XXV. AND SO THEY MARRY NEITHER KNOWING THE OTHER.

People always have been asking each other conundrums and riddles and puzzles of various kinds ever since the world began. It seems to be an instinct of the human family, and almost always of a disagreeable nature. We are told that Samson, by way of making things pleasant during his wedding festivities, asked a riddle of his “best man” and ushers, with a sort of wager attached to it. If they guessed it within the week the bridegroom was to give each of them a new suit of clothes, and if they did not each of them was to give him one. It is a very entertaining story throughout, but not in place just here except as it is the earliest recorded instance of a conundrum. It was not fairly guessed, and the result was a good deal of family unpleasantness, a divorce and the deaths of several hundred persons, including the bride and all her family.

Then comes the Sphinx with her stupid little riddle about the animal that in the morning walks on four legs, at noon on two and in the evening on three. It is a very poor affair, looked at as a riddle, but pretty serious when one remembers that Madam Sphinx was in the habit of devouring those who “gave it up.” What an advance the world has made, to be sure, since the days of Œdipus and the Sphinx! Nowadays instead of being devoured if you do not guess a conundrum, some one kindly explains it to you, and you have the opportunity to smile satirically and blandly while saying: “Oh, really! Is that all?”

For my part I never try to guess conundrums, the other course is so much more amusing.

But as in most other things, nature excels man in this sort of puzzle making, and the best of it is, from her point of view, that she can inflict her own penalties for the failure to give a correct answer, and we are quite powerless to resist her decrees. Perhaps the completest puzzle of all those in the dear old lady’s abundant store, and one that has never, so far as I know, been successfully answered by any son of Adam or daughter of Eve, is a series of questions relating to the due relation of the sexes to each other, with minor queries as to the nature of woman and the nature of man, asked in each case of some member of the opposite sex. The beauty of it is, that the questions are so fascinating that both man and woman insist upon studying them, and unwarned by the example of others they put so much of their time and life and interest into the matter that when the day comes that they must “give it up” they are too weary of all life’s problems to care to take up another.

Oh, the mistakes that men and women make with regard to each other! Oh, the fatal shipwreck they encounter in trying to personally test their theories as to the true solution of the puzzle upon which all their forefathers and foremothers have broken their teeth, and yet never come at the kernel of the nut!

And with what gallant confidence each new aspirant comes before the Sphinx and says: “I can guess your charming riddle, although these others have failed. I understand the nature of at least one woman or one man, and I will stake my whole life upon giving the correct answer.”

The Sphinx smiles—and that cold, satiric, incomprehensible smile was caught most cleverly long since by the Egyptian sculptors, and fixed upon the immortal stone which after the lapse of ages tells its story more clearly than words can put it.

The Sphinx, as those great artists knew, is the prototype of nature in her conundrum-asking mood—the subtle amusement, the bitter satire, the veiled and conscious power of the great mother as she plays with her children, like a tigress with her cubs, is all there. She is but a sportive mother at the best, that old nature! She flings her children into the water to teach them to swim for their lives. If they have nerve and strength to strike out vigorously, they are safe, but if they are weak or timid or make mistakes, why, she lets them drown as not worth saving. In the old story of Saturn and Ops, the children were devoured by the parents, and earth and nature are both one. And so the poor little wretches go on century after century sinking or swimming, as the case may be, always trying to get the better of nature, and very seldom succeeding even when they plume themselves upon having done so.

Look at the manner in which men and women practically reply to the query as to which member of the opposite sex is the one best adapted for a lifelong companionship, this being, as we all know, one of the most important of nature’s conundrums. Every one of us at some period or other has found it propounded to us, and probably every one of us has decided it in a manner differing from that we should have selected had we better understood the matter.

A man sees a woman at some social gathering, it matters not if it is at the reception of a duchess, or a queen of society in our own country, or if it is at a “sociable” or a dance in some little country town. Nature is pre-eminently “no respecter of persons,” and works in the one case precisely as she does in the other. The girl is well dressed, gay, smiling and evidently pleased with the young man’s attentions. They pass an hour together and part with mutual good will. A dozen or so of such interviews, a few calls at the family dwelling, a ride, a drive, a walk or two, and he is prepared to offer himself and she to accept him. If any one having the right demands of him the raison d’être, the solid foundation of his selection and consequent engagement, he replies that is all right, that he understands Fanny thoroughly, and is quite sure she will make him happy. As to whether he is quite sure to make her happy, it is usually the last thing he thinks about. “What sort of a girl is she?” asks the mother of the happy youth, recalling the mistake she made.

“Oh, she’s a jolly girl; as jolly a girl as ever you saw,” replies the wise young man judicially. “She is as light-hearted as a bird, always full of fun and laughter, always ready for anything proposed in the way of amusement, good-natured and obliging, great taste in dress, and as neat as a pin—in fact, she is just the kind of a girl I like, and can get on with. I hate these prim, mopish, proper sort of girls who are always getting tired and faint and frightened of everything, from a spider to a cow, and mustn’t get their feet wet, and all that.”

