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THE WIDOW
[Illustration: "OH well, I was only showing you the sugar bowl."
_Frontispiece_]
THE WIDOW
[TO SAY NOTHING OF THE MAN]
BY HELEN ROWLAND
ILLUSTRATED BY ESTHER P. HILL
[Illustration]
DODGE PUBLISHING COMPANY
220 EAST 23D STREET, NEW YORK
Copyright, 1908, by Dodge Publishing Co.
[THE WIDOW. 3]
CONTENTS
PAGE
I THE WIDOW 5
II THE WINNING CARD? 18
III WHY? 32
IV THE WIDOW'S RIVAL 47
V MONEY AND MATRIMONY 60
VI SIGNS AND COUNTERSIGNS OF LOVE 73
VII A SHORT CUT 86
VIII AFTER LOVE--(?) 101
IX HER WAY 118
X MARRIAGE 135
XI THE WIDOW'S DEAL 151
XII NEW YEAR'S IRRESOLUTIONS 165
I
THE WIDOW.
"WHAT would you say," asked the widow, tucking her skirts cautiously
about her patent leather toes and leaning back luxuriously against the
variegated pillows, "if I should tell you that I have found the very
girl who would make you a model wife?"
The bachelor glanced up indifferently and dipped the paddle lazily into
the water.
"What model?" he asked, suspiciously. "Women are like automobiles, you
know. There are so many models. And even after you have selected one
most carefully you never can tell what it is going to do."
"They are more like horses," declared the widow, "if you know how to
handle them, and are gentle and kind----"
"And let them see you're master----"
"And don't jab them with spiteful little spurs----"
"And know when to pull on the curb----"
"And when to coax them with sugar----"
"And when to beat 'em--and even then you can't tell what they're going
to shy at or balk at any more than you can tell when an automobile is
going to break down or run away or blow up. But this 'model'--is she
pretty and fetching and warranted to run smoothly over rough roads and
to climb all the matrimonial hills and not puncture a tire in the
finances and to be just as good for a long run as for a spurt? Is she
smart looking and substantial and----"
The widow sat up so quickly that the canoe swayed unsteadily beneath
them.
"She's not a harem, Mr. Travers!" she cried. "Oh, dear!" she sighed
hopelessly, leaning back again, "why is it that every man expects to get
a harem of virtues combined in one wife? I don't believe any man but
Solomon was ever perfectly satisfied with domestic life."
"Solomon," remarked the bachelor, giving the paddle an emphatic shove,
"understood the necessity for variety in wives. But if Solomon had lived
in the twentieth century he wouldn't have needed so many--er--annexations.
He would have got it all in one modern woman.
Now, you, for instance----"
"Speaking impersonally," interrupted the widow, trying to look austere
and at the same time to blow a chiffon veil out of her mouth, "when a
man buys an automobile he selects a runabout or a victoria or a touring
car or a racing machine, according to his needs, and is satisfied."
"Not at all," protested the bachelor. "The moment he has one automobile
he is sighing for another, and he is never happy until he has a garage
full----"
"And it is the same about a coat or a hat," persisted the widow,
ignoring the interruption; "he picks out what suits him best; but he
doesn't expect his top hat to do him for picnics nor his swallow-tail
to serve for lawn tennis nor his yachting cap to look well in church
nor----"
"A derby," interrupted the bachelor, "will do almost anywhere."
"They're hideous, Mr. Travers! and stiff and commonplace and
uncomfortable and----"
"Are they anything like the model wife you've picked out for me?"
inquired the bachelor insinuatingly.
The widow flushed under the corner of her chiffon veil.
"Well," she acquiesced unwillingly, "she isn't particularly pretty nor
brilliant and fascinating, and all that; but she's just the kind of a
girl a man ought to marry."
"And never does!" finished the bachelor triumphantly, backing water and
turning the canoe for mid-stream. "Of all kinds of women a man
detests----"
"How many kinds of women are there?" cried the widow suddenly.
"How many women are there?" retorted the bachelor. "The variety is only
limited by the number of feminine individuals. But fundamentally they
can be divided into two classes, just as automobiles can be divided into
gasoline and electric. There is the woman a man wants to marry, the kind
that is stamped from birth for wifehood, the even-tempered,
steady-going, comfortable kind of girl that you would like to tie to for
life and with whom you know you would be perfectly contented--and
utterly stupid. Every man has in mind his ideal wife; and nearly every
man's ideal is of the calm, domestic, wholly good, wholly sweet sort,
the sort that seems like a harbor away from the storm. But so often,
just about as he has found this ideal, or before he has found her and
before the sun of his summer day dream has risen the storm comes
along----"
"The--what?"
"The tumultuous, impossible, adorable, unfathomable woman--the woman who
may be good or bad, ugly or beautiful, but is always fascinating,
alluring and irresistible. And she wrecks his little summer day dream
and turns his snug harbor into a roaring whirlpool and carries him off
in a tempest. Sometimes he marries her and sometimes he doesn't; but
whether he does or does not, he is always spoiled for the other kind
afterward."
"And if he does marry her," added the widow, trailing her fingers
thoughtfully in the water, "he is always sorry and wishing he had
married the other kind."
"Well," the bachelor laid his paddle across his knee, "what's the
difference? If he had married the other kind he would always have been
wishing he hadn't. Now if a man could only be allowed two wives----"
"One for week days and one for--holidays?" inquired the widow
sarcastically.
