Part 13

People do not confess these things, but the socio-psychologist must remember that when a man quietly picks up a flower pot and hurls it through the window, the original cause may be found in the behavior of the departmental manager six hours before. The irritation of children can envenom two lives, for it seems almost inevitable that each party should think the other spoils or tyrannizes. It is not always so, and sometimes children unite by the bond of a common love; very much more often they unite by the burden of a common responsibility. Indeed, it is this financial responsibility that draws two people close, because tied together they must swim together or sink together, until they are so concerned individually with their salvation that they think they are concerned with the salvation of the other. That bond of union is dangerous, because marriage is expensive, and because one tends to remember the time when bread was not so dear and flesh and blood so cheap. There is affluence in bachelordom; there is atrocious discomfort too, but when one thinks of the good old times, one generally forgets all except the affluence. Of the present, one sees only that one cannot take the whole family to Yellowstone; of the past, one does not see the sitting room, or the hangings on which the landlady merely blew. The wife thinks of her frocks, garlands of the sacrificial heifer, the husband of the days when he could afford to be one of the boys. And, as soon as the past grows glamorous, the present day grows dull; always because one must blame something, one blames the other. It is so much more agreeable to spend a thousand dollars than to spend a hundred, even if one gets nothing for it. It is power. It is excitement. One thinks of money until one may come to think of nothing but money, until, as suggested before, a husband turns into a vaguely disagreeable person who can be coaxed into paying bills. In the working class especially there is bitterness among the women, who before their marriage knew the taste of independence and of earned money in their purses. It is a great love that can compensate a woman for the loss of freedom after she has enjoyed it.

Nothing indeed can compensate a woman for this, except a lover, that is to say, a return to an older state. That is to what she turns, for strange as it may seem, marriage does not vaccinate against the temptations of love. She does not easily love again, for she has been married, and while it is easy to love again when one has been atrociously betrayed, just because one invests the new with everything that the old held back, it is difficult to love again when the promised love turned merely to dullness. There is nothing to strike against. There is no contrast, and so women slip into relationships that are silly, because there is nothing real behind them. Boredom is the root of all evil, and I doubt whether busy and happy women seek adventure, for few of them want it for adventure's sake: they seek only satisfaction. That is what most men cruelly misunderstand; they blame woman instead of searching out their own remissness. Sins of omission matter more than sins of commission, more even than infidelities, for love, which is all a woman's life, is only a momentous incident in that of a man. Love may be the discovery of a happiness, but man remains conscious of many other delights. Woman is seldom like that. You will imagine a man and a woman who have blundered upon mutual understanding standing upon the hill from which Moses saw Canaan. The woman would fill her eyes with Canaan, and could see nought else, while the man gazing at the promised land would still be conscious of other countries. In the heart of a man who is worth anything at all, love must have rivals,--art, science, ambition,--and it is a delight to woman that there should be rivals to overcome, even though it be a poor slave she tie to her chariot wheels.

Marriage does not always suffer when people drift away from their allegiance; in countries such as France notably, where many husbands and wives do not think it necessary to trust, or tactful to watch each other, the problem does not set itself so sharply. It is mainly in Anglo-Saxon countries where the little blue flower has its altars that the trouble begins. A rather fascinating foreigner said to me once: "Englishwomen are very troublesome; they are either so light that they do not understand you when you tell them you love them, or so deep that you must elope every time. This is a difficult country." I do not want to seem cynical, but the polygamous nature of man is so ill-recognized and the boredom of woman such a national institution that when it is too late to pretend that that which has happened has not happened, most of the mischief has already been done. Why a husband or wife who has found attraction in another should immediately treat his partner abominably is not easily understood, for falling in love with the present victim need not make him rude or remiss to the rest of the world. But the British are a strange and savage people. Also, when in doubt they get drunk, so I fear I must leave a clearer recognition of polygamous instincts to the slow-growing enlightenment of the mind of man.

