“I am not going to write about husbands,” I said, “least of all my own, but about marriage as an institution; the part it plays in the evolution of human beings.”
“Nevertheless, everything you say about it will reflect upon me,” argued Himself. “The only husband a woman knows is her own husband, and everything she thinks about marriage is gathered from her own experience.”
“Your attitude is not only timid, it is positively cowardly!” I exclaimed. “You are an excellent husband as husbands go, and I don’t consider that I have retrograded mentally or spiritually during our ten years of life together. It is true nothing has been said in private or public about any improvement in me due to your influence, but perhaps that is because the idea has got about that your head is easily turned by flattery.—Anyway, I shall be entirely impersonal in what I write. I shall say I believe in marriage because I cannot think of any better arrangement; also that I believe in marrying men because there is nothing else to marry. I shall also quote that feminist lecturer who said that the bitter business of every woman in the world is to convert a trap into a home. Of course I laughed inwardly, but my shoulders didn’t shake for two minutes as yours did. They were far more eloquent than any loose leaf from a diary; for they showed every other man in the audience that you didn’t consider that you had to set any ‘traps’ for me!”
Himself leaned back in his chair and gave way to unbridled mirth. When he could control his speech, he wiped the tears from his eyes and said offensively:—
“Well, I didn’t; did I?”
“No,” I replied, flinging the tea-cosy at his head, missing it, and breaking the oleander on the plant-shelf ten feet distant.
“You wouldn’t be unmarried for the world!” said Himself. “You couldn’t paint every day, you know you couldn’t; and where could you find anything so beautiful to paint as your own children unless you painted me; and it just occurs to me that you never paid me the compliment of asking me to sit for you.”
“I can’t paint men,” I objected. “They are too massive and rugged and ugly. Their noses are big and hard and their bones show through everywhere excepting when they are fat and then they are disgusting. Their eyes don’t shine, their hair is never beautiful, they have no dimples in their hands and elbows; you can’t see their mouths because of their moustaches, and generally it’s no loss; and their clothes are stiff and conventional with no colour, nor any flowing lines to paint.”
“I know where you keep your ‘properties,’ and I’ll make myself a mass of colour and flowing lines if you’ll try me,” Himself said meekly.
“No, dear,” I responded amiably. “You are very nice, but you are not a costume man, and I shudder to think what you would make of yourself if I allowed you to visit my property-room. If I ever have to paint you (not for pleasure, but as a punishment), you shall wear your everyday corduroys and I’ll surround you with the children; then you know perfectly well that the public will never notice you at all.” Whereupon I went to my studio built on the top of the long rambling New England shed and loved what I painted yesterday so much that I went on with it, finding that I had said to Himself almost all that I had in mind to say, about marriage as an institution.