“Nelly, if there is one subject on which girls are more idiotically ignorant than on any other, it is happiness in marriage. A courtier, a lover, a man who will not let the winds of heaven visit your face too harshly, is very nice, no doubt; but he is not a husband. I want to be a wife and not a fragile ornament kept in a glass case. He would as soon think of submitting any project of his to the judgment of a doll as to mine. If he has to explain or discuss any serious matter of business with me, he does so apologetically, as if he were treating me roughly.”
“Well, my dear, you see, when he tried the other plan, you did not like that either. What is the unfortunate man to do?”
“I dont know. I suppose I was wrong in shrinking from his confidence. I am always wrong. It seems to me that the more I try to do right, the more mischief I contrive to make.”
“This is all pretty dismal, Marian. What sort of conduct on his part would make you happy?”
“Oh, there are so many little things. He makes me jealous of everything and everybody. I am jealous of the men in the city—I was jealous of the sanitary inspector the other day—because he talks with interest to them. I know he stays in the city later than he need. It is a relief to me to go out in the evening, or to have a few people here once or twice a week; but I am angry because I know it is a relief to him too. I am jealous even of that organ. How I hale those Bach fugues! Listen to the maddening thing twisting and rolling and racing and then mixing itself up into one great boom. He can get on with Bach: he can’t get on with me. I have even condescended to be jealous of other women—of such women as Mrs. Saunders. He despises her: he plays with her as dexterously as she thinks she plays with him; but he likes to chat with her; and they rattle away for a whole evening without the least constraint. She has no conscience: she talks absolute nonsense about art and literature: she flirts even more disgustingly than she used to when she was Belle Woodward; but she is quickwitted, like most Irish people; and she enjoys a broad style of jesting which Ned is a great deal too tolerant of, though he would as soon die as indulge in it before me. Then there is Mrs. Scott, who is just as shrewd as Belle, and much cleverer. I have heard him ask her opinion as to whether he had acted well or not in some stroke of business—something that I had never heard of, of course. I wish I were half as hard and strong and self-reliant as she is. Her husband would be nothing without her.”
“I am afraid I was right all along, Marian. Marriage is a mistake. There is something radically wrong in the institution. If you and Ned cannot be happy, no pair in the world can.”
“We might be very happy if——” Marian stopped to repress a sob.
“Anybody might be very happy If. There is not much consolation in Ifs. You could not be better off than you are unless you could be Marian Lind again. Think of all the women who would give their souls to have a husband who would neither drink, nor swear at them, nor kick them, nor sulk whenever he was kept waiting half a minute for anything. You have no little pests of children——”
“I wish I had. That would give us some interest in common. We sometimes have Lucy, Marmaduke’s little girl, up here; and Ned seems to me to be fond of her. She is a very bold little thing.”
“I saw Marmaduke last week. He is not half so jolly as he was.”