have them talk like that—not answer me, you know—or have them do as Mr. Jones, the storekeeper, did, and the men there with him.
It was one day when I was in there buying some white thread for Nurse Sarah, and it was a little while after I had asked the doctor if a divorce was a disease. Somebody had said something that made me think you could buy divorces, and I suddenly determined to ask Mr. Jones if he had them for sale. (Of course all this sounds very silly to me now, for I know that a divorce is very simple and very common. It's just like a marriage certificate, only it _un_marries you instead of marrying you; but I didn't know it then. And if I'm going to tell this story I've got to tell it just as it happened, of course.)
Well, I asked Mr. Jones if you could buy divorces, and if he had them for sale; and you ought to have heard those men laugh. There were six of them sitting around the stove behind me.
"Oh, yes, my little maid" (above all things I abhor to be called a little maid!) one of them cried. "You can buy them if you've got money enough; but I don't reckon our friend Jones here has got them for sale."
Then they all laughed again, and winked at each other. (That's another disgusting thing—winks when you ask a perfectly civil question! But what can you do? Stand it, that's all. There's such a lot of things we poor women have to stand!) Then they quieted down and looked very sober—the kind of sober you know is faced with laughs in the back—and began to tell me what a divorce really was. I can't remember them all, but I can some of them. Of course I understand now that these men were trying to be smart, and were talking for each other, not for me. And I knew it then—a little. We know a lot more things sometimes than folks think we do. Well, as near as I can remember it was like this:
"A divorce is a knife that cuts a knot that hadn't ought to ever been tied," said one.
"A divorce is a jump in the dark," said another.
"No, it ain't. It's a jump from the frying-pan into the fire," piped up Mr. Jones.
"A divorce is the comedy of the rich and the tragedy of the poor," said a little man who wore glasses.
"Divorce is a nice smushy poultice that may help but won't heal," cut in a new voice.
"Divorce is a guidepost marked, 'Hell to Heaven,' but lots of folks miss the way, just the same, I notice," spoke up somebody with a chuckle.
"Divorce is a coward's retreat from the battle of life." Captain Harris said this. He spoke slow and decided. Captain Harris is old and rich and not married. He's the hotel's star boarder, and what he says, goes, 'most always. But it didn't this time. I can remember just how old Mr. Carlton snapped out the next.
"Speak from your own experience, Tom Harris, an' I'm thinkin' you ain't fit ter judge. I tell you divorce is what three fourths of the husbands an' wives in the world wish was waitin' for 'em at home this very night. But it ain't there." I knew, of course, he was thinking of his wife. She's some cross, I guess, and has two warts on her nose.
There was more, quite a lot more, said. But I've forgotten the rest. Besides, they weren't talking to me then, anyway. So I picked up my thread and slipped out of the store, glad to escape. But, as I said before, I didn't find many like them.
Of course I know now—what divorce is, I mean. And it's all settled.
They granted us some kind of a decree or degree, and we're going to
Boston next Monday.
It's been awful, though—this last year. First we had to go to that horrid place out West, and stay ages and ages. And I hated it. Mother did, too. I know she did. I went to school, and there were quite a lot of girls my age, and some boys; but I didn't care much for them. I couldn't even have the fun of surprising them with the divorce we were going to have. I found they were going to have one, too—every last one of them. And when everybody has a thing, you know there's no particular fun in having it yourself. Besides, they were very unkind and disagreeable, and bragged a lot about their divorces. They said mine was tame, and had no sort of snap to it, when they found Mother didn't have a lover waiting in the next town, or Father hadn't run off with his stenographer, or nobody had shot anybody, or anything.
That made me mad, and I let them see it, good and plain. I told them our divorce was perfectly all right and genteel and respectable; that Nurse Sarah said it was. Ours was going to be incompatibility, for one thing, which meant that you got on each other's nerves, and just naturally didn't care for each other any more. But they only laughed, and said even more disagreeable things, so that I didn't want to go to school any longer, and I told Mother so, and the reason, too, of course.
But, dear me, I wished right off that I hadn't. I supposed she was going to be superb and haughty and disdainful, and say things that would put those girls where they belonged. But, my stars! How could I know that she was going to burst into such a storm of sobs and clasp me to her bosom, and get my face all wet and cry out: "Oh, my baby, my baby—to think I have subjected you to this, my baby, my baby!"
And I couldn't say a thing to comfort her, or make her stop, even when I told her over and over again that I wasn't a baby. I was almost a young lady; and I wasn't being subjected to anything bad. I liked it—only I didn't like to have those girls brag so, when our divorce was away ahead of theirs, anyway.
But she only cried more and more, and held me tighter and tighter, rocking back and forth in her chair. She took me out of school, though, and had a lady come to teach me all by myself, so I didn't have to hear those girls brag any more, anyway. That was better. But she wasn't any happier herself. I could see that.
There were lots of other ladies there—beautiful ladies—only she didn't seem to like them any better than I did the girls. I wondered if maybe they bragged, too, and I asked her; but she only began to cry again, and moan, "What have I done, what have I done?"—and I had to try all over again to comfort her. But I couldn't.
She got so she just stayed in her room lots and lots. I tried to make her put on her pretty clothes, and do as the other ladies did, and go out and walk and sit on the big piazzas, and dance, and eat at the pretty little tables. She did, some, when we first came, and took me, and I just loved it. They were such beautiful ladies, with their bright eyes, and their red cheeks and jolly ways; and their dresses were so perfectly lovely, all silks and satins and sparkly spangles, and diamonds and rubies and emeralds, and silk stockings, and little bits of gold and silver slippers.
And once I saw two of them smoking. They had the cutest little cigarettes (Mother said they were) in gold holders, and I knew then that I was seeing life—real life; not the stupid kind you get back in a country town like Andersonville. And I said so to Mother; and I was going to ask her if Boston was like that. But I didn't get the chance. She jumped up so quick I thought something had hurt her, and cried, "Good Heavens, Baby!" (How I hate to be called "Baby"!) Then she just threw some money on to the table to pay the bill and hurried me away.
It was after that that she began to stay in her room so much, and not take me anywhere except for walks at the other end of the town where it was all quiet and stupid, and no music or lights, or anything. And though I teased and teased to go back to the pretty, jolly places, she wouldn't ever take me; not once.
Then by and by, one day, we met a little black-haired woman with white cheeks and very big sad eyes. There weren't any spangly dresses and gold slippers about her, I can tell you! She was crying on a bench in the park, and Mother told me to stay back and watch the swans while she went up and spoke to her. (Why do old folks always make us watch swans or read books or look into store windows or run and play all the time? Don't they suppose we understand perfectly well what it means—that they're going to say something they don't want us to hear?) Well, Mother and the lady on the bench talked and talked ever so long, and then Mother called me up, and the lady cried a little over me, and said, "Now, perhaps, if I'd had a little girl like that—!" Then she stopped and cried some more.
We saw this lady real often after that. She was nice and pretty and sweet, and I liked her; but she was always awfully sad, and I don't believe it was half so good for Mother to be with her as it would have been for her to be with those jolly, laughing ladies