XLI
Hazel Barrance to Verena Raby
Dear Aunt,—You were the kindest thing to write to me like that. Such a long letter too! I hope you weren’t too tired after it. But, alas! the pity is it has not converted me. Marriage for every one else if you like, but not for me. I have seen too much of it, nor do I seem to want any of the things it gives except escape from home. But it would be escaping only to another form of bondage. Every one is not made for domesticity and I am sure I am not. I hate everything to do with the preparation of meals. I even rather hate meals themselves and would much prefer to eat only when I felt hungry, a little at a time and fairly often and alone. The idea of munching for evermore punctually and periodically opposite the same man both repels and infuriates me. I wonder if you can understand this. The thought of Horace under these conditions is too revolting.
Since I wrote to you Horace has actually been to father, behind my back; but father is much too pleased with my likeness to himself to be unsporting, and Horace was sent away with the warning that he hadn’t an earthly—but if he cared to persist he must come to me direct and to no one else. He would have gone to mother for a cert if she had not been so wholly occupied with the affairs of the next world.
Father was really funny about it. “What does Horace want to marry for, anyway?” he said: “he knows how to speak French”—this referring to his old theory that what men most want in wives is a gift of tongues when travelling abroad.
But apart from not wanting to marry, marriage frightens me. It means losing the fine edge of courtesy and kindness and tenderness. I see so many married people—girls I knew when they were engaged—one or two to whom I was bridesmaid and they are all so coarsened by it and take things so for granted. I don’t think anything is sadder than the way in which little pretty indulged sillinesses when a girl is engaged, become detestable in her husband’s eyes after they are married. Losing umbrellas, for example.
That’s the end of my grumbling about marriage. This correspondence, as the editors say, must now cease, and henceforth I will write only when I have something cheerful and amusing to tell you. I have been selfishly using you far too long.—Your loving
Hazel