XXXV
HUSBANDS—THE LIVING CONUNDRUM
A woman writes me that she has been married to a man for sixteen years, yet she has never got acquainted with him. She says he is good and kind, but indifferent to her. He never finds fault with her and never praises her. He spends his evenings at home by his own fireside, but a mummy would be just about as conversational. All of this has got the woman guessing, and she can’t figure out whether her husband still cares for her or not, or whether he regards his marriage as a success or a failure.
Good gracious, sister, don’t imagine for an instant that you have anything unique in the way of a husband! All men are full of curious peculiarities, and no woman ever gets acquainted with one, no matter whether she has been married to him for sixteen years or sixty. For, as an old colored friend of mine says: “Husbands is the most undiscovered nation of people there is.”
No woman ever understands, for instance, why it is that a man who was an ardent and impetuous wooer turns into a husband with about as much sentiment and pep to him as a cold buckwheat cake, as soon as the marriage ceremony is said over him. Nor can she form any idea of why the man who was willing to risk his life to get her takes so little interest in her after he has got her. She cannot doubt that he loved her, because he gave great and indisputable proof of that by assuming her support for life. Nor can she see any reason for his change of attitude. She still carries the same line of bait with which she caught him. She still has the same eyes that he likened to violets drenched in dew, but he doesn’t notice them. She still has the same white hands that he used to hold by the hour, but if she wants anybody to hold them now she has to hunt up some man to whom she is not married. No woman can ever understand why a man doesn’t put forth the same effort to make his home a going concern as he does to make his business or profession a success.
If every man tried to sell himself to his wife as he does to his employer, or a big customer, or a valuable client, there would be no disgruntled, dissatisfied married women in the world. If every man studied his wife’s peculiarities of disposition; if he played on her weaknesses as deftly and handled her as tactfully as he does a merchant who is about to place a big order, or a rich patient, every wife in the land would be eating out of her husband’s hand. If every man paid his wife a fair wage for her services, as he does his stenographers and clerks, it would take the heaviest curse off matrimony for millions of wives.
But, altho to have a contented wife and a peaceful and happy home means more to a man than to make a million dollars, not one man in a hundred ever gives any real serious thought or makes any honest effort to make his marriage a success. He leaves the most important thing in his life to chance, and he wins out or loses, according to whether fortune is with him or not. Women never can understand why their husbands refuse to handle them diplomatically, when it would be money in their pockets to use the velvet glove instead of the strong-arm method.
Every man knows that he can jolly his wife into doing anything, and doing without anything. He knows that if he hands her a few cheap compliments about what a wonderful manager she is and how she helps him, she will squeeze every nickel. Every man knows that if he tells his wife how beautiful and lovely she looks in her last year’s dress, she wouldn’t trade it off for the latest Paris importation. Every man knows that he can kiss his wife’s eyes shut until she will be blind as a bat, and that he has only to give her a warm smack on the lips to make her dumb as an oyster.
And every wife knows that her husband knows these things about her, because she has furnished him with a complete diagram about how to work her. And she never knows whether to be mad at him or disgusted with him, because he would rather fight with her and pay for it in having to eat bad meals, and having his money wasted and buy her new frocks and limousines and pearls, than to take the trouble to flatter her a little and treat her the way she is begging to be treated.
Most of all, women never can understand why their husbands are so stingy with words, which surely are among the cheapest commodities on earth. Above everything else, every wife yearns for words of love, for words of praise from her husband. Just to have her husband pet her, to have him say to her that she grows dearer and dearer to him every day, and that he thanks God for giving her to him, pays any woman for all the sacrifice, all the work, all the suffering that marriage brings her. It makes her heart sing with joy, and the lack of it fills her life with tears of despair.
Every man knows this. Every man knows that he can make his wife happy with just a few words, and yet he withholds them. Even the men who really love their wives and appreciate all that their wives do for them refuse to give the starving souls the words that would be the bread of life to them. No. No wife ever gets acquainted with her husband. Husbands always keep us guessing to the end of the chapter. Perhaps that is why we all want one of these living conundrums.