Gray youth: The story of a very modern courtship and a very modern marriageOnions, Oliver
General
Gray youth: The story of a very modern courtship and a very modern marriage
Onions, Oliver
Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction; Women -- Social and moral questions -- Fiction
"Then," Cosimo urged, "let us be brave and take it. There's very little
doubt that they'll reform those ridiculous laws before long. They're
bound to. With the spread of Democracy cheaper Divorce is inevitable;
and when it becomes quite common much of the stigma you speak of will
disappear. Look here: I've an idea!... Why shouldn't we start a sort of
private Insurance against not getting on together--put away a sum each
year for the contingency, so that the expenses of Divorce would be met
out of a fund? We could arrange some means of drawing on it, too, in
case we decided to live apart. Don't you think that's a good idea?"
"Ye-es," said Amory slowly. "Ye-es. It's certainly a Law, I should
say, that the only real way of keeping people together is to leave
them perfectly free to separate whenever they like. The day of
force, whether physical or legal, is over. That's what makes all
that downstairs so exquisitely funny. They think that the way to
bind yourself is to tie yourself fast! So of course it's our duty to
dissociate ourselves as far as ever we can from all that.... Isn't it
nearly time 'Orris and Jellies were here?"...
"Oh, they aren't due for half an hour yet. Now about Incompatibility,
Amory----"
And their love-making went on.
The remark about 'Orris and Jellies had to do with their dissociation
from the semi-communal feasting that was going on in the Central Hall.
It had been Amory's idea that this dissociation would be more complete
if 'Orris and Jellies also feasted with the rest of the world, and
the joke had been cheap at the cost of the qualifying purchase at
Hallowells' of Jellies' wedding-veil. So 'Orris, Jellies, Mrs. 'Ill,
a woman who lent a hand at the Creek sometimes, together with one or
two friends, had been told off to a table midway between Hymen and
the Bell. Amory and Cosimo intended to watch from the gallery. They
still regarded the world and its happenings much as they might have
regarded a stereoscope, to be taken up for a few minutes when they
found themselves in the humour for it, and put down again when it no
longer amused them; and if Dorothy did not like the presence of this
particular party at Hallowells', that could only be because Dorothy was
a snob.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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