morning and salted my coffee and sugared my chop.' Accept this as a
proof?"
"No, no, no," said the widow, laughing, "of course not! But when you
arrive at her house half an hour before the time and appear at odd and
embarrassing moments without a rational excuse and get mixed on your
dates and look at her as if she were the moon or a ghost, and might
disappear at any moment, and sit for hours gazing into space and
moistening your lips in the hope that you will think of something to
say----"
"She knows that she's got you!" groaned the bachelor.
"Oh, she may not," declared the widow, cheerfully. "She may not know
anything. She may be in love herself."
"That's it!" protested the bachelor, "knowing you're in love is only
half the trouble. How are you going to know when a girl has reached the
love stage? How are you going to know that she is not just dangling you,
or marrying you for your money? They're so clever and wise and
coquettish and----"
"When a girl is in love," said the widow, "she ceases being clever and
wise and coquettish. She becomes mooney and silent and begins to notice
things about you that you never knew yourself, such as that your nose is
like Napoleon's or that you have a profile like E. H. Sothern and
shoulders like Hackett's and hair like Kyrle Bellew's. She never keeps
you waiting, but is always dressed and sitting in the parlor an hour
before you arrive and is never in a hurry to get home and will walk for
blocks beside you in the rain with her best hat on without caring. She
begins to 'mother' you----"
"To what?"
"To caution you about getting your feet wet and avoiding a draught and
wearing your overcoat and to look at you every time you leave her as if
she was afraid you would die before morning and--Mr. Travers, do you
know I believe this train has reached Jersey City?"
"Why--why--so it has! Waiter! Waiter! Where in thunder is that
blockhead? Why hasn't he brought us the rest of the dinner?"
"You forgot to order it!" said the widow, looking maliciously up under
her hat.
"Jersey City! Last stop!" called the conductor from the door.
The bachelor put down his napkin and rose.
"Check, sir?" asked the waiter, with accusing eyes.
"Were you forgetting to pay?" inquired the widow, softly.
The bachelor thrust a bill into the waiter's hands and started down the
aisle, followed by the widow.
"You forgot your change," remarked the widow, as they stepped into the
depot.
"Oh, never mind," said the bachelor. "Where are your wraps?"
The widow clutched his sleeve.
"I--I--left them in the dining car," she stammered.
The bachelor gazed down at the top of the violet hat with a triumphant
smile.
"Oh, do go back and try to get them!" moaned the widow glancing wildly
at the train, which by this time was being switched onto a side track.
"It will be at the risk of my life," declared the bachelor, "but if you
want--any more----"
"More--what?" asked the widow, distractedly.
"Proof," said the bachelor.
"It isn't necessary," said the widow, as she spied an excited porter
running toward them, clutching a pongee coat, a silver hand bag and a
violet parasol.
"These," said the bachelor, taking them tenderly from the porter and
tipping him, "are the most substantial signs of----"
"A lost head," said the widow quickly.
"Or a lost heart," added the bachelor, as they crossed the station and
stepped fatuously on to--the wrong ferryboat.
VII
A SHORT CUT.
"WHAT ought I to do," asked the widow, carefully licking all the gum off
the flap of a violet envelope and then trying to make it stick, "to a
silly boy, who--asked me for a kiss?"
"What ought you to do?" repeated the bachelor, laying down his cigar and
regarding the widow severely. "Refuse him, of course."
"Oh, of course," agreed the widow, rubbing the envelope spasmodically
with the end of her handkerchief, "but what ought I do to teach him
better?"
"I can't think of anything--better," replied the bachelor, charitably
reaching for the violet envelope and closing it firmly with his fist.
"How about just taking the kiss--without asking for it?" inquired the
widow naively, as she leaned luxuriously back among the cushions of the
divan. "Wouldn't that have been better--for him, I mean?"
"Would it?" The bachelor looked the widow straight in the eye.
"Well," replied the widow weakly, toying with some fringe on a satin
sofa pillow and carefully avoiding the bachelor's gaze, "he would have
gotten it."
"And now he never will," rejoined the bachelor with a confidence he did
not feel.
"Oh, I don't know." The widow became suddenly interested in the
arrangement of the fringe on the satin sofa pillow. "But it isn't the
man who asks a woman for a kiss or--or anything--who gets it. It's the
man who takes for granted."
"Takes--what?"
