On the Betrothal of Brothers

by Evelyn Sharp

On the Betrothal of Brothers.

By Evelyn Sharp.

Illustrations by F. Mabelle Pearse.

WE always called him our clever brother. We fell down and worshipped him the day he got his first article in a paper, and it is my private opinion that we have never straightened our backs since. I don't quite know why we thought him clever. I think it was partly because at one time he "broke out artistic," so to speak, and used to wear a dandelion for a buttonhole, and a raw-edged piece of faded silk for a tie, and show other symptoms of a current culture now archaic. But the chief reason was that for weeks together he declined to speak to any of us, except when the rigorous necessities of meal-time demanded speech; we loved to think he was communing with his genius during these epochs of silence, and we felt quite sorry for him when he had to ask for the mustard or the anchovy sauce. Our father didn't believe in any genius that was not paid for, and hinted darkly at had temper; our mother made many excuses for him and gave him a tonic. When he grew tired of the lofty and monotonous society of his genius, we used to welcome him back again with tact and gratitude. I do not remember that we ever alluded to the weeks of silence that had passed, which would have been more human if less politic. Of course, he never went to dances; they were far too conventional for him, for one thing; and he could not dance, for another, though I do not know that he ever urged this as a reason for not going. But we did not want him to wear picotees and take us out in the evening; any ordinary brother could have done that, and he was our "clever brother."

Then he got engaged, like any other Benedick or any other brother; and, like any other sisters, we prepared to hate his fiancée in our hearts, and to conceal our hatred from him. Not that he would have noticed it, for he did not notice us at all just then, except for the purposes of comparison. He told my musical sister that she would never know what music was until she heard his betrothed sing; he looked at my short curls, which used to please him so much, and told me, without comment, to notice her "crown of hair." There always is a crown of some sort about a brother's fiancée: hair, or beauty, or something that doesn't cost much. He even went as far as the place in which she lived, and raved about the North of England until we nearly hated ourselves for being his untalented, unmusical, uncrowned sisters who lived in the South.

Everyone expected the wedding to be scintillating with eccentricity. But our clever brother took a strange pleasure in disappointing people, and it was held after all in an ordinary village church, or at least as ordinary a village church as there could be in the North Country; and the only vagary of which he was guilty was to give each of the bridesmaids an orchid instead of a bouquet, which some uninitiated person in the crowd (who must have come originally from the South) was heard to pronounce "terrible close." So that was the end of our clever brother. I do not mean that it killed him off at once, but it gave him in course of time a house, with bath-room pipes, "and a something termed a "range," and a baby called William. We should not have minded so much if he had called it Dante Gabriel or Percy Bysshe, as we all suggested, but—William!

However, we had our enthusiastic brother to fall back upon; and our enthusiastic brother had hobbies, and showed no sign of including matrimony among them. The worst ones he ever had were socialism and metaphysics. The socialism possessed him first. It appeared to be very violent while it lasted, and was a very exclusive kind of socialism; at least, he said it was not given to many people to understand it at all, and it seemed to be meant for a race of men who didn't exist at present. He said this new kind of socialism had nothing to do with violent measures like communism; everything would have to be swept away that was all, and we must get rid of our Norman ancestors and our blue blood, and all such traditions, and socialism would follow without any revolution at all. And then, when he had raved for some months about socialism the elevation of mankind, he became equally possessed with metaphysics and the extinction of mankind. He contrived most ingeniously to work the two together for some time; and he used to cajole us into his room at the top of the house and read Schopenhauer, until we quite agreed that life was a mistake, and said so. Then he said we had missed the whole point of the theory, and explained it all over again without waiting for a wet day, so that we found it was better to agree with him silently. And yet, in spite of the misery and the evil in which he said society was steeped, he sought pleasure with a freshness which was certainly unworthy of a serious metaphysician. He took us to as many dances as we pleased, and he never minded if he could not find us at the end of the evening when it was time to come away: in a brother, and a socialist, and a metaphysician, such consideration was abnormal.

And then he went to stay with some friends at Christmas time, and met his fate just like any ordinary brother who stays in a country house and has never read a word of Schopenhauer. She lived in the West of England, so we had a change as far as locality went; but there was a sameness about the rest of it as there always is. She was tall, a fact I gathered from his first remark on his return to town: "Well, you are a little thing! Haven't you shrunk or something?" And he tried absently to find my waist somewhere about my head. "She wore glasses, but She did not look blue in them as I did in mine," he said; that was merely to work off his annoyance at my doing something that She did. One day, it was a wet one I remember, I mentioned Schopenhauer—poor, forgotten, discarded Schopenhauer.

"I suppose she is great on metaphysics," I said, carelessly. He coughed a little.

"Well, no, not exactly that—yet. Of course," he added, quickly, "there is plenty of time for that, and her mind has developed in other ways, you see. You should hear her play——"

"I will when she comes to town. But about the metaphysics," I pursued, relentlessly; "didn't you have any wet days in the holidays, or does it never rain in the West of England? I suppose the subject was crowded out, though?"

Enthusiasts are no good at concealing anything.

"We—we did mention it a little," he confessed; "in fact I felt it was only right to give her some of my views on marriage, and our engagement was a little delayed in consequence." (It had all been arranged in a week, but I wondered how it had not been deferred for ever.) "However, it's all square now. And, after all, metaphysics are not everything," he added, with some show of boldness.

"Then she doesn't approve of Schopenhauer?" rather nastily.

"How you do hammer at a subject" (crossly). "When you see Her you will understand how difficult it was not to hurt her feelings. You don't know what these highly-strung artistic natures are; and her ancestors came over with the Conqueror" (very proudly), "and when people have blue blood in their veins——"

"They can't swallow metaphysics and socialism in a lump. But I'm glad I needn't think it is wrong to be happy any more; do you know, I really thought, from what you said before you were engaged, that love and marriage were delusions. I suppose I must have missed the point again." I felt I deserved that little bit of revenge. But he unconsciously turned my weapons against myself.

"I wouldn't worry about marriage if I were you; it doesn't immediately concern you, does it?"

"Oh no," I assented, cheerfully; "it isn't everyone who has artistic natures, and blue blood, and Norman ancestors, is it?"

"Never mind, dear," he said, as kindly as he could; "she can't cook a bit, or do any of those useful things. And lots of people seem very happy without being married, you know."

I suppose nothing can be done?