LOST AND FOUND
XIII. "IF YOU AREN'T CROSS AND DISPLEASED"
XIV. A QUARREL AND A CRISIS
XV. "BUT I LOVE YOU"
XVI. INTERRUPTED SIGHT-SEEING
XVII. A DANGER AND A PROBLEM
XVIII. "CALL ME MOTHER—IF YOU CAN"
XIX. LILLIAN UNDERWOOD'S STORY
XX. LITTLE MISS SONNOT'S OPPORTUNITY
XXI. LIFE'S JOG-TROT AND A QUARREL
XXII. AN AMAZING DISCOVERY
XXIII. "BLUEBEARD'S CLOSET"
XXIV. A SUMMER OF HAPPINESS THAT ENDS IN FEAR
XXV. PLAYING THE GAME
XXVI. A VOICE THAT CARRIED FAR
XXVII. "HOW NEARLY I LOST YOU!"
XXVIII. A DARK NIGHT AND A TROUBLED DAWN
XXIX. "BUT YOU WILL NEVER KNOW—"
XXX. THE WEEKS THAT FOLLOWED
XXXI. A MYSTERIOUS STRANGER
XXXII. "THE DEAREST FRIEND I EVER HAD"
XXXIII. "MOTHER" GRAHAM HAS SOMETHING TO SAY
XXXIV. A MESSAGE FROM THE PAST
XXXV. THE WORD OF JACK
XXXVI. "AND YET—"
XXXVII. A CHANGE IN LILLIAN UNDERWOOD
XXXVIII. "NO—NURSE—JUST—LILLIAN"
XXXIX. HARRY CALLS TO SAY GOOD-BY
XL. MADGE FACES THE PAST AND HEARS A DOOR SOFTLY CLOSE
XLI. WHY DID DICKY GO?
XLII. DAYS THAT CREEP SLOWLY BY
XLIII. "TAKE ME HOME"
INTRODUCTION
Probably it is true that no two persons entertain precisely the same view of marriage. If any two did, and one happened to be a man and the other a woman, there would be many advantages in their exemplifying the harmony by marrying each other—unless they had already married some one else.
Sour-minded critics of life have said that the only persons who are likely to understand what marriage ought to be are those who have found it to be something else. Of course most of the foolish criticisms of marriage are made by those who would find the same fault with life itself. One man who was asked whether life was worth living, answered that it depended on the liver. Thus, it has been pointed out that marriage can be only as good as the persons who marry. This is simply to say that a partnership is only as good as the partners.
"Revelations of a Wife" is a woman's confession. Marriage is so vital a matter to a woman that when she writes about it she is always likely to be in earnest. In this instance, the likelihood is borne out. Adele Garrison has listened to the whisperings of her own heart. She has done more. She has caught the wireless from a man's heart. And she has poured the record into this story.
The woman of this story is only one kind of a woman, and the man is only one kind of a man. But their experiences will touch the consciousness—I was going to say the conscience—of every man or woman who has either married or measured marriage, and we've all done one or the other.
PIERRE RAVILLE.
Revelations of a Wife
I
"I WILL BE HAPPY! I WILL! I WILL!"
Today we were married.
I have said these words over and over to myself, and now I have written them, and the written characters seem as strange to me as the uttered words did. I cannot believe that I, Margaret Spencer, 27 years old, I who laughed and sneered at marriage, justifying myself by the tragedies and unhappiness of scores of my friends, I who have made for myself a place in the world's work with an assured comfortable income, have suddenly thrown all my theories to the winds and given myself in marriage in as impetuous, unreasoning fashion as any foolish schoolgirl.
I shall have to change a word in that last paragraph. I forgot that
I am no longer Margaret Spencer, but Margaret Graham, Mrs. Richard
Graham, or, more probably, Mrs. "Dicky" Graham. I don't believe
anybody in the world ever called Richard anything but "Dicky."
On the other hand, nobody but Richard ever called me anything shorter than my own dignified name. I have been "Madge" to him almost ever since I knew him.
Dear, dear Dicky! If I talked a hundred years I could not express the difference between us in any better fashion. He is "Dicky" and I am "Margaret."
He is downstairs now in the smoking room, impatiently humoring this lifelong habit of mine to have one hour of the day all to myself.
My mother taught me this when I was a tiny girl. My "thinking hour," she called it, a time when I solved my small problems or pondered my baby sins. All my life I have kept up the practice. And now I am going to devote it to another request of the little mother who went away from me forever last year.
"Margaret, darling," she said to me on the last day we ever talked together, "some time you are going to marry—you do not think so now, but you will—and how I wish I had time to warn you of all the hidden rocks in your course! If I only had kept a record of those days of my own unhappiness, you might learn to avoid the wretchedness that was mine. Promise me that if you marry you will write down the problems that confront you and your solution of them, so than when your own baby girl comes to you and grows into womanhood she may be helped by your experience."
Poor little mother! Her marriage with my father had been one of those wretched tragedies, the knowledge of which frightens so many people away from the altar. I have no memory of my father. I do not know today whether he be living or dead. When I was 4 years old he ran away with the woman who had been my mother's most intimate friend. All my life has been warped by the knowledge. Even now, worshipping Dicky as I do, I am wondering as I sit here, obeying my mother's last request, whether or not an experience like hers will come to me.
A fine augury for our happiness when such thoughts as this can come to me on my wedding day!
Dicky
