_ CHAPTER 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 anaesthetic."
"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--"
The widow rose quickly and shook out her skirts.
"Now, don't begin that, Billy," she said, trying to be severe, "you're too 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 hinges of your enthusiasm creak and you've got a bare spot on the top of your head, and----"
"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 and good style and well preserved, and if----"
"Well?" The bachelor looked up expectantly.
"If there WERE such a thing as 'trial marriages'--" The widow hesitated again.
"You'd give me a trial?" asked the bachelor eagerly.
"Oh," said the widow, studying the toes of her red slippers, "it wouldn't be--such a trial!" _