Michael Won the Day.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVII, Issue 26, 26 June 1912, Page 52

Michael Won the Day.

By

MARY HEATON VORSE.

©F course, Sally laundry hadn’t married Michael without knowing something about his quick temper. It had quite a reputation, had that temper of Michael's. Personally, I do not think that it was quicker than many a man’s, bint Landry was so big that anger in him seemed impressive, and besides tltat, his temper was noiser than the tempers of most men. lit simply exploded that was all; it exploded with violence, even. It let itself off in a rattling thunder of resonant adjectives and nouns. When the smoke had cleared away one would find Michael placid as any mill-pond quite unaware that he had done anything at all worthy of mention. He did not mean anything by it, and nobody had ever minded him much; in fact, his friends (quite enjoyed the picturesque exaggeration into which his temper led him. Sally had rather admired it the one or two times she had seen it in, active eruption, So to speak, it had l>een tartoed in her defence. She admired the rapidity with which he recovered. The first time it occurred to her that his anger might be directed against herself was when Michael’s mother said, to her:

“You musn’t mind Michael, my dear, if he’s hasty now and then. Michael's always had a quick temper. He gets over it right away." And she had added, with a loudi of complacency: “But Michael is just like his father, and he was just like his grandfather.” as if it was a virtue in Michael to have perpetuated in his person a violent family temper. Rally had been politely tolerant of her mother-in-law's little fluttering bits of advice. They had mainly to do with the things that Michael liked and the things that he didn't like. Michael, she confided to Sally, was very particular about Ivis coffee. Michael never could remember to put all his things in his bag, and when he arrived for a week end party and found that he'd forgotten some necessity, it always*made him very angry. She hinted that Sally would avoid friction by seeing to it herself that everything went in. Mrs. Landry was apologetic when Bhe gave Buch advice, because Sally seemed so largely confident, so aide to look after her own affairs—and those of a. number of other persons besides. Still, it hardly seemed fair *to Mrs. Landry to let any woman marry Michael without .giving her a glimpse of his temperament. (Michael was so much c isier to live with when a few little detail,, were attended to.

Sally Warner was twenty-eight when she married. She had some theories about marriage —not many. For one thing, she didn't believe in spoiling husbands, as her younger sister, who had married first, had spoiled hers. She believed in doing her part of the work ably and competently, and then letting Michael do his share. She was so quiveringly anxious to do right that she couldn't imagine herself doing anything wrong. She had no patience with the women who Harried lightly and without a just sense of their responsibilities, of what they ow'ed to themselves and what they owed their husbands. She wasn’t quite sure that Michael was equally serious'in his views of life;, she wasn’t even sure she wanted him to be, for the chief charm of Michael was his .boyish gaiety. Though he was four years older than Rally, he sometimes seemed the younger. He had enthusiasms the like of which she had never known, and his chief and most endearing enthusiasm was the flattering one that concerned her. For Michael was in love, gloriously in love —head over heels in love, and he didn’t care who knew it. His friends let him bore them with accounts of Sally’s perfections, for the world was indulgent to Michael Landry. That boyish charm of his which floated his famous temper also made him less odious when' in love than are most men.

But finally it happened at the breakfast table. Everything was delightful; the table was pretty, Sallie looked most charming. The breakfast was good—all but the coffee. That was undeniably weak.

Michael tasted his. “What is this?” he demanded, as he sipped it.

“What is what?” asked Sally. “This that I’m drinking,” said Michael. “Why, it’s coffee, isn’t it?” said Sally innocently. “Coffee!” he exploded. “I don’t call this coffee! 1 call it an insulting slop, that’s what I call it! How’s this coffee made —'is it dripped or boiled? Boiled 1 bet you! ”

“I don’t know how it was made,” Sally replied with dignity. ’“You don’t know how your coffee’s made? You don’t know whether your coffee’s boiled or dripped — in your house! If I ran my business that way, I’d be a bankrupt this minute!” Sally rang the bell.

“I’ll find out, if you like,” she said, with freezing politeness; she was proud that she could always keep her temper under control. “Will you ask,” she instructed the maid, “whether this coffee was dripped or boiled?”

