Reflections of a beginning husband

“Dear Mr. French,” my letter began, “Cordelia and I have a mind again to get married. But having once been engaged and quit, we have no mind at all to be engaged again and divulge it. Would you mind, please, you and Mrs. French, if we eloped? It seems so much the more feasible and private way.”

I would rather have broken it to him by word of mouth, but for some things it is written words or none. If you have determined to elope with a man’s daughter you can’t very well go and ask leave of him. Suppose he objects! Of course he will object, especially after consulting his wife. The only way, if you propose to consult him at all, is to write, and mail the letter on the way to the church and come back to the house afterward for the answer.

Cordelia felt she just couldn’t be publicly engaged to me again. Of course I didn’t mind. I think meanly of the engaged state per se, but I had always rather be engaged to Cordelia than not. But that was only because I had always wanted to marry her, and had been glad to throw any convenient obstacle, even an engagement, in the way of her marrying any one else. The thing that had bothered me was to have the engagement end without our being married. I wanted to have it die a natural death in church, with flowers and a minister, and it had irked me very sore indeed to be “released” like a baseball-player before the end of the season. It left me on a miserably awkward footing with the rest of the world and with her, and it left her in the same case. Nobody quite knew whether to congratulate either of us on getting rid of the other. People naturally wanted to know why, and of course you can’t tell in the newspaper. It was awkward for our families. There was a feeling that they ought to quarrel, because somebody must be to blame, and the other side ought to resent it. But they didn’t want to quarrel, and wouldn’t; not even a little, to keep up appearances. They held their tongues and went on about their business as before, but inevitably flocked more apart than they had been wont to do, because when they met it excited too much interest.

I don’t mean that they were such conspicuous people that the London papers had cables about them. It was only that when Mrs. Fessenden or Mrs. Somebody Else got home from the Jenkinses’ tea she told her family, and whomever she had to dinner, that Mrs. French and Harriet and Mrs. Jesup were at the Jenkinses’ and spoke, as they passed, as politely as though nothing had happened. And then would follow a little chattering tribute of discourse about Cordelia French and Peregrine Jesup, and why did they break their engagement, anyway!

Not that my family, or Cordelia’s, got direct reports of what was said at Mrs. Fessenden’s dinner-table. They didn’t; at least, not often. But they knew what must have been said, and families don’t like to be subjects of speculation or of critical or even compassionate observation. They can bear the eye of approval, of admiration, and even of a moderate envy, but what family likes to have the Fessendens, the Jenkinses, the Underharrows, the Overtons, and the rest of the families getting their heads together to swap surmises as to what the Frenches and the Jesups have got in their closet!

Maybe you’d like to know why Cordelia and I loosed hands after our intentions had been six months on file. In this private way why should I not explain that it was not so much the fault of either of us as of the conditions of life as we found them. You see, I was twenty-three, and Cordelia was two years younger. I was studying the profession in which I hope to be useful in my day and generation, and by the practice of which I hope to derive a respectable maintenance from a contributory world, which Cordelia was already inspecting. That’s what she was doing. She was out of school and looking about, shifting from continent to continent to get a better view; getting acquainted with people and things, ascertaining whom and what she liked and what places seemed more joyous to her than others. What for so much inspection and investigation to prepare her for a destiny already measured off, tied up, and waiting to be called for? If she had been in college, she might possibly have kept. I don’t know what are the merits of the women’s colleges as depositories for engaged girls, but they may have a value for that use. But a roving life of enlargement by travel and social experience has no such value at all. There was I, tied up to professional studies, on such allowances as my indulgent parents could afford me without too gross injustice to their own family life and their obligations to their other dependents. And there was Cordelia, diligently qualifying herself to live creditably and profitably on an income of from twelve thousand a year up.

You might suppose that ordinary precautions would have been taken to prevent her from seeing much of a person so unsuited to her needs as I, but they were not. There was nothing against me: I had no criminal record, did not drink much, was of respectable origin, had known Cordelia a long time already, and was such a person, in a general way, as she might properly enough marry sometime, if circumstances suited. Cordelia came out, and went to dances and dinners. She had to dance with somebody. Male persons of the dancing age and disposition with incomes of from twelve thousand up are rather scarce. Dances cannot be equipped with such alone: neither can dinners. So Cordelia danced with anybody who asked her soon enough, and that was often me; and she ate her dinner alongside of whoever was put next to her, and that was sometimes me. And when it wasn’t me I wished it was; and so what happened, happened all in natural course and according to reasonable expectation, and nobody ventured to disprove, though doubtless there was a fair volume of conjecture as to whose money Cordelia French and Peregrine Jesup proposed to get married on. But we had not selected anybody to underwrite our prospective happiness. We had not got so far as that. We had just got irresponsibly engaged, according to the American plan and the spontaneous promptings of youth and affection.

