THE COLLECTED WORKS OF CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN: Short Stories, Novels, Poems & Essays. Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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floor as she did herself. "Architecture is such fine work to do at home!" they had both agreed. "Here you have your north light—your big table—plenty of room for work! You will grow famouser and famouser," he had lovingly insisted. And she had answered, "I fear I shall be too contented, dear, to want to be famous."
That was only some year and a-half ago,—but Isabel, lying there by her sleeping husband and sleeping child, was stark awake and only by assertion happy. She was thinking, persistently, of dust. She loved a delicate cleanliness. Her art was a precise one, her studio a workshop of white paper and fine pointed hard pencils, her painting the mechanical perfection of an even wash of color. And she saw, through the floors and walls and the darkness, the dust in the little shaded parlor—two days' dust at least, and Orchardina is very dusty!—dust in the dining-room gathered since yesterday—the dust in the kitchen—she would not count time there, and the dust—here she counted it inexorably—the dust of eight days in her great, light workroom upstairs. Eight days since she had found time to go up there.
Lying there, wide-eyed and motionless, she stood outside in thought and looked at the house—as she used to look at it with him, before they were married. Then, it had roused every blessed hope and dream of wedded joy—it seemed a casket of uncounted treasures. Now, in this dreary mood, it seemed not only a mere workshop, but one of alien tasks, continuous, impossible, like those set for the Imprisoned Princess by bad fairies in the old tales. In thought she entered the well-proportioned door—the Gate of Happiness—and a musty smell greeted her—she had forgotten to throw out those flowers! She turned to the parlor—no, the piano keys were gritty, one had to clean them twice a day to keep that room as she liked it.
From room to room she flitted, in her mind, trying to recall the exquisite things they meant to her when she had planned them; and each one now opened glaring and blank, as a place to work in—and the work undone.
"If I were an abler woman!" she breathed. And then her common sense and common honesty made her reply to herself: "I am able enough—in my own work! Nobody can do everything. I don't believe Edgar'd do it any better than I do.—He don't have to!"—and then such a wave of bitterness rushed over her that she was afraid, and reached out one hand to touch the crib—the other to her husband.
He awakened instantly. "What is it, Dear?" he asked. "Too tired to sleep, you poor darling? But you do love me a little, don't you?"
"O yes!" she answered. "I do. Of course I do! I'm just tired, I guess. Goodnight, Sweetheart."
She was late in getting to sleep and late in waking.
When he finally sat down to the hurriedly spread breakfast-table, Mr. Porne, long coffeeless, found it a bit difficult to keep his temper. Isabel was a little stiff, bringing in dishes and cups, and paying no attention to the sounds of wailing from above.
"Well if you won't I will!" burst forth the father at last, and ran upstairs, returning presently with a fine boy of some eleven months, who ceased to bawl in these familiar arms, and contented himself, for the moment, with a teaspoon.
"Aren't you going to feed him?" asked Mr. Porne, with forced patience.
"It isn't time yet," she announced wearily. "He has to have his bath first."
"Well," with a patience evidently forced farther, "isn't it time to feed me?"
"I'm very sorry," she said. "The oatmeal is burned again. You'll have to eat cornflakes. And—the cream is sour—the ice didn't come—or at least, perhaps I was out when it came—and then I forgot it..... I had to go to the employment agency in the morning!.... I'm sorry I'm so—so incompetent."
"So am I," he commented drily. "Are there any crackers for instance? And how about coffee?"
She brought the coffee, such as it was, and a can of condensed milk. Also crackers, and fruit. She took the baby and sat silent.
"Shall I come home to lunch?" he asked.
"Perhaps you'd better not," she replied coldly.
"Is there to be any dinner?"
"Dinner will be ready at six-thirty, if I have to get it myself."
"If you have to get it yourself I'll allow for seven-thirty," said he, trying to be cheerful, though she seemed little pleased by it. "Now don't take it so hard, Ellie. You are a first-class architect, anyhow—one can't be everything. We'll get another girl in time. This is just the common lot out here. All the women have the same trouble."
"Most women seem better able to meet it!" she burst forth. "It's not my trade! I'm willing to work, I like to work, but I can't bear housework! I can't seem to learn it at all! And the servants will not do it properly!"
"Perhaps they know your limitations, and take advantage of them! But cheer up, dear. It's no killing matter. Order by phone, don't forget the ice, and I'll try to get home early and help. Don't cry, dear girl, I love you, even if you aren't a good cook! And you love me, don't you?"
He kissed her till she had to smile back at him and give him a loving hug; but after he had gone, the gloom settled upon her spirits once more. She bathed the baby, fed him, put him to sleep; and came back to the table. The screen door had been left ajar and the house was buzzing with flies, hot, with a week's accumulating disorder. The bread she made last night in fear and trembling, was hanging fatly over the pans; perhaps sour already. She clapped it into the oven and turned on the heat.
Then she stood, undetermined, looking about that messy kitchen while the big flies bumped and buzzed on the windows, settled on every dish, and swung in giddy circles in the middle of the room. Turning swiftly she shut the door on them. The dining-room was nearly as bad. She began to put the cups and plates together for removal; but set her tray down suddenly and went into the comparative coolness of the parlor, closing the dining-room door behind her.
She was quite tired enough to cry after several nights of broken rest and days of constant discomfort and irritation; but a sense of rising anger kept the tears back.
"Of course I love him!" she said to herself aloud but softly, remembering the baby, "And no doubt he loves me! I'm glad to be his wife! I'm glad to be a mother to his child! I'm glad I married him! But—this is not what he offered! And it's not what I undertook! He hasn't had to change his business!"
She marched up and down the scant space, and then stopped short and laughed drily, continuing her smothered soliloquy.
"'Do you love me?' they ask, and, 'I will make you happy!' they say; and you get married—and after that it's Housework!"
"They don't say, 'Will you be my Cook?' 'Will you be my Chamber maid?' 'Will you give up a good clean well-paid business that you love—that has big hope and power and beauty in it—and come and keep house for me?'"
"Love him? I'd be in Paris this minute if I didn't! What has 'love' to do with dust and grease and flies!"
Then she did drop on the small sofa and cry tempestuously for a little while; but soon arose, fiercely ashamed of her weakness, and faced the day; thinking of the old lady who had so much to do she couldn't think what to first—so she sat down and made a pincushion.
Then—where to begin!
"Eddie will sleep till half-past ten—if I'm lucky. It's now nearly half-past nine," she meditated aloud. "If I do the upstairs work I might wake him. I mustn't forget the bread, the dishes, the parlor—O those flies! Well—I'll clear the table first!"
Stepping softly, and handling the dishes with slow care, she cleaned the breakfast table and darkened the dining-room, flapping out some of the flies with a towel. Then she essayed the parlor, dusting and arranging with undecided steps. "It ought to be swept," she admitted to herself; "I can't do it—there isn't time. I'll make it dark—"
"I'd rather plan a dozen houses!" she fiercely muttered, as she fussed about. "Yes—I'd rather build 'em—than to keep one clean!"
Then were her hopes dashed by a rising wail from above. She sat quite still awhile,