"Yes," acquiesced the bachelor, "one for each side of him, the tame side
and the untamed side. One to serve as a harbor and make him a home and
fulfill his domestic longings and bring up his children and keep him
sane and moral; and the other to amuse him and entertain him and inspire
him and put the trimmings on life and the spice and flavor in the
matrimonial dish."
"A sedative and a stimulant!" jeered the widow. "One to stir you up and
one to calm you down; one to spur you forward and one to pull on the
curb--a Hebe and a Minerva! And then you'd be running around demanding a
Venus to make you forget the other two. Whatever woman a man marries, he
invariably spends his life sighing for something different. If he is
tied to a nice, soft sofa pillow, he longs for a backbone. If he marries
a parlor ornament, he yearns for a kitchen utensil. If his wife has a
Greek nose, he discovers afterward that what he really admires is pugs.
If he picks out red hair or black, he will go blocks out of his way to
pursue every yellow glint that catches his eye. And if he married a
whole harem at once he would discover that what he really wanted was
monogamy, and a single wife with a single idea. There aren't enough
kinds of women in the world to fulfill any one man's idea of what a wife
should be."
"And yet," sighed the bachelor, "I once knew a woman who would have done
that--all by herself."
The widow looked unconvinced.
"Was she a model wife?" she inquired, skeptically.
"How do I know?" said the bachelor. "She wasn't my wife."
"Of course not!" cried the widow. "It is always the other man's wife who
is our ideal----"
"She wasn't my ideal," protested the bachelor. "She was the storm that
shattered my ideal and spoiled me for matrimony. She was a whole garage,
a whole stable, a whole harem in one."
The widow looked distinctly disapproving.
"It's lucky," she said coldly, "that you escaped--a woman like--that!"
"But I haven't," protested the bachelor, laying down his paddle and
leaning forward so that the ends of the widow's chiffon veil blew in his
face. "She was the spice in life's pudding, the flavor, the sauce, the
stimulant, the----"
"This canoe is tipping dreadfully," remarked the widow, but the
disapproval had disappeared from her eyes.
"She was----"
"Why, I do believe it's growing dark, Mr. Travers."
"It is," agreed the bachelor. "Nobody can see----"
"See--what?" asked the widow, suddenly sitting up straight and fixing
the bachelor with her eyes.
"How perfectly adorable and unfathomable and tumultuous----"
"Are you feeding me sugar, Mr. Travers?"
"Perhaps," acknowledged the bachelor, leaning back and picking up the
paddle again, "but some day, when I'm ready, I'm going to stop feeding
you sugar. I'm going to put on the curb bit."
"Why don't you do it now--Billy?" asked the widow, with a challenging
glance from beneath her lashes.
"I can't," grumbled the bachelor, "while you are blowing that chiffon
veil."
The widow took the two ends of the offensive thing and tied them
deliberately under her chin.
"Some day," continued the bachelor, as he swung the canoe shoreward with
a vigorous dip of the paddle, "I'm going to show you who's master. I'm
going to marry you and then--"
"Be sorry!" laughed the widow.
"Of course," assented the bachelor, "but I'd be sorrier--if I didn't."
II
THE WINNING CARD?
"THERE," said the bachelor as he bowed to a little man across the room,
"sits the eighth wonder of the world--a man with a squint and a cork leg
and no income to speak of, who has just married for the third time. What
makes us so fascinating?"
The widow laid down her oyster fork and gazed thoughtfully at the
beautiful girl in blue chiffon sitting opposite the man with the squint.
"Don't generalize," she said, turning rebukingly to the bachelor. "You
mean what makes the little man so fascinating?"
The bachelor jabbed an oyster viciously.
"Well," he grumbled, "what does make him so fascinating? Is it the
squint or the cork----"
The widow looked at him reproachfully.
"Don't be envious," she said. "He might have two squints and yet be
successful with women. Haven't you ever seen a runty, plain little man
before, with nothing on earth, apparently, to recommend him except his
sex, who could draw the women as a magnet does needles?"
The bachelor dropped his oyster and stared at the widow.
"It's hypnotism!" he declared with solemn conviction.
The widow laughed.
"It's nothing of the sort," she contradicted. "It's because he holds
man's winning card and knows how to play it. Just observe the tender
solicitude with which he consults her about that fish."
"You mean," inquired the bachelor suspiciously, "that he has a
fascinating way?"
"That's all he needs," responded the widow promptly, "to make him
irresistible."
"Then, how do you account," argued the bachelor, indicating a
Gibsonesque young man eating his dinner alone under a palm at the corner
table, "for the popularity of that Greek god over there? He's a perfect
boor, yet the women in this hotel pet him and coax him and cuddle him as
if he were a prize lion cub."
"Oh," remarked the widow, "if you were all Greek gods--that would be
different. But, unfortunately, the average man is just an ungainly
looking thing in a derby hat and hideous clothes, with knuckly hands and
padded shoulders and a rough chin."
"Thank you," said the bachelor sweetly. "I see--as in a looking glass.
Evidently our countenances--"
"Pooh!" jeered the widow, "your countenances just don't count. That's
all. What profiteth it a man though he have the face of an Apollo if he
have the legs of a Caliban? A woman never bothers about a man's face.
It's his figure that attracts her. She will forgive weak eyes and a
cut-off chin twice as quickly as weak shoulders and cut-off legs."
"That's why we pad them--the shoulders," explained the bachelor.
"You wouldn't need to," retorted the widow, "if you knew how to play the
winning card."
"What IS the winning card?" implored the bachelor, leaning across the
table anxiously.
