Kitabı oku: «The Widow [To Say Nothing of the Man]», sayfa 5

IX
Her Way

"THERE," said the bachelor, as he nodded amiably at the big, jolly-looking man beside the little, weazened woman, "is the best husband the Lord ever made!"

"The Lord!" said the widow scornfully. "It isn't the Lord who makes husbands. It's the wife!"

"And I always thought God made Adam," sighed the bachelor, humbly.

"Adam," said the widow promptly, as she dropped another lump of sugar into her tea, "wasn't a husband. He was only a man. And a man is only – raw material. He is like a ready-made frock or a ready-made coat; he has got to be cut down and built up and ironed out and taken in and to have all the raw edges trimmed off before he is properly – "

"Finished?" suggested the bachelor.

The widow nodded cheerfully.

"Yes," she agreed, "and adjusted to matrimony. And even then sometimes he is a dreadful botch."

"And all his style is gone," sighed the bachelor.

The widow studied her Sévres cup thoughtfully.

"Well," she admitted, "sometimes the material is so bad or so skimpy – "

"So – what?"

The widow smiled patiently.

"Skimpy," she repeated. "There is so little to some men that the cleverest woman couldn't patch them up into a full-sized specimen. They are like the odds and ends left on the remnant counter. You have to do the best you can with them and then use Christian Science to make yourself believe they are all there and that the patches don't show. Haven't you ever seen magnificent women trailing little annexes after them like echoes or – or – "

"Captives in the wake of a conquering queen?" broke in the bachelor.

The widow studied her Sévres cup as the purple plume on her hat danced.

"Those," she exclaimed, "are the bargain-counter husbands, picked up at the last moment and made over to fit the situation – which they never do."

The bachelor set down his teacup with the light of revelation in his eyes.

"And I always thought," he exclaimed solemnly, "that they were picked out on purpose to act as shadows or – or satellites."

"Picked out!" echoed the widow mockingly. "As if all women wouldn't be married to Greek gods or Napoleon Bonapartes or Wellingtons or Byrons if they could 'pick out' a husband. Husbands are like Christmas gifts. You can't choose them. You've just got to sit down and wait until they arrive; and sometimes they don't arrive at all. A woman doesn't 'pick out' a husband; she 'picks over' what's offered and takes the best of the lot."

"And sometimes you're so long picking them over," added the bachelor, "that the best ones are snapped up by somebody else and you have to take the left-overs."

The widow poised her spoon above her cup tentatively.

"Well," she sighed, "it's all a lottery anyhow. The girl who snaps up her first offer of marriage is as likely to get something good as the one who snaps her finger at it and waits for a Prince Charming until the last hour and then discovers that she has passed him by and that some other woman has taken him and made him over beautifully. And even if a girl had the whole world to select from, she wouldn't know how to choose. You never can tell by the way a thing looks under the electric light in the shop how it will look in broad daylight when you have got it home, or how it will make up or whether it will fade or run or shrink. And you never can tell by the way a man acts before marriage how he will come out in the wash of domesticity, or stand the wear and tear of matrimony. It's usually the most brilliant and catchy patterns of manhood that turn out to be cotton-backed after the gloss of the honeymoon has worn off. And on the other hand you may carefully select something serviceable – dull and virtuous and worthy and all that – and he may prove so stiff and lumpy and set in his ways and cross-grained and seamy and irritable that you will cultivate gray hairs and wrinkles – "

"Ironing him out?" suggested the bachelor.

"Yes," agreed the widow, "and the wildest 'jolly good fellow' will often tame down like a lamb or a pet pony in harness and will become a joy forever with a little trimming off and taking in and basting up."

"Humph," protested the bachelor, "but when you catch 'em wild and tame 'em, how do you know they are not going to break the harness or burst the basting threads?"

The widow considered a moment.

"You don't," she acknowledged grudgingly. "But there is a great deal in catching the wild variety and domesticating them while they are young. Of course, it's utterly impossible to subdue a lion after he has got his second teeth, and it's utterly foolish to try to reform a man – after he is thirty or has begun to lose his hair. Besides," she added, "there is so much in the woman who does the training and the making over. There are some women who could spoil the finest masculine cloth in the world by too much cutting and ripping and – and nagging; while there are others who can give a man or a house or a frock just the touch that will perfect them."

