Here we have, in the first year, a young man and woman who have come together, not through any overmastering force of passion, but as middle-class men and women are mostly brought together, by the accidents of juxtaposition, and by a pleasant sentiment. They met, before marriage, at tennis parties, at suburban dances, at evening At Homes. By the laws of natural selection, aided a little by anxious mothers, this young man and this young woman find out, or think they find out, that they are “suited” to each other. That is to say, the young man thrills in a pleasant way in the presence of the girl, and she sees the timidity in his eyes when she looks at him, and she knows that her laughter, the touch of her hand, the little tricks and graces she has learnt from girl-friends, or from actresses in musical comedy, or from instinct, attract him to her. She leads him on, by absurd little tiffs, artfully arranged, by a pretence of flirtation with other boys, by provocative words, by moments of tenderness changing abruptly to sham indifference, or followed by little shafts of satire which wound his pride, and sting him into desire for her. He pursues her, not knowing that he is pursued, so that they meet half-way. This affair makes him restless, ill at ease. It interrupts his work and his ambitions. Presently it becomes an obsession, and he knows that he has “fallen in love.” He makes his plans accordingly.
In the middle-classes love still presupposes marriage (though the idea is not so fast-rooted as in the old days), but how the dickens is he to manage it? He is just starting his career as Something in the City, or as a solicitor, barrister, journalist, artist, doctor. His income is barely sufficient for himself, according to his way of life, which includes decent clothes, a club, a game of golf when he feels like it, a motor-cycle or a small car, a holiday abroad, theatres, a bachelor dinner now and again—the usual thing. He belongs to the younger generation, with wider interests, larger ideas, higher ambitions than those with which his father and mother started life.
He could not start on their level. Times have changed. He remembers his father’s reminiscences of early struggles, of the ceaseless anxiety to make both ends meet, of the continual stinting and scraping to keep the children “decent,” to provide them with a good education, to give them a fair start in life. He remembers his mother in his own childhood. She was always mending stockings. There was always a litter of needlework on the dining-room table after supper.
There were times when she “did” without a maid, and exhausted herself with domestic drudgery. There were no foreign holidays then, only a week or two at the seaside once a year. There was precious little pocket money for the boys. They were conscious of their shabby gentility, and hated it.
The modern young man looks with a kind of horror upon all this domestic squalor, as he calls it. He couldn’t stand it. If marriage means that for him he will have none of it. But need it mean that? He and Winifred will scheme out their lives differently. They will leave out the baby side of the business—until they can afford to indulge in it. They will live in a little flat, and furnish it, if necessary, on the hire system. They will cut out the domestic drudgery. They will enjoy the fun of life, and shelve the responsibilities until they are able to pay for them. After all it will not be long before he is earning a good income. He has got his feet on the first rang of the ladder, and, with a little luck——
So he proposes to the girl, and she pretends to be immensely surprised, though she has been eating her heart out while he hesitated, and delayed, and pondered. They pledge each other, “till death do us part,” and the girl, who has been reading a great many novels lately, is very happy because her own plot is working out according to the rules of romance.
They live in a world of romance before the marriage day. The man seems to walk on air when he crosses London Bridge on his way to the City. Or if he is a barrister he sees the beauty of his girl’s face in his brief—and is in danger of losing his case. Or if a journalist he curses his irregular hours which keep him from the little house in Tulse Hill, or the flat in Hampstead, where there is a love-light in the windows. He knows the outward look of the girl, her softness, her prettiness, her shy glance when he greets her. He knows her teasing ways, her tenderness, her vivacity. Only now and then he is startled by her stupidity, or by her innocence, or by her ignorance, or—still more startling—by her superior wisdom of the ways of the world, by her shrewd little words, by a sudden revelation of knowledge about things which girls are not supposed to know.
But these things do not count. Only sentiment and romance are allowed to count. These two people who are about to start on the long road of life together are utterly blind to each other’s vices or virtues. They are deeply ignorant of each other’s soul. They know nothing of the real man or the real woman hidden beneath the mask of social conventions, beneath the delightful, sham of romantic affection. They know nothing of their own souls, nor of the strength that is in them to stand the test of life’s realities. They know nothing of their own weakness.
So they marry.
And for the first year they are wonderfully happy. For the first year is full of excitement. They thrill to the great adventure of marriage. They are uplifted with passionate love which seems likely to last for ever. They have a thousand little interests. Even the trivialities of domesticity are immensely important. Even the little disasters of domesticity are amusing. They find a lot of laughter in life. They laugh at the absurd mistakes of the servant-maids who follow in quick succession. They laugh at their own ridiculous miscalculations with regard to the expense of house-keeping. They laugh when visitors call at awkward moments and when the dinner is spoilt by an inefficient cook. After all, the comradeship of a young man and wife is the best thing in life, and nothing else seems to matter. They are such good comrades that the husband never leaves his wife a moment in his leisure time. He takes her to the theatre with him. They spend week-ends together, far from the madding crowd. They pluck the flowers of life, hand in hand, as lovers. The first year merges into the second. Not yet do they know each other.