He was one of those who shy at the _tête-à-tête_ life which, for a long
time, matrimony demands. As his wedding-day approached he grew fearful
of the prolonged conversation which would stretch from the day of
marriage, down the interminable vistas, to his death, and, more and
more, he became doubtful of his ability to cope with, or his endurance
to withstand, the extraordinary debate called marriage.
He was naturally a silent man. He did not dislike conversation if it
was kept within decent limits: indeed, he responded to it contentedly
enough, but when he had spoken or been addressed for more than an hour
he became, first, impatient, then bored, and, finally, sulky or
ill-mannered.--"With men," said he, "one can talk or be silent as one
wishes, for between them there is a community of understanding which
turns the occasional silence into a pregnant and fruitful interlude
wherein a thought may keep itself warm until it is wanted: but with a
woman!"--he could not pursue that speculation further, for his
acquaintance with the sex was limited.
In every other respect his bride was a happiness. Her good looks
soothed and pleased him. The touch of her hand gave him an
extraordinary pleasure which concealed within it a yet more
extraordinary excitement. Her voice, as a mere sound, enchanted him.
It rippled and flowed, deepened and tinkled. It cooed and sang to him
at times like the soft ringdove calling to its mate, and, at times
again, it gurgled and piped like a thrush happy in the sunlight. The
infinite variation of her tone astonished and delighted him, and if it
could have remained something as dexterous and impersonal as a wind he
would have been content to listen to it for ever--but, could he give
her pipe for pipe? Would the rich gurgle or the soft coo sound at last
as a horrid iteration, a mere clamour to which he must not only give an
obedient heed, but must even answer from a head wherein silence had so
peacefully brooded?
His mind was severe, his utterance staccato, and he had no knowledge of
those conversational arts whereby nouns and verbs are amazingly
transfigured into a gracious frolic or an intellectual pleasure. To
snatch the chatter from its holder, toss and keep it playing in the air
until another snatched it from him; to pluck a theory hot from the
stating, and expand it until it was as iridescent and, perhaps, as thin
as a soap-bubble: to light up and vivify a weighty conversation until
the majestic thing sparkled and glanced like a jewel--these things he
could not do, and he knew it. Many a time he had sat, amazed as at an
exhibition of acrobatics, while around him the chatter burst and sang
and shone. He had tried to bear his part, but had never been able to
edge more than one word into that tossing cataract, and so he fell to
the habit of listening instead of speaking.
With some reservations, he enjoyed listening, but particularly he
enjoyed listening to his own thoughts as they trod slowly, but very
certainly, to foregone conclusions. Into the silent arena of his mind
no impertinent chatter could burst with a mouthful of puns or ridicule,
or a reminiscence caught on the wing and hurled apropos to the very
centre of discussion. His own means of conveying or gathering
information was that whereby one person asked a question and another
person answered it, and, if the subject proved deeper than the
assembled profundity, then one pulled out the proper volume of an
encyclopaedia, and the pearl was elicited as with a pin.
Meanwhile, his perturbation was real. There are people to whom we need
not talk--let them pass: we overlook or smile distantly at the
wretches, retaining our reputation abroad and our self-respect in its
sanctuary: but there are others with whom we may not be silent, and
into this latter category a wife enters with assured emphasis. He
foresaw endless opportunities for that familiar discussion to which he
was a stranger. There were breakfast-tables, dinner-tables,
tea-tables, and, between these, there might be introduced those
preposterous other tables which women invent for no purpose unless it
be that of making talk. His own breakfast, dinner, and tea-tables had
been solitary ones, whereat he lounged with a newspaper propped against
a lamp, or a book resting one end against the sugar-bowl and the other
against his plate.--This quietude would be ravaged from him for ever,
and that tumult nothing could exorcise or impede. Further than these,
he foresaw an interminable drawing-room, long walks together, and
other, even more confidential and particular, sequestrations.
