ROOM WHERE CUPID WEEPS

Evening Star, Issue 19712, 12 November 1927, Page 19

ROOM WHERE CUPID WEEPS

THE MARRIAGE.-MORTUARY ' I FUNERAL MARCH OF ROMANCE There is an office in the central police courts of nearly every largo city am) town throughout the country, which once s week is the sccno of the funeral march of romance (says tho ‘ Sunday Chronicle’). Thraugh it passes an? apparently endless stream of human tragedies, of broken lives, and searing sorrow. Within its four walls, in an atmosphere charged with bitterness, suspicion, and hate, are played out in the raw stuff of real life ail the variations of human emotion and drama.

This room of sorrows is the law’s mortuary of marriage, the ** Maintenance Office.” where wives who have secured separation orders against their husbands come to draw their allowances, and tho husbands come to pay them in. There is material enough hero lo kup all tho playwrights in Britain busy writing for tho remainder of their lives. Tho divorce courts have their light and shade, for tho cutting of the marriage tie often moans a happy release and the beginning of a new life. LIVING HELL. But hero there is nothing but shade, for these couples who are morally sundered but legally tied, drag out their lives in a living hell, A * .Sunday Chronicle ’ correspondent has spent two days in one of these bureaus of broken homes. He has watched <ho procession of crippled lives and bleeding hearts—tho men and women who bin e slaughtered love. Week after week throughout the year it goes on, he writes. And overv time another nail is hammered into the coffins of once happy marriages. With the clerk, busy with cash boxes and colossal ledgers, I take a scat at a long tablo on trestles. It is “ paying-in ” day for husbands. Up in the police court above, magistrates are still hearing matrimonial cases and applications for separations. A girl wife, perhaps, is tearfully telling the Bench that her husband had deserted her and loft her stranded and starving. Sooner or later they will come here to swell tho ranks of matrimonial failures.MEN WHO HAVE KILLED LOVE. “ Open the doors,” orders tho chief clerk. They are Hung wide, and I sec down the dim corridor outside a jumble of men. They arc all types—men in corduroys and mufflers, professional-looking men m striped trousers and black coats, men who preserve an attitude of studied nonchalance and bravado,’ ar.d men who look timid and ashamed. “Of course, if they want they can spare themselves tho ordeal of coming hero and send tho money through the post,” whispers .the clerk. “We do a lot of business that way. But many still prefer to come.” One by one. the men who have killed love file in. The first is a burly laborer. Very slowly and very painfully, as though ho is partings with his heart's blood, ho counts out 15s. ‘‘Working short time this week,” ho. complains, as he turns away. “That leaves mo a quid for baccy, beer, and lodgings.” Always the men who pay see their own side of tho tragedy. No one, apparently, gives a thought 'to tho struggle of the woman who will call next day for her allowance. ASHES OP ROMANCE. There is a boy—he can scarcely be more than 19—who timidly puts down a 10s note on the tablo. His shabby suit is thread■jire, and his thin form is under-nourished. Yet, young though tie is, knowledge and cynicism is written on his face. Ashes of romance! Castles that had tumbled! What suspicion, jealousy, or torturing scenes, I wonder, had led to his appearance here? “Wo got a lot like him—young ones,” whispered tho clerk. They seem to lush headlong into marriage, and then comes the awakening. When this office was started a few years ago,” he added, “ the amount received and paid out during the year was well under £3,000. Now it is nearly £40,000.”’ So the procession goes on. Some of the men walk boldly up to tho table, pay their money, and walk away without a glance to right or left. Others, as they await their turn, snigger—pitiful little sniggers that give a clue to the sort of thing that is passing between them. There is now a little, middle-aged-man at tho desk, a clerk or shop assistant, one imagines. Waiting for the officials to look up from his ledgers, he fumbles nervously with a straggly moustache. “Will you tell my wife,” he asks, that I’m not able to let her have anything this week? I can’t pay my landlady, and I’m in danger of being turned out on the street. Next week, perhaps, I. . . •” “I know,” breaks in tho clerk wearily. “This is the ninth week you’ve told tho same story. If your wife wants she can fako out a warrant.” TWO WOMEN.

A pcetly woman in a neat costume and a smart hat steps, up lo Iho tabic ami lays down two pound notes with an air of defiance. “I’ve conic to pay for Mr she announces. ‘•The cause of the trouble—tho woman he is living with,’’ whispers tho clerk confidentially. I find myself wondering what the wife is like. . , There is another variation of tho same story when a florid, vulgar-looking woman lake's her turn at the desk. Her eves have tell-tale, pouches beneath thorn, her breath reeks of gin. “ Ami the, husband left the sweetest., prettiest little woman you’d over wish lo see for that!” comments tho clerk. Then there is a little girl ofeight—the child of tho second woman. Clutching a note and some silver in her fist she steps np in a businesslike way. Does she know, I wonder, tho meaning of all this? Perhaps she docs. Her pinched face is terribly wise. It is the following day. Tho wives of the men who were here the day before—arc lined np to claim the' moneys due to them, THE WOMAN WHO IS PAID. Whatever these marriages that have gone awry mean to tho husbands there :s no doubt what they mean to the wives. There are no sniggers here, no joking and sly laughs. Only a terrible weariness and a shocked disillusion. Some have baskets on their arms, for, the moment they have been paid, they will make a bee-line to the grocer’s and the butcher’s to buy tho provisions which must last’till next receiving _ day; others have two or three children trailing at their skirts, and one or two nurse babies only a few months old. And there are,young girls still in their teens in this mortuary of romance. One is expecting her first baby. Married only a few months, happly only a few short weeks, then the commencement of petty irritations leading to the. final break—that Is the story of many. With divorce now within tho reach of the poorest, one imagines many of those women would seek to cut the tio that has become a bondage of tho soul. But many are too old ever to have a' chance of marrying again, bo they continue to come hero week after week until death sunders the last frayed strand. A TRAGIC “NO.” A pale young woman with a baby in her anus sidles nervously up to tho tabic. “ Anything for Mrs ?” she trembles. Tho clerk scans the ledger. “Is this your first visit?” The woman nods. For a space there is silence, while the other women regard her curiously and a trifle pityingly; then the clerk says: “I’m, sorry; there’s nothing.” “But what am I to do?” falters the woman, pathetically. “I'vo got three children to keep and we’ve no money at all.” But beyond telling her to come again next week the clerk can do nothing.

Accompanied by a police officer a young couple come down from _ the police court upstairs, The wife has just been granted a separation order, and the officer is there to see tho necessary' formalities completed. As she awaits the taking of particulars the woman looks up at her husband with a sudden, wistful smile. “ Don’t let’s do it,” she entreats. “ Let's go home.” ■ But the man shakes his head. “ YYm took me to court, and you’ll have to abide by the consequences.’’ So it goes on week after week, the tragic story of this room where Cupid watches—and weeps.