“Boiled, ma’am," the maid reported presently., “I knew it!" said Michael, “I knew it! Boiled —and boiled in a dirty pot, by Jove! 1. can smell it! Let me tell you, Sally, right now, I won't have it. I’ve been patient about this coffee business; I haven’t said anything; I believe in letting everybody do his own work in this world, and I’4 thought you’d you’d come to, by Jove, I thought you’d come to!”

.“Come to what?’’ asked Sally, with an air of tranquil inquiry that would have irritated a milder man than Michael. “To your senses!” said Michael. “To a sense of taste! I’m a perfectly reasonable man—my wants are few—l could stand almost any kind of food; but as for drinking a slop that I can’t tell from a brew of patent medicine —by heaven, 1 won’t! 1 wouldn’t at a hotel — why. if this had been a hotel, I’d have raised the roof before now. That’s the matter with me—l’m too patient. I just let things go on and on — and now look at that?” He pointed to the coffee (before him. “That's the fruit of patience! Do you buy your coffee ground or in the bean?” he next demanded.

The question came out like a bullet. “I buy it ground,” said Sally with dignity.

“That s no way to buy coffee,” said Mi-chad; “that’s no way at all to buy coffee; and there’s only one way to make coffee in this world, and that’s’ by dripping it. 1 don’t mean to say that an old hunter can’t boil a good pot of coffee, but an ordinary cook’s no more able, to make boiled 'coffee than to find her way through a trackless forest!” Once launched, Michael explained, lucidly and at- length, the theory of making perfect coffee. Then he reflected upon the ancestry of this-coffee; he told f ‘-’v whit he thought of the cook; he left no doubt in Sally’s mind as to what he thought Of her as a housekeepe., and he definitely explained—most definitely — what kind of coffee he was going to have hereafter in his own house, if he had to go out, by Jove, and make it himself.

I 11 bet you anything, you like.” he said, “that she lets those grounds stand for hours and hours; I’ll bet you she warms over coffee for dinner—by Jove, I’ll bet you she does that even!” -Sally sat upright and silent. She let him go on. At last he relapsed into silence behind his paper. He grumbled away at intervals during breakfast, his irritation now rising high and wrathful, then dying away to occasional discontented mutterings. So. Sally reflected bitterly, this was what Michael “didn’t mean anything by” —this uncontrolled -fit of rage." and'over such s petty cause. From the bottom of her heart Sally loathed pettiness in all its forms-

She sat upright, a white-faced Casablanca, and longed to flee to her own room to cry, but was too proud to do it. She sat there with wide-eyed hor-

ror, waiting for Michael to emerge from behind hie paper. Presently he came into view again. He came into view, placid, good-temper-ed, and affectionate. He utterly ignored the acene he had made; he didn't seem conscious that there had been a scene. Far from giving any sign of being aware that he had done anything wrong, he had the air of forgiving Bally for something that she had done, fox he said, with great sweetness:

“If you give your attention to it. I’m sure you’ll be able to give me the best cup of coffee I’ve ever tasted,” and after that he had the audacity to kiss her good-by. He was in no way disconcerted when she averted her face and his kiss fell somewhere upon her back hair. Sally spent the morning crying. It was useless for her to tell herself that Michael meant nothing. The noise of his anger had first left her numb and frightened, as if by some appalling r noise. Then anger at Michael swept over her. He dared to talk like that to her! This was all his love for her meant, all his extravagant tenderness; a cup of bad coffee was enough to sweep it away! She understood him now. Then followed a large disgust at the circumstances that made such a thing possible in her life, an indignation at Michael for having shown her anything so ugly. His loud irritability struck her as nothing short of indecent. As she. recovered from the first shock of his “brutal exhibition” —for that is what she called it to herself—she examined her conduct with a fine, impartial judgment- Had she been so lax a housekeeper as to have deserved this? She went through all her various duties. -She sat in judgment on herself; she was judge and jury. The verdict was “Not guilty.” (She had been a good careful wife —she had, she had! —and Michael was a beast not to have told her before about the coffee in a different way. It was one of those cries when a young woman feels that her happiness is gone for ever. Even though she should forgive Michael in the course of time., her love could never have the fine flavour that it had had before. The first jo,y of it was tarnished. There ■would always be the fear lurking in the background that Michael might break out at her like that again.

