NEVER quarrel at breakfast is the first maxim for commuters and their wives. Partings in anger mean day-long misery for both, and generally involve telephone calls later in the day, and a box of chocolate-coated maraschino cherries carried home on the 5.18. Marriage (say the philosophers) is a subdivision of the penal code, dedicated to the proposition that men and women are created equal. But the studious observer of matrimonial feints and skirmishes sees very little to verify that daring surmise.
Harry Bennett sipped his breakfast coffee grimly. Its savour had departed: for ninety seconds earlier Mrs. Bennett had fled upstairs in a flush of anger and tears. In five minutes he would have to run for the train; and what man can soothe an outraged wife in five minutes? He ate his toast without relish, gazing sourly on the blue-and-white imitation Copenhagen china, the pretty little porcelain marmalade pot, and the big silver coffee-urn.
The desperate inequality of married life pierced his heart. Why should he have to accept in silence tart remarks uttered by his wife, while the least savagery of his own was cause for tears?
He rushed upstairs to say a few consoling words. The bedroom door was locked. Compassion fled, and he growled furiously through the panels. Then he ran hotly for the train.
It seems unreasonable: but the lives of human beings are not guided by reason. Harry had come to the conclusion that the silver coffee-urn was at the bottom of all their squabbles.
Before Elaine Addison surrendered herself into his capable hands, there had been a competitor for the honour of surrounding her with sectional bookcases, linen closets, potted hydrangeas, and the other authentic trappings of a home.
Aubrey Andrews was the rival warrior. He was the kind of man who always has a lot of crisp greenbacks in a neat leather bill-fold. Harry's hard-earned frogskins were always crumpled in a trousers pocket This may seem trivial, but it distinguishes two totally different classes of men. Aubrey was tall, dark, well groomed; he played billiards and belonged to expensive clubs. It was supposed that his wife would be beyond the reach of financial worries. He kept a horse and easy office hours.
Harry—well, Harry was no aristocrat. He worked hard for what he got, and didn't get much. He was neither tall, nor dark, nor well groomed. But he was a fine, lovable, high-minded chap, and to everyone's surprise, including his own, he got Elaine.
Tennyson had a good deal to do with it, I think. Harry still read Tennyson, although that excellent poet is no longer fashionable, and kept on repeating what Tennyson said about Elaine. And finally Elaine could not help saying, “My Lancelot!” and melting into his arms.
Aubrey gave them a magnificent silver coffee-urn for a wedding present, and presently enlisted for service, first on the Mexican border and then in France, where he became a heroic and legendary figure, surrounded in Elaine's mind by the prismatic glamour of girlhood days.