One winter when most of us boys were away, Mother was invited to go to Egypt with Mrs. Tytus and two or three others. Mrs. Tytus’s son, Bob, was in charge of the party. They were going to sail up the Nile in a houseboat, they would see Luxor and Memphis, and altogether it seemed to be an ideal opportunity. Mother loved travel. She was eager to see any place that was new to her, even a place that was comparatively near-by like the Whitneys’ camp up in Maine, and as Egypt was ten times as far away it seemed ten times as attractive.
She explained to Father what a wonderful chance it was. He was not impressed. He said she wanted to go anywhere, always, and he had never seen such a woman. Most women were glad to have a home, he said, and knew enough to appreciate it, but the only thing Mother seemed to want was to be on the go.
He went on to say that he himself had some sense, however, and that he would no more think of going to Egypt than to the North Pole. In a year or two, if he could get away from business, they might go to London and Paris once more, but not one of the Day family had ever even set foot in Egypt, and nobody else he knew had, either, except Charlie Bond, who was one of those restless fellows anyhow and was always doing queer things. He said it was a wild and entirely unsuitable country, and that never in any circumstances whatever would he take Mother to Egypt.
“But that’s just why I want to go, Clare, dear. You don’t understand.”
Father stared at her, and said, “What! What’s why you want to go? Of course I don’t understand.”
“Why, because you don’t like it. I thought it would please you.”
The veins in Father’s forehead began to swell. “You thought it would please me?”
“Oh, Clare, dear, don’t be stupid. I knew you wouldn’t want to take me over to Egypt yourself, but don’t you see, if Mrs. Tytus takes me, you won’t ever have to.”
This theory that Mother was only trying to save him trouble by getting on a ship and going to Egypt completely dumbfounded Father. But Mother clung firmly to it. She said of course she hated to have him miss seeing the Pyramids, but still she wouldn’t enjoy dragging him off there if he was so unwilling, so he could just stay home and be comfortable in his own way while she went quietly over with Mrs. Tytus and hurried straight back.
To help clinch the matter, she brought Mrs. Tytus to see him. She brought young Bob Tytus, too. She told Father how much her letter of credit should be, and when he protested, she said she was saving him money, because it would be nearly twice as much if he took her himself.
When Father said violently that he wished her to remain at his side, she said everybody had to go away sometimes, and Dr. Markoe had warned her she must.
Dr. Markoe was a man Father liked. Mrs. Tytus was tactful and beautiful. Mother was pertinacious. Between them all, they actually bore Father down, and on the appointed day Mother got aboard the ship, letter of credit and all, with Father swearing that now he would have to worry about her all winter, and he wouldn’t be happy for a minute until she got back.
“Good-bye, darling,” she said. “Do be quiet and nice while I’m gone.”
“I won’t!” he shouted, kissing her, and he marched stiffly off, saying, “I hope you are satisfied,” and then turned back at the foot of the gang-plank, calling loudly, “Dear Vinnie!” Mother waved her hand, the whistles blew hoarsely, and the crowds swirled and jostled, hiding these two from each other as the ship slid away.
Father began looking for letters the very next morning, and when none came he cursed the pilot and the postman, and said that he had a bad headache. But a letter did arrive in a few days, when the pilot had had time to mail it, and after the first three or four weeks we heard from Mother often.
Some of the letters told us how she was constantly meeting people she knew, not only on the ship but at every port where Mrs. Tytus and she went ashore. “Your mother has the damnedest number of friends I ever heard of,” said Father. “She’s everlastingly meeting some old friend or other wherever she goes. I never see people I know when I’m travelling. But there isn’t a city in Europe where your mother wouldn’t spot a friend in five minutes.” And when a letter came saying she had just climbed Mt. Vesuvius and had found old Mr. and Mrs. Quintard of Rye at the top, peering down into the crater, Father said that upon his soul he never knew anyone like her.
Other letters were full of household advice and instructions about menus, or warnings to Father to keep an eye on the rubber tree and to speak about washing the curtains. Others abused the bad habits of foreigners and the inconveniences and troubles she met. “Well, why doesn’t she stay home, then?” Father demanded triumphantly. Though he swore at every foreigner who dared to inconvenience her, he relished the complaints in these letters.
But when Mother left civilization behind her, even a far outpost like Cairo, and went off up the Nile in a thing called a dahabeah, manned by native boatmen, and when letters came from queer-sounding ancient cities in the interior, Father got nervous. He said it was a wild, harum-scarum thing to do. Moreover, it was entirely needless. He said he could see all of Egypt he wanted to without leaving New York–there were enough musty old mummies in the Museum to satisfy anybody. “But your mother wouldn’t look at them; no, they weren’t dead enough for her; she had to go traipsing off to see a mummy on its native heath. Why, somebody even brought an obelisk over here at great expense,” he went on, “and left it to crumble away in the Park, where people can see it for nothing, but for some reason or other it isn’t crumbly enough for your mother.”
There were letters about the strange range of hills back of Thebes, and the great colonnades at Karnak, and the statues and tombs, which Father pished at impatiently; and there were letters about fleas, and moonlight and Nubian songs, and finally letters with snapshots. Father said he hated these photographs. He spent a great deal of time staring at them in deep disapproval. There was one in particular of Mother looking very roguish and chic in her voluminous dress, sitting way up on top of a tall and insolent camel, with two big black men in white turbans standing off at one side. No other member of the party around. Not a soul in sight but the black men and Mother. Father looked at that photograph often and groaned about it at night, and kept shouting things to himself about “the ends of the earth.”
