“One woman can’t have everything,” said I.
“No, but she can have what I mean—and she’s not much good to a man without it. If you’re set on marrying her wait till you’re ready, anyhow. She never will be.”
“What do you mean, mother?”
“Wait till you’ve got money in the savings bank. Wait till you’ve got used to having money. Then maybe you’ll be able to put a bit on a spendthrift wife even if you are crazy about her. You’re making a wrong start with her, Godfrey. You’re giving her the upper hand, and that’s bad for women like her—mighty bad.”
It was from my mother that I get my ability at business. She and I often had sensible talks, and her advice started me right in the railroad office and kept me right until I knew my way. So I did not become angry at her plain speaking, but appreciated its good sense, even though I thought her prejudiced against my Edna. However, I had not the least impulse to put off the marriage. My one wish was to hasten it. Never before or since was time so leisurely. But the day dragged itself up at last, and we were married in church, at what seemed to us then enormous expense. There was a dinner afterward at which everyone ate and drank too much—a coarse and common scene which I will spare gentle reader. Edna and I went up to New York City for a Friday to Monday honeymoon. But we were back to spend Sunday night in our grand forty-dollar flat. On Monday morning I went to work again—a married man, an important person in the community.
Never has any height I have attained or seen since equalled the grandeur of that forty-dollar flat. My common sense tells me that it was a small and poor affair. I remember, for example, that the bathroom was hardly big enough to turn round in. I recall that I have sat by the window in the parlor and without rising have reached a paper on a table at the other end of the room. But these hard facts in no way interfere with or correct the flat as my imagination persists in picturing it. What vistas of rooms!—what high ceilings—what woodwork—and plumbing!—and what magnificent furniture! Edna’s father, in a moment of generosity, told her he would pay for the outfitting of the household. And being in the undertaking business he could get discounts on furniture and even on kitchen utensils. Edna did the selecting. I thought everything wonderful and, as I have said, my imagination refuses to recreate the place as it actually was. But I recall that there was a brave show of red and of plush, and we all know what that means. Whether her “Lady Book” had miseducated her or her untrained eyes, excited by the gaudiness she saw when she went shopping, had beguiled her from the counsels of the “Lady Book,” I do not know. But I am sure, as I recall red and plush, that our first home was the typical horror inhabited by the extravagant working-class family.
No matter. There we were in Arcadia. For a time her restless soaring fancy, wearied perhaps by its audacious flight to this lofty perch of red and plush and forty dollars a month, folded its wings and was content. For a time her pride and satisfaction in the luxurious newness overcame her distaste and disdain and moved her to keep things spotless. I recall the perfume of cleanness that used to delight my nostrils at my evening homecoming, and then the intoxicating perfume of Edna herself—the aroma of healthy young feminine beauty. We loved each other, simply, passionately, in the old-fashioned way. With the growth of intelligence, with the realization on the part of men that her keep is a large part of the reason in the woman’s mind if not in her heart for marrying and loving, there has come a decline and decay of the former reverence and awe of man toward woman. Also, the men nowadays know more about the mystery of woman, know everything about it, where not so many years ago a pure woman was to a man a real religious mystery. Her physical being, the clothes she wore underneath, the supposedly sweet and clean thoughts, nobler than his, that dwelt in the temple of her soul—these things surrounded a girl with an atmosphere of thrilling enigma for the youth who won from her lips and from the church the right to explore.
All that has passed, or almost passed. I am one of those who believe that what has come, or, rather, is coming, to take its place is better, finer, nobler. But the old order had its charm. What a charm for me!—who had never known any woman well, who had dreamed of her passionately but purely and respectfully. There was much of pain—of shyness, fear of offending her higher nature, uneasiness lest I should be condemned and cast out—in those early days of married life. But it was a sweet sort of pain. And when we began to understand each other—to be human, though still on our best behavior—when we found that we were congenial, were happy together in ways undreamed of, life seemed to be paying not like the bankrupt it usually is when the time for redeeming its promises comes but like a benevolent prodigal, like a lottery whose numbers all draw capital prizes. I admit the truth of much the pessimists have to say against Life. But one thing I must grant it. When in its rare generous moments it relents, it does know how to play the host at the feast—how to spread the board, how to fill the flagons and to keep them filled, how to scatter the wreaths and the garlands, how to select the singers and the dancers who help the banqueters make merry. When I remember my honeymoon, I almost forgive you, Life, for the shabby tricks you have played me.
Now I can conceive a honeymoon that would last on and on, not in the glory and feverish joy of its first period, but in a substantial and satisfying human happiness. But not a honeymoon with a wife who is no more fitted to be a wife than the office boy is fitted to step in and take the president’s job. Patience, gentle reader! I know how this sudden shriek of discord across the amorous strains of the honeymoon music must have jarred your nerves. But be patient and I will explain.
Except ourselves, every other family in the house, in the neighborhood, had at least one servant. We had none. If Edna had been at all economical we might have kept a cook and pinched along. But Edna spent carelessly all the money I gave her, and I gave her all there was. A large part of it went for finery for her personal adornment, trash of which she soon tired—much of it she disliked as soon as it came home and she tried it on without the saleslady to flatter and confuse. I—in a good-natured way, for I really felt perfectly good-humored about it—remonstrated with her for letting everybody rob her, for getting so little for her money. She took high ground. Such things were beneath her attention. If I had wanted a wife of that dull, pinch-penny kind I’d certainly not have married her, a talented, educated woman, bent on improving her mind and her position in the world. And that seemed reasonable. Still, the money was going, the bills were piling up, and I did not know what to do.