There will be a devil of an uproar before such a change can be made. It will be a great shock, but look back and see what shocks there have been and what changes have nevertheless taken place in this marriage business in the past.'

'The difficulty,' he continues, 'is to make English people face such a problem. They want to live under discipline more than any other nation in the world. They won't look ahead, especially the governing people.

And you must have philosophy, though it is more than you can hope to get English people to admit the bare name of philosophy into their discussion of such a question. Again and again, notably in their criticism of America, you see how English people will persist in regarding any new trait as a sign of disease. Yet it is a sign of health.'

It will be seen that Mr Meredith puts forward the ten-year limit merely as a suggestion. I recall in one of Stevenson's essays an allusion to a lady who said: 'After ten years one's husband is at least an old friend,' and her answer was: 'Yes, and one would like him to be that and nothing more.' The decade seems to have a special significance in marriage. After the trying first year is over, most couples settle down comfortably enough until nearing the tenth year. The president of the Divorce Court has called this the danger zone of married life. One of the subsequent letters in _The Daily Mail_, approving Mr Meredith's suggestion, alluded to the present form of marriage as 'the life-sentence,' and suggested a still shorter time limit, five years for choice, since during that time a couple would have found happiness or the reverse, and in the latter case ten years was too long to wait for freedom.

A writer in another paper cited America as an example of terminable marriage in full working order. 'It appears from the statement of an American bishop that the people of the United States are actually living under Mr Meredith's conditions already. Last year (1903) as many as 600,000 American marriages were dissolved. This means that there was one divorce to every four marriages. In some districts the proportion was more like one to two. And the most frequent cause of divorce was a desire for change!'

It seems to me that the establishment of a leasehold marriage system would only result in wholesale wretchedness and confusion, beside which the present sum of marital misery would be but a drop in the ocean. If our marriage laws must be modified, let us trust it will not be in this direction, though it is obvious enough that such a change would come as a boon to thousands of men and women, who from one cause or another have come to loathe the tie that binds them. Whether it would not also disturb the prosaic content that pa.s.ses for happiness with millions more is too big a question to be more than mentioned here.

The fate of those who are tied for life to lunatics, criminals, and drunkards is pitiable indeed, but an extension of the laws of divorce would meet their exceptional case, without disturbing the marriage bond of normal people. I have endeavoured to indicate some of the many difficulties of leasehold marriage in the following dialogue.

II

LEASEHOLD MARRIAGE IN PRACTICE A DIALOGUE IN 1999

'There is one thing that women dread more than celibacy--it is repudiation.' --MARCEL PReVOST.

_Katharine and Margaret, both attractive women on the borderland of forty, are lunching together. They are old friends and have not met for years._

_Margaret._ 'How nice it is to be together again, but I'm sorry to find you so changed; you don't look happy, what is the trouble?'

_Katharine._ 'I ought to look happy, I've had wonderful luck, but the truth is, I'm utterly tired. The conditions of marriage nowadays are horribly wearing, don't you think?'

_M._ 'Well, of course, we miss that feeling of peace and security that our mothers talked of, but then we also miss that ghastly monotony.

Think of living year after year, thirty, forty, fifty years, with the same man! How tired one would get of his tempers.'

_K._ 'I'm not so sure of that. Monotony of tempers is better than variety. All people have them, anyway. Besides, I've a notion that our fathers were nothing like so difficult to live with as our husbands are.

You see, in the old days they knew they were fixed up for life, and that acted as a curb. We seem to miss that curb nowadays.'

_M._ 'Yes, there's something in that. I remember my grandmother, who was married at the end of the last century, used to say that her husband was her Sheet Anchor, and he called her his Haven of Rest.'

_K._ 'Oh, I envy them! That's what I want so badly--a haven, an anchor!

How peaceful life must have been then before this horrible new system came in.'

_M._ 'People evidently didn't seem to think so, or why should they have altered it? But what's your quarrel with the system? You've had four husbands and changed the first two almost as quickly as the law allowed.'

_K._ 'Yes, and I'm only forty-one. I began too young--at eighteen--but one naturally takes marriage lightly when one knows it's only for five years. One enters upon it as thoughtlessly as our happy mothers used to start their flirtations.'

_M._ 'The consequences are rather more serious though; we are disillusioned women at the age when they were still light-hearted girls.'

_K._ 'It's the families that make it so difficult. Fatherhood is quite a cult nowadays. All my husbands have been of a philoprogenitive turn, and I have eight children.'

_M._ 'Eight children! No wonder you look worried.'

_K._ 'Exactly! my mother would have been horrified. Two or three was the correct number in her days, four at the utmost, and five a fatality and very rare.'

_M._ 'Well, my dear, you needn't have had so many; you should have curbed that cult of Fatherhood. No woman is compelled to bear children nowadays, as our unfortunate grandmothers were. Have you got all eight with you?'

