CHAPTER XIII—THE INTERMITTENT COURTSHIP
ONLY by long service does one become an artist, but one becomes married by a simple ceremony. It is the tragedy of marriage, which is the most difficult of all the arts, that most people come to it without apprenticeship. Perhaps the popularity of widows as brides is due to the fact that the widow is a widow: that she has been broken in to marriage: that she has not everything to learn: that one, at any rate, of the contracting parties, is expert. There is much to be said for the policy of the “trial trip.”
Courtship, if intimate enough, may be a fairish substitute, bowdlerized, as it were, for a “trial trip,” but when Sam married Ada he knew pitiably little about her.
He thought that she was wonderful. Not only had he to think it, but he actually did think it. He had to think it because only for a prodigy among women could he have treated his mother as he did. He had thought her crazy when she put her hand into the lire, but he knew it was heroic. If she were crazy, it was for love for him, and at the core, he loved her too and felt ashamed of himself, but Ada stood between them, and he was not going to give up Ada. Then he was busy, time wore on, custom blunted the prick of conscience, and it finally became a habit either not to think of Anne at all, or to think comfortably of her as happy enough with Madge.
And he actually thought Ada wonderful because the conditions of his courtship fought for her. He was visibly prospering; he liked prosperity; it was Ada who had initiated his prosperity; and she was glamorous for that. Again, he was very busy in those days with the first steps of his new business, too occupied to play the diligent lover, and saw her very fitfully. So seen, she did not lose the wonder of surprise, but came upon him freshly with each of their meetings, able to parade for each some new attraction from her slender stock of charm. She kept their intercourse egregiously correct, and he thought her mystery was infinite. She hid her shallowness behind affected modesty, knowing that an intimate courtship would discover to him that there was nothing to discover, and attracted by aloofness. It was immensely clever in its short-winded way: a cleverness that lasted the course of courtship, but evaporated when the tape—the altar—was reached. It did not seem necessary to Ada to go on being clever once that ring was on her finger. She was married, she had achieved: she was clever for the spurt, and had no cleverness left, for the Marathon Race. And Sam had many preoccupations in those days which prevented him from thinking too much about Ada.
If he was dull about his courtship, his wits were sharp enough for other matters. He had the satisfaction, almost from the day of its issue, of seeing the pamphlet sell steadily. Very quickly it ceased to be a case of getting his money back, and became merely a question of how many cents per cent he was going to make. His first edition of five thousand (the soi-disant thousand) was rapidly exhausted, and the presses of Carter Meadowbank worked overtime to cope with the demand. He cast bread upon the waters by sending copies to every name in the Clergy List and every Member of Parliament; and did not cast in vain. Free advertisement was lavished upon him. Somehow, he had found one of those times when the social conscience is stirred: he published, without knowing it, opportunely, and the diabolic cleverness of Gerald Adams’ writing steered him safely past the rocks of the Public Prosecutor. It seemed only to stimulate demand when he raised the price to a shilling.
He had no further trouble with the pamphlet. It sold itself, but sitting still watching the wheels go round did not appeal to Sam, who had a thousand pounds to multiply. He hadn’t quite the hardihood to believe that he could multiply his thou sand as rapidly as he had the twenty-five which he paid Adams, but he felt that he was launched as a publisher and had nothing to publish.
His thoughts were diverted from that solecism one day when he went into Carter’s printing-office to speed up the foreman. The foreman admitted that the pace could be improved. “But I dunno, sir, that the boss wants it improved. There’s nothing in to follow this job of yours. You might say you’ve been the saving of Mr. Carter.”