The widow laid down her soup spoon and bent to arrange the violets in
her belt meditatively.
"Well," she said, "Sir Walter Raleigh played it and it won him a title;
and Mr. Mantellini played it and it kept him in spending money and fancy
waistcoats for years without his doing a stroke of work; and Louis
XIV.--but oh, pshaw! You know all about that. Briefly speaking, a man's
winning card is his knowledge of how to treat a woman. Specifically, it
is a tender, solicitous, protecting manner. A woman just loves to be
'protected,' whether there is anything to be protected from or not. She
loves to know that you are anxious for her safety and comfort, even when
there is no cause in the world for your anxiety. She loves to have you
wait on her, even when there is a room full of hired waiters about. She
loves to be treated like an adorable, cunning, helpless child, even when
she is five feet ten and weighs a cool two hundred. She delights in
having a mental cloak laid down for her to walk over and every time you
do it she secretly knights you."
"It sounds awfully easy," said the bachelor.
"But it isn't," retorted the widow, "if it were all men would try
it--and all men would be perfectly irresistible."
"Well, aren't they?" asked the bachelor, innocently. "I thought
they----"
"The winning way, the irresistible masculine manner," pursued the widow,
ignoring the interruption, "is something subtle and inborn. It can't be
put on or varnished over. It is neither a pose nor a patent. It is the
gift of one of the good fairies at birth. If it is going to be trained
into a man he must be caught and schooled very early--say, before he is
ten years old. It's his ingrain attitude toward women and he begins by
practicing it on his mother. If he is not to the manner born and tries
to cultivate it late in life, he must watch very carefully to see that
he does not overdo it like a lackey or a dancing master or the villain
in a melodrama. Of course, it can be cultivated to a certain extent,
like music or Christian Science, but it's hard for a man to learn that a
woman is a fragile creature and needs a bodyguard, after he has been
twenty years letting his sisters pack their own trunks and lug their own
satchels and golf clubs. Besides, most men are too busy or too
self-absorbed to cultivate it, if they could."
"Most men," remarked the bachelor, stirring his coffee and lighting his
cigarette, "aren't anxious to become the sort of 'mother's darling' you
describe."
"Nonsense," retorted the widow. "Richard the Third was a perfectly
adorable ladies' man and he couldn't be called exactly--a 'mother's
darling.' Yet the things he said to poor Lady Anne and the way he said
them would have turned any feminine brain. It isn't milk and water that
women admire; it's the milk of human interest. It's the feeling that a
man is gazing at you instead of through you at his own reflection--or
some other woman."
"But if it means giving up all the easy chairs," protested the bachelor,
"and packing all the family trunks and putting out your pipe every time
a female member of the family approaches and eating dishes you don't
want and running round doing household errands, a man hasn't got
time----"
"It doesn't!" declared the widow. "It has nothing to do with morals or
with selfishness. Some of the most selfish men in the world are those
whom a poor little woman will work her fingers to the bone to support,
simply because when she comes home at night after her labors her husband
puts his arms around her and tells her how sad it makes him feel to see
her struggle so, and how young and beautiful she keeps in spite of it
all and orders her to lie down and let him run out and fetch her some
ice cream and read to her. A man with that sort of way with him can get
anything on earth out of a woman and then make her eternally grateful to
him. Look at the husbands who slave all day earning money for their
wives to spend and go home tired out and grouchy and never get a word of
thanks. Yet, a man can stay out six nights in the week, and if he will
come home on the seventh with a kiss and a compliment and a box of candy
and any old lie and a speech about sympathy and all that, a nice
sensible wife will forgive and forget--and adore him."
[Illustration: "THAT Greek god has been staring as if he contemplated
murder." _Page 28_]
"But are there any nice sensible wives?" asked the bachelor plaintively.
"Have you finished your cigarette, Mr. Travers?" inquired the widow
coolly.
"Because if there are, that is just what I am looking----"
"If you have," pursued the widow, "I think we had better go."
The bachelor rose with alacrity. "I think so, too," he acquiesced,
pleasantly. "That Greek god over yonder under the palm has been
staring at me as if he contemplated murder for the last half hour."
The widow blushed.
"Perhaps," she said with a one-cornered smile, "he is envying you----"
"Undoubtedly!" agreed the bachelor.
"Envying you," pursued the widow, "your fascinating ways."
"Oh," cried the bachelor, "then I have got it."
"What?" said the widow.
"The winning card. The charm!"
"Well," said the widow, putting her head on the side and gazing at him
speculatively, "you wear a derby hat."
"I take it off in the house and in the presence of ladies," protested
the bachelor.
"And your shoulders----" began the widow.
"They are my own!" declared the bachelor.
"And your----"
"They also are mine," broke in the bachelor quickly.
"And besides all that," added the widow, "you have that little bald spot
in the middle of your head. And yet----"
"Go on," said the bachelor, "you have said the worst."
"I broke an engagement with a nice boy to dine with you to-night."
"That doesn't prove anything," said the bachelor scornfully. "Maybe he
hasn't played the winning card."
"No, it proves you have," declared the widow.
"I can't see it!" protested the bachelor.
"Well, just look at the Greek god over under the palm and then look in
the glass at yourself and--work it out."
"But why look at the Greek god?"
"Because," said the widow, turning to the mirror and carefully tilting
her hat, "he is the nice boy with whom I broke the engagement."
III
WHY?
"WHY is a woman?" snapped the bachelor, flinging himself into the big
armchair opposite the widow with a challenging glance.
