And as the visitor steers his way pleasantly through the meal, he makes the acquaintance of an extraordinary number of relatives. The spoons, he finds, are from Aunt Amy. Aunt Amy lives in Syracuse and at first objected to the match. The salt cellar is from a male cousin who (you learn this from Jack), it was thought at one time, would be the fortunate man himself—that is, until Jack appeared on the scene. Poor fellow, he sought consolation by marrying, only two months later, a nice girl from Alexandria, Va. The cut-glass salad dish is from the bride's dearest friend at boarding-school, a charming girl, who paints and sings and is now studying music in Berlin.
When the coffee is brought in, Jack asks if you will smoke. This is, in a way, the most dangerous situation of the entire evening. If you say yes, Jack is apt to pass the cigars and and say, "Go right ahead. I have given it up, you know, and I feel all the better for it." But if you are expert in reading faces, and decide that the bride probably has conscientious scruples against the habit, and you reply "No," Jack is likely to say, "Sorry, but Alice allows me one cigar a day after dinner," and you are left to suffer the torments of the lost, and have lied into the bargain. Nor is it possible to lay down any rule for arriving at the correct reply under such circumstances. A hurried glance about the house will not help one. A handsome bronze ash-tray may be only a paperweight. Young wives are in the habit of buying their husbands the most ornate smoking apparatus, with the understanding that it shall never be used.
It is after dinner that reflection comes; and with it comes a touch of sorrowful wonder. Jack bears himself with great equanimity in his new condition; but it is apparent, nevertheless, that he has changed from what you knew him. In the first place, he has built up a comprehensive system of domestic serfdom to which he cheerfully submits. He glories in his enslavement; he rattles his chains. He actually boasts of the habit he has acquired of dropping in at the grocer's every morning on his way to the office. When it is the maid's day out, Jack insists on helping with the dishes and he tells you with pride that, given plenty of hot water, there is nothing in that line which he would hesitate to undertake. He makes it a point to visit Washington Market at least twice a week, and he comes home with cuts, joints, steaks, rounds, poultry, fish, game, and fruits in dazzling variety. He carries these things conspicuously in the Subway. And Jack's wife is appreciative of his kind intentions, and lets him bring, from long distances, meats which she can purchase at several cents a pound less from her butcher two blocks away.
The passion for acquiring food commodities is only one phase of Jack's new character. You begin to see now that all these years you have never suspected what capacities for home-building he had in him. In the presence of any kind of article offered for sale his overmastering passion is to buy the thing and take it home. Instinct apparently impels him to store up quite useless supplies against a future emergency. He haunts hardware stores, he rummages in antique furniture shops, and you may see him any day during the lunch hour flattening his nose against windowfuls of copper and brass ware. He buys patent hammers by the quarter dozen, as well as nails, tacks, screws, bolts, casters, brackets, and curtain poles. He brings home Japanese vases from the auction rooms. One day he acquired a step-ladder; it came by wagon because they refused to let him take it into the Subway.
And Jack's wife acquiesces in his self-imposed servitude. She does not demand it; she is even a good deal incommoded by it. But her woman's instinct tells her that the thing is a disease, which a man must catch, like the measles. Until the husband's passion for home-building quiets down, she is content to accept the unnatural situation; she is even proud to have inspired it.
But as Jack prattles on, and Jack's wife smiles over her embroidery frame, it comes over you that, despite all the kindly communion of the evening, you are an outsider there. You ask yourself bitterly whether there is such a thing as constancy in man, whether there is such a thing as true comradeship or affection. For fifteen years, from your freshman year at high school, you and Jack have been what the world calls friends. What are you now? Jack still calls you friend; apparently that is the reason why you have just dined with him and his wife. But in reality you are not there as his friend. You are there as the guest of this newly-constituted social unit, this new family. You are there not as a person, but as part of an institution.
And just when you are ready to accept the new situation you are swept away by the unreality of the entire arrangement. It is inconceivable that Jack should have thrown you over for this alien person whom he calls wife. Your habits and Jack's are so much alike; your tastes, your outlook upon life. You used to play the same games at college, sing the same songs, smoke the same tobacco, wear each other's clothes, and now Jack has thrown you over for one with whom in the nature of things he can have none of those habits in common. It is not merely puzzling; it grows almost absurd. You shake your head over it some time after you have said good-night, and the bride has told you that as a dear friend of Jack's, they always will be pleased to have you call.