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Title: Of The Ruse That Failed
Author: R. D. Cumming [
More Titles by Cumming]
Once upon a time in Ashcroft there lived a lady who had the wool pulled over her husband's eyes to such an extent that he had optical illusions favorable to the "darling" who deceived him. His most alluring illusion was a booby idea that his "pet" was an invalid, and she kept pouring oil on the joke to keep it burning, and pulled the wool down further and further so that hubby could not see the combustible fluid she was pouring into the flames. Her illness was one of those "to be continued" story kinds--better to-day, worse to-morrow--and she "took" to the blankets at the most annoying and inopportune moments; and every time she "took" an indisposition she expected hubby to pull down the window curtains and go into mourning. But he, the hardhearted man, would continue to eat and smoke and sleep as though no volcanic lava were threatening to submerge the old homestead. His sympathy was not enough; he should stop eating, stop sleeping, and stop smoking--he should be in direct communication with the undertaker and negotiating about the price of caskets.
His wife had the misleading conviction that when she was ill her case was more serious than that of anyone else. In fact, no one else had ever suffered as she suffered; their ailments were summer excursions to the antipodes compared with hers, and when hubby argued that all flesh was subject to ills and disorders, that almost every unit of the human species had toothaches and rheumatics, the argument was voted down unanimously by the suffragette majority as illegitimate argument.
Gradually hubby became convinced that his wife was an invalid, and he went into mourning as much as a man could mourn the loss of a joy that he had grasped for, and just missed in the grasping. He enjoyed the situation as much as a man could who had discovered that he had amalgamated himself with an hospital which was mortgaged for all it was worth to the family physician. Out of his salary of seventy-five dollars per month sixty-five was devoted towards the financing of the doctor's time payments on his automobile; the balance paid for food, clothing, water, light, and fuel, and supplied the wolf with sufficient allowance to keep him from entering the parlor in the concrete. But the philosopher, as all men must ultimately become, concluded to make the best of his bad real estate investment. He resigned himself to a life of perpetual, unaffected martyrdom. After all, it was his personal diplomacy that was at fault--he should not have bought a pig in an Ashcroft potato sack.
During the first year of their matrimonial failure they had rooms at the "Best" Hotel, and the girls carried breakfast to the bride's room seven mornings of every week at about 10.30, where the "invalid" devoured it with such greed and relish that they became suspicious and talked "up their sleeves" about her. Three days each week she had all meals carried up to her, and the girls wondered how she could distribute so much proteid about her system with so little exercise. The extreme healthfulness of her constitution was the only thing that saved this woman from dying of surfeit. The only occasions on which she would rise from her lethargy was to attend a dance or social of some kind given at Walhachin or Savona--she did not avoid one of them, and on those occasions she would be the liveliest cricket on the hearth, the biggest toad in the puddle, while the husband was pre-negotiating with the physician for some more evaporated stock in the auto. How she ever got home was a mystery, for she would be more disabled than ever for weeks to come. Of course she had just overdone her constitutional possibility--she said so herself, and she should know.
Whispers went abroad that she was lazy, and they became so loud that hubby heard them over the wireless telephone. He became exasperated. "My wife a hypocrite? Never! The people have hearts of stone--brains of feathers--they do not understand."
One day--it had never occurred to him before--he suggested that they consult a specialist in somnolence. But she would not hear of it; there was nothing wrong with her; all she wanted was to be left alone. In a short time hubby began to consider her in the light of a "white man's burden," and had distorted visions of himself laboring through life with an over-loaded back action.
One day the hotel proprietor advised him of a contemplated raise in his assessment to re-imburse the business for extras in connection with elevating so much food upstairs, which was not part and parcel of the rules and regulations of the house in committee. Besides, the accommodation was needless.
"Needless!" exclaimed hubby. "Would you degenerate a lady and gentleman wilfully. I will leave your fire-trap at once and cast anchor at the 'Next Best.'" The proprietor argued that his competitor was welcome to such pickings, so he made no comment on the debate.
