FRANK CROSSE was a methodical young man—his enemies might sometimes have
called him pedantic,—and he loved to reduce his life to rule and order.
It was one of his peculiarities. But how about this new life into which
he was entering? It took two to draw up the rules for that. The little
two-oared craft who put out upon that voyage have to lay their own
course, each for itself; and all round them, as they go, they see the
floating timbers and broken keels of other little boats, which had once
started out full of hope and confidence. There are currents and eddies,
low sand-banks and sunken reefs, and happy the crews who see them ahead,
and trim their course to avoid them. Frank brooded over it all. He had
seen something of life, for his years. He was observant and reflective.
He had watched his friends who were happy, and he had watched his friends
who were not. And now, as a result of all this wise cogitation, he sat
down at a table one evening, with a solemn face, and a sheet of foolscap.
‘Now, Maude,’ said he, ‘I want to have a serious talk.’
Maude looked up in surprise from the linen which she was marking.
‘Oh dear!’ she cried.
‘Why “oh dear”?’
‘There’s something wrong?’
‘Nothing in the world.’
‘You looked so solemn, Frank. I thought you had been looking at the
tradesman’s books. What is it, dear?’
‘Well, Maude, I have been thinking of married life in general. Don’t you
think it would be a good thing if we were to make some resolutions as to
how it should be conducted—some fundamental principles, as it were?’
‘Oh do, dear, do! What fun it will be!’
‘But it’s serious, Maude.’
‘Yes, dear, I am quite serious.’
‘It seemed to me, that if we could reduce it to certain rules, then,
whatever came upon us in the future, we should always know exactly how to
act.’
‘What are the rules, dear?’
‘Well, we can only arrive at them by talking it over between ourselves.
I could not draw up a set of rules, and ask you to submit to them. That
is not my idea of a partnership. But if we found that we were agreed
upon certain points, then we could both adopt them by mutual consent.’
‘How charming, Frank! Do please tell me some of the points.’
‘I have a few in my mind, and I should like to hear any which you may
have—any ideas, you know, how to get the very highest and best out of our
life. Now, first of all, there is the subject of quarrelling.’
‘O Frank, how horrid!’
‘Dear girl, we must look into the future. We are going to live all our
lives together. We must foresee and prepare for all the chances of
life.’
‘But that is absurd.’
‘You can’t live all your life and never be in a bad temper!’
‘But not with _you_, Frank.’
‘Oh, I can be very aggravating sometimes. Now, my idea is this.
Ill-humour passes and hurts nobody. But if two people are ill-humoured,
then each excites the other, and they say ever so much more than they
mean. Let us make a compact never both to be ill-humoured at the same
time. If _you_ are cross, then it is your turn, and I stand clear. If
_I_ am cross, you let me work it off. When either hoists the
danger-signal, the other is on guard. What do you think of that?’
‘I think you are the funniest old boy—’
‘Do you agree?’
‘Yes, dear, of course I agree.’
‘Article number one,’ said Frank, and scribbled upon his paper.
‘Your turn, now.’
‘No, dear, I have not thought of anything.’
‘Well, then, here is another point. Never take each other for granted.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Never relax those attentions which one lover shows to another. Some
husbands seem to forget that their wives are ladies. Some wives speak to
their husbands with less courtesy and consideration than to any casual
male visitor. They mean no harm, but they get into a slack way. We must
not do that.’
‘I don’t think we are likely to.’
‘People get into it unconsciously. Pull me up sharply at the first
sign.’
‘Yes, sir, I will.’
‘The next point that I have noted is an extension of the last. Let each
strive to be worthy of the love of the other. People get slovenly and
slipshoddy, as if it didn’t matter now that they were married. If each
were very keen to please the other, that would not be so. How many women
neglect their music after marriage.’
‘My goodness, I haven’t practised for a week!’ cried Maude.
‘And their dress and their hair’—Maude’s hand flew up to her curls. ‘My
darling, yours is just perfect. But you know how often a woman grows
careless. “He will love me anyhow,” she says to herself, and perhaps she
is right, but still it is not as it should be.’
‘Why, Frank, I had no idea you knew so much.’
‘I have heard my friends’ experiences.—And the man too: he should
consider his wife’s feelings as much as he did his sweetheart’s. If she
dislikes smoke, he should not smoke. He should not yawn in her presence.
He should keep himself well-groomed and attractive. Look at that dirty
cuff! I have no business to have it.’
‘As if it could make any difference to me.’
‘There now! That is what is so demoralising. You should stand out for
the highest. When I came to you at St. Albans, I had not dirty cuffs.’
‘You forgive me the music, Frank, and I’ll forgive you the cuff. But I
agree to all you say. I think it is so wise and good. Now I’ve got
something to add.’
‘Good. What is it?’
