The Young Wife CHAPTER 9.
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It is so easy, with a few strokes of the pen, to carry the reader through as many years, that we cannot resist the impulse to do so; especially as you have lingered long enough in the description of domestic incidents, such as recur again and again, year after year, in the family of a young married couple like Mr. and Mrs. Lawton. We shall, therefore, advance the history of those we have introduced, at least ten years, with only a remark or two.
Mrs. Lawton, who had been blessed during the period with two more children, both boys, had not ceased, at different periods, to press upon her husband the expediency of breaking up housekeeping, and enjoying the comforts of a boarding-house. His very resoluteness in opposing this desire on the part of his wife, only tended to make it increase in strength, and take deeper root in her mind. To her, the precincts of a boarding-house seemed forbidden ground, and because forbidden, if for no other reason — she had come to have an almost unconquerable desire to renounce the certain comforts of her own pleasant establishment, for the doubtful ones that such a change of condition promised. During all that period, the influence of Mrs. Campbell, who had by dint of persevering application, finally prevailed upon her husband to break up, was operating steadily and powerfully — counteracting, in a good degree, the more judicious and really excellent counsel of Mrs. Emerson, added to that of her own mother, who would never hear a word in favor of giving up her comfortable house.
The care of three children added, of course, greatly to Mrs. Lawton's duties, and made any irregularity in the arrangements of her family, doubly annoying. Their ages were,Florence, the eldest, eleven years, James, nine, and Henry, an infant, about a year old. From the first, she had been devoted to them, for her maternal feelings were deep and lasting. As to servants, she still had many and grievous troubles.
In regard to Mr. Lawton, he had felt, like everyone else, the disastrous effects arising from a universal depression of trade that pervaded the whole community in 1840. A prudent man in his business, he had been able to bear up under the accumulating difficulties of the times, but he was merely holding his own, not advancing. It happened, one evening, about this time, that as Mr. Lawton and his wife sat after tea, each busy with thoughts that neither felt disposed to clothe in words, Mr. and Mrs. Campbell dropped in, to pass a social hour. Mr. Campbell was a man of general information, and of course he and Mr. Lawton were soon engaged in discussing some current topic of interest; while, with the ladies, the too common theme of troublesome servants was introduced and canvassed.
"There is where I am a little ahead of you, Mrs. Lawton," said her visitor. "I am my own servant in my own chamber — and there ends the matter. After I have made my bed in the morning, I can sit down pleasantly enough, and chat with my husband, until the breakfast bell rings. And after breakfast I can do what I please until dinner time; and the same until supper. No seeing after servants, and studying about what I shall have for dinner, and how it shall be cooked. I wouldn't keep house again for a pretty premium!"
"And sick and tired enough of it I am, Mrs. Campbell. But Mr. Lawton won't hear to our breaking up housekeeping. Though, I suspect, if he had all the trouble of it, as I have, he would be glad enough to escape."
"I never knew what it was to enjoy life," resumed Mrs. Campbell, "until we sold off our things and went to boarding. I was always in hot water about something. Don't you find your servants very wasteful? I never had one who did not waste and break more than her wages came to."
"Why, the fact is," responded Mrs. Lawton, "there is scarcely a day that a cup, a plate, or a tumbler is not broken. There! Didn't you hear that crash in the kitchen? Something else has gone. Now, if I were to go out there and ask the cook what she had broken, and how she came to do it, she would have the sulks all day tomorrow, which would cost me more unpleasant feelings than the plate or dish is worth."
"Why don't you break up and go to boarding, Mrs. Lawton? You would be a thousand times better contented."
"The fact is, Mrs. Campbell, I shall have to worry my husband into it. I think I can approach him on the score of economy. Times are hard enough now, the men all say; and if I can convince him that several hundred dollars can be saved by breaking up — he will be in a fair way to be conquered."
"You will never regret it, Mrs. Lawton. It is living a dog's life to keep house."
"A dog's life, Mrs. Campbell? Yes, you are right there!"
"You can save five or six hundred dollars a year by boarding; and that is a handsome sum now-a-days."
"Do you hear that, Mr. Lawton?" cried his wife, in an exulting tone. "Mrs. Campbell says that we can save at least five or six hundred dollars by boarding."
"And be six hundred dollars worse off in regard to comfort than we now are."
"There you are mistaken, Mr. Lawton," said Mrs. Campbell, coming up to the attack in aid of her friend. "We have tried house-keeping, and we have tried boarding; and the latter, besides being cheaper, is in every way more pleasant."
"It may be for you, Mrs. Campbell, but with our three children, and a servant to take care of them — we would find boarding a very unpleasant change from a comfortable house, in which we can do as we please."
"But I am sure we do just as we please," broke in Mrs. Campbell. "We come when we please, and we go when we please. And in boarding-houses, everyone is at home; for while he pays for it, the house he lives in is his home."
"You may think it tolerable with no children," replied Mr. Lawton; "but, with three and a nurse, let me tell you, that you would find it approaching too near the intolerable. While a single man, I had boarding to my heart's content; and I find house-keeping, with all its little troubles, far preferable."
"You may call them little troubles, Mr. Lawton," spoke up his wife, with some spirit — "but if you had all the battles to fight with the servants, and the care of the whole house upon your shoulders — you would see these little troubles through the other end of the telescope. But what do you say, Mr. Campbell? Let us have your opinion upon the matter; I am sure that you prefer boarding to house-keeping?"
"Why, as to that," replied Mr. Campbell, in a very deliberate manner, seeming all the while to be casting about in his mind for words to convey his thoughts, that would not, at the same time that they expressed his own, compromise his wife's opinions too much — "we are comfortably enough off. Our landlady is a fine woman, and quite attentive to the wants of her boarders. It costs us less to board, as there are but two of us, than it did to keep house; but not such a great deal less. If it was not that Mrs. Campbell likes it so much better — I would prefer, I think, to be in a house of my own. But it is so much easier for her, that it would be wrong in me, perhaps, to prefer my own comfort to hers. We had such a trying time with servants, that I am reluctant to subject her again to the same perplexities and inconveniences."
"But if your family was as large as ours," said Mr. Lawton, bringing him at once to the point, "would you prefer boarding?"
"As you corner me, then, so closely, I must beg, respectfully, to differ with the ladies, and say, that I would think house-keeping, with a family of children, in every way preferable to boarding."
"Well, I'm for boarding, I can tell you!" broke in Mrs. Lawton, half laughing, half serious, "and whenever Mr. Lawton says the word, I will be ready at a week's notice!"
"I don't intend being ready for a long time to come. Never, I think."
"We shall see!" was the laughing reply of Mrs. Lawton.
The gentlemen, after a brief pause, resumed their conversation, and the ladies put their heads together again, and went on in their comparison of the evils and benefits of house-keeping and boarding.
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