"Why--why, because," stammered the widow; startled at his sudden
appearance.
"I knew it!" said the bachelor with conviction.
"And there are lots of other reasons, Mr. Travers."
"But they aren't reasonable," declared the bachelor doggedly.
The widow closed her book with a sigh and laid it on the table beside
her.
"Who said they were?" she asked witheringly. "Neither is a woman. Being
reasonable is so stupid. It's worse than being suitable or sensible,
or--or proper."
The bachelor lifted his eyebrows in mild astonishment.
"I thought those were virtues," he protested.
"They are, Mr. Travers," returned the widow crushingly, "and that's why
they're so uninteresting. You might as well ask why is music, or
painting, or pate de foie gras, or champagne, or ice cream, or anything
else charming and delicious--"
"And utterly useless."
"Of course," agreed the widow, leaning back and thoughtfully twisting
the bit of lace she called a handkerchief. "It's the utterly useless
things that make the world attractive and pleasant to live in--like
flowers and bonbons and politics and love--"
"And tobacco," added the bachelor reflectively.
"Woman is the dessert to the feast," went on the widow, "the trimmings
on the garment of life, the spice in the pudding. Of course, a man can
eat his dinner without dessert or champagne and live his life without
kisses or a woman--but somehow he never does."
"And that's just where he gets into trouble," retorted the bachelor
promptly. "If you could only tell," he went on pathetically, "what any
one of them was going to do or why she was going to do it, or----"
"Then it isn't 'Why _is_ a woman?' but 'Why _does_ a woman?' that you
wanted to know," interrupted the widow helpfully.
"That's it!" cried the bachelor, "why does she get off a car backward?
Why does she wear a skirt four yards long and then get furious if you
step on it? Why does she make a solemn and important engagement without
the slightest intention of keeping it? Why does she put on open-work
stockings and gaudy shoes and hold her frock as high as she dares--and
then annihilate you if you stare at her? Why does she use everything as
it was not intended to be used--a hairpin to pick a lock, a buttonhook
to open a can, a hairbrush to hammer a nail, a hatpin to rob a letter
box, a razor to sharpen a pencil and a cup and saucer to decorate the
mantelpiece? Why does she gush over the woman she hates worst and snub
the man she is dying to marry? Why does she lick all the glue off a
postage stamp and then try to make it stick? Why does she cry at a
wedding and act frivolous at a funeral? Why does she put a new feather
on her hat and a new kink in her hair, and expect a man to notice it as
quickly and be as astonished as he would if she had shaved her head or
lost a limb? Why does she seem offended if you don't make love to her,
and then get angry if you do? Why does she act kittenish when she's big
and dignified, when she's little and old, when she's young and silly,
when she's old? And why, oh, why, did you inveigle me into coming down
to this miserable pink-and-white house party with the hope of being
near you and then utterly ignore me and spend your time flirting with
Bobby Taylor, while I sulk about like a lost sheep or run errands----"
"For Miss Manners?" suggested the widow cuttingly.
"Miss Manners!" exclaimed the bachelor scornfully.
"You once thought her very beautiful, Mr. Travers."
"That's just it!" retorted the bachelor. "Why didn't you let me go on
thinking her beautiful----"
"'As delicate as a sea shell,' wasn't it?"
"Yes," snapped the bachelor, "and as--hollow!"
The widow smiled enigmatically.
"Tell me," she said sympathetically, "what she has done to you."
"Well, for one thing," complained the bachelor, "she coaxed me out on
the piazza last night in the moonlight, and then, when she had talked
sentiment for half an hour and lured me to a dark spot and simply goaded
me into taking her hand----"
The widow sat up straight.
"But you didn't do it, Billy Travers!"
"Of course I did. It seemed almost an insult not to. And what did she
do? She jerked it away, flung herself from me, rose like an outraged
queen, turned on me with that 'I-thought-you-were-a-gentleman' air and
said----"
The widow lay back in her chair and laughed.
"Oh, mercy!" she said, wiping the tears from her eyes when she was
able. "Excuse me but--but--how did she look when she did it?"
"Well," confessed the bachelor, "she did look rather stunning."
"That's why she did it," explained the widow between laughs. "A woman's
reason for doing most things is because she thinks she will look well
doing them."
"Or because she thinks you will look surprised if she does them."
"Or because she wants to attract your attention."
"Or to make you feel uncomfortable."
"Or to astonish you or amuse you or----"
"Work on your sensibilities, or get on your nerves, or play on your
sympathies. But," he went on growing wroth at the recollection, "the
idea of a little chit like that--and that isn't the worst. This morning
she dragged me out of bed at half-past five to go fishing. Fishing! At
this season! I never saw a girl so crazy for fish in my life; and when
we had walked four miles to find the right spot and she had been silent
long enough for me to feel a nibble at the bait and had helped me with
all her might and main to haul in that blessed little fish, do you know
what she did?"
The widow looked up questioningly.
"She cried because I wanted to bring it home and made me throw it back
into the water. That's what she did!"
The widow sat up straight, with horrified eyes.
"Well, of course she did!" she exclaimed heatedly. "She only asked you
to _catch_ the fish didn't she--not to _kill_ it?"
The bachelor stared at her for a moment without speaking. Then he got up
silently and walked over to the window.
"I suppose," he remarked after a long pause, apparently addressing the
front lawn or the blue heavens, "that it's that same sort of logic that
incites a woman to play for a man until she catches him--and then throw
him overboard. O Lord," he continued, glancing at the sky devoutly, "why
couldn't you have made them nice and sensible?"
