The Widow [To Say Nothing of the Man] Page 10

  X

  MARRIAGE.

  "ISN'T all this talk about 'trial marriages' absurd?" remarked thewidow, laying her newspaper on the tabourette and depositing two smallred kid toes on the edge of the fender.

  "It is," agreed the bachelor, cheerfully, with his eyes on the red kidtoes, "considering that all marriages are--trials."

  "Just fancy," went on the widow, scornfully, ignoring the flippancy,"being leased to a husband or wife for a period of years, like a flat ora yacht or--or----"

  "A second-hand piano," suggested the bachelor.

  "And knowing," continued the widow, gazing contemplatively into thefire, "that when the lease or the contract or whatever it is expired,unless the other party cared to renew it, you would be on the marketagain."

  "And probably in need of all sorts of repairs," added the bachelor,reflectively, "in your temper and your complexion and your ideas."

  "Yes," sighed the widow, "ten years of married life will rub all thevarnish off your manners, and all the color off your illusions and allthe finish off your conversation."

  "And the hinges of your love making and your pretty speeches are likelyto creak every time you open your mouth," affixed the bachelor,gloomily.

  "And you are bound to be old-fashioned," concluded the widow, withconviction, "and to compare badly with brand-new wives and husbands withall the modern improvements. Besides," she continued, thoughtfully,"even if you should be lucky enough to find another--another--"

  "Tenant for your heart?" suggested the bachelor, helpfully.

  The widow nodded.

  "There would be the agony," she went on, "of getting used to him orher."

  "And the torture," added the bachelor, with a faint shudder, "of goingthrough with the wedding ceremony again and of walking up a green andyellow church aisle with a green and yellow feeling and a stiff newcoat, and the gaping multitude gazing at you as if you were a newspecimen of crocodile or a curio or----"

  "It takes nearly all of one lifetime," interrupted the widow,impatiently, "to get used to one wife or husband; but, according to the'trial marriage' idea, just as you had gotten somebody nicely trainedinto all your little ways and discovered how to manage him----"

  "And to bluff him," interpolated the bachelor.

  "And what to have for dinner when you were going to show him the billfor a new hat," proceeded the widow, "and how to keep him at homenights----"

  "And to separate him from his money," remarked the bachelor,sarcastically.

  "And to make him see things your way," concluded the widow, "it wouldbe time to pack up your trunks and leave. Any two people," shecontinued, meditatively, "can live together fairly comfortably afterthey have discovered the path around one another's nerves--the littlethings not to say and not to do in order to avoid friction, and thelittle things to say and to do that will oil the matrimonial wheels. Butit would take all the 'trial' period to get the domestic machinerunning, and then----"

  "You'd be running after another soul-mate," finished the bachelor,sympathetically.

  "Yes." The widow crossed the red kid toes and then drew them quicklyunder the ruffles of her skirts as she caught the bachelor staring atthem. "And--I've--forgotten what I was going to say," she finished,turning the color of her slippers.

  "Oh, it doesn't matter," said the bachelor, consolingly.

  "What!"

  "It doesn't matter what you say," explained the bachelor, "it's the wayyou say it, and----"

  "About soul-mates," broke in the widow, collecting herself, "there'dalways be the chance," she pursued hurriedly, "that you'd have to take asecond-hand one."

  "Sometimes," remarked the bachelor, blowing a smoke ring and gazingthrough it at the place where the widow's toes had been, "second-handgoods are more attractive than cheap, new articles. For instance,widows----"

  "Oh, widows!" interrupted the widow impatiently, "They're different.They're like heirlooms--only parted with at death. But it would bedifferent with a wife who was relinquished because she wasn't wanted. Ifanybody is anxious to get rid of something it is a pretty sure sign thatit isn't worth having. It's nearly always got a flaw somewhere and it'sseldom what it is represented to be. Besides, I've noticed that thewoman who can't get along with one husband, usually finds it just asdifficult to get along with another."

  "There would always be the chance," protested the bachelor, "that youmight get the party who had done the discarding."

  "And who might want to do it again," objected the widow triumphantly."Just imagine," she added irrelevantly, "living with a person whomsomebody else had trained!"

  "Oh, that would have its advantages," declared the bachelor. "A horsebroken to harness is always easier to handle."

  "Perhaps," agreed the widow leaning back and thoughtlessly putting herred kid toes on the fender again, "but when two horses are going totravel together it is always best for them to get used to one another'sgait from the first. Don't you look at it that way?"

  "Which way?" asked the bachelor, squinting at the fender with his headon the side.

  "Fancy," said the widow not noticing the deflection, "marrying a man whohad been encouraged to take an interest in the household affairs andhaving him following you about picking up things after you; or one,whose first wife had trained him to sit by the fire in the evening, andwhom it took a derrick to get to the theatre or a dinner party; or onewho had been permitted to smoke a pipe and put his feet all over thefurniture and growl about the meals and boss the cook!"