"Takes her by surprise, Mr. Travers," explained the widow, "and doesn't
give her time to think or to say no. The short cut to managing a woman
is not argument or reason. It's action. She may like to be coaxed, but
it's the man who orders her about whom she admires--and obeys. Eve has
never forgotten that she is only a rib and when Adam forgets it,
she----"
"Makes him feel like a small part of the vertebrae," interpolated the
bachelor tentatively.
"Naturally," returned the widow, tying the sofa pillow fringe in a hard
knot and then untying it again, "when a man comes to her on his knees
she is clever enough to keep him there; but when he comes to her with a
scepter in his hand and determination in his eye, she has a wholesome
respect for him. It's not the man who begs but the one who demands that
receives. It's not the man who asks a girl to marry him, but the one who
tells her that she is going to marry him, who gets her. It's not the
husband who requests the privilege of carrying a latch-key or staying
down town at night who can do so without fear and trembling, but the one
who calmly takes the latch-key and telephones his wife that he is going
to stay down town and then rings off as though the matter were settled.
The question of who's going to have the whip hand in love or matrimony
is decided the very first time a man looks at a woman and lets her know
who's master."
The bachelor flicked the ashes off his cigar and regarded the widow
curiously.
"Are you talking Christian Science or Hypnotism?" he inquired patiently.
"Neither," replied the widow, "I'm talking facts, Mr. Travers. Haven't
you ever seen a little short-legged man with a snub nose married to a
beautiful, queenly creature, whom he ordered about as if she were the
original Greek slave and who obeyed him as if he were Nero himself, and
adored him in proportion to his overbearing qualities? And have you
never seen a magnificent, six-foot-two specimen of masculine humanity,
who was first in war and first everywhere but in his own home, where he
was afraid to put his feet on a chair or light a pipe or make an
original remark, because some little dried-up runt of a woman had him
hypnotized into believing that he was the thirty-second vertebrae and she
all the rest of the bones and sinew of the human race? A woman is like a
darky, who fancies that 'freedom' means three-quarters of the sidewalk,
or a small boy who imagines that doing as he pleases means smashing his
sister's toys and stealing sweets from the pantry. Put her in her place
and she will stay there; but give her an inch of power and she'll take
an ell of liberty and boss you off your own door sill. The biggest,
boldest woman that ever lived is built like a barge, to be towed; and
any little man who puffs up enough steam and makes a loud enough noise
can attach her to himself and tow her all the way up the river of life."
The bachelor laid down his cigar and gazed at the widow in awe.
"And I never knew it," he whispered huskily.
"I suppose," said the widow, beginning to toy with the fringe again,
"that you've been asking girls to kiss you, all this time."
"Not _all_ the time," protested the bachelor.
"And, of course," continued the widow maliciously, "they've all refused
you."
"Not _all_," repeated the bachelor, pensively.
"What?" The widow glanced up quickly.
"Once," explained the bachelor apologetically, "I didn't have a bald
spot."
"When a man asks for a kiss," pursued the widow, thoughtfully, "a girl
HAS to refuse him; but when he takes it----"
"She has to take it, too," said the bachelor, chuckling.
"Would you mind," asked the widow, ignoring the last flippant bit of
persiflage and picking up the violet envelope, "posting a letter for
me?"
"May I look at the address?" demanded the bachelor.
"It's to the boy," began the widow, "who--who----"
"Took the roundabout way?" finished the bachelor, helpfully.
The widow nodded.
"I have written him," she explained, "that he mustn't--that it would be
best if he wouldn't come here any more. That will keep him in his place,
I think."
"On his knees?" inquired the bachelor sarcastically.
"And I told him," proceeded the widow, with a reproachful glance at the
bachelor, "how very rude and foolish----"
"Did you explain," interrupted the bachelor, "that the foolishness
consisted in not taking the kiss?"
"Mr. Travers!"
"And that the rudeness lay entirely in assuming that you might not want
to be----"
"How dare you!" cried the widow, flaming as red as the scarlet satin
sofa pillow behind her head. "I gave him a dreadful scolding!" she
added, looking pensively at the sealed note and toying with the edge of
the flap, as though she half wished it would come open again.
"In other words," remarked the bachelor laconically, "having him down,
you proceeded to wipe your feet on him. Since he had turned the left
cheek, you made him turn all the way round, so that you could stick pins
in his back and make him feel like the thirty-second vertebrae and----"
"I had to, Mr. Travers," cried the widow pleadingly. "It was my duty."
