This confession of her own lifelong poverty should have turned me aside from my fell purpose, but it did not—it merely encouraged me to go on. In place of saying, "My dear girl, as compensation for all those years of care and humiliating poverty you deserve a spacious home, with servants and a carriage. Realizing that I can offer you only continued poverty and added anxiety, I here and now relinquish my design. I withdraw in favor of a better and richer man"—instead of uttering these noble words, what did I do? I did the exact opposite! I proceeded to press my selfish, remorseless, unwarranted demand!
It is customary for elderly men to refer either flippantly or with gentle humor to their days of courtship, forgetting (or ignoring) the tremulous eagerness, the grave questioning and the tender solemnity of purpose with which they weighed the joys and responsibilities of married life. It is easy to be cynical or evasive or unduly sentimental in writing of our youthful love affairs, when the frosts of sixty years have whitened our heads, after years of toil and care have dimmed our eyes and thinned our blood, but I shall permit neither of these unworthy moods to color my report of this day's emotion. I shall not deny the alternating moments of hope and doubt, of bitterness and content, which made that afternoon both sweet and sad.
The thing I was about to do was tragically destructive—I knew that. To put out a hand, to arrest this happy and tranquil girl, saying, "Come, be my wife. Come, suffer with me, starve with me," was a deed whose consequences scared me while they allured me. I felt the essential injustice of such a marriage, and I foresaw some of its accompanying perplexities, but I did not turn aside as I should have done. With no dependable source of income, with an invalid mother to care for, I asked this artist, so urban, so native to the studio, so closely knit to her joyous companions in the city, to go with me into exile, into a country town, to be the housekeeper of a commonplace cottage filled with aged people! "It is monstrous selfishness; it is wrong," I said, "but I want you."
My philosophy, even at that time, was essentially individualistic. I believed in the largest opportunity to every human soul. Equal rights meant Equal rights in my creed. I had no intention of asking Zulime Taft to sink her individuality in mine. I wanted her to remain herself. Marriage, as I contemplated it, was to be not a condition where the woman was a subordinate but an equal partner, and yet how unequal the sacrifice! "I ask you to join your future with mine. It's a frightful risk, but I am selfish enough to wish it."
Under no illusion about my own character, I admitted that there is no special charm in a just man. To have a sense of honor is fine, but to have a joyous and lovely disposition makes a man a great deal easier to live with. I was perfectly well aware that as a husband I would prove neither lovely nor joyous. My temper was not habitually cheerful. Like most writers, I was self-absorbed, filled with a sense of the importance of my literary designs. To be "just" was easy, but to be charming and considerate—these were the points on which I was sure to fail, and I knew it. Did that deter me? Not at all! Bitterly unwilling to surrender Zulime to the richer and kindlier man who was, undoubtedly, waiting at that moment to receive her and cherish her, I pleaded with her to share my poverty and my hope of future fame.
Shaken by my appeal, she asked for time in which to consider this problem. "I ought to talk with Lorado," she said.
The mere fact that she could not decide against me at the moment gave me confidence. "Very well," I said. "Mother wants me—I shall go home for a week. Let me know when I can come again. I hope it will not be more than a week."
In this arrangement we rested, and as we walked back to camp I cared nothing for the sly words or glances of our fellow artists. I believed I had won my case.
My mother's demand for my presence did not arise—I soon learned—from any return of her malady, but from a desire for news of my courtship. "Where's my new daughter? Why didn't you bring her?" she demanded.
"She couldn't come this time. The question is still unsettled."