Anniversary
Mrs. Taylor shuffled a worn pack of cards and began her evening session at solitaire. She would play probably forty games before she went to bed, and she would win thirty of them. What harm if she cheated a little? Russian Bank was more fun, but it cannot be played alone, and her husband was bored by it. He had been unable to learn bridge in spite of the patient and more or less expert teaching of the Hammonds, who lived three blocks away.
The thirty-four-dollar synthetic radio had done nothing but croak since the day following its installation. The cheap piano’s D and G above middle C were mute. The town’s Carnegie Library acquired very few “hot” books and the few were nearly always out. Picture plays hurt Louis’ eyes and he would not let her go out nights by herself, though he had no scruples against leaving her at home from eight to eleven Wednesdays, when he attended lodge and bowled.
So Mrs. Taylor shuffled her cards and tried to listen when Louis read aloud from the Milton Daily Star or the Milton Weekly Democrat, or recounted stories she had heard six times before and would hear six times again.
She had awakened this morning to the realization that it was the twelfth day of November, the ninth anniversary of her marriage. Louis had remembered that date for the first six years of their life together; for the last three years it had been to him just November the twelfth.
Nine years ago the Star and the Democrat had called her one of Milton’s most charming and beautiful young women, and they had been right. They had referred to Louis as a model young man, sober, industrious and “solid”; a young man whom any girl should be proud and glad to have as a husband. They were right again.
Now Mrs. Taylor, at thirty-three, was good-looking, but in a cold, indifferent sort of way. She no longer bothered to embellish her natural attractiveness and she lacked the warmth and vivacity which had won the adoration of most of Milton’s male youth, notably Walter Frayne, Jim Satterly and Louis Taylor himself.
Louis was still a model young man, sober, industrious and “solid.” When you thought of the precarious existence of the women who had married his chief rivals, you couldn’t help feeling that wisdom and good luck had been on Mrs. Taylor’s side when she made her choice.
Walter had attended college for one semester, at the end of which he came home with a perfect record of studies, 4; Flunks, 4. He had run amuck in Milton and ultimately, turned down by the girl he really cared for, had married an orphan whose parents had left her $150,000—but not for long. After this tidy sum had been poured away Walter was almost continuously unemployed and people wondered how he and his wife lived. And why.
There was nothing of the gay dog about Jim Satterly. He had graduated from high school and gone into the Milton Gas Company’s office as bookkeeper at eight dollars per week. He was now thirty-five years old and still with the gas company, but his salary had been steadily increased until it was twenty-two dollars. His wife gave weekly piano lessons to a class of four pupils at fifty cents a half-hour each. She had borne Jim three children, or kiddies. The Satterlys seemed to enjoy their kiddies and an occasional picture show, but no magazine editor had ever sent a staff man to get a success story out of Jim.
Louis Taylor was secretary to the town’s only wealthy man, old Thomas Parvis, who owned a controlling interest in the Interurban Railway. Louis worked long hours and was paid four thousand a year, big money in Milton. It was enough to keep the childless Taylors in comfort; in comparative luxury, even. Couples with smaller incomes owned cars, took trips to nearby lake resorts and to Harper City, where a stock company presented worthwhile plays. But Louis was saving for a rainy day and his wife had long ago given up praying for rain.
Mrs. Taylor was winning her fourth successive victory over solitaire by the simple expedient of pretending