The widow took up her book with disdain.
"'Nice and sensible'" she repeated witheringly. "Just think how it
would feel to be called 'nice and sensible!' I wish," she added, turning
to her novel with an air of boredom, "that you would go and--talk to
Ethel Manners."
The bachelor eyed her narrowly.
"I guess I will," he said finally. "She seems more interesting--now that
you've explained her."
The widow stopped in the middle of a paragraph and looked up.
"And by Jove!" went on the bachelor reminiscently, turning to the window
again, "she did look dreamy in a sunbonnet and that little short skirt
this morning. She has adorable feet, you know."
The widow closed her book with a sharp snap, keeping her fingers between
the pages.
"_I_ know, Mr. Travers; but how did _you_ know?"
"I looked at them," confessed the bachelor frankly, "and her ankles--"
The widow's mouth closed in a straight line.
"I'm afraid, Mr. Travers," she remarked frigidly, "that you are not a
fit companion for a young girl like Ethel."
"I'm not equal to her," grinned the bachelor.
"No, you're not. She's a nice, sensible girl and----"
"Do you hate her very much?"
"Hate her?" The widow's eyes opened with astonishment.
"You called her 'nice and sensible.'"
"Bobby Taylor's looking for you, Marion," called Miss Manners, glancing
in at the door suddenly.
"Well, goodby. I'm off," said the bachelor, following the swish of Miss
Manners's skirts with his eyes, as she hurried away down the hall.
"Sit down, Mr. Travers!" commanded the widow in an awful tone.
At that moment a buoyant young man poked his head in at the door.
"Go way, Bobby," said the widow. "Mr. Travers and I are
discussing--er--psychology."
"Ugh!" remarked Bobby, dutifully withdrawing, "why do you do it, if it
hurts?"
The bachelor looked up at the widow under the tail of his eyelid.
"Does it hurt?" he asked.
But the widow's underlip was curled into a distinct pout and her eyes
met his reproachfully. She dabbed them effectively with the end of her
lace handkerchief.
"Of c-course it does," she said with a little choke in her voice, "when
you have been here three whole days and have never noticed me and have
spent every minute of your time trailing around after
that--that--little--"
"But wasn't that what you invited me for?" exclaimed the bachelor
helplessly.
"Of course it was," acknowledged the widow, "but--but I didn't think
you'd do it."
The bachelor gazed at her a moment in blank amazement. Then a gleam of
enlightenment came into his eyes and he leaned over and caught her
fingers.
"Look here, Marion," he said gently, "you invited me down here to fling
that girl at my head. If you didn't want me to fall in love with her,
what did you want?"
"I wanted you to get enough of her!" explained the widow, smiling
through her lace handkerchief.
"Well--I have. I've got too much!" vowed the bachelor fervently.
The widow laughed softly and complacently.
"That's just what I knew would happen," she said, closing her novel and
flinging it onto the couch.
Then she added, looking up quizzically:
"A woman always has a reason--if you can only find out what it is."
IV
THE WIDOW'S RIVAL.
"WHY," said the widow, gazing thoughtfully at the ruby-faced woman with
the gigantic waist-line, who sat beside the meek little man on the bench
opposite, "do men marry--those?"
The bachelor glanced into the violet eyes beneath the violet hat.
"Perhaps," he said insinuatingly, "because they can't get--somebody
else."
"Nonsense," replied the widow poking her parasol emphatically into the
sand. "With all the chance a man has----"
"Chance!" cried the bachelor scoffingly. "Chance! What chance has a man
got after a woman makes up her mind to marry him?"
The widow dug the sand spitefully with the point of her violet sunshade.
"I didn't refer to the chance of escape," she replied, icily. "I was
speaking of the chance of a choice."
"That's it!" cried the bachelor. "The selection is so great--the choice
is so varied! Don't you know how it is when you have too many dress
patterns or hats or rings to choose from? You find it difficult to
settle on any one--so difficult, in fact, that you decide not to choose
at all, but to keep them all dangling----"
"Or else just shut your eyes," interrupted the widow, "and put out your
hand and grab something."
[Illustration: "CHANCE! what chance has a man got?" _Page 48_]
"Of course, you shut your eyes!" acquiesced the bachelor. "Whoever
went into matrimony with his eyes open?"
"A woman does," declared the widow tentatively. "She knows exactly what
she wants, and if it is possible, she gets it. It is only after she has
tried and failed many times that she puts her hand into the matrimonial
grab-bag, and accepts anything she happens to pull out. But a man never
employs any reason at all in picking out a wife----"
"Naturally!" scoffed the bachelor. "By that time, he's lost his reason!"
The widow rested her elbow on the handle of her sunshade, put her chin
in her hand and smiled out at the sea.
"Yes," she said, "he has. He has reached the marrying mood."
"The--what?"
"The marrying mood. A man never decides to marry a girl just simply
because he loves her, or because she is suitable, or because he ought to
marry her, or because she is irresistible or fascinating or in love with
him. He never marries at all until he gets the marrying mood, the
matrimonial fever--and then he marries the first girl who comes along
and wants him, young or old, pretty or ugly, good or bad. And that
explains why a lot of men are tied up to women that you cannot possibly
see any reason for having been married at all, much less married to
those particular men."