At this Sally pulled herself up. It should not happen again. If Michael couldn't control himself, why, she would teach him how. Here was a time for discipline. She had known how to wield effectively a certain stony displeasure. When Michael came home that night she would listen to his apologies—of course there’if be apologies; then very calmly, with carefully chosen phrases, she would show him liow childish, how ipet-ty, and how brutal his conduct had seemed to her—how it would have seemed to any reasonable outsider; and she would not forgive him too soon. Michael should feel that he had committed a grave fault, all the graver because he had gotten angry over so trivial a thing. Nevertheless, she saw to buying coffee of the very best kind, in bean, and u coffee-grinder; also pots of several sizes for dripping—earthen ones, .according to Michael’s loudly reiterated suggestions. Then she awaited the penitent return of her lord.

Michael came home bringing with him his usual air of large good humour. His personality seemed to warm the room like the light of an open fire, when he came into it. lie greeted Sally with his usual charming affection. She made no response. Discipline was beginning. “Come on out and let's see the garden: don’t you want to?” he suggested. His attitude was appaling; evidently he was quite unconscious of having done anything wrong. Sally could hardly believe her senses. He was as sweet and as friendly and as affectionate as if ho hadn’t just ended -his life’s happiness for a cup of coffee. “I don’t think I care to go,” Sally responded to his suggestion.

“Why not?” he demanded, in blank amaxement.

“I’m a little tired to-night,” said Sally frigidly. “Poor little girl!” Michael sympathised, and he kissed her.

Rally almost shivered to think of kissing het just as if nothing had happened. What denseness! “Oh, come along,” he said; “the air'll do you good. You dig around the house too mnch, that's what’s the matter with you. You’re too conscientious. Dome out, Sally, and see if the flowers have

grown einee we looked at them yesterday.”

.Excuses failing, poor Sally went; she had no intention of provoking another creene. She went, a silent statue of herself. Michael talked on buoyantly. *'l like blue flowers,” he said, as they passed a bed of larkspurs; “don’t you Sally?”

“Yes,” replied Sally. It seemed to her as if actual distance separated them. “It’s a pity there are not more blue flowers,” he went on. “Bachelor’s buttons are blue —bu-t it's hard to keep their colour from going off, you know.” Sully was quite pale with indignation. “Don’t you feel well?” Michael asked her anxiously.

“Oh,, yes,” she replied. “That’s all right then,” he sighed with relief. “You don’t seem natural. I suppose,” he added very simply, “it’s a mood.”

It was liia experience that all women had moods—inexplicable moments when you couldn’t understand them. His mother whom he adored, had them; every girl he had ever known had been subject to them; and at these ’ times they’d say all sorts of queer things about themselves and about you. Sally evidently had moods x too, and when she had one of her star flights, it was for him to plant his two feet solidly on the earth and wait for her to eome back. Moods were simple; one overlooked them. Indeed, Michael’s attitude toward the “queerness” of’ women was that of the philosopher toward the weather. He was no meteorologist of the emotions. It was not his business to search, into the hidden causes of mist and rain; enough for him sensibly to seek cover in a storm; or, if he had to he abroad, to plod manfully through the tempest without complaining.

Now I will ask the reader to observe Michael Landry and his wife Sally at dinner. 'Behold Sally, erect and dignified, in her chair presenting a blank, and stony front. -Behold (Michael rattling harmless small talk against the wadi of silence between him and his wife. See Sally making her displeasure more and more obvious all the time; subtlety, she has discovered, does not work with Michael. Watch them through the whole, dreary meal —■ 'Michael’s artless gaiety playing on, Sally growing more and more rigid.

At last Michael became aware that his wife’s mood was hasting longer than it ought to. “Do you want to go into town to the theatre to-night,” he suggested, “and ger cheered up?” “No, thank you,” said .Sally, with calm politeness. “No, thank you. 1 don’t feel like the theatre.”

