Yet might not she have seen? Astounding how in life one’s suddenly engulfed in depths and never has perceived the shoals from which they led; suddenly entombed in night and never has perceived the gradual declination of the day! Why, when she looked back, so far away as in those days of choosing their house had been in seed this thing that now was come to fruit. And she had watched it grow from seed to seedling, and on to bud and blossom, and never had suspected.
But had she not? Then it was curious, she knew, that, alone of all her thoughts, all her beliefs, all her theories, her observations and her deductions from her observations, curious that of them all only a certain observation, made when choosing their house, she never had told to Harry.
Choosing their house! She had gone back to her rooms from the third day of their house-hunting gently amused at an addition to her compendium of lore on the male habit. It was in a way like the cat idea; at least it was, like that, reversal of a common opinion on distinguishing traits as between men and women. It went in her mind like this and, because it arose out of Harry, she laughed softly to herself as like this she shaped it:
“They say a woman marries for a home. Wrong, wrong! It’s man that marries for a home—a home that, having got it, superficially he cares little enough about, and superficially uses as a good place to get away from; but that’s just how he uses his business, how he uses everything. Oh, he wants it, he wants it, and he marries for it far more than a woman wants it or marries for it. How plain it is! A man marries to settle down, a woman for just precisely the opposite: to break up; to get away from the constraints of daughterhood and of Miss-hood, as a schoolgirl, holiday-bound, from the constraints of school; to enlarge her life, not to restrict it; to aerate her life, not to compose it. Why, it’s inherent in a man, the desire for a home; it’s in his bones. Look at little boys playing—it’s caves and tents and wigwams they delight to play at; a place they can in part discover and in part construct, and then arrange their things in, and then go off exploring and then, all the time, be coming back to the delicious cave and creep in and block up the door! Girls don’t play at that; they play at shops and being grown up, at nursing dolls and not themselves being nursed. But that’s your man—a hunter with a cave, and the return to the cave the best part of the hunting. That’s what he marries for—a home; a pitch of his own; a place to bring his things to and wherein to keep his things; an establishment; a solid, anchored base; a place where he can have his wife and his children and his dogs and his books and his servants and his treasures and his slippers and his ease, and can feel, comfortably, that she and they and it are his,—his mysterious cave with the door blocked up, his base, his moorings, his settled and abiding centre. Dear Harry!”
“Dear Harry” because all this had come to her while with secret, fond amusement she had watched Harry delightedly and entrancedly fussing about the houses they explored. The boy with a cave! The man with a home! She liked the idea of a new home, and a home with Harry, but, given outstanding features obviously essential, almost any home would have satisfied her. She was animated and interested in the choosing, but not with Harry’s interest and animation. Hers were the feelings with which she had established herself in the two-room suite at the boarding house. There any two rooms would have done; here any pleasant house would do. It was not the rooms; it was the significance of her entry into their possession. It was not the house; it was the significance of all connoted by the house. The rooms had been a stepping-off place to independence larger and to triumphs new; the house was a stepping-off place to independence, to triumphs, to battle of life and to joy of life, lifted upon a plane high above her old world as the stars, as bright and keen as they.
But for Harry it was a stepping-in place.
It was Harry that fussed and examined and measured and opened and shut and tested and tried and must have this and must have that. It was Harry who saw everything with the eye that was going to see it and live with it permanently and for all time. It was Harry who invested every square yard of every interior with the attributes that should be there when they therein were domiciled. Harry who said, “This front door! Rosalie, we’re going to have a front door that will hit you in the eye and make you say ‘Mice and Mumps, there’s a distinguished couple that live behind a door like that!’ None of your wretched browns and greens and blacks and reds for our door, Rosalie! We’ll have a yellow front door, gamboge. I’ve seen it on a house in Westminster. I’ll take you there. You wait till you see it. Imagine it, Rosalie, beneath that lovely old fanlight overhead. And then yellow window boxes tinted to match in every window and crammed with flowers. It’ll be a house you’ll run to get into directly you catch sight of it. Then inside here, in the hall, there’ll be the thickest rugs money can buy and the brightest light and the warmest stove. You’ll step in and shut the yellow door and, ‘Mice and Mumps,’ you’ll say, ‘this is home!’ Now, look here; here’ll be my study; I’ll have bookshelves built in all round there and there and there. Pictures there. This nook—I’ll fix a little cupboard there and keep my tools in. I’ll spend half my time our first weeks pottering about with a hammer and a pair of pliers. This place just here on the landing. Looks like a dungeon. We’ll knock out a window there and fit it up with hot and cold water as a cloak room. Now here’s your room, your—”
“My study,” she had interpolated, a little apprehensive lest for her private room he should use another word.
“Yes, your study, rather. Each of us with our own study! A lark, eh? And Rosalie, in mine there’ll be a special chair for you and in yours a special chair for me. We’ll stroll in on each other’s work—”
She loved him for that. “Like two men in chambers,” she said.