"Yes, I did," she continued, "and, as far as I could make out, it wasn"t their easy ideas about marriage that caused their decline, but their--what shall I say?--their general moral slackness... ."
"I know," said Isolda, coming to the rescue. "I was reading a frightfully interesting book about it the other day, _Imperial Purple_.
It was the relaxing of all ideals, the giving way entirely to carnal appet.i.tes, the utter lack of moral backbone consequent on excess of luxury and prosperity that smashed up the Romans. But if a strenuous, cold-blooded nation like ourselves chose to relax the stringent conditions of marriage, and kept strictly to the innovation, well, it"s absurd to say all our ideals would deteriorate and the Empire collapse in consequence!"
"Hear, hear! Worthy of the Bluestocking herself!"
"Very well," said Miranda. "I"ll give in about the Romans if you like, just so as to get on with the conversation. Now let"s have your gorgeous idea, Amoret."
"It"s just this," said Amoret. "_Duogamy._"
"_Duo_--two?"
"Exactly--two partners apiece. We"re all so complex nowadays that one can"t possibly satisfy us. Two would just do it. Two would serve to relax the tension of married life, and yet would not lead to what the newspapers call licence. Everyone would have another chance, and what the first partner lacked would be supplied by the second."
"It"s not such a bad idea," said Isolda, musingly. "Launcelot could choose a good walker and bridge player for his alternative wife, and I"d try to find a man who hated cards and never walked a step when he could possibly ride."
"I think it"s a grand idea," cried Miranda, enthusiastically. "Lysander could find a woman who"d play his accompaniments and love musical comedies, and I"d look out for a man who made a cult of the higher drama and had two permanent stalls at the Vedrenne-Barker Theatre."
"It would simply solve everything," cried Amoret, ecstatically.
"Whenever Theodore was disagreeable, off I"d go to my other one--and yet without feeling I was neglecting him, as he could go to _his_ other one.
She would probably be a worthy, stolid, stayless lady with none of my faults, and when he was fed up with her stolid staylessness he could come back to me, and my very faults, you see, would be pleasing to him by reason of their contrast to hers, and _vice versa_."
"It"s really a wonderful idea," said Isolda, thoughtfully, "I wonder no one thought of it before. There would be fewer old maids, as men wouldn"t be so terribly shy of matrimony when they knew there would always be that second chance. They wouldn"t expect so much from one wife as they do now. And think what a good effect it would have on our manners, too--how kind and polite and self-controlled we would be, under fear of being compared unfavourably with the other one."
"Yes, it would certainly keep us all up to the mark," reflected Miranda, "slovenly wives would make an effort to be smart, and shrewish ones would put a curb on their tongues. Husbands would be quite loverlike and attentive, in their anxiety to outdo the other fellow."
"It would smooth out the tangles all round," declared Amoret; "now just take the cases known to us personally. The Fred Smiths, for instance, haven"t spoken to each other for three years, just because Fred fell in love with Miss Brown and spends nearly all his time with her. Mrs Smith is broken-hearted, Fred looks miserable enough--a home where no one speaks to you must be simply Hades--and the Brown girl is always threatening to commit suicide. The affair has quite spoilt her life, and it must be very hard luck on the Smith children, growing up in such an atmosphere. My plan would have done away with all this misery: Fred could have married Miss Brown, and gone on living happily at intervals with Mrs Smith."
"But what would Mrs Smith do in the intervals? She happens to have found no counter attraction."
"Well, perhaps if duogamy had been the custom, she would have looked out for one," said Amoret, "most married women could find one alternative, I"m sure. But, any way, no plan is perfect, and there are lots of wives who wouldn"t want a second husband at all, and who would be only too glad of a restful period, when no dinners need be ordered. Then take the case of the Robinsons: d.i.c.k Jones adores Mrs Robinson and is utterly wretched because he can only be a friend to her. She is very fond of him, and fond of her husband too; she could make them both very happy if they would share her."
"I have often felt I could make two men happy," said Isolda. "Some of my best points are wasted on Launcelot. Then, too, he never tires of the country and his beloved golf, but I do, and when one of my fits of London-longing were to come over me I"d just run up to town and have a ripping time with my London husband."
"Without feeling you were doing anything wrong," supplemented Amoret, whose apparent experience of the qualms of conscience struck me as being rather suspicious.
"It"s no good, girls," said Miranda, suddenly. "It"s no good--duogamy"s off! Think of the servants!"
"Horrors, the servants!" said Isolda, blankly.
"Yes, I was afraid you would soon find out the one weak spot," said Amoret, regretfully. "Of course it would be awful having to cope with two lots of servants. One husband could afford to keep four or five, say, and the other only one or two, and each lot would get out of hand during the wife"s absence."
