Herbert Wells - Marriage

"Adorable young people," he said. "Adorable happy young people....

"Did you notice, dear, how she held that dainty little chin of hers?...

"Pride is such a good thing, my dear, clear, straight pride like theirs—and they were both so proud!...

"Isn't it good, dear, to think that once you and I may have looked like that to some passer-by. I wish I could bless them—sweet, swift young things! I wish, dear, it was possible for old men to bless young people without seeming to set up for saints...."

It was in a boat among reeds upon the lake of Orta that Trafford first became familiarized with the idea that Marjorie was capable of debt.

"Oh, I ought to have told you," she began, apropos of nothing.

Her explanation was airy; she had let the thing slip out of her mind for a time. But there were various debts to Oxbridge tradespeople. How much? Well, rather a lot. Of course, the tradespeople were rather enticing when first one went up——How much, anyhow?

"Oh, about fifty pounds," said Marjorie, after her manner. "Not more . I've not kept all the bills; and some haven't come in. You know how slow they are."

"These things will happen," said Trafford, though, as a matter of fact, nothing of the sort had happened in his case. "However, you'll be able to pay as soon as you get home, and get them all off your mind."

"I think fifty pounds will clear me," said Marjorie, clinging to her long-established total, "if you'll let me have that."

"Oh, we don't do things like that," said Trafford. "I'm arranging that my current account will be a sort of joint account, and your signature will be as good as mine—for the purpose of drawing, at least. You'll have your own cheque-book——"

"I don't understand, quite," said Marjorie.

"You'll have your own cheque-book and write cheques as you want them. That seems the simplest way to me."

"Of course," said Marjorie. "But isn't this—rather unusual? Father always used to allowance mother."

"It's the only decent way according to my ideas," said Trafford. "A man shouldn't marry when he can't trust."

"Of course not," said Marjorie. Something between fear and compunction wrung her. "Do you think you'd better?" she asked, very earnestly.

"Better?"

"Do this."

"Why not?"

"It's—it's so generous."

He didn't answer. He took up an oar and began to push out from among the reeds with something of the shy awkwardness of a boy who becomes apprehensive of thanks. He stole a glance at her presently and caught her expression—there was something very solemn and intent in her eyes—and he thought what a grave, fine thing his Marjorie could be.

But, indeed, her state of mind was quite exceptionally confused. She was disconcerted—and horribly afraid of herself.

"Do you mean that I can spend what I like?" asked Marjorie.

"Just as I may," he said.

"I wonder," said Marjorie again, "if I'd better."

She was tingling with delight at this freedom, and she knew she was not fit for its responsibility. She just came short of a passionate refusal of his proposal. He was still so new to her, and things were so wonderful, or I think she would have made that refusal.

"You've got to," said Trafford, and ended the matter.

So Marjorie was silent—making good resolutions.

Perhaps some day it may be possible to tell in English again, in the language of Shakspeare and Herrick, of the passion, the tenderness, the beauty, and the delightful familiarizations of a happy honeymoon; suffice it now, in this delicate period, to record only how our two young lovers found one day that neither had a name for the other. He said she could be nothing better than Marjorie to him; and she, after a number of unsuccessful experiments, settled down to the old school-boy nickname made out of his initials, R. A. G.

"Dick," she said, "is too bird-like and boy-like. Andrew I can't abide. Goodwin gives one no chances for current use. Rag you must be. Mag and Rag—poor innocents! Old rag!"

"Mag," he said, "has its drawbacks! The street-boy in London says, 'Shut your mag.' No, I think I shall stick to Marjorie...."

All honeymoons must end at last, so back they came to London, still very bright and happy. And then, Marjorie, whose eyes had changed from flashing stones to darkly shining pools of blue, but whose soul had still perhaps to finds its depths, set herself to the business of decorating and furnishing the little house Mrs. Trafford had found for them within ten minutes of her own. Meanwhile they lived in lodgings.

There can be no denying that Marjorie began her furnishing with severely virtuous intentions. She was very particular to ask Trafford several times what he thought she might spend upon the enterprise. He had already a bedroom and a study equipped, and he threw out three hundred pounds as his conception of an acceptable figure. "Very well," said Marjorie, with a note of great precision, "now I shall know," and straightway that sum took a place in her imagination that was at once definitive and protective, just as her estimate of fifty pounds for her Oxbridge debts had always been. She assured herself she was going to do things, and she assured herself she was doing things, on three hundred pounds. At times the astonishment of two or three school friends, who joined her in her shopping, stirred her to a momentary surprise at the way she was managing to keep things within that limit, and following a financial method that had, after all, in spite of some momentary and already nearly forgotten distresses, worked very well at Oxbridge, she refrained from any additions until all the accounts had come to hand.

It was an immense excitement shopping to make a home. There was in her composition a strain of constructive artistry with such concrete things, a strain that had hitherto famished. She was making a beautiful, secure little home for Trafford, for herself, for possibilities—remote perhaps, but already touching her imagination with the anticipation of warm, new, wonderful delights. There should be simplicity indeed in this home, but no bareness, no harshness, never an ugliness nor a discord. She had always loved colour in the skies, in the landscapes, in the texture of stuffs and garments; now out of the chaotic skein of countless shops she could choose and pick and mingle her threads in a glow of feminine self-expression.

On three hundred pounds, that is to say—as a maximum.

The house she had to deal with was, like Mrs. Trafford's, old and rather small; it was partly to its lack of bedroom accommodation, but much more to the invasion of the street by the back premises of Messrs. Siddons & Thrale, the great Chelsea outfitters, that the lowness of the rent was due, a lowness which brought it within the means of Trafford. Marjorie knew very clearly that her father would say her husband had taken her to live in a noisy slum, and that made her all the keener to ensure that every good point in the interior told to its utmost, and that whatever was to be accessible to her family should glow with a refined but warm prosperity. The room downstairs was shapely, and by ripping off the papered canvas of the previous occupier, some very dilapidated but admirably proportioned panelling was brought to light. The dining-room and study door on the ground floor, by a happy accident, were of mahogany, with really very beautiful brass furnishings; and the dining-room window upon the minute but by no means offensive paved garden behind, was curved and had a little shallow balcony of ironwork, half covered by a devitalized but leafy grapevine. Moreover, the previous occupier had equipped the place with electric light and a bathroom of almost American splendour on the landing, glass-shelved, white-tiled, and white painted, so that it was a delight to go into.