‘Each should take an interest in the other’s department.’
‘Why, of course they should.’
‘But it is not done.’
‘Why naturally, dear, you take an interest in my City work.’
‘Yes, sir, but do you take as keen an interest in my housekeeping?’
‘Perhaps I have been a little thoughtless.’
‘No, no, dear, you haven’t. You are always full of consideration. But I
have noticed it with mother, and with others also. The husband pulls out
his cheque-book at the end of the week or month, and he says, “Well, this
is rather more than we can afford,” or “This is less than I expected,”
but he never really takes any interest in his wife’s efforts to keep
things nice on a little. He does not see it with her eyes and try to
realise her difficulties. Oh, I wish I could express myself better, but
I know that the interest is one-sided.’
‘I think what you say is quite right. I’ll try to remember that. How
shall we enter it upon our list?’
‘That Interests should be mutual.’
‘Quite right. I have it down. Well, any more points?’
‘It is your turn.’
‘Well, there is this, and I feel that it is just the holiest thing in
matrimony, and its greatest justification—that love should never
degenerate into softness, that each should consciously stimulate the
better part of the other and discourage the worse, that there should be a
discipline in our life, and that we should brace each other up to a
higher ideal. The love that says, “I know it is wrong, but I love him or
her so much that I can’t refuse,” is a poor sort of love for the
permanent use of married life. The self-respect which refuses to let the
most lofty ideal of love down by an inch is a far nobler thing, and it
wears better too.’
‘How will you express all that?’
‘Mutual respect is necessary for mutual love.’
‘Yes, I am sure that that is right.’
‘It sounds obvious, but the very intensity of love makes love soft and
blind. Now I have another, which I am convinced that you will not agree
with.’
‘Let me hear it.’
‘I have put it in this way, “The tight cord is the easiest to snap.”’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I mean that married couples should give each other a certain
latitude and freedom. If they don’t, one or other will sooner or later
chafe at the restriction. It is only human nature, which is an older and
more venerable thing than marriage.’
‘I don’t like that at all, Frank.’
‘I feared you wouldn’t, dear, but I believe you’ll see it with me when I
explain what I mean. If you don’t, then I must try to see it with you.
When one talks of freedom in married life, it means, as a rule, freedom
only for the man. He does what he likes, but still claims to be a strict
critic of his wife. That, I am sure, is wrong. To take an obvious
example of what I mean, has a husband a right to read his wife’s letters?
Certainly not, any more than she has a right to read his without his
permission. To read them as a matter of course would be stretching the
chain too tight.’
‘Chain is a horrid word, Frank.’
‘Well, it is only a metaphor. Or take the subject of friendships. Is a
married man to be debarred from all friendship and intimacy with another
woman?’
Maude looked doubtful.
‘I should like to see the woman first,’ she said.
‘Or is a married woman to form no friendship with another man who might
interest or improve her? There is such a want of mutual confidence in
such a view. People who are sure of each other should give each other
every freedom in that. If they don’t, they are again stretching it
tight.’
‘If they do, it may become so slack that it might as well not be there at
all.’
‘I felt sure that we should have an argument over this. But I have seen
examples. Look at the Wardrops. _There_ were a couple who were never
apart. It was their boast that everything was in common with them. If
he was not in, she opened his letters, and he hers. And then there came
a most almighty smash. The tight cord had snapped. Now, I believe that
for some people, it is a most excellent thing that they should take their
holidays at different times.’
‘O Frank!’
‘Yes, I do. No, not for us, by Jove! I am generalising now. But for
some couples, I am sure that it is right. They reconsider each other
from a distance, and they like each other the better.’
‘Yes, but these rules are for our guidance, not for that of other
people.’
‘Quite right, dear. I was off the rails. “As you were,” as your brother
Jack would say. But I am afraid that I am not going to convince you over
this point.’
Maude looked charmingly mutinous.
‘No, Frank, you are not. I don’t think marriage can be too close. I
believe that every hope, and thought, and aspiration should be in common.
I could never get as near to your heart and soul as I should wish to do.
I want every year to draw me closer and closer, until we really are as
nearly the same person as it is possible to be upon earth.’
When you have to surrender, it is well to do so gracefully. Frank
stooped down and kissed his wife’s hand, and apologised. ‘The wisdom of
the heart is greater than the wisdom of the brain,’ said he. But the
love of man comes from the brain, far more than the love of woman, and so
it is that there will always be some points upon which they will never
quite see alike.
‘Then we scratch out that item.’
‘No, dear. ‘Put “The cord which is held tight is the easiest to snap.”
That will be all right. The cord of which I speak is never held at all.
The moment it is necessary to hold it, it is of no value. It must be
voluntary, natural, unavoidable.’
So Frank amended his aphorism.
‘Anything more, dear?’