After one has married a lady, what does one say to her? He could not
conceive any one saying anything beyond "Good-morning." Then the other
aspect arrested him, "What does a woman find to say to a man?" Perhaps
safety lay in this direction, for they were reputed notable and
tireless speakers to whom replies are not pressingly necessary. He
looked upon his sweetheart as from a distance, and tried to reconstruct
her recent conversations.--He was amazed at the little he could
remember. "I, I, I, we, we, we, this shop, that shop, Aunt Elsa, and
chocolates." She had mentioned all these things on the previous day,
but she did not seem to have said anything memorable about them, and,
so far as he could recollect, he had said nothing in reply but "Oh,
yes" and "To be sure!" Could he sustain a lifetime of small-talk on
these meagre responses? He saw in vision his most miserable
tea-table--a timid husband and a mad wife glaring down their noses at
plates. The picture leaped at him as from a cinematograph and appalled
him. . . . After a time they would not even dare to look at each
other. Hatred would crouch behind these figures, waiting for its chain
to be loosed!
So he came to the knowledge that he, so soon to be a husband, had been
specially fashioned by nature to be a bachelor. For him safety lay in
solitude: others, less rigorously planned, might safely venture into
the haphazard, gregarious state of wedlock, but he not only could not,
but must not, do so, and he meditated an appeal to his bride to release
him from the contract. Several times the meditation almost became
audible, but always, just as he toppled on the surge of speech, the
dear lady loosed a torrent of irrelevancies which swirled him from all
anchorage, and left him at the last stranded so distantly from his
thought that he did not know how to find his way back to it.
It would be too brutally direct to shatter information about silk at
one shilling the yard with a prayer for matrimonial freedom. The girl
would be shocked--he could see her--she would stare at him, and
suddenly grow red in the face and stammer; and he would be forced to
trail through a lengthy, precise explanation of this matter which was
not at all precise to himself. Furthermore, certain obscure emotions
rendered him unwilling to be sundered from this girl.--There was the
touch of her hand; more, the touch of her lips given bravely and with
ready modesty--a contact not lightly to be relinquished. He did not
believe he could ever weary of looking at her eyes: they were grey,
widely open, and of a kindness such as he could not disbelieve in; a
radiant cordiality, a soft, limpid goodwill; believing and trustful
eyes which held no guile when they looked at him: there were her
movements, her swiftness, spaciousness, her buoyant certainty: one
remembered her hair, her hands, the way she wore a frock, and a
strange, seductive something about the look of her shoe.
The thing was not possible! It is the last and darkest insult to tell
the woman who loves you that you do not wish to marry her. Her
indignant curiosity may be appeased only by the excuse that you like
some other woman better, and although she may hate the explanation she
will understand it--but no less legitimate excuse than this may pass
sunderingly between a man and a woman.
It lay, therefore, that he must amend his own hand, and, accordingly,
for the purpose of marital intercourse, he began a sad inquiry into the
nature of things. The world was so full of things: clouds and winds
and sewing machines, kings and brigands, hats and heads, flower-pots,
jam and public-houses--surely one could find a little to chat about at
any moment if one were not ambitiously particular. With inanimate
objects one could speak of shape and colour and usefulness. Animate
objects had, beside these, movements and aptitudes for eating and
drinking, playing and quarrelling. Artistic things were well or badly
executed, and were also capable of an inter-comparison which could not
but be interesting and lengthy.--These things could all be talked
about. There were positive and negative qualities attaching to
everything, and when the former was exhausted the latter could still be
profitably mined--"Order," said he, "subsists in everything, and even
conversation must be subject to laws capable of ascertainment."
He carefully, and under the terms of badinage, approached other men,
inquiring how they bore themselves in the matrimonial dispute, and what
were the subjects usually spoken of in the intimacies of family life.
But from these people he received the smallest assistance.--Some were
ribald, some jocose, some so darkly explanatory that intelligence could
not peer through the mist or could only divine that these hated their
wives. One man held that all domestic matters should be left entirely
to the wife and that talking was a domestic matter. Another said that
the words "yes, no, and why" would safeguard a man through any
labyrinth, however tortuous. Another said that he always went out when
the wife began to speak; and yet another suggested that the only
possible basis for conversation was that of perpetual opposition, where
an affirmation was always countered by a denial, and the proving of the
case exercised both time and intelligence.
As he sat in the train beside his wife the silence which he so dreaded
came upon them. Emptiness buzzed in his head. He sought diligently
for something to speak about--the characteristics of objects! There
were objects and to spare, but he could not say--"that window is
square, it is made of glass," or, "the roof of this carriage is flat,
it is made of wood."
Suddenly his wife buried her face in her muff, and her shoulders were
convulsed. . . .
Love and contrition possessed him on the instant. He eased his husky
throat, and the dreaded, interminable conversation began--
"What are you crying for, my dear?" said he.