"Good heavens!" exclaimed the bachelor, "I'm glad I've got past the
age----"
"But you haven't!" declared the widow emphatically. "The marrying fever
is, like the measles or the appendicitis, liable to catch you at any age
or stage, and you never know when or why or how you got it. Sometimes a
man takes it when he is very young and rushes into a fool marriage with
a woman twice his age, and sometimes he goes all his life up to sixty
without catching the contagion and then gets it horribly and marries his
cook or a chorus girl young enough to be his granddaughter. Haven't you
seen confirmed bachelors successfully resist the wiles of the most
fascinating women and turn down a dozen suitable girls--and then, just
when you thought they were quite safe and entirely past the chance of
marriage as well as their first youth, turn around and tie themselves
to some little fool thing without a penny to her name or a thought worth
half that amount? That was a late attack of the matrimonial fever--and
the older you get it the harder it goes. Let me see," added the widow
thoughtfully, "how old are you?"
"I haven't lost my ideals--nor my teeth!" declared the bachelor
defensively.
"What is your ideal?" asked the widow leaning over and peeping up under
the bachelor's hat brim.
The bachelor stared back at her through lowered lashes.
"It's got on a violet hat," he began, "and violet----"
"Is that a ship out there?" asked the widow, suddenly becoming
interested in the sea.
"And violet----"
"Oh, dear!" she interrupted petulantly. "Of course, you've got ideals.
All men have ideals--but they don't often marry them. The trouble is
that when a man has the marrying fever he can clothe anything in curls
and petticoats with the illusions he has built around that ideal, and
put the ideal's halo on her head and imagine she is the real thing. He
can look at a red-headed, pug-nosed girl from an angle that will make
her hair seem pure gold and her pug look Greek. By some mental feat, he
can transform a girl six feet tall with no waist line and an acute elbow
into a kittenish, plump little thing that he has always had in mind--and
marry her. Or, if his ideal is tall and willowy and ethereal, and he
happens to meet a woman weighing 200 pounds whose first thought in the
morning is her breakfast and whole last thought at night is her dinner,
he will picture her merely attractively plump and a marvel of intellect
and imagination. And," the widow sank her chin in her hand and gazed out
to sea reflectively, "it is all so pitiful, when you think how happy men
could make marriage, if they would only go about it scientifically!"
"Then what," inquired the bachelor flinging away his cigar and folding
his arms dramatically, "is the science of choosing a wife?"
"Well," said the widow, counting off on the tips of her lilac silk
gloves, "first of all a man should never choose a wife when he finds
himself feeling lonesome and dreaming of furnished flats and stopping
to talk to babies in the street. He has the marrying fever then, and is
in no fit condition to pick out a wife and unless he is very careful he
is liable to marry the first girl who smiles at him. He should shut his
eyes tight and flee to the wilderness and not come back until he is
prepared to see women in their proper lights and their right
proportions."
"And then?" suggested the bachelor.
"Then," announced the widow oratorically, "he should choose a wife as he
would a dish at the table--not because he finds her attractive or
delicious or spicy, but--because he thinks she will agree with him."
"I see," added the bachelor, "and won't keep him awake nights," he
added.
The widow nodded.
"Nor give him a bitter taste in the mouth in the morning. A good wife is
like a dose of medicine--hard to swallow, but truly helpful. The girls
who wear frills and high heels and curly pompadours are like the salad
with the most dressing and garnishing, likely to be too rich and spicy,
while the plain little thing in the serge skirt, who never powders her
nose, may prove as sweet and wholesome--as--as home-made pudding."
"Or--home-made pickles," suggested the bachelor with wry face.
The widow shook her parasol at him admonishingly.
"Don't do that!" cried the bachelor.
"Do what?" inquired the widow in astonishment.
"Wave your frills in my eyes! I had just made up my mind to propose to
Miss Gunning and----"
The widow sat up perfectly straight.
"Do you really admire--a marble slab, Mr. Travers?"
"And your frills," pursued the bachelor, unmoved, "like salad
dressing----"
"I beg your pardon."
"Or garnishings----"
"Mr. Travers!"
"Might be merely a lure to make me take something which would disagree
with me."
The widow rose and looked coolly out over the waves.
"I can't see," she said, "why you should fancy there could be any
chance----"
"I don't," sighed the bachelor. "It isn't a matter of chance, but of
choice."
The ice in the widow's eyes melted into sun in a moment. She turned to
the bachelor impulsively.
"Why do you want to marry me?" she asked.
The bachelor rose and looked down at her critically.
"Well," he said, "for one thing, because you're just the woman I ought
not to marry."
"What!"
"You're too highly spiced----"
"Billy!"
"And you'd be sure not to agree with me----"
"Billy Travers!"
"And because----"
"Well? Go on."
"Because----" The bachelor hesitated and gazed deep into the violet
eyes.
"Please proceed, Mr. Travers."
"I won't!" The bachelor turned his back on her defiantly.
The widow came a little nearer and stooped around to peep under his
hat-brim.
"Please--Billy!" she breathed softly.
"Well, then--because I'm in the marrying mood," he replied.
But the widow was half way to the hotel before he knew what had
happened.
V
MONEY AND MATRIMONY.
"WHAT rhymes with 'matrimony'?" inquired the widow, taking her pencil
out of her mouth and looking up thoughtfully through the fringes of her
pompadour.
"Money," responded the bachelor promptly, as he flung himself down on
the grass beside her and proceeded to study her profile through the
shadows of the maple leaves.
The widow tilted her chin scornfully.