‘Yes, I have thought of one other,’ said she. ‘It is that if ever you
had to find fault with me about anything, it should be when we are
alone.’
‘And the same in your case with me. That is excellent. What can be more
vulgar and degrading than a public difference of opinion? People do it
half in fun sometimes, but it is wrong all the same. Duly entered upon
the minutes. Anything else?’
‘Only material things.’
‘Yes, but they count also. Now, in the matter of money, I feel that
every husband should allow his wife a yearly sum of her own, to be paid
over to her, and kept by her, so that she may make her own arrangements
for herself. It is degrading to a woman to have to apply to her husband
every time she wants a sovereign. On the other hand, if the wife has any
money, she should have the spending of it. If she chooses to spend part
of it in helping the establishment, that is all right, but I am sure that
she should have her own separate account, and her own control of it.’
‘If a woman really loves a man, Frank, how can she grudge him everything
she has? If my little income would take one worry from your mind, what a
joy it would be to me to feel that you were using it!’
‘Yes, but the man has his self-respect to think of. In a great crisis
one might fall back upon one’s wife—since our interests are the same, but
only that could justify it. So much for the wife’s money. Now for the
question of housekeeping.’
‘That terrible question!’
‘It is only hard because people try to do so much upon a little. Why
should they try to do so much? The best pleasures of life are absolutely
inexpensive. Books, music, pleasant intimate evenings, the walk among
the heather, the delightful routine of domestic life, my cricket and my
golf—these things cost very little.’
‘But you must eat and drink, Frank. And as to Jemima and the cook, it is
really extraordinary the amount which they consume.’
‘But the tendency is for meals to become much too elaborate. Why that
second vegetable?’
‘There now! I knew that you were going to say something against that
poor vegetable. It costs so little.’
‘On an average, I have no doubt that it costs threepence a day. Come
now, confess that it does. Do you know what threepence a day comes to in
a year? There is no use in having an accountant for a husband, if you
can’t get at figures easily. It is four pounds eleven shillings and
threepence.’
‘It does not seem very much.’
‘But for that money, and less, one could become a member of the London
Library, with the right to take out fifteen books at a time, and all the
world’s literature to draw from. Now just picture it: on one side, all
the books in the world, all the words of the wise, and great, and witty;
on the other side, a lot of cauliflowers and vegetable-marrows and French
beans. Which is the better bargain?’
‘Good gracious, we shall never have a second vegetable again!’
‘And pudding?’
‘My dear, you always eat the pudding.’
‘I know I do. It seems an obvious thing to do when the pudding is there
in front of me. But if it were not there, I should neither eat it nor
miss it, and I know that you care nothing about it. There would be
another five or six pounds a year.’
‘We’ll have a compromise, dear. Second vegetable one day, pudding the
next.’
‘Very good.’
‘I notice that it is always after you have had a substantial meal that
you discuss economy in food. I wonder if you will feel the same when you
come back starving from the City to-morrow? Now, sir, any other
economy?’
‘I don’t think money causes happiness. But debt causes unhappiness. And
so we must cut down every expense until we have a reserve fund to meet
any unexpected call. If you see any way in which I could save, or any
money I spend which you think is unjustifiable, I do wish that you would
tell me. I got into careless ways in my bachelor days.’
‘That red golfing-coat.’
‘I know. It was idiotic of me.’
‘Never mind, dear. You look very nice in it. After all, it was only
thirty shillings. Can you show me any extravagance of mine?’
‘Well, dear, I looked at that dressmaker’s bill yesterday.’
‘O Frank, it is such a pretty dress, and you said you liked it, and you
have to pay for a good cut, and you said yourself that a wife must not
become dowdy after marriage, and it would have cost double as much in
Regent Street.’
‘I didn’t think the dress dear.’
‘What was it, then?’
‘The silk lining of the skirt.’
‘You funny boy!’
‘It cost thirty shillings extra. Now, what can it matter if it is lined
with silk or not?’
‘Oh, doesn’t it? Just you try one and see.’
‘But no one can know that it is lined with silk.’
‘When I rustle into a room, dear, every woman in it knows that my skirt
is lined with silk.’
Frank felt that he had ventured out of his depth, so he struck out for
land again.
‘There’s only one economy which I don’t think is justifiable,’ said he,
‘and that is, to cut down your subscriptions to charities. It is such a
very cheap way of doing things. Not that I do much in that line—too
little, perhaps. But to say that because _we_ want to economise,
therefore some poor people are to suffer, is a very poor argument. We
must save at our own expense.’
So now Frank, in his methodical fashion, had all his results tabulated
upon his sheet of foolscap. It was not a very brilliant production, but
it might serve as a chart for the little two-oared boats until a better
one is forthcoming. It ran in this way—
_Maxims for the Married_