"Your--what?"
"To teach him a lesson," explained the widow promptly. "He's got to
learn that in the situation between man and woman there's only one
throne and that whoever gets up on it first wields the sceptre. He's got
to learn that the conquest of woman is not, like the Battle of Waterloo,
an affair of strategy, but like the Battle of Bunker Hill or
Sennacherib----"
"Or the Boston Tea Party or the Massacre of the Innocents," broke in the
bachelor. "But aren't you a little hard on the girl? If you get him too
well trained he'll beat her."
"Well," replied the widow promptly, "if he does she'll adore him.
Besides, it's much better to have the matrimonial medicine administered
in allopathic doses than in the little homeopathic pellets of caution
and deceit, and lies and arguments which end in the divorce court, and a
woman enjoys being bossed and bullied and ordered about by the man she
loves quite as much as he enjoys the bossing and bullying. It's her
natural instinct to look up, but she can't look up to a man who is
figuratively at her feet. She may struggle against the man who attempts
to conquer her by main force, but she enjoys being conquered just the
same, and it takes a great burden off her soul to be able to lay her
head on a broad, masculine shoulder and to know that every affair in
life is going to be settled and decided for her.
"She may talk about thinking for herself and voting and all that, but
she is always glad enough to sit back and be thought for and voted for
by some man who has magnetized her into believing him the incarnation of
intelligence. And any man can do it. If the average husband only had a
little more nerve and fewer nerves, he could master his wife with one
hand and his eyes shut. The heathen Turk can get along better with a
whole harem full of women than the civilized man gets along with one
lone, lorn wife. It isn't because he's any wiser or cleverer or kinder,
but because the first Turk learned the short cut to managing a woman and
passed the secret down in the family. They don't ask them to marry them
over there, they order them; they don't request them to run an errand or
sew on a button, they merely wave their hands and the women fight for
the privilege of obeying. They have known for ages what the white man
never seems to have learned, that the way to take a woman is by storm
and the way to hold her is by force and that any man can manage any
woman if he only knows how and has the audacity and the courage--What
are you trying to do, Mr. Travers?"
[Illustration: "I'VE got the courage at last--and the audacity." _Page
99_]
"I'm taking a short cut to the divan," replied the bachelor, sitting
down beside the widow, "and I've got the courage at last----"
"How dare you, Billy Travers!"
"And the audacity----"
"Stop! Stop!"
"And the nerve----"
"Mr. Taylor," announced the maid, appearing suddenly between the
portieres at this critical moment.
"Oh, mercy!" cried the widow, "and my hair is just----"
"Am I intruding?" asked a fresh-faced young man, entering briskly
between the portieres.
"Not at all, Bobby," said the widow sweetly, holding out one hand and
feeling her back hair with the other. "You arrived just at
the--psychological moment. We have been talking about you for the last
half hour."
VIII
AFTER LOVE----(?)
"WHY is it," asked the widow, swinging her chatelaine pensively as she
strolled down the avenue beside the bachelor, "that the man who is most
in love is most apt to get over it suddenly?"
The bachelor withdrew his eyes from the pretty pair of ankles across the
street and glanced down at the widow with the lenient smile of superior
wisdom.
"Why is it," he retorted, "that the man who drinks the most champagne at
dinner has the worst headache next morning?"
"That isn't any explanation at all, Mr. Travers." The widow's
chatelaine jingled impatiently. "Champagne is intoxicating."
"So is love."
"Champagne leaves you with an--an all-gone feeling."
"And love leaves you with--'that tired feeling'."
"Not me," said the widow promptly, "I always feel exhilarated
after--after----"
"Afterwards," finished the bachelor helpfully. "But you're a woman. It's
the man who has the 'tired feeling'."
"What is it like?" persisted the widow.
"Well," the bachelor flipped his cane thoughtfully, "did you ever eat a
fourteen course dinner, and then go to Sherry's afterward for supper
and then go to Delmonico's for a snack and to Rector's for----"
"I've been through it," sighed the widow.
"You didn't want any more, did you?" asked the bachelor sympathetically.
"That's the way a man feels when he's had enough of love--or a woman."
"But--but love isn't indigestible."
"Too much of anything--love or dinner or champagne--is apt to take away
your appetite. And too much of a woman is sure to make you hate the
sight of her."
