, further, she
insisted he should not tell her what it was for.
"You've always had money in your pocket," she reminded him, "and
there's no reason marriage should change that. If it did, I'd
wish I'd never married you. Oh, I know about men when they get
together. First one treats and then another, and it takes money.
Now if you can't treat just as freely as the rest of thcm, why I
know you so well that I know you'd stay away from them. And that
wouldn't be right ... to you, I mean. I want you to be together
with men. It's good for a man."
And Billy buried her in his arms and swore she was the greatest
little bit of woman that ever came down the pike.
"Why," he jubilated; "not only do I feed better, and live more
comfortable, and hold up my end with the fellows; but I'm
actually saving money--or you are for me. Here I am, with
furniture being paid for regular every month, and a little woman
I'm mad over, and on top of it money in the bank. How much is it
now?"
"Sixty-two dollars," she told him. "Not so bad for a rainy day.
You might get sick, or hurt, or something happen.
It was in mid-winter, when Billy, with quite a deal of obvious
reluctance, broached a money matter to Saxon. His old friend,
Billy Murphy, was laid up with la grippe, and one of his
children, playing in the street, had been seriously injured by a
passing wagon. Billy Murphy, still feeble after two weeks in bed,
had asked Billy for the loan of fifty dollars.
"It's perfectly safe," Billy concluded to Saxon. "I've known him
since we was kids at the Durant School together. He's straight as
a die."
"That's got nothing to do with it," Saxon chided. "If you were
single you'd have lent it to him immediately, wouldn't you?"
Billy nodded.
"Then it's no different because you're married. It's your money,
Billy."
"Not by a damn sight," he cried. "It ain't mine. It's ourn. And I
wouldn't think of lettin' anybody have it without seein' you
first."
"I hope you didn't tell him that," she ssid with quick concern.
"Nope," Billy laughed. "I knew, if I did, you'd be madder'n a
hatter. I just told him I'd try an' figure it out. After all, I
was sure you'd stand for it if you had it."
"Oh, Billy," she murmured, her voice rich and low with love;
"maybe you don't know it, but that's one of the sweetest things
you've said since we got married."
The more Saxon saw of Mercedes Higgins the less did she
understand her. That the old woman was a close-fisted miser,
Saxon soon learned. And this trait she found hard to reconcile
with her tales of squandering. On the other hand, Saxon was
bewildered by Mercedes' extravagance in personal matters. Her
underlinen, hand-made of course, was very costly. The table she
set for Barry was good, but the table for herself was vastly
better. Yet both tables were set on the same table. While Barry
contented himaelf with solid round steak, Mercedes ate
tenderloin. A huge, tough muttonchop on Barry's plate would be
balanced by tiny French chops on Mercedes' plate. Tea was brewed
in separate pots. So was coffee. While Barry gulped twenty-five
cent tea from a large and heavy mug, Mercedes sipped three-dollar
tea from a tiny cup of Belleek, rose-tinted, fragile as all
egg-shell. In the same manner, his twenty-five cent coffee was
diluted with milk, her eighty cent Turkish with cream.
"'Tis good enough for the old man," she told Saxon. "He knows no
better, and it would be a wicked sin to waste it on him."
Little traffickings began between the two women. After Mercedes
had freely taught Saxon the loose-wristed facility of playing
accompaniments on the ukulele, she proposed an exchange. Her time
was past, she said, for such frivolities, and she offered the
instrument for the breakfast cap of which Saxon had made so good
a success.
"It's worth a few dollars," Mercedes said. "It cost me twenty,
though that was years ago. Yet it is well worth the value of the
cap."
"But wouldn't the cap be frivolous, too?" Saxon queried, though
herself well pleased with the bargain.
"'Tis not for my graying hair," Mercedes frankly disclaimed. "I
shall sell it for the money. Much that I do, when the rheumatism
is not maddening my fingers, I sell. La la, my dear, 'tis not old
Barry's fifty a month that'll satisfy all my expensive tastes.
'Tis I that make up the difference. And old age needs money as
never youth needs it. Some day you will learn for yourself."
"I am well satisfied with the trade," Saxon said. "And I shall
make me another cap when I can lay aside enough for the
material."
"Make several," Mercedes advised. "I'll sell them for you,
keeping, of course, a small commission for my services. I can
give you six dollars apiece for them. We will consult about them.
The profit will more than provide material for your own." _
Read next: BOOK II: CHAPTER V
Read previous: BOOK II: CHAPTER III
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