"I suppose they do sound alike," she condescended, "but I am making a
poem; and there is no poetical harmony in the combination."
"There is no harmony at all without it," remarked the bachelor shortly.
"But how on earth can you make a poem out of matrimony?"
"Some people do," replied the widow loftily.
"On paper!" sneered the bachelor. "On paper they make poems of death and
babies and railroad accidents and health foods. But in real life
matrimony isn't a poem; it's more like a declaration of war, or an
itemized expense account, or a census report, or a cold business
proposition."
The widow bit the end of her pencil and laid aside her paper. If the
bachelor could have caught a glimpse of her eyes beneath the lowered
lashes he might not have gone on; but he was studying the sky through
the maple leaves.
"It's a beautiful business proposition," he added. "A magnificent money
making scheme, a----"
The bachelor's eyes had dropped to the widow's and he stopped short.
"Go on," she remarked in a cold, sweet voice that trickled down his
back.
"Oh, well," he protested lamely, "when you marry for money you generally
get it, don't you? But when you marry for love--it's like putting your
last dollar on a long shot."
"If you mean there's a delightful uncertainty about it?" began the
widow.
"There's nothing half so delightful," declared the bachelor, "as betting
on a sure thing. Now, the man or woman who marries for money----"
"Earns it," broke in the widow fervently. "Earns it by the sweat of the
brow. The man who marries a woman for her money is a white slave, a bond
servant, a travesty on manhood. For every dollar he receives he gives a
full equivalent in self-respect and independence, and all the things
dearest to a real man."
"A real man," remarked the bachelor, taking out his pipe and lighting
it, "wouldn't marry a woman for her money. It's woman to whom marriage
presents the alluring financial prospect."
"Oh, I don't know," responded the widow, crossing her arms behind her
head and leaning thoughtfully against the tree at her back. "In these
days of typewriting and stenography and manicuring and trained nursing,
matrimony offers about the poorest returns, from a business standpoint,
of any feminine occupation--the longest hours, the hardest work, the
greatest drain on your patience, the most exacting master and the
smallest pay, to say nothing of no holidays and not even an evening
off."
"Nor a chance to 'give notice' if you don't like your job," added the
bachelor sympathetically.
"If the average business man," went on the widow, ignoring the
interruption, "demanded half of his stenographer that he demands of his
wife he couldn't keep her three hours."
"And yet," remarked the bachelor, pulling on his pipe meditatively, "the
average stenographer is only too glad to exchange her position for that
of wife whenever she gets----"
The jangle of gold bangles, as the widow brought her arms down from
behind her head and sat up straight, interrupted his speech.
"Whenever she gets----"
The widow picked up her ruffles and started to rise.
"Whenever she gets--ready," finished the bachelor quickly.
The widow sat down again and leaned back against the tree.
"How perfectly you illustrate my point," she remarked sweetly.
"Oh," said the bachelor, taking his pipe out of his mouth, "did you have
a point?"
"That marriage is something higher and finer than a business
proposition, Mr. Travers, and that there are lots of reasons for
marrying besides financial ones."
"Oh, yes," agreed the bachelor, "there is folly and feminine coercion
and because you can't get out of it, and----"
"As for marriage as a money affair," pursued the widow without waiting,
"it's just the money side of it that causes all the squabbles and
unhappiness. If they've got it, they are always quarreling over it and
if they haven't got it they are always quarreling for it. The
Castellanes and Marlboroughs who fight over their bills and their debts
aren't any happier than the Murphys and the Hooligans who fight over the
price of a pint of beer. It's just as difficult to know what to do with
money when you've got it as it is to know what to do without it when
you haven't got it; and a million dollars between husband and wife is a
bigger gulf than a $10 a week salary. It's not a question of the amount
of money, but the question of who shall spend it that makes all the
trouble."
"But don't you see," argued the bachelor, sitting up suddenly and
knocking the ashes out of his pipe, "that all that would be eliminated
if people would make marriage a business proposition? For instance, if
two people would discuss the situation rationally and make the terms
before marriage; if the man would state the services he requires and the
woman would demand the compensation she thinks she deserves----"
"Ugh!" shuddered the widow, putting her hands over her eyes, "that
would be like writing your epitaph and choosing the style of your
coffin."
"And every man," pursued the bachelor, "would be willing to give his
wife her board and room and a salary adequate to her services and to his
income----"
"And to let her eat with the family," jeered the widow.
"Well," finished the bachelor, "then marriage wouldn't offer the poorest
returns in the professional market. And, besides," he added, "there
would be fewer wives sitting about in apartment hotels holding their
hands and ordering the bellboys around, while their husbands are down
town fretting and struggling themselves into bankruptcy; and fewer
husbands spending their nights and their money out with the boys, while
their wives are bending over the cook stove and the sewing machine,
trying to make ends meet on nothing a year."
"But that," cried the widow, taking her hands down from her eyes, "would
mean spending your courtship talking stocks and bonds and dividends!"
"And the rest of your life forgetting them and talking love," declared
the bachelor, triumphantly.
The widow looked up speculatively.
"Well--perhaps," she acquiesced, "if courtship were more of a business
proposition marriage would be less of a failure. Anyhow, you'd know in
advance just what a man considered you worth in dollars and cents."
"And you'd eliminate all the uncertainty," added the bachelor.
"And the chance of having to beg for your carfare and pin money."
"And of having to go bankrupt for matinee tickets and Easter hats."
"And of being asked what you did with your allowance."
"Or of how you acquired your breath or lost your watch."