The widow's chatelaine was dancing madly in the afternoon sunlight.
"I don't suppose," she said witheringly, "that it would be possible for
a woman to get too much of a man!"
"No," agreed the bachelor cheerfully, as he squinted at another pair of
pretty ankles, "women are sentimental topers. They sip their wine or
their sentiment slowly and comfortably; they don't gulp it down like a
man. That's why the man has usually finished the bottle before the woman
has touched her glass. He is ready to turn out the lights and put an end
to the affair just as she has begun to get really interested. But," and
the bachelor turned suddenly upon the widow, "who is the man? Show him
to me!" and he brought his cane down fiercely on the sidewalk.
"Wh-what man?" asked the widow, turning pink to the tips of her ears.
"The man who has jilt--gotten over it. I don't see how it's possible,"
he added thoughtfully, "with you."
"Me!" The widow's voice was as chill and crisp as the autumn air. "I
wish," she added musingly, "that I knew how to patch it up."
"That's right!" retorted the bachelor. "Try to revive his interest in
champagne by offering it to him--the morning after. What he needs, my
dear lady, is--ice. When he has had a little ice and a little tabasco
sauce----"
"He may want more champagne?" asked the widow hopefully.
"Yes," replied the bachelor, swinging his cane cheerfully, "but not from
the same bottle. Will women ever learn," he mused, "that it is as
impossible to revive a man's interest in a woman he has completely
gotten over loving as to make him want stale champagne with all the
fizz gone out of it?"
"I don't see why," said the widow. "A woman often falls in love with the
same man twice."
"Because she never falls too much in love with him--once," explained the
bachelor.
The widow's chatelaine rattled indignantly.
"Nonsense!" she cried, "A woman's love is always stronger and deeper
than a man's."
"But it isn't so effervescent. She is a natural miser and she hoards her
feelings. A man flings his sentiment about like a prodigal and naturally
when it's all gone--there isn't any left."
"Is that when he gets the 'tired feeling?'" inquired the widow
sympathetically.
"Yes," said the bachelor, "and nothing is worse than waking up in the
morning with a dark brown taste in your mouth--to find the woman
standing before you offering you more champagne. But she always does. A
woman never seems to know when the logical conclusion of a love affair
has arrived. She clings with all her strength to the tattered remnants
of sentiment and shuts her eyes and tries to make believe it isn't
morning, when she ought to go away----"
"And let him sleep it off," suggested the widow.
"That's it," agreed the bachelor, "I once knew a man who was infatuated
with a woman who used attar of roses on her gloves and things. When he
woke up--I beg your pardon--after they had broken off, he never could
abide the smell of roses."
"I suppose," said the widow, holding her muff against her cheek
sentimentally, "it reminded him of all the tender little tete-a-tetes
and moonlight nights and the way her hair curled about her forehead and
the way she used to smile at him, and of her gloves and her ruffles and
the color of her eyes and----"
"It didn't!" said the bachelor emphatically. "It nauseated him. It's the
woman who always remembers the pleasant part of a love affair. A man
remembers only--the next morning--and the hard time he had getting out
of it."
"And the headache," added the widow.
"And the 'tired feeling'."
"And the other woman," suggested the widow contemptuously.
"Yes," agreed the bachelor, "the other woman, of course. But," he added
thoughtfully, "if a woman could only take the hint in time----"
"What time?" asked the widow. "When a man begins to be late for his
engagements?"
"Yes; or to forget them altogether."
"And to make excuses and enlarge on his rush of business."
"And to seem abstracted during the conversation."
"And to stop noticing her jokes or her frocks or the way she does her
hair."
"And to stay away from places where he could be sure to meet her."
"But," protested the widow, "they always make such plausible excuses."
"Nothing," said the bachelor confidently, "will keep a man away from a
woman except a lack of interest in her----"
"Or an interest in another woman," added the widow promptly. "But," she
concluded tentatively, "there ought to be a cure for it."
"For what? The other woman?"
"That tired feeling, Mr. Travers."
"There isn't any cure," replied the bachelor promptly, "but there's a
good preventive. When you were a very little girl," he continued
patronizingly, "and liked jam----"
"I like it now!" declared the widow.
"How did your mother manage to preserve your interest in it?"
"She took the jam away, Mr. Travers, and put it on the top shelf
always--just before I had had enough."
