Breaking off, he leaned forward, supporting his chin on his left hand as he stared at the fire. Little flames sprang up from the red mass, cast flickering lights on his serious face, and glowed in his dark blue eyes. Claud thought he had never seen so interesting a man in his life. Whether on board the Swan, in his white shirt and crimson sash, or here in these quaint London rooms of his, in modern Philistine dress-clothes, he seemed equally at home, yet equally distinguished.
Mr. Cranmer waited for what he would say—he would not break in upon his meditations.
"Have you ever," slowly he spoke at last, "have you ever given your really serious attention to the subject of marriage? I mean, in the abstract?"
Claud started, tossed his head combatively, while an eager light broke over his face.
"Yes, I have," he replied, quickly. "I have considered very few things in my life, but this I have seriously thought over."
"I am glad," said Percivale, simply. "I want to know how you regard it. What place ought marriage to take in a man's life? Is it an episode? Ought it to be left to chance? Or is it a thing to be deliberately striven and planned for as the completion of one's existence? Is happiness possible for an unmarried man?—I mean, of course, happiness in its deepest and fullest sense? Can a man whose experience of life is partial and imperfect, as a single man's must be—can he be said to be a judge at all, not having tried it in its most important aspect? What do you think?"
"I do wish," said Claud, in an irritable voice, "that you would not put your question in that way. I wish you would not follow the example of people who talk of marriage in such an absurdly generic way, as if it were a fixed state, a thing in which the symptoms must be the same in every case, like measles or scarlet fever. I have always thought the subject of marriage left remarkably little room for generalising. One marriage is no more like another than one man is like another. The Jones marriage differs essentially from the Smith, because they are the Jones, and the Smiths are the Smiths. Yet people will be absurd enough to argue that because Jones is unhappy Smith had better not try matrimony. If he were going to marry the same woman there might be a show of reason in such an argument; but even then it wouldn't follow, because he is not the same man."
Percivale's eyes were fixed on the speaker.
"I see," he said, reflectively. "Your view is that the individual side of our nature is the side which determines the success or failure of marriage."
"Certainly—especially in this age of detail. In the Middle Ages, when life was shorter, people took broader views; and, besides, they had no nerves. Any woman who was young and anything short of repulsive as to her appearance would suit your feudal baron, who would perhaps only enjoy her society for a few weeks in the intervals of following the duke to the wars, or despoiling his neighbor's frontier. When they did meet, it was among a host of servants, men-at-arms, poor relations, minstrels and retainers; they had no scope for boring each other. A man's value was enhanced in his wife's eyes when it was always an open question, as she bade him adieu, whether they ever met again in this world. Moreover, in those days the protection of a husband was absolutely necessary to a woman. Left a widow, she became, if poor, a prey for the vicious—if rich, for the designing. Eccentricities of temper must have been kept wonderfully in the background, when issues like these were almost always at stake; the broad sympathies of humanity are, generally speaking, the same. Any woman and man will be in unison on a question of life or death; but now-a-days how different! Maid, wife, or widow can inhabit a flat in South Kensington without any need of a male protector to "act the husband's coat and hat set up to drive the world-crows off from pecking in her garden"—which Romney Leigh conceived to be one, though the lowest, of a husband's duties. And your choice of a woman becomes narrowed when one cannot live in London, another will not emigrate, a third differs from you in politics, a fourth disdains all social duties, a fifth can only sit under a particular preacher, and yet another dare not be out of reach of her family doctor. Times are changed, sir. Marriage to-day depends on the individual."