“Observant infants. Well, there we stand, then. One of us has got either to change his principles—her principles, I mean—or to be false to them. Or else, apparently, there can be nothing doing between you and me. That’s the position, isn’t it?”
Gerda nodded, her mouth full of apple.
“It’s very awkward,” Barry continued, “my having fallen in love with you. I had not taken your probable views on sociology into account. I knew that, though we differed in spelling and punctuation, we were agreed (approximately) on politics, economics, and taste in amusements, and I thought that was enough. I forgot that divergent views on matrimony were of practical importance. It would have mattered less if I had discovered that you were a militarist and imperialist and quoted Marx at me.”
“I did tell you, Barry. I really did. I never hid it. And I never supposed that you’d want to marry me.”
“That was rather stupid of you. I’m so obviously a marrying man. … Now, darling, will you think the whole thing out from the beginning, after I’ve gone? Be firsthand; don’t take over theories from other people, and don’t be sentimental about it. Thrash the whole subject out with yourself and with other people—with your own friends, and with your family too. They’re a modern, broad-minded set, your people, after all; they won’t look at the thing conventionally; they’ll talk sense; they won’t fob you off with stock phrases, or talk about the sanctity of the home. They’re not institutionalists. Only be fair about it; weigh all the pros and cons, and judge honestly, and for heaven’s sake don’t look at the thing romantically, or go off on theories because they sound large and subversive. Think of practical points, as well as of ultimate principles. Both, to my mind, are on the same side. I’m not asking you to sacrifice right for expediency, or expediency for right. I don’t say ‘Be sensible,’ or ‘Be idealistic.’ We’ve got to be both.”
“Barry, I’ve thought and talked about it so often and so long. You don’t know how much we do talk about that sort of thing, at the club and everywhere and Kay and I. I could never change my mind.”
“What a hopeless admission! We ought to be ready to change our minds at any moment; they should be as changeable as pound notes.”
“What about yours, then, darling?”
“I’m always ready to change mine. I shall think the subject out too, and if I do change I shall tell you at once.”
“Barry.” Gerda’s face was grave; her forehead was corrugated. “Suppose we neither of us ever change? Suppose we both go on thinking as we do now for always? What then?”
He smoothed the knitted forehead with his fingers.
“Then one of us will have to be a traitor to his or her principles. A pity, but sometimes necessary in this complicated world. Or, if we can neither of us bring ourselves down to that, I suppose eventually we shall each perpetrate with someone else the kind of union we personally prefer.”
They parted on that. The thing had not grown serious yet; they could still joke about it.
III
Though Gerda said “What’s the use of my talking about it to people when I’ve made up my mind?” and though she had not the habit of talking for conversation’s sake, she did obediently open the subject with her parents, in order to assure herself beyond a doubt what they felt about it. But she knew already that their opinions were what you might expect of parents, even of broad-minded, advanced parents, who rightly believed themselves not addicted to an undiscriminating acceptance of the standards and decisions of a usually mistaken world. But Barry was wrong in saying they weren’t institutionalists; they were. Parents are.
Rodney was more opinionated than Neville, on this subject as on most others. He said, crossly, “It’s a beastly habit, unlegitimatised union. When I say beastly, I mean beastly; nothing derogatory, but merely like the beasts—the other beasts, that is.”
Gerda said “Well, that’s not really an argument against it. In that sense it’s beastly when we sleep out instead of in bed, or do lots of other quite nice things. The way men and women do things isn’t necessarily the best way,” and there Rodney had to agree with her. He fell back on “It’s unbusinesslike. Suppose you have children?” and Gerda, who had supposed all that with Barry, sighed. Rodney said a lot more, but it made little impression on her, beyond corroborating her views on the matrimonial theories of middle-aged people.
Neville made rather more. To Neville Gerda said “How can I go back on everything I’ve always said and thought about it, and go and get married? It would be so reactionary.”
Neville, who had a headache and was irritable, said “It’s the other thing that’s reactionary. It existed long before the marriage tie did. That’s what I don’t understand about all you children who pride yourselves on being advanced. If you frankly take your stand on going back to nature, on being reactionary—well, it is, anyhow, a point of view, and has its own merits. But your minds seem to me to be in a hopeless muddle. You think you’re going forward while you’re really going back.”
“Marriage,” said Gerda, “is so Victorian. It’s like antimacassars.”
“Now, my dear, do you mean anything by either of those statements? Marriage wasn’t invented in Victoria’s reign. Nor did it occur more frequently in that reign than it had before or does now. Why Victorian, then? And why antimacassars? Think it out. How can a legal contract be like a doyley on the back of a chair? Where is the resemblance? It sounds like a riddle, only there’s no answer. No, you know you’ve got no answer. That kind of remark is sheer sentimentality and muddle-headedness. Why are people in their twenties so often