What about our current American practice of turning most of the girls loose from school at eighteen or nineteen and keeping most of the youths, who are their natural mates, tied up to professional studies or business apprenticeships four or five years longer, and letting them play together meanwhile, and expecting them to shape their own destinies on practical and satisfactory lines? Isn’t a good deal expected of us young people, all tinder, sparks, and indiscretion? The French, they tell me, expect less and provide more. I have thought a good deal of these concerns since Cordelia and I were first engaged and found our intentions unseasonable. Of course, I wanted to be considered in Cordelia’s plans and deportment; wanted, naturally, to have her stay around where I could see her at recess and on Sundays and other holidays, and perhaps meet her at festive gatherings when the urgency of my studies permitted me to get to them. I liked to have her around handy, but of course I could not interdict her from going about, or even from going beyond the seas when it suited her parents to take her. I could say that she had already seen as much of the world and the people in it as was necessary, but how was I to insist that, while I was cultivating and improving my abilities all I knew how, Cordelia should let most of hers lie fallow and mark time and wait? If she had only had a steady job to work at in the intermission while I was qualifying myself to work at mine, things might have worked out serenely; but the only job she had was to get married, and meanwhile to cheer and satisfy her parents, and try to be worth her keep to them while she was making acquaintance with the world. Marriage seems to be a complete occupation (circumstances being favorable), but being engaged isn’t. It’s just a makeshift, delightful for six weeks, very suitable for three months, and tolerable for six; but when it contemplates indefinite extension into uncertain years it is an asset of very doubtful value to a girl in active social life. When the Frenches found that Cordelia seemed to be losing interest in affairs, was indifferent to dances and dinners, was apt to be abandoned by mankind to the society of chaperones, was getting left out of house-parties that I could not go to, was gently indisposed to put the sea or any wide expanse of land between herself and me, and was rather aggravated than appeased by the little she could see of me when I was near, they said--the parents did: “This isn’t working to much of a charm! Nobody is ahead on it, and we are getting behind. Cordelia’s no fun any more, and there is no end of it in sight.”

And soon after Cordelia and I called our engagement off, much to our grief and with the sympathy of our elders. I advised her to put me down to the account of experience, and try to figure out a profit on me, if she could. But I never put her down to account of anything, being of just the same mind about her that I always had been, though grievously put out to leave her blooming on the paternal bush without any “hands-off” sign on her, protected only by her natural thorns.

There was a line in the paper to say the engagement was off, Cordelia went abroad again, I continued my studies, and time went on. It does go on somehow; the trick is to keep on going with it. Who does that, gets somewhere in spite of impediments, lacerations of the affections, and all misgivings about the possibility of there being a gap anywhere in the procession of self-supporters that a new aspirant can fit himself into. I have been called “sensible.” It seems a painfully tame thing to be, and I presume I was called so by way of disparagement. But, after all, there are times when there is no choice but between being sensible and being silly, and then you have just got to be sensible if you can, no matter how it tastes. Being sensible, while one is working to get a start in life, must be excused, because it is the price of adventure, indiscretion, speculation--all the really glorious and spectacular parts of human existence.

Three years I was sensible and plugged away at my job, learning the rudiments and then the application of them. All that time I had never a word with Cordelia. How could I? I could not go on where I left off, and unless, or until, I could do that, how could I go on at all? Sight of her I did have now and then, but seldom; for, though she was often in town and I nearly always there, our occupations usually kept us from accidental meetings. We didn’t travel the same beats.

I finished my professional studies, sustained the tests provided to measure my proficiency, and got a job in an office with a small salary and some prospects. Candor requires that I admit that I passed those examinations pretty well, for really I had not spared work in the long preparation for them.

And the job I got was a good one as beginners’ jobs go, and the prospects were as good, so far as I could see, as the prospects of anybody of my time of life and in my line of endeavor. So I didn’t see why, barring accidents, I should not get somewhere presently.