“AH right,” said Michael, relieved; “1 don’t either. I feel much more like staying at home, but I thought perhaps you’d like to go. We’ll have a much tetter time at home together, dear, won't we?”

To this Sally made no reply. But Michael waa neither abashed nor east down. Dinner was irreproachable, and when the coffee appeared, it proved excellent. And what did Michael say? “I knew you could make a good cup of coffee,” were the unbelievable words that fell on Sally’e ears, “if you put your mind to it. Jove, -I wish I’d spoken about it sooner,” went on Michael, applying the axe to his tree of joy. “You take a hint mighty quick. Sometimes, I think I’m the happiest man in the world. Why, 1 know men who talk and talk about things, and their wives never pay the least attention. I know a man,” went on Michael, “who ate poached eggs every day for three years, and ho hates poached eggs. He told his wife he didn’t like them, but she told him they were more healthful that way, and besides it was easier to get all the breakfast egj^ l done alike. I wouldn’t stand for that though. By Jove, I’d have fried them, ■in a ehafing-dish first. You wouldn’t have let me eat poached eggs that 1 hated, would you darling?” he asked affectionately. Michael was still in the first flush of newly married fatuousness. At this point he got up from the table and kissed his outraged wife. She received his caress with as much warmth as a stone monument. But Michael, borne up on the flood of his own enthusiasm, didn’t notice her coldness. “It was mighty nice of you to attend to that right away,” ho said again, later in the evening, tramping across dangerous ground with a heavy foot. “Nnw, some women get angry—actually get angry—if thsir husluinds suggest the least thing to them. Thank goodness, you’ve not that kind. If there’s any thing I hate, it’s a petty woman who can't take a slight suggestion, 1 think I'd lose all

respect for a woman who was so sinailmitided as to get angry because her husliand criticized some little thing about her housekeeping.” 'Here was a clipping of the wings of retribution, to be sure!, Here it was that Sally withdrew irrevocably into her inner self.

The following week saw the great battle for supremacy that goes on, consciously or unconsciously, between every ne-wly married pair. Somebody has to be on top. It is very rare that one of two married people isn’t the stronger. Sally was used to being the strongest at home. Silent displeasure had. been her weapon;'calm, dignified, silent displeasure; not a word uttered that she had to apologise for; not a look or a speech that a lady might not permit herself; the calm, stony face of Gibraltar presented for her family's inspection. Huis she had always waged war; not. that she would have called it waging war. She admired herself for it; she had always felt superior because she never got irritated, nor lost her temper. Now she kept up the same tactics with Michael that had brought Iter brothers to terms and that had even worked successfully with her father and mother. She kept on—but with a certain sickening premonition of defeat. She had rewarded or chastened those whom she loved like a jealous goddess. Here, with the person she loved best of all, and needed to defend herself against most of all, she found herself with no weapon. There wore no good-conduet prizes that she could give him. Michael liked her in sunshine and in shadow. She was welcome to her moods; they couldn’t annoy him. She could retire into the fortress of herself, anti lie would never knock at the door. .She could jiave all the liberty of the emotions. Indeed, the only notice that Michael took of her attitude was to remark once, with genial tolerance: “Got the sulks, Sally? Well, you shall sulk, if you want to. You don’t mind my sitting watching you sulk, do you, darling?”

And then there came to Sally, the impassive, the calm an almost irresistible desire to slap her Michael — slap him hard. Thus may a new environment affect. us.

And the worst of it was that Sally found her resentment dying out. She nurtured it; she tended it like a sick child, but it wouldn’t stay alive. Michael was too nice, and too amusing. Then there came a moment of vision to Sall;-. She -saw her own displeasure, her own chill looks and glances, as the small, tiny weapons of a child, matched against the large good-humored impassiveness of Michael,- -It-was no use. Site gave up. She surrendered. Michael had won the dav. .

Almost apologetically she came up to him and took his hand, in sign of .surrendering her sword. Hut. she had one last shot. He didn’t notice that it was the first lime that she had come to him in a week. He didn’t even know that there had been any measuring of strength, lie was not aware that there had been a battle and that he had won.