The Widow [To Say Nothing of the Man] Page 5

  V

  MONEY AND MATRIMONY.

  "WHAT rhymes with 'matrimony'?" inquired the widow, taking her pencilout of her mouth and looking up thoughtfully through the fringes of herpompadour.

  "Money," responded the bachelor promptly, as he flung himself down onthe grass beside her and proceeded to study her profile through theshadows of the maple leaves.

  The widow tilted her chin scornfully.

  "I suppose they do sound alike," she condescended, "but I am making apoem; and there is no poetical harmony in the combination."

  "There is no harmony at all without it," remarked the bachelor shortly."But how on earth can you make a poem out of matrimony?"

  "Some people do," replied the widow loftily.

  "On paper!" sneered the bachelor. "On paper they make poems of death andbabies and railroad accidents and health foods. But in real lifematrimony isn't a poem; it's more like a declaration of war, or anitemized expense account, or a census report, or a cold businessproposition."

  The widow bit the end of her pencil and laid aside her paper. If thebachelor could have caught a glimpse of her eyes beneath the loweredlashes he might not have gone on; but he was studying the sky throughthe maple leaves.

  "It's a beautiful business proposition," he added. "A magnificent moneymaking scheme, a----"

  The bachelor's eyes had dropped to the widow's and he stopped short.

  "Go on," she remarked in a cold, sweet voice that trickled down hisback.

  "Oh, well," he protested lamely, "when you marry for money you generallyget it, don't you? But when you marry for love--it's like putting yourlast dollar on a long shot."

  "If you mean there's a delightful uncertainty about it?" began thewidow.

  "There's nothing half so delightful," declared the bachelor, "as bettingon a sure thing. Now, the man or woman who marries for money----"

  "Earns it," broke in the widow fervently. "Earns it by the sweat of thebrow. The man who marries a woman for her money is a white slave, a bondservant, a travesty on manhood. For every dollar he receives he gives afull equivalent in self-respect and independence, and all the thingsdearest to a real man."

  "A real man," remarked the bachelor, taking out his pipe and lightingit, "wouldn't marry a woman for her money. It's woman to whom marriagepresents the alluring financial prospect."

  "Oh, I don't know," responded the widow, crossing her arms behind herhead and leaning thoughtfully against the tree at her back. "In thesedays of typewriting and stenography and manicuring and trained nursing,matrimony offers about the poorest returns, from a business standpoint,of any feminine occupation--the longest hours, the hardest work, thegreatest drain on your patience, the most exacting master and thesmallest pay, to say nothing of no holidays and not even an eveningoff."

  "Nor a chance to 'give notice' if you don't like your job," added thebachelor sympathetically.

  "If the average business man," went on the widow, ignoring theinterruption, "demanded half of his stenographer that he demands of hiswife he couldn't keep her three hours."

  "And yet," remarked the bachelor, pulling on his pipe meditatively, "theaverage stenographer is only too glad to exchange her position for thatof wife whenever she gets----"

  The jangle of gold bangles, as the widow brought her arms down frombehind her head and sat up straight, interrupted his speech.

  "Whenever she gets----"

  The widow picked up her ruffles and started to rise.

  "Whenever she gets--ready," finished the bachelor quickly.

  The widow sat down again and leaned back against the tree.

  "How perfectly you illustrate my point," she remarked sweetly.

  "Oh," said the bachelor, taking his pipe out of his mouth, "did you havea point?"

  "That marriage is something higher and finer than a businessproposition, Mr. Travers, and that there are lots of reasons formarrying besides financial ones."

  "Oh, yes," agreed the bachelor, "there is folly and feminine coercionand because you can't get out of it, and----"

  "As for marriage as a money affair," pursued the widow without waiting,"it's just the money side of it that causes all the squabbles andunhappiness. If they've got it, they are always quarreling over it andif they haven't got it they are always quarreling for it. TheCastellanes and Marlboroughs who fight over their bills and their debtsaren't any happier than the Murphys and the Hooligans who fight over theprice of a pint of beer. It's just as difficult to know what to do withmoney when you've got it as it is to know what to do without it whenyou haven't got it; and a million dollars between husband and wife is abigger gulf than a $10 a week salary. It's not a question of the amountof money, but the question of who shall spend it that makes all thetrouble."

  "But don't you see," argued the bachelor, sitting up suddenly andknocking the ashes out of his pipe, "that all that would be eliminatedif people would make marriage a business proposition? For instance, iftwo people would discuss the situation rationally and make the termsbefore marriage; if the man would state the services he requires and thewoman would demand the compensation she thinks she deserves----"

  "Ugh!" shuddered the widow, putting her hands over her eyes, "thatwould be like writing your epitaph and choosing the style of yourcoffin."

  "And every man," pursued the bachelor, "would be willing to give hiswife her board and room and a salary adequate to her services and to hisincome----"

  "And to let her eat with the family," jeered the widow.

  "Well," finished the bachelor, "then marriage wouldn't offer the poorestreturns in the professional market. And, besides," he added, "therewould be fewer wives sitting about in apartment hotels holding theirhands and ordering the bellboys around, while their husbands are downtown fretting and struggling themselves into bankruptcy; and fewerhusbands spending their nights and their money out with the boys, whiletheir wives are bending over the cook stove and the sewing machine,trying to make ends meet on nothing a year."

  "But that," cried the widow, taking her hands down from her eyes, "wouldmean spending your courtship talking stocks and bonds and dividends!"

  "And the rest of your life forgetting them and talking love," declaredthe bachelor, triumphantly.

  The widow looked up speculatively.

  "Well--perhaps," she acquiesced, "if courtship were more of a businessproposition marriage would be less of a failure. Anyhow, you'd know inadvance just what a man considered you worth in dollars and cents."

  "And you'd eliminate all the uncertainty," added the bachelor.

  "And the chance of having to beg for your carfare and pin money."

  "And of having to go bankrupt for matinee tickets and Easter hats."

  "And of being asked what you did with your allowance."

  "Or of how you acquired your breath or lost your watch."

  "The trouble is," sighed the widow, "that no man would ever be broadenough or generous enough to make such a proposition."

  "And no woman would ever be sensible enough to listen to it."

  "Nonsense. Any woman would. It's just the sort of thing we've beenlonging for."

  "Well," said the bachelor, turning on his back and looking up at thewidow speculatively, "let me see--you could have the violet room."

  "What!" exclaimed the widow.

  "It's got a good south view," protested the bachelor, "and besides it'snot over the kitchen."

  "What on earth do you mean?" The widow sat up straight and her banglesjingled warningly.

  "And you could have Saturday and Wednesday evenings out. Those are myclub nights."

  "How dare you!"

  "And any salary you might ask--"

  "What are you talking about, Billy Travers?"

  "YOU'VE taken all the poetry out of it." _Page 72_]

  "I'm making you a proposal of marriage," explained the bachelor in aninjured tone. "Don't you recognize it?"

  The widow rose silently, lifted the sheet of paper in her hands and toreit to pieces.

  "Was
that your poem?" inquired the bachelor as he watched the breezecarry the fragments away over the grass.

  The widow shook out her ruffles and picked up her hat.

  "You've taken all the poetry out of it," she retorted, as she fledtoward the house.

  The bachelor looked after her undecidedly for a moment. Then he leanedback lazily and blinked up at the sky between the leaves.

  "And this," he said softly, "is the white man's burden."