He is growing enlightened; at least he is infinitely more educated than he was, for he has begun to recognize that woman is to a certain extent a human being, a savage, a barbarian, but entitled to the consideration generally given to the Hottentot. I do not think woman will always be savage, though I hope she will not turn into the clear-eyed, weather-beaten mate that Mr. H. G. Wells likes to think of--for the future. She has come to look upon man as an equation that can be solved. He, too, in a sense, and both are to-day much less inclined than they were fifty years ago to overlook a chance of pleasing. It is certain that men and women to-day dress more deliberately for each other than they ever did before, that they lead each other, sometimes with dutiful unwillingness, to the theatre or the country; it is very painful sometimes, this organization of pleasure, but it is necessary because dull lives are bad lives, and better fall into the river than never go to the river at all. It is dangerous and vain to take up the attitude, "I alone am enough." Yet many do: as one walks along a suburban street, where every window is shut, where every dining room has its aspidistra in a pot, one realizes that scores of people are busily heaping ash upon the once warm fire of their love. The stranger is the alternative; he obscures small quarrels; if the stranger is beautiful, he urges to competition; if he is inferior, he soothes pride. But above all, the stranger is change, therefore hope. The stranger is an insurance against loss of personal pride; he compels adornment, for what is "good enough for my husband" is not good enough for the lady over the way. The stranger serves the pleasure lust, this violent passion of man, and cannot harm him because the lust for pleasure, within the limits of hysteria, involves a desire for good looks, for elegance, for gaiety; above all, love of pleasure was reviled of our fathers, and whatever our fathers thought bad is become a good thing. Our fathers did not understand certain forms of pride: there is more than pride of body in good looks, good clothes, and showing off before acquaintances: there is achievement, which means pride of conquest. I imagine that the happiest couple in the world is the one where each lives in perpetual fear that somebody will run away with the other.

Looking at it broadly, I see marriage as a Chinese puzzle, almost, but not quite, insoluble. Spoilt by coldness, spoilt by ardour, spoilt by excess, spoilt by indifference, spoilt by obedience, by stupidity, by self-assertion, spoilt by familiarity, spoilt by ignorance. Spoilt in every possible way that man can invent. Spoilt by every ounce of influence a jealous or ironical world can muster, spoilt by habit, by contrast, by obtuseness quite as much as by overclose understanding. And yet it stands. It stands because there is nothing much to put into its place, because marriage is the only road that leads a man away from his dinner when he is forty-five, or teaches a woman to preserve her complexion. It stands like most human things, because it is the better of two bad alternatives. Only because it stands we must not think that it will never change. All things change, otherwise one could not bear them. I suspect that marriage, that was once upon a time the taking of a woman by a man, which has now grown legalized, and may become courteous, will turn into a very skilled occupation. It will be recognized still more than now that all freedom need not be lost after putting on the wedding ring. As legal right and privilege grow, as women develop private earnings, a consciousness of worth must arise. Already women realize their value and demand its recognition. If they demand it long enough, they will get it. I suspect that the economic problem is at the root of the marriage problem, for people are not indiscriminate in their relationships, and even Don Juan, after a while, longs to be faithful, if only somebody could teach him how to be it. Marriage can be made close only by making divorce easy, by extending female labor. For labor makes woman less attractive and to be attractive is rather a trap: how much higher can a woman rise? But the economic freedom of woman will mean that she need not bind herself; she will be able to break away, and in those days she will be most completely bound, for who would run away from a jail if the door were always left open?

I detest Utopia, and these things seem so far away that I am more content to take marriage as it is in the hope that unhealthy novels, unnecessary discussions, unwholesome views, and unnatural feelings may little by little reform mankind. Meanwhile, I hold fast to the private maxim that hardly anything is unendurable if one sets up that all mankind could not give one a quite worthy mate. But there is another alleviation: understanding not only that one is married to somebody else, but also that somebody else is married to yourself, and that it is quite as hard for the other party. There are many excellent things to be done; here are a few:

(1) Do not open each other's letters. (For one reason you might not like the contents.) And try not to look liberal if you don't even glance at the address or the postmark.

(2) Vary your pursuits, your conversation, and your clothes. If required, vary your hair.

(3) If you absolutely must be sincere, let it be in private.

(4) (Especially for wives.) Find out on the honeymoon whether crying or swearing is the more effective.

(5) Once a day say to a wife: "I love you"; to a husband: "How strong you are!" If the latter remark is ridiculous, say: "How clever you are!" for everybody believes that.

(6) Forgive your partner seventy times seven. Then burn the ledger.

* * * * *

_By the author of "The Second Blooming"_

THE STRANGERS' WEDDING

_By_ W. L. GEORGE

12mo. Cloth. 450 pages. $1.35 _net_.

Readers of "The Second Blooming," one of the most discussed novels of 1915, will welcome the announcement of another novel of married life by this talented English author.