Soon after that, Mother turned around and headed for home. Father grew more and more eager to have her back, every day. Up to this time he had been comparatively quiet, for him, but the nearer the day of her return came the more noisy and impatient he got. Even at the pier, he made indignant remarks about how slow the ship was, getting in.
He forgot this mood, however, the minute he hugged her, and he instantly took charge of her things–all except her black bag, which she would never let anyone touch–and he ordered all the customs inspectors around and got Mother through in a jiffy, and he found a man to shoulder her trunk and he picked out the best hackman, and as the carriage rattled off over the cobblestones, Mother said she was glad to be back.
Father had taken particular pains to have everything in the house in its place, so that when Mother came in the door, she would say that home was just the way she had left it. Instead, what she actually said was “Oh, this poor room! Why, I never!” and she put down the black bag and began setting the chairs at different angles and moving her favourite ornaments affectionately as she straightened them out. “Poor things,” she said, as she patted them, “didn’t anybody know enough to turn you around the way you belong?” Father followed her, looking puzzled at these minute changes, and calling her attention to the rubber tree, which had grown half a foot. “Well,” Mother said, “of all the forlorn objects, with those dead leaves left hanging there!” But when Father’s face fell and she saw how disappointed he looked, she smiled at him to console him and said, “You did the best you could, darling.” And she climbed upstairs to unpack.
The letter of credit had been very much on Father’s mind. He had never before given Mother the management of any such sum. He was so happy to have her back that he said nothing about this at first. He was waiting for Mother to speak of it. But she said nothing either.
He had two expectations about it, and he didn’t know which to trust. One was hopeful but slightly unreal. The other, based on long experience, was pessimistic.
It had been a large letter of credit, not as much as Mrs. Tytus had recommended but still, he felt, generous. He felt he had a right to expect that Mother hadn’t spent all of it, but had left a substantial balance undrawn which he could now restore to his bank account. His other and realer expectation was that she had spent every cent and had possibly even had to borrow from Mrs. Tytus besides. The fact that she was avoiding the subject pointed to this latter outcome.
One night, after she had gone up to bed, she came back down for a moment to hand him some papers. “You might be going over these, Clare,” she said. “I couldn’t keep track of everything for you; I tried my best but I couldn’t. But I saved all the bills.” And she went off to bed again.
Father checked them over, one by one, carefully. They were full of strange-looking details:
| Mrs. Day, Room 195, Shepheard’s Hotel. | Cairo, Feb. 24, 1900. |
| To 1 Passage to Second Cataract | £23 0 0 |
| To 60 days on Dahabeah Tih | 85 16 0 |
| ———- | |
| £108 16 0 |
“Second Cataract!” Father muttered to himself vehemently. What would such a woman do next?
These bills supplied Father with more details than he had hoped to keep track of, and there was none of them that he felt much inclined to dispute. But as there were still several hundred dollars unaccounted for, he waited for Mother to confess what she had done with the balance.
Day after day went by without her saying one word. He began to fear that things must be serious. He became so alarmed that it would have been a relief to him to know the worst and be done with it. But do what he could–without direct questioning–he could get nothing out of her.
Mother had noticed his fumbling hints of course, and she did have a confession to make. But first she went and had a long talk with a young girl she was fond of–a girl whose name was Wilhelmine Johnson, whom George afterward married. Mother confided to Wilhelmine in secret that the situation was this: she hadn’t spent all her letter of credit but she hated to give up the balance. It was wicked of her to feel that way, she supposed, but she meant to keep it herself.
Wilhelmine instantly took a strong stand about this. She said that on no account should Mother hand over that money to Father. Mother had always wanted to have some money of her own, Wilhelmine reminded her, and now here was her chance.
As Mother listened to this advice she felt happy, but she also felt frightened. It seemed to her far more daring to hang on to that money than it had been to ride on a camel. But while she was away all those months she had had a taste of what independence was like, and she was reluctant to drop back into her Victorian rôle.
When at last she nerved herself to tell Father, he felt better at once, but he smilingly reproved her for not having come to him sooner; and as to her keeping the money he said that that was all nonsense. He said that she was home now, thank God, and as he always paid all her bills at home she had no use for this money.
“Yes I have too,” Mother said.
“Well, what will you use it for, then?” Father asked.
Mother didn’t wish to explain. As a matter of fact she had no very definite ideas as to what she wanted some cash of her own for–she only knew that she wanted it. She said: “Oh, there are lots of little things I could use it for, Clare. Things I’d like to get when I need them, without so much talk.”
This seemed unconvincing to Father. He demanded the balance. He felt that he was the natural custodian of any such fund and the only safe place for it was in his bank account, as Mother, of course, didn’t have one. But Mother insisted on hiding it away in her own bureau drawer. Father pointed out how reckless this was, but he could do nothing with her. That voyage to Egypt had changed her; she was always much harder to manage after that sail up the Nile.
As a gracious concession, however, she presented Father with a large pale-blue scarab, mounted to use as a scarf-pin, which she said she hadn’t really meant to let him have until Christmas. Father looked at this object without enthusiasm and asked what it was. When he was told that it was the image of a sacred beetle, he immediately pushed it away. He didn’t want any dead beetles in his scarf, he declared. He told Mother she could send it right back to the tomb it had come from. He said that he begged to inform her that he was not a mummy.