"How do they do it?" asked the bachelor enthusiastically. "Take 'em by the nape of the neck and – "

"Mercy, no!" cried the widow. "They take them unawares. The well-trained husband never knows what has happened to him. He only knows that, after ten years of matrimony, he is ashamed to acknowledge his own youthful picture. He has been literally re-formed in everything from his collars and the way he parts his hair to his morals and the way he signs his name. The best husbands aren't caught; they're made. And the luckiest woman isn't the one who marries the best man, but the one who makes the most out of the man she marries."

"But," protested the bachelor, "if we're such a lot and such a lottery, why do you marry us at all?"

The widow looked up in surprise and stopped with her cup poised in midair.

"Why do we wear frocks, Mr. Travers?" she asked witheringly. "Why do we pompadour our hair or eat with forks or go to pink teas? Marriage is a custom; and if a woman doesn't marry she is simply non – non – "

"Compos mentis?" inquired the bachelor, helpfully.

"Well, yes," said the widow, "but that wasn't what I meant. What is the Latin for 'not in it'? Her father looks at her accusingly every time he has to pay her dressmaker's bill and her mother looks at her commiseratingly every time she comes home without being engaged and all her friends look at her as if she were a curiosity or – or a failure. And besides, she misses her mission in life. That was what the Lord put Eve in the world for – to give the finishing touches to Adam."

"She finished him all right!" exclaimed the bachelor fervently.

"Making a living," went on the widow scorning the insinuation, "or making a career or making fame or a fortune isn't the real forte of woman. It's making a husband – out of a man."

"I should think," said the bachelor setting down his teacup and leaning back comfortably in his chair, "that they would form a corporation and set up a factory where they could turn 'em out by the dozen or the crate – or – "

"Pooh!" cried the widow, "a husband is a work of art and has to be made by hand. He can't be turned out by machinery like a chromo or a lithograph. And, besides, if you want a ready-made one you can always find plenty of them on the second-hand counter – "

"On the – where?"

"Where they keep the widowers," explained the widow. "If a woman isn't interested or clever enough to manufacture her own husband, she can always find some man who has been modeled by another woman. And she has the satisfaction of knowing exactly what she's getting and just what to expect. The only trouble is that, in case she makes a mistake in her choice, she never has a chance to make him over. He has been cut down and relined and faced and patched already to his limit."

"And his seams are apt to be shiny and his temper frayed at the edges," declared the bachelor.

"And you have to be very sure that he fits your disposition."

"And matches your taste."

"And that he won't pinch on the bank account."

"Nor stretch on the truth."

"And that the other woman hasn't botched him."

"And even then he's a hand-me-down – and may shrink or run or – "

"Oh, widowers don't shrink or run," retorted the widow. "Matrimony is a habit with them, and they feel like a cab-horse out of harness without it. They long to feel the bit between their teeth and the gentle hand on the reins – "

"And the basting threads," added the bachelor. "I wonder what it's like," he went on, meditatively.

"You'll never know," said the widow, setting her cup on the tabourette. "You're too old."

"Yes, I've got my second teeth," sighed the bachelor.

"And your bald spot."

"And I've sown my second crop of wild oats."

"And yet," said the widow leaning her chin in her hand and looking up thoughtfully under her purple feather, "it would be a great triumph – "

"I won't be put in harness!" protested the bachelor.

The widow considered him gravely.

"There's plenty of material in you," she declared. "You could be trimmed off and cut down and – "

"I'm too tough to cut!"

"And relined."

"I'm almost moth-eaten now!" moaned the bachelor.

The widow leaned forward and scrutinized him with interest.

"It would be a pity," she said slowly, "to let the wrong woman botch you. The next time you propose to me," she added thoughtfully, "I think I'll – "

"Did I ever propose to you?" broke in the bachelor with real fright.

"Oh, lots of times," said the widow; "it's almost a habit now."

"But you refused me!" pleaded the bachelor. "Say you refused me."

"I did," said the widow promptly. "I wasn't looking for – remnants."

"Never mind!" retorted the bachelor. "Some day you may find I've been grabbed up."

"You'll have lost all your – starch and style by then," said the widow as she patted her back hair and started for the door.

The bachelor followed, putting on his gloves.