"Well, that's the way to preserve a man's interest in a woman," declared
the bachelor. "Deal yourself out to him in homeopathic doses. Put
yourself on the top shelf, where it is hard for him to get at you. Feed
him sugar out of a teaspoon; don't pass him the whole sugar bowl. Then
he will be always begging for more. One only wants more of anything that
one can't get enough of, you know. Now, if a woman would use her
judgment----"
"As if a woman in love had any judgment!" mocked the widow.
"That's it!" sighed the bachelor, "She never has. She just lays the
whole feast before the man, flings all her charms at his head at once,
surfeits him with the champagne of her wit and lets him eat all the
sugar off his cake right away. The love affair springs up like a
mushroom and--"
"Oh, well," interrupted the widow impatiently, "I like mushroom love
affairs. I like a man who can fling himself headlong into an affair
and----"
"Of course you do!" sighed the bachelor, "every woman does. The sensible
and temperate man who will love her all his life----"
"A little!" said the widow contemptuously.
"Well, a little is enough," retorted the bachelor, "at a time."
"That depends," said the widow, "on how many times--one is loved. There
are some women who are so saving of their sugar and frugal with their
sentiment that they never know the real joy of a grand passion or of
having a man love them properly. What's the use of having money if you
are always going to keep it in the bank?" she added conclusively.
The bachelor looked down at her and said nothing. There was a smile of
hopeless resignation in his eyes.
"Here we are!" cried the widow, suddenly stopping in front of a tall
brownstone house and holding out her hand politely. "So glad to
have----"
"Aren't you going to invite me in?" demanded the bachelor, in
astonishment.
The widow lifted her eyebrows in faint surprise.
"What," she asked sweetly, "after----"
"You broke an engagement with me last night!" blurted out the bachelor,
looking the widow straight in the eyes. But the widow shifted her gaze
to the park across the street and swung her chatelaine indifferently.
"And you weren't 'at home' to me the day before yesterday and you were
out of town for a week before that; and you promised me that this
afternoon----"
"Did I?" asked the widow, looking up innocently.
"Yes, you did!" declared the bachelor.
"Oh, well," laughed the widow, as she tripped up the steps with a wave
of her muff, "I was only showing you the sugar bowl; but I didn't mean
you could have another spoonful; besides," she added, turning round and
talking through the tunnel in her muff, "there's somebody waiting
inside."
"Who?" demanded the bachelor.
"The man with the 'tired feeling'," said the widow.
"But," began the bachelor in a puzzled voice, "if he is tired of--of
you----"
"Me!" the widow laughed. "He isn't tired of me, Mr. Travers. It's--the
other woman. He came to me for--for----"
"A bracer?" suggested the bachelor. "What are you going to give him?" he
added.
"Vinegar, mustard, pepper, salt," said the widow counting off the
buttons of her coat, child fashion.
The bachelor looked at her out of the corner of his eye.
"Anything else?" he asked.
"A little--ice," said the widow, gazing out over the park.
"Anything else?" persisted the bachelor.
The widow studied her muff musingly.
"Oh--I don't know," she said, doubtfully.
"Any--sugar?" demanded the bachelor.
The widow shook her head smilingly.
"No," she said, "I'm saving that for another----"
"Another!"
"Another time," said the widow ambiguously as she let the door close
softly behind her.
IX
HER WAY.
"THERE," said the bachelor, as he nodded amiably at the big,
jolly-looking man beside the little, weazened woman, "is the best
husband the Lord ever made!"
"The Lord!" said the widow scornfully. "It isn't the Lord who makes
husbands. It's the wife!"
"And I always thought God made Adam," sighed the bachelor, humbly.
"Adam," said the widow promptly, as she dropped another lump of sugar
into her tea, "wasn't a husband. He was only a man. And a man is
only--raw material. He is like a ready-made frock or a ready-made coat;
he has got to be cut down and built up and ironed out and taken in and
to have all the raw edges trimmed off before he is properly----"
"Finished?" suggested the bachelor.
The widow nodded cheerfully.
"Yes," she agreed, "and adjusted to matrimony. And even then sometimes
he is a dreadful botch."
"And all his style is gone," sighed the bachelor.
The widow studied her Sevres cup thoughtfully.
"Well," she admitted, "sometimes the material is so bad or so skimpy--"
"So--what?"
The widow smiled patiently.