_ CHAPTER V. MONEY AND MATRIMONY
"WHAT rhymes with 'matrimony'?" inquired the widow, taking her pencil out of her mouth and looking up thoughtfully through the fringes of her pompadour.
"Money," responded the bachelor promptly, as he flung himself down on the grass beside her and proceeded to study her profile through the shadows of the maple leaves.
The widow tilted her chin scornfully.
"I suppose they do sound alike," she condescended, "but I am making a poem; 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 and babies and railroad accidents and health foods. But in real life matrimony isn't a poem; it's more like a declaration of war, or an itemized expense account, or a census report, or a cold business proposition."
The widow bit the end of her pencil and laid aside her paper. If the bachelor could have caught a glimpse of her eyes beneath the lowered lashes he might not have gone on; but he was studying the sky through the maple leaves.
"It's a beautiful business proposition," he added. "A magnificent money making 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 his back.
"Oh, well," he protested lamely, "when you marry for money you generally get it, don't you? But when you marry for love--it's like putting your last dollar on a long shot."
"If you mean there's a delightful uncertainty about it?" began the widow.
"There's nothing half so delightful," declared the bachelor, "as betting on 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 the brow. The man who marries a woman for her money is a white slave, a bond servant, a travesty on manhood. For every dollar he receives he gives a full equivalent in self-respect and independence, and all the things dearest to a real man."
"A real man," remarked the bachelor, taking out his pipe and lighting it, "wouldn't marry a woman for her money. It's woman to whom marriage presents the alluring financial prospect."
"Oh, I don't know," responded the widow, crossing her arms behind her head and leaning thoughtfully against the tree at her back. "In these days 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, the greatest drain on your patience, the most exacting master and the smallest pay, to say nothing of no holidays and not even an evening off."
"Nor a chance to 'give notice' if you don't like your job," added the bachelor sympathetically.
"If the average business man," went on the widow, ignoring the interruption, "demanded half of his stenographer that he demands of his wife he couldn't keep her three hours."
"And yet," remarked the bachelor, pulling on his pipe meditatively, "the average stenographer is only too glad to exchange her position for that of wife whenever she gets----"
The jangle of gold bangles, as the widow brought her arms down from behind 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 have a point?"
"That marriage is something higher and finer than a business proposition, Mr. Travers, and that there are lots of reasons for marrying besides financial ones."
"Oh, yes," agreed the bachelor, "there is folly and feminine coercion and 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 and unhappiness. If they've got it, they are always quarreling over it and if they haven't got it they are always quarreling for it. The Castellanes and Marlboroughs who fight over their bills and their debts aren't any happier than the Murphys and the Hooligans who fight over the price of a pint of beer. It's just as difficult to know what to do with money when you've got it as it is to know what to do without it when you haven't got it; and a million dollars between husband and wife is a bigger gulf than a $10 a week salary. It's not a question of the amount of money, but the question of who shall spend it that makes all the trouble."
"But don't you see," argued the bachelor, sitting up suddenly and knocking the ashes out of his pipe, "that all that would be eliminated if people would make marriage a business proposition? For instance, if two people would discuss the situation rationally and make the terms before marriage; if the man would state the services he requires and the woman would demand the compensation she thinks she deserves----"
"Ugh!" shuddered the widow, putting her hands over her eyes, "that would be like writing your epitaph and choosing the style of your coffin."
"And every man," pursued the bachelor, "would be willing to give his wife her board and room and a salary adequate to her services and to his income----"
"And to let her eat with the family," jeered the widow.
"Well," finished the bachelor, "then marriage wouldn't offer the poorest returns in the professional market. And, besides," he added, "there would be fewer wives sitting about in apartment hotels holding their hands and ordering the bellboys around, while their husbands are down town fretting and struggling themselves into bankruptcy; and fewer husbands spending their nights and their money out with the boys, while their 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, "would mean spending your courtship talking stocks and bonds and dividends!"
"And the rest of your life forgetting them and talking love," declared the bachelor, triumphantly.
The widow looked up speculatively.
"Well--perhaps," she acquiesced, "if courtship were more of a business proposition marriage would be less of a failure. Anyhow, you'd know in advance 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 broad enough 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 been longing for."
"Well," said the bachelor, turning on his back and looking up at the widow 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's not over the kitchen."
"What on earth do you mean?" The widow sat up straight and her bangles jingled warningly.
"And you could have Saturday and Wednesday evenings out. Those are my club nights."
"How dare you!"
"And any salary you might ask--"
"What are you talking about, Billy Travers?"
"I'm making you a proposal of marriage," explained the bachelor in an injured tone. "Don't you recognize it?"
The widow rose silently, lifted the sheet of paper in her hands and tore it to pieces.
"Was that your poem?" inquired the bachelor as he watched the breeze carry 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 fled toward the house.
The bachelor looked after her undecidedly for a moment. Then he leaned back lazily and blinked up at the sky between the leaves.
"And this," he said softly, "is the white man's burden." _