"So instead of having a perfectly deevy time with two husbands vying with each other in pleasing one, one would have a fearsome existence constantly breaking-in minions. Directly one had got A."s servants into order, it would be time to go back to B. and do the same there."
"No; thank you," said Isolda, firmly, "one lot is enough for me. I"ve said dozens of times, for the servant reason alone, that I wish I had never married. It would be madness to actually double one"s burden.
You can strike me off the list of duogamists, Amoret, until the Servant Question is solved by some new invention of machinery, or the importation of Chinese."
"Perhaps," Amoret suggested hopefully, "your alternative might consent to live in a hotel."
"No such luck," said Isolda, mournfully, "when a man marries it"s mostly for a home--why else should he marry unless it"s for the children? Good gracious! I"d forgotten all about the children. Of course that settles it."
"The _cul-de-sac_ of all reforms!" said Amoret, tragically. "It"s impossible to suggest any revision in the marriage system that isn"t instantly quashed by the children complication."
We all sat silent, busy with our thoughts, and then Isolda shuddered.
"Duogamy"s no good," she said emphatically, "and I _am_ so disappointed!"
VII
THE ADVANTAGES OF THE PRELIMINARY CANTER
"Marriage is terrifying, but so is a cold and forlorn old age."
--R. L. STEVENSON.
Of all the revolutionary suggestions for improving the present marriage system, the most sensible and feasible seems to me marriage "on approval"--in other words, a "preliminary canter." The procedure would be somewhat as follows: a couple on deciding to marry would go through a legal form of contract, agreeing to take each other as husband and wife for a limited term of years--say three. This period would allow two years for a fair trial, after the abnormal and exceptionally trying first year was over. Any shorter time would be insufficient. At the conclusion of the three years, the contracting parties would have the option of dissolving the marriage--the dissolution not to become absolute for another six months, so as to allow every opportunity of testing the genuineness of the desire to part. If no dissolution were desired, the marriage would then be ratified by a religious or final legal ceremony, and become permanently binding.
In the case of a marriage dissolved, each party would be free to wed again; but the second essay must be final and permanent from the start.
This restriction would be absolutely necessary if the preliminary canter plan is not to degenerate into a species of legalised free love, as there are many men, and some women, who would "always go on cantering,"
as Amoret expressed it once--and the upshot would be nothing less than leasehold marriage for the short term of three years.
It might be urged against this plan that many couples who come to grief in the danger zone of married life--_i.e._ nearing the tenth year--are perfectly happy in the early years. But human love being as mutable as it is, and people and conditions being so liable to change, it is impossible to arrive at any permanent marriage system which allows for this. It must, however, be remembered that, in the majority of unhappy unions, it is not the system, but the individuals who are to blame. The inst.i.tution of the conjugal novitiate would, however, reduce the number of divorces considerably, by making less possible the miserable misfits in temperament now so prevalent. It would give a second chance to those who had made a mistake, yet without resulting in that promiscuity of intercourse which is a danger to society and fatal to the best interests of the race. Of what other scheme can the same be said?
For married women in the novitiate period a new prefix would have to be invented, which they would retain if the union were dissolved. _Mrs_ would be the distinguishing prefix of women who had entered on the final and permanent state of matrimony. Whether the wife would take the husband"s surname during the probationary term would be another question for decision by the majority; I should incline to her retaining her maiden name with the aforesaid prefix, and only a.s.suming that of the husband with the Mrs of finality. But these are mere details.
As regards the important question of the children, the issue of a probationary union would, of course, be legitimate, but I think wise people would see to it that no children were born to them until the marriage had been finally ratified. Certainly children would be the exception rather than the rule, but the question of their custody in the case of dissolved marriages would be one requiring the most thoughtful legislation. To divide the child"s time between the parents is an undesirable expedient, and one that must to a certain extent be harmful, since a settled existence and routine is so essential for children"s well-being. Yet to deprive the father of them altogether is equally undesirable.
The conjugal novitiate is not a new scheme. It was practised prior to the Reformation in Scotland under the name of "hand-fasting." The parties met at the annual fairs, and by the ceremony of joining hands declared themselves man and wife for a year. On the anniversary of this function they were legally married by a priest--if all had gone well with them. If they had found the union a failure they parted.
PART IV
CHILDREN--THE _CUL-DE-SAC_ OF ALL REFORMS
"An early result, partly of her s.e.x, partly of her pa.s.sive strain is the founding, through the instrumentality of the first savage Mother, of a new and beautiful social state--Domesticity... . One day there appears in this roofless room that which is to teach the teachers of the world--a Little Child." --HENRY DRUMMOND.
"Every good woman is by nature a mother, and finds best in maternity her social and moral salvation. She shall be saved in child-bearing." --GRANT ALLEN.
"Children are a man"s power and his honour." --HOBBES.