"How do you know that?" he asked, when they had bidden their hostess good-afternoon and stood on the portico saying goodby.

"Well," said the widow, "it would take an artist to make you over. The wrong woman would utterly ruin you."

"And who is the wrong woman?" The bachelor tried to look into the widow's eyes beneath the purple feather.

But the widow only glanced out over the lawn and swung her parasol.

"Who is the wrong woman?" persisted the bachelor.

The widow studied the tip of her patent leather toe.

"Who is the wrong woman?"

The widow looked up suddenly under her violet feather.

"The other woman," she said softly, "of course."

X
Marriage

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

"It is," agreed the bachelor, cheerfully, with his eyes on the red kid toes, "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 or a yacht or – or – "

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

"And knowing," continued the widow, gazing contemplatively into the fire, "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 market again."

"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 the varnish off your manners, and all the color off your illusions and all the finish off your conversation."

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

"And you are bound to be old-fashioned," concluded the widow, with conviction, "and to compare badly with brand-new wives and husbands with all 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 or her."

"And the torture," added the bachelor, with a faint shudder, "of going through with the wedding ceremony again and of walking up a green and yellow church aisle with a green and yellow feeling and a stiff new coat, and the gaping multitude gazing at you as if you were a new specimen 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 trained into 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 bill for a new hat," proceeded the widow, "and how to keep him at home nights – "

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

"And to make him see things your way," concluded the widow, "it would be time to pack up your trunks and leave. Any two people," she continued, meditatively, "can live together fairly comfortably after they have discovered the path around one another's nerves – the little things not to say and not to do in order to avoid friction, and the little things to say and to do that will oil the matrimonial wheels. But it would take all the 'trial' period to get the domestic machine running, 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 quickly under the ruffles of her skirts as she caught the bachelor staring at them. "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 way you say it, and – "

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

"Sometimes," remarked the bachelor, blowing a smoke ring and gazing through it at the place where the widow's toes had been, "second-hand goods 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 be different with a wife who was relinquished because she wasn't wanted. If anybody is anxious to get rid of something it is a pretty sure sign that it isn't worth having. It's nearly always got a flaw somewhere and it's seldom what it is represented to be. Besides, I've noticed that the woman who can't get along with one husband, usually finds it just as difficult to get along with another."

"There would always be the chance," protested the bachelor, "that you might 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 whom somebody else had trained!"

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

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

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

"Fancy," said the widow not noticing the deflection, "marrying a man who had been encouraged to take an interest in the household affairs and having 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, and whom it took a derrick to get to the theatre or a dinner party; or one who had been permitted to smoke a pipe and put his feet all over the furniture and growl about the meals and boss the cook!"

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

"Yes," agreed the widow with a little shiver, "what horrid things two people 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 with red hair,' or, 'Thank goodness it won't last forever!'" she added.

"That's the beauty of it!" broke in the bachelor enthusiastically. "It wouldn't last forever! And the knowledge that it wouldn't would be such an anæsthetic."

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

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

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

"I'm not arguing in favor of marriage at all," protested the bachelor plaintively. "But marrying for life is like putting the whole dinner on the table at once. It takes away your appetite. Marrying on trial would be 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 divide things – the children and – "

"The dog and the cat."

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

"Oh, well, in that case," remarked the bachelor, "you might have grown so used to and fond of one another that when it came to the parting of the ways, you would not want to part them. After all," he went on soberly, "if 'trial marriages' were put into effect, they would end nine times out of ten in good old fashioned matrimony. A man can get as accustomed 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 man and as fond of him as she is of an old umbrella or a pair of old shoes that have done good service. No matter how battered or worn they may become, nor how many breaks there are in them, we can never find anything to quite take their place. Matrimony, after all, is just a habit; and husbands and wives become habits – habits that however disagreeable 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 two people can stand one another they will cling together anyhow, and if they can't they won't anyhow; and whether it's a run out lease or a divorce or prussic acid that separates them doesn't make much difference. Custom, not the wedding certificate, is the tie that binds most of us. The savage doesn't need any laws to hold him to the woman of his 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 chairs and pipes and shoes and things you were speaking of; it's full of holes and breaks and bare spots, and it won't always work – but there's nothing that will quite take the place of it."

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