BOOK THREE
CHAPTER I
THE EXTREME MONOGAMY OF MR. RAWN
I
It is always more or less annoying to put away a wife. Even if the expense of the process be little, as in these modern days it has come to be, and even if consent thereto be mutual, as is so often the case, there are in practically all cases so many unpleasant attendant features as almost to dispose one to favor the abolishment of the marriage idea, and to condemn it as one not destined to survive in these days of modern competition. This, the more especially as regards that monogamic idea of marriage which the government at Washington harshly seeks to extend over our entire domain. As to the idea of polygamy, much may be said in its favor. Thus, if one be tired of one wife, or bored by another, in polygamy it is easy to shift the domestic scene to a third, and that in wholly good-humored fashion. The idea of divorce has about it something almost personal, as though one were displeased over some matter, as though one held in one's heart something actually of criticism, or dissatisfaction, or mayhap condemnation of one's own earlier judgment in the selection of a helpmeet.
Again, even after divorce has been consummated, there are so many small habits to be broken, heritage and hold-over of relations but recently sundered. For instance, if one has been accustomed every Friday evening to have shoulder of pork and boiled cabbage at table, and if only one woman has evinced ability to prepare shoulder of pork and cabbage in the proper manner, and if that woman has chanced to be one's lately current wife, it is, let us repeat, an annoying thing to find that that particular woman, after deliberately forming and fostering in one a craving for shoulder of pork and cabbage—after having established an addiction, as it were, in one's soul for that viand—has with shameless disregard of wifely duty and domestic decency obliged one to divorce her, perhaps ex vinculo, or at least ab mensa et thoro.
And again there may be yet other habits upon the one hand or the other which must be broken or readjusted. If one's wife—or one of one's wives—has been in the habit of leaving her tatting each afternoon on the top of the table near the best view out of the bow window, and if one sees continually this abandoned tatting permanently left there in the confusion of her permanent departure—it is annoying, let us repeat, to be reminded of a habit to whose creator we have said farewell. It causes a mental ennui constantly to be removing tatting or embroidery.
Or, if one's current wife has had the old-fashioned and not wholly well-bred habit of meeting one at the door of an evening, at the close of the day's labors—just as in the evening the cave woman greeted her man at the mouth of the cave to ask him what had been the fortune of the day's hunt—and if now that footfall, ill-bred, yet after all habitual—and was it wholly unwelcome, after all?—shall have ceased for ever, with what equanimity, let us ask, can we regard the memory of the woman who formed that habit and handed down an annoying expectation to her husband, impossible of fulfillment after her departure?
It is, as John Rawn wisely has said, true that much may be said in favor of the idea of marriage; yet upon the other hand, how very much there is that could be said against it, or at least against it as implying an unrestricted continuance, offering no change in association. The which is by way of saying something to prove John Rawn's excellently philosophical course in life to have been quite correct. There could have been no doubt as to the wisdom of his marrying Laura, his wife, in the first place, no doubt as to the wisdom of continuing the marriage relation with her for many years; but, upon the other hand, it is obvious that his idea of the timeliness of the divorce in due season was equally wise. Indeed, the only reservation in his mind in regard to this latter matter was one of censure for a woman who, having entered into the holy state of matrimony with a gentleman of his parts, had had the temerity to create in his soul an addiction for shoulder of pork and cabbage; who had left her tatting upon the table; and who, departing, had given no future address whither her tatting might be sent! Yes, Laura Rawn had been, without doubt or question, an unreasonable and unkind wife.
Above all it was wrong for a woman to go away and leave her late husband feeling so much alone. Why should he, John Rawn, be allowed to become conscious of a feeling of lonesomeness? Why should he be left to dread the drawing of the curtains at night, when there remained only the pound of the surf along the wall, the wail of the wind in the cornice? One chloroforms a formerly prized dog, but misses it. It is much the same way with the divorced wife. Too many unpleasant features attend the process of such separation. Any civilization worth the name ought to devise some method less annoying for this which Mr. Rawn has so fittingly described as the corollary of the marriage rite. Surely our boasted age has its drawbacks, its shortcomings!