The "Next Best" was "full up," as it always is, so they carried the living corpse out on a stretcher, and hubby went batching with his burden in a three-roomed house on Bancroft Street. When it became hubby's duty to cook the meals and carry half of them to bed for his better half every morning before breakfast he began to taste silly and smell sort of henpeck like. He persisted humbly, lovingly, self-sacrificingly, henpeckedly, however, until one morning his sun rose brighter than it had ever done before and he saw a faint glimmer of light through the wool that was hanging in front of him.
"Perhaps there is such a commodity as superfluous personal sacrifice to one's matrimonial obligations," he soliloquized. "Perhaps this spouse of mine with the pre-historic constitution can be cured by an abstract treatment. Is she ill, or is she playing a wild, deceitful part? Is she sitting on me with all her weight?" He was willing to allow her the usual proportion of female indisposition, but a continued story of such nightmare proportions was beginning to unstring his physical telephone system. So, to we who have no wool over our eyes, this was one of the most pitiful and criminal cases of selfish indolence, perhaps coupled with a belief that a husband, through his sympathy, will love a woman the more because of her suffering. No supposition, of course, could be farther from the concrete--a husband wants, requires, admires, loves, a healthy, active working-partner. Failing this the husband as a husband is down and out.
When hubby began to realize this an individual reformation was at the dawning. The very next morning no breakfast arrived by private parcel post.
"Harry," she exclaimed, "bring me my porridge and hot cakes; I am starving."
"If you are starving get up and eat in your stall at the table," said Harry, sarcastically, although it pained him.
"Harry!" she shouted, "you selfish beast!"
For diplomatic reasons Harry was silent.
Harry made an abrupt exit without waiting for adjournment, and went up town. A new life seemed to be dawning upon him. It was the emancipation from slavery. He went into the drug store, into the hardware store, into the hotels and all the other stores--he talked and laughed as he had never done before.
It was 3 a.m. the following morning when he found himself searching for the door-knob in the vicinity of the front window. Having gained an entrance, he was accosted by his wife, who exclaimed: "Harry, you drunk?"
"Well, y'see, it was the pioneer shupper," said Harry, and he tumbled into bed.
This was Harry's first ruse. His next move was an affinity. He would cease to pose as a piece of household furniture--a dumb waiter sort of thing.
At that time there was a vision waiting table at the "Best" who had most of the fellows on a string. Harry threw his grappling irons around her and took her in tow. This went on for some time without suspicion being aroused on the part of the "invalid," but the wireless telegraphy of gossip whispered the truth to her one day when she was wondering what demon had taken possession of her protector. She dropped her artificial gown in an instant and rushed up Railway Avenue like a militant suffragette. Just about the local emporium Harry was sailing along under a fair and favorable wind, hand in hand with his new dream, when he saw his legal prerogative approaching near the "Next Best" hotel. He dislodged his grappling-hooks in an instant, stepped slightly in advance, and feigned that he had been running along on his own steam. But she saw him and defined his movements. They met like two express engines in collision, and what followed had better be left buried underneath the sidewalk of the local emporium. There were dead and dying left on the field, and they reached home later by two rival routes of railway.
The stringency endured some days, which time she huffed and he read Charles Darwin. At the end of that period the ice broke, as it always does; the clouds rolled away, and the sun began to shine, and they began to negotiate for peace. They had a long sitting of parliament, and it was moved and seconded, and unanimously carried, that each give the other a reprieve. It meant the amalgamation of two hearts that became so intertwined with roots that nothing earthly could pull them asunder. It was the founding of one of the happiest homes in Ashcroft. He left his affinity--she left her bed. They became active working partners. Long years after he told her of his ruse. She laughed.
"You saved me," she said.
He endorsed the note, and they had one long, sweet embrace which still lingers in their memory.
[The end]
R. D. Cumming's short story: Of The Ruse That Failed
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