"The trouble is," sighed the widow, "that no man would ever be broad
enough or generous enough to make such a proposition."
"And no woman would ever be sensible enough to listen to it."
"Nonsense. Any woman would. It's just the sort of thing we've been
longing for."
"Well," said the bachelor, turning on his back and looking up at the
widow speculatively, "let me see--you could have the violet room."
"What!" exclaimed the widow.
"It's got a good south view," protested the bachelor, "and besides it's
not over the kitchen."
"What on earth do you mean?" The widow sat up straight and her bangles
jingled warningly.
"And you could have Saturday and Wednesday evenings out. Those are my
club nights."
"How dare you!"
"And any salary you might ask--"
"What are you talking about, Billy Travers?"
[Illustration: "YOU'VE taken all the poetry out of it." _Page 72_]
"I'm making you a proposal of marriage," explained the bachelor in an
injured tone. "Don't you recognize it?"
The widow rose silently, lifted the sheet of paper in her hands and tore
it to pieces.
"Was that your poem?" inquired the bachelor as he watched the breeze
carry the fragments away over the grass.
The widow shook out her ruffles and picked up her hat.
"You've taken all the poetry out of it," she retorted, as she fled
toward the house.
The bachelor looked after her undecidedly for a moment. Then he leaned
back lazily and blinked up at the sky between the leaves.
"And this," he said softly, "is the white man's burden."
VI
SIGNS AND COUNTERSIGNS OF LOVE.
"IF there were only some way," began the bachelor, gazing thoughtfully
out of the window of the dining car, "in which a fellow could prove his
love----"
"There are millions of them!" declared the widow, sipping her consomme
daintily.
"Those mediaeval fellows had such an advantage over us," complained the
bachelor. "When a chap loved a girl, all he had to do to prove it was to
get another chap to say he didn't, and then to break the other chap's
head. That was a sure sign."
"And it was so easy," remarked the widow.
"Yes," agreed the bachelor, enthusiastically. "Is there anybody whose
head you particularly want broken? I feel remarkably like fighting."
"Of course, you do," said the widow sympathetically. "The fighting
spirit is born in every man. But duelling isn't a sign of love; it's a
sign of egotism, hurt pride, the spirit of competition, the
dog-in-the-manger feeling. Besides, it's out of fashion."
"Well," sighed the bachelor, "then I suppose I shall have to save your
life or--die for you."
"You might," said the widow, nodding encouragingly, "but it wouldn't
prove anything--except that you had a sense of the picturesque and
dramatic. Suppose you did save my life; wouldn't you do as much for any
man, woman or child, or even any little stray dog who might happen to
fall out of a boat or be caught in a fire, or get under the feet of a
runaway?"
"I've got it!" cried the bachelor, "I'll write a book of poems and
dedicate them to you."
The widow toyed with her spoon.
"You've done that to--several girls before," she remarked ungratefully.
"That's it!" cried the bachelor. "How is a man going to tell when he's
in love when he feels the same way--every time?"
"Have you forgotten your soup?" asked the widow, glancing at the
untouched plate in front of the bachelor.
The bachelor picked up his spoon languidly.
"No," he said, "but----"
"Because if you had," said the widow, "it would have been a proof."
"A--what?"
"A proof," repeated the widow. "Forgetting to eat your meals is the
first sign of love. A man may write poetry and swear love by all the
planets separately; but if he sits down opposite you an hour afterward
and orders mutton chops and gravy and devours them to the last crumb,
either he doesn't mean what he says or doesn't know what he is talking
about. When he lets his breakfast grow cold and forgets to go out to his
lunch and loses his interest in his dinner it's a sure sign of love."
"It might be a sign of dyspepsia," suggested the bachelor doubtfully.
"Oh, well," proceeded the widow, sipping her soup leisurely, "there are
other signs besides a lost appetite."
The bachelor looked hopeful.
"Is one of them smelling violets all day, when there aren't any 'round;
and feeling a funny jump in your throat every time you catch sight of a
violet hat; and suddenly discovering you have written, 'Send me eight
quarts of violets and a widow,' instead of 'eight quarts of gasoline and
a patent pump'?"
The widow leaned so far over her soup that her eyes were completely
shaded by the brim of her violet hat.
"Yes," she said gently, "loss of reason is one of them--and loss of
memory."
"And loss of sleep?"
"And loss of common sense."
"And loss of self-respect?"
"And of your powers of conversation."
"Nonsense!" cried the bachelor, "a man in love can say more fool
things----"
The widow put down her spoon emphatically.
"A man in love," she contradicted, "can't talk at all? It's not the
things he says, but the things he isn't able to say; the things that
choke right up in his throat----"
"I've had that!" interrupted the bachelor.
"Had--what?"
"The 'love-lump' in the throat."
"And did you ever go up stairs to light the gas and turn on the water
instead; or walk three blocks in the wrong direction without knowing it;
or hunt ten minutes for your shoes and then discover it was your collar
button or your hat that you had lost?"
"Or add a column of figures and get a poem for the answer; or break your
neck running to the office and then have to sit down and think what you
came down early for; or begin a business letter 'Dearest Smith' and drop
it in the box without a stamp, or read your paper upside down, or----"
"You've got it!" cried the widow.
"I know it," sighed the bachelor, "dreadfully!"
"The idea, I mean," said the widow, blushing. "Those are the real proofs
of love."
"But," protested the bachelor, "they aren't impressive. How are you
going to let the girl know----"
"A girl always knows," declared the widow.