"The Strangers' Wedding" is the story of Roger Huncote, a young man of the upper classes who, inflamed with philanthropic ideals, joins a settlement to work among the poor. He is speedily undeceived as to the usefulness of the movement and the worthiness of those who control it, and conceiving an unreasonable disgust of his own class, marries the daughter of a washerwoman. Realizing that there may be little difficulties, he believes that when two people care deeply for each other nothing else can matter. But Huncote has much to learn; and most of the story is concerned with the pitiful misunderstandings between the young husband and the young wife, both of whom are charming but as unable to meet as east and west. Mr. George indicates with much psychological subtlety the reversion of the "strangers" to their own class, which ultimately leads them to a happy ending.

This novel is throughout pathetic, but it contains a great deal of broad humor and deserves its sub-title, "The Comedy of a Romantic."

_By the Author of "The Stranger's Wedding"_

THE SECOND BLOOMING

_By_ W. L. GEORGE

12mo. 438 pages. $1.35 _net_.

A strong and thoughtful story.--_New York World._

A story of amazing power and insight.--_Washington Evening Star._

Mr. George is one of the Englishmen to be reckoned with. One now says Wells, Galsworthy, Bennett--and W. L. George.--_New York Globe._

This writer has entered with more courage and intensity into the inner sanctuaries of life than Mr. Howells and Mr. Bennett have cared to do.--_Chicago Tribune._

Mr. George follows a vein of literary brilliancy that is all his own, and his study of feminine maturity will find ample vindication the round world over.--_Philadelphia North American._

It is a book which is bound to appeal to women, for it is so extraordinarily true to life; so many women have passed and are passing through remarkably similar experiences.--_London Evening Standard._

It is perhaps the biggest piece of fiction that the present season has known. The present reviewer may frankly say, without exaggeration, that he has not had a treat of similar order since the still memorable day when he first made the acquaintance of Mr. Galsworthy's "Man of Property."--_Frederic T. Cooper in the Bookman (N. Y.)._

_The Racial Characteristics of French and English_

THE LITTLE BELOVED

_By_ W. L. GEORGE

12mo. Cloth. $1.35 _net_

Not since Thackeray, indeed, has any English novelist done a more impressive study of the typical Englishman. It is not only a good story; it is a notable study of national character.--_Baltimore Sun._

Not merely a splendid opportunity for contrast between the temperamental differences of French and English, but a narrative of earnest merit. We are met by a full world of English characters.--_New York Post_.

First and last, interesting. It is crowded with impressions, glimpses, and opinions. There are many characters and they are all living.... Reading his book is a real adventure, by no means to be missed.--_New York Times._

A vigorous novel based upon the process--constructive and destructive--whereby a typical French youth, mercurial, passionate, spectacular, is transformed into a staid and stolid English householder and husband.--_Chicago Herald._

Mr. George, one of the most promising of the younger English writers, has shown the process of naturalization from a more striking viewpoint, in this story of the changing of a Frenchman into an English citizen. With this purpose and his nervous, irritable nature trouble is sure to ensue, and he has adventures in plenty.--_Boston Transcript._

"Once read, will not quickly be forgotten."--_Providence Journal._

UNTIL THE DAY BREAK

_By_ W. L. GEORGE

12mo. Cloth. $1.35 _net._

Mr. George's study of the evolution of this Israel Kalisch is a remarkable work in realistic fiction.--_New York World._

A novel of more than usual value.... It is a life-drama, such as is going on continually in London and New York.--_Hearst's Magazine._

The story contains a very pretty love element.... Such an objective picture as is here presented will do more than sermons to reveal the futility of the sacrifice which anarchy sometimes makes of noble minds.--_New York Post._

Mr. George unquestionably has the gift of description, not only of places but of men. Kalisch, egotistic, self-confident, fearless, making his way from Gallicia through Hungary to starve and fight in New York, is an impressive conception.--_The Bookman._

Israel, Warsch, Leimeritz, the various women who successively love Israel, they are so true, so vital that we can almost see and hear them speak and breathe. Yes, this is a great novel, even though it alternately fires and freezes the very marrow of the soul.--_Chicago Herald._

LITTLE, BROWN & CO., PUBLISHERS

34 BEACON STREET, BOSTON

End of Project Gutenberg's The Intelligence of Woman, by W. L. George