In England when a man married, certain practical matters could be inquired into and arranged by solicitors, the amount of the prospective bride's fortune, the allowances and settlements to be made, the position of the bridegroom with regard to pecuniary matters.To put it simply, a man found out where he stood and what he was to gain.But, at first to his sardonic entertainment and later to his disgusted annoyance, Sir Nigel gradually discovered that in the matter of marriage, Americans had an ingenuous tendency to believe in the sentimental feelings of the parties concerned.
The general impression seemed to be that a man married purely for love, and that delicacy would make it impossible for him to ask questions as to what his bride's parents were in a position to hand over to him as a sort of indemnity for the loss of his bachelor freedom.Anstruthers began to discover this fact before he had been many weeks in New York.
He reached the realisation of its existence by processes of exclusion and inclusion, by hearing casual remarks people let drop, by asking roundabout and careful questions, by leading both men and women to the innocent expounding of certain points of view.Millionaires, it appeared, did not expect to make allowances to men who married their daughters; young women, it transpired, did not in the least realise that a man should be liberally endowed in payment for assuming the duties of a husband.If rich fathers made allowances, they made them to their daughters themselves, who disposed of them as they pleased.In this case, of course, Sir Nigel privately argued with fine acumen, it became the husband's business to see that what his wife pleased should be what most agreeably coincided with his own views and conveniences.
His most illuminating experience had been the hearing of some men, hard-headed, rich stockbrokers with a vulgar sense of humour, enjoying themselves quite uproariously one night at a club, over a story one of them was relating of an unsatisfactory German son-in-law who had demanded an income.He was a man of small title, who had married the narrator's daughter, and after some months spent in his father-in-law's house, had felt it but proper that his financial position should be put on a practical footing.
"He brought her back after the bridal tour to make us a visit," said the storyteller, a sharp-featured man with a quaint wry mouth, which seemed to express a perpetual, repressed appreciation of passing events."I had nothing to say against that, because we were all glad to see her home and her mother had been missing her.But weeks passed and months passed and there was no mention made of them going over to settle in the Slosh we'd heard so much of, and in time it came out that the Slosh thing"--Anstruthers realised with gall in his soul that the "brute," as he called him, meant "Schloss," and that his mispronunciation was at once a matter of humour and derision--"wasn't his at all.It was his elder brother's.The whole lot of them were counts and not one of them seemed to own a dime.The Slosh count hadn't more than twenty-five cents and he wasn't the kind to deal any of it out to his family.So Lily's count would have to go clerking in a dry goods store, if he promised to support himself.But he didn't propose to do it.He thought he'd got on to a soft thing.
Of course we're an easy-going lot and we should have stood him if he'd been a nice fellow.But he wasn't.Lily's mother used to find her crying in her bedroom and it came out by degrees that it was because Adolf had been quarrelling with her and saying sneering things about her family.When her mother talked to him he was insulting.Then bills began to come in and Lily was expected to get me to pay them.And they were not the kind of bills a decent fellow calls on another man to pay.But I did it five or six times to make it easy for her.I didn't tell her that they gave an older chap than himself sidelights on the situation.But that didn't work well.
He thought I did it because I had to, and he began to feel free and easy about it, and didn't try to cover up his tracks so much when he sent in a new lot.He was always working Lily.He began to consider himself master of the house.
He intimated that a private carriage ought to be kept for them.He said it was beggarly that he should have to consider the rest of the family when he wanted to go out.When I got on to the situation, I began to enjoy it.I let him spread himself for a while just to see what he would do.Good Lord!
I couldn't have believed that any fellow could have thought any other fellow could be such a fool as he thought I was.