  "Or to a wife," interpolated the bachelor, "who had always handled thefunds and monopolized the conversation and chosen her husband's collarsand who threw all her past husbands at you every time you did somethingshe wasn't used to or objected to something she was used to."

  "Yes," agreed the widow with a little shiver, "what horrid things twopeople could say to one another."

  "Such as 'Just wait until the lease is up!'" suggested the bachelor.

  The widow nodded.

  "Or, 'The next time I marry, I'll be careful not to take anybody withred hair,' or, 'Thank goodness it won't last forever!'" she added.

  "That's the beauty of it!" broke in the bachelor enthusiastically. "Itwouldn't last forever! And the knowledge that it wouldn't would be suchan anaesthetic."

  "Such a what!" the widow sat up so suddenly that both toes slipped fromthe fender and her heels landed indignantly on the floor.

  "It would be the lump of sugar," explained the bachelor, "that wouldtake away the bitter taste and make you able to swallow all the trialsmore easily. It's the feeling that a painful operation won't last longthat makes it possible to grin and bear it. Besides, it would do awaywith all sorts of crimes, like divorce and wife murder and ground glassin the coffee. Knowing that the marriage was only temporary and that wewere only sort of house-party guests might make us more polite andagreeable and entertaining, so as to leave a good impression behind us."

  "I do believe," cried the widow, sitting up straight and looking at thebachelor accusingly, "that you're arguing in favor of 'trial marriage.'"

  "I'm not arguing in favor of marriage at all," protested the bachelorplaintively. "But marrying for life is like putting the whole dinner onthe table at once. It takes away your appetite. Marrying on trial wouldbe more like serving it in courses."

  "And changing the course would be such a strain," declared the widow."Why, when the contract was up how would you know how to dividethings--the children and--"

  "The dog and the cat."

  "And all the little mementos you had collected together and the thingsyou had shared in common and the favorite arm chair and the things youhad grown used to and fond of----"

  "Oh, well, in that case," remarked the bachelor, "you might have grownso used to and fond of one another that when it came to the parting ofthe ways, you would not want to part them. After all," he went onsoberly, "if 'trial marriages' were put into effect, they would end ninetimes out of ten in good old fashioned matrimony. A man can get asaccustomed to a woman as
he does to a pipe or a chair----"

  "What!"

  "And a woman," pursued the bachelor, "can become as attached to a manand as fond of him as she is of an old umbrella or a pair of old shoesthat have done good service. No matter how battered or worn they maybecome, nor how many breaks there are in them, we can never findanything to quite take their place. Matrimony, after all, is just ahabit; and husbands and wives become habits--habits that howeverdisagreeable they may be we don't want to part with. 'Trial marriages,'even if they should be tried, wouldn't alter things much. As long as twopeople can stand one another they will cling together anyhow, and ifthey can't they won't anyhow; and whether it's a run out lease or adivorce or prussic acid that separates them doesn't make muchdifference. Custom, not the wedding certificate, is the tie that bindsmost of us. The savage doesn't need any laws to hold him to the woman ofhis choice. Habit does it; and if habit doesn't the woman will!"

  The widow sighed and leaned back in her chair.

  "I suppose so," she said, "but it seems dreadfully dreary."

  "What seems dreadfully dreary?" inquired the bachelor.

  "Matrimony," replied the widow solemnly. "It IS like those old chairsand pipes and shoes and things you were speaking of; it's full of holesand breaks and bare spots, and it won't always work--but there's nothingthat will quite take the place of it."

  "Nothing," said the bachelor, promptly. "That's why I want to--"

  The widow rose quickly and shook out her skirts.

  "Now, don't begin that, Billy," she said, trying to be severe, "you'retoo old!"

  "Oh, well, I'm still in good repair," protested the bachelor.

  The widow shook her head.

  "All the varnish is worn off your ideals," she objected, "and the hingesof your enthusiasm creak and you've got a bare spot on the top of yourhead, and----"

  "NO," said the widow, "you're shop-worn." _Page 149_]

  "But I've most of the modern improvements," broke in the bachelor,desperately, "and I'm not second-hand, anyway!"

  "No," said the widow, looking him over critically, "you're shop-worn.But, originally, you were an attractive article, and you're genuine andgood style and well preserved, and if----"

  "Well?" The bachelor looked up expectantly.

  "If there WERE such a thing as 'trial marriages'--" The widow hesitatedagain.

  "You'd give me a trial?" asked the bachelor eagerly.

  "Oh," said the widow, studying the toes of her red slippers, "itwouldn't be--such a trial!"