So they marry, and he finds that he knew as little about his wife as she did about him. The high spirits and constant cheerful alacrity in matters of amusement were the gift of youth and health, and shade with beautiful ease into peevishness, discontent, and a restless desire for new amusements and distractions. The constant attentions of the suitor give place to the indifference and carelessness of the husband, and the disappointed wife utters complaints long and loud that he is by no means the devoted slave she was led to believe him. He retorts that if she were as cheerful and amiable, as well dressed and trim as he once had known her, he should be as much in love—it is he who is disappointed, and has a right to complain, etc. The matrimonial question as to “scissors” is well started, and goes on until one or the other gets flung into the well, or perhaps flings himself or herself into some Dead Sea of despair.

But after all, a man’s failure to comprehend the real character of the woman he selects as wife is not nearly so disastrous as the corresponding failure of the woman to understand the man before she commits her life to his keeping. The Sphinx gives to the one a cruel blow of her lion-like paw, but the other she devours bodily, leaving but the crushed semblance, the simulacrum, as the ancients used to say, of the bright and hopeful creature who dared try to answer her fatal riddle.

Say what we will of the equality of the sexes, and the ability of woman to hold her own in the battle of life, the fact remains that when and if a woman loses she loses a great deal more than the man. A woman plays for heavier stakes than the man, and is so reckless in her game that she never pauses until she has flung her all upon the board. Take a case: A woman meets a man who at once devotes himself to her, and both by word and deed professes to hold his life as of no value except as it may be devoted to her service.

Now no woman who lives is insensible to the delicate flattery of such a profession—no woman so strong or so self-reliant as not to be pleased and attracted by what seems the sincere and thorough devotion of a man who is admired and sought by other women, and is able to hold his own among other men. Even if she is happy and prosperous and surrounded by other friends, a man who so addresses her, or without any spoken words so comports himself, is sure to win a favorable place in her regard; but if, alas, the woman is lonely and tired and oppressed with the weight of duties and obligations too heavy for her strength, and which no one helps her to carry, then if one of these plausible and much professing men comes along, and in every look and motion and act says: “Oh, how I long to help you and to comfort you, and to take all that heavy burden off your shoulders!” she listens, raises her eyes to heaven in thanksgiving for such unlooked-for succor, and gladly, yes, eagerly, gives herself and all she has and all she hopes and fears and loves into his hands. She throws her entire fortune upon the table. She stakes body, soul, mind, the memories of the past and hopes of the future upon this single turn of the wheel. She exclaims to listening Fate: “I have solved your riddle! I have found the answer to your conundrum of life! I have at last met with the answer to your terrible enigma, O Fate!” They marry; for the cruel game is not made absolute until this bond is riveted. While a woman is betrothed her good angel may possibly come to the rescue, and give her some warning by which she may escape with no more than a heavy blow and an undying scar; but when once she is married there is but one door of escape besides death, and it is a question which is the more cruel.

Few men, whatever may be their disposition, are the same after marriage that they are before. In the very best specimen of the sex there is a perhaps unconscious desire and effort to appear better than he really is during the period of courtship. He exercises a perpetual restraint upon the coarser and more violent traits of his nature. He sacrifices his convenience, his comfort, his tastes and inclinations to those of the object of his pursuit. He likes to walk, and she prefers driving; he drives. He loves to be out-of-doors, she prefers a shaded parlor; he sits in the parlor. He dotes upon athletics and she likes to hear poetry; he reads poetry, and so on. I do not say that the girl or woman is right to accept or to exact all this self-sacrifice. I will, indeed, allow that she is apt to become selfish, and perhaps unreasonable, but at this period of the game she is blindfolded, both by fate and by the man, who never once speaks candidly and honestly to her, but is always insisting that her wishes are dearer to him than his own and that to do what he does not like to do, and give up all that he does like, is precisely what he enjoys and wishes.

The woman believes him, and accepts the rôle of despot, which is thus forced upon her, and she wonders that she is not even mistress of her own life, cannot arrange her hours, or her pursuits, or the dainty environments of her home as she has always done heretofore. She thought to find shelter in a tower of strength, and she finds herself captive in a squalid and hateful prison, while he who was to have been her devoted knight and preux chevalier, becomes at once her jailer and her fellow-captive.

All this because, poor woman, she failed to correctly guess the riddle propounded to her by that unknown power which we call nature or fate, or by way of parable, the Sphinx. The riddle of human character! Did anybody ever fully solve it? Many of us have tried, but can any one of us say with conviction that we have succeeded? For even at the last—even after the man whom we at first considered has discovered that he has not married the woman he supposed, and after, in the latter case, the woman has found out her own woeful mistake—can we set it down as certain that either one of them finally reads the other’s character aright?

I firmly believe not. At first each saw virtues that either were too evanescent or too much matter of pretense to be of any lasting service, and when these had vanished each discovered faults and disagreeabilities, and perhaps vices, that seemed to comprise the whole character; but after all, does not truth lie in the middle here, as in most other cases? Neither man nor woman is quite as good as we at first imagined, or quite as bad as we afterward concluded—in fact, we never quite understand from first to last; we never get the true answer to the conundrum.

The Sphinx has the best of it every time.