_K._ 'No, that's just the trouble. I didn't want to have so many, but of course now I've got them I want them with me, and of course their fathers want them too.'

_M._ 'Oh dear! how tiresome; that's the worst of having children in these times. I'm sometimes glad I have none.'

_K._ 'Then perhaps you don't know the law about the children of our present marriage system? A sum of money has to be invested annually for each child, in the great State Infant Trust; when the marriage is dissolved the mother has the sole custody of them, unless the father wishes to share it; in the latter case they spend half the year with each parent.'

_M._ 'It's fair.'

_K._ 'I suppose so, but oh! so terribly hard on a mother! My two elder girls are almost grown up, they've been at a boarding school for some time, and it was easy and natural enough for George and I to share them in the holidays, but now, I can't keep them at the school any longer, and they will have to spend half the year with him. Thank heaven, he hasn't been married for some time, and isn't likely to again, so I haven't the horror of a strange woman influencing them, but how can I guide them? how have any real control or influence over them in such circ.u.mstances?'

_M._ 'Yes, that must be very sad for you.'

_K._ 'It's awful, but there's much worse than that. My second husband, Gordon, the father of Arthur and Maggie, is married again, and his wife is jealous of his eldest children, and hates the time when they come to stay. And my little Arthur is so delicate, he requires ceaseless care and studying--I never have a happy moment when he is with them; he doesn't get on well with the other children either, and always returns from the visits looking ill and wretched. I couldn't tell you all I have suffered on account of Arthur! Oh! when I think of him, I could curse this infamous marriage system--it is a sin against nature!'

_M._ 'But, my dear, it's no use abusing the laws. Why didn't you stay with Gordon, or in the first instance with George? It's often done, even now.'

_K._ 'I know, I know, but George and I were utterly unsuited--we married as boy and girl. Under the old system prudent parents generally intervened, and the young couple were obliged to wait until they were sure of their own minds. But you know how things are now; in one's first young infatuation, one is sure of five years ahead at least, and one doesn't need to look beyond that.'

_M._ 'Well, you were twenty-four when you married Gordon; why didn't you choose him more carefully?'

_K._ 'That was largely "a matter of economics" as I read in an old play called _Votes for Women_, not long ago--so quaint their ideas were in those days!--and there was something in it too about "twenty-four used not to be so young, but it's become so!" Still, I was old enough to know better, but I was light-hearted and luxury-loving, and I couldn't live on that pittance, which was all the law compelled George to allow me.

I don't blame him, it was all he could do to save the necessary tax for the children. So I married Gordon for a home, and of course it was hateful!'

_M._ 'And your third husband died?'

_K._ 'Yes; the one who should have lived generally dies. I lost him after two years only, but I can't talk of him, dear; he was just my Man of Men.'

_M._ 'Ah! I'm glad you have had that.'

_K._ 'Oh! I have been lucky with all my troubles, as I told you. I was alone for four years after I lost my Best, and I should like to have been faithful to him for ever. But I wasn't strong enough; in spite of the dear children I was very lonely, as the elder ones were always at school.'

_M._ 'Yes, and one wants a man, somehow, to fuss round one.'

_K._ 'True, it's a fatal weakness. So at last I married my good little Duncan, just for companionship. I chose _him_ carefully enough.

Experience has taught me a lot, and I didn't mean to be left in the lurch at forty as so many are.'

_M._ 'I'm glad he's good to you. Yes; it's fearful how many women get left alone just when they need care and love most, when their looks and freshness are gone, and their energy weakened. But, as you haven't got that to fear, why should you be so worried now?'

_K._ 'It isn't exactly that I'm worried--I'm used up! Twenty years of uncertain domestic arrangements is enough to wear out anyone. I've never been able to feel settled in any house, or let myself get attached to a place, or plant out a garden even. One's set of friends is always breaking up; people never seem to buy houses and estates now, or to get rooted anywhere. In the novels of fifty years ago, how they used to complain about being in a groove! They little knew how miserable life could be for want of a permanent groove.'

_M._ 'I dislike monotony, but it certainly has its advantages. You remember my first husband, d.i.c.k?--such a good-looking boy--he was crazy about golf and outdoor games. I got quite into his way of living, and it was a great trial when I married Cecil Innes, who hated the open air, and cared only for books and grubbing about in museums.'

_K._ 'Why did you leave d.i.c.k?'

_M._ 'I didn't really want to, we were very comfy together, but he fell in love with another woman. He was mad about her, and asked me to release him. As I had no children, I thought it only fair to agree.

Cecil interested me very much at first, and he adored me, but I had a very dreary time with him. You know I'm not a bit literary, and he was so "precious" and bookish, he bored me to death. I was glad to leave him for Jack, my present husband, but Cecil's grief at parting was so frightful I shall never forget it, and when he died soon after I felt like a murderess.'