cleverest woman couldn't patch them up into a full-sized specimen. They
are like the odds and ends left on the remnant counter. You have to do
the best you can with them and then use Christian Science to make
yourself believe they are all there and that the patches don't show.
Haven't you ever seen magnificent women trailing little annexes after
them like echoes or--or----"
"Captives in the wake of a conquering queen?" broke in the bachelor.
The widow studied her Sevres cup as the purple plume on her hat danced.
"Those," she exclaimed, "are the bargain-counter husbands, picked up at
the last moment and made over to fit the situation--which they never
do."
The bachelor set down his teacup with the light of revelation in his
eyes.
"And I always thought," he exclaimed solemnly, "that they were picked
out on purpose to act as shadows or--or satellites."
"Picked out!" echoed the widow mockingly. "As if all women wouldn't be
married to Greek gods or Napoleon Bonapartes or Wellingtons or Byrons if
they could 'pick out' a husband. Husbands are like Christmas gifts. You
can't choose them. You've just got to sit down and wait until they
arrive; and sometimes they don't arrive at all. A woman doesn't 'pick
out' a husband; she 'picks over' what's offered and takes the best of
the lot."
"And sometimes you're so long picking them over," added the bachelor,
"that the best ones are snapped up by somebody else and you have to take
the left-overs."
The widow poised her spoon above her cup tentatively.
"Well," she sighed, "it's all a lottery anyhow. The girl who snaps up
her first offer of marriage is as likely to get something good as the
one who snaps her finger at it and waits for a Prince Charming until the
last hour and then discovers that she has passed him by and that some
other woman has taken him and made him over beautifully. And even if a
girl had the whole world to select from, she wouldn't know how to
choose. You never can tell by the way a thing looks under the electric
light in the shop how it will look in broad daylight when you have got
it home, or how it will make up or whether it will fade or run or
shrink. And you never can tell by the way a man acts before marriage how
he will come out in the wash of domesticity, or stand the wear and tear
of matrimony. It's usually the most brilliant and catchy patterns of
manhood that turn out to be cotton-backed after the gloss of the
honeymoon has worn off. And on the other hand you may carefully select
something serviceable--dull and virtuous and worthy and all that--and he
may prove so stiff and lumpy and set in his ways and cross-grained and
seamy and irritable that you will cultivate gray hairs and wrinkles----"
"Ironing him out?" suggested the bachelor.
"Yes," agreed the widow, "and the wildest 'jolly good fellow' will
often tame down like a lamb or a pet pony in harness and will become a
joy forever with a little trimming off and taking in and basting up."
"Humph," protested the bachelor, "but when you catch 'em wild and tame
'em, how do you know they are not going to break the harness or burst
the basting threads?"
The widow considered a moment.
"You don't," she acknowledged grudgingly. "But there is a great deal in
catching the wild variety and domesticating them while they are young.
Of course, it's utterly impossible to subdue a lion after he has got his
second teeth, and it's utterly foolish to try to reform a man--after he
is thirty or has begun to lose his hair. Besides," she added, "there is
so much in the woman who does the training and the making over. There
are some women who could spoil the finest masculine cloth in the world
by too much cutting and ripping and--and nagging; while there are others
who can give a man or a house or a frock just the touch that will
perfect them."
"How do they do it?" asked the bachelor enthusiastically. "Take 'em by
the nape of the neck and----"
[Illustration: "IF we're such a lot, why do you marry us?" _Page 126_]
"Mercy, no!" cried the widow. "They take them unawares. The well-trained
husband never knows what has happened to him. He only knows that, after
ten years of matrimony, he is ashamed to acknowledge his own youthful
picture. He has been literally re-formed in everything from his collars
and the way he parts his hair to his morals and the way he signs his
name. The best husbands aren't caught; they're made. And the luckiest
woman isn't the one who marries the best man, but the one who makes the
most out of the man she marries."
"But," protested the bachelor, "if we're such a lot and such a lottery,
why do you marry us at all?"
The widow looked up in surprise and stopped with her cup poised in
midair.
"Why do we wear frocks, Mr. Travers?" she asked witheringly. "Why do we
pompadour our hair or eat with forks or go to pink teas? Marriage is a
custom; and if a woman doesn't marry she is simply non--non----"
"Compos mentis?" inquired the bachelor, helpfully.
"Well, yes," said the widow, "but that wasn't what I meant. What is the
Latin for 'not in it'? Her father looks at her accusingly every time he
has to pay her dressmaker's bill and her mother looks at her
commiseratingly every time she comes home without being engaged and all
her friends look at her as if she were a curiosity or--or a failure. And
besides, she misses her mission in life. That was what the Lord put Eve
in the world for--to give the finishing touches to Adam."
"She finished him all right!" exclaimed the bachelor fervently.
"Making a living," went on the widow scorning the insinuation, "or
making a career or making fame or a fortune isn't the real forte of
woman. It's making a husband--out of a man."
"I should think," said the bachelor setting down his teacup and leaning
back comfortably in his chair, "that they would form a corporation and
set up a factory where they could turn 'em out by the dozen or the
crate--or---"
"Pooh!" cried the widow, "a husband is a work of art and has to be made
by hand. He can't be turned out by machinery like a chromo or a
lithograph. And, besides, if you want a ready-made one you can always
find plenty of them on the second-hand counter----"
"On the--where?"
"Where they keep the widowers," explained the widow. "If a woman isn't
interested or clever enough to manufacture her own husband, she can
always find some man who has been modeled by another woman. And she has
the satisfaction of knowing exactly what she's getting and just what to
expect. The only trouble is that, in case she makes a mistake in her
choice, she never has a chance to make him over. He has been cut down
and relined and faced and patched already to his limit."
"And his seams are apt to be shiny and his temper frayed at the edges,"
declared the bachelor.
"And you have to be very sure that he fits your disposition."
"And matches your taste."
"And that he won't pinch on the bank account."
"Nor stretch on the truth."
"And that the other woman hasn't botched him."
"And even then he's a hand-me-down--and may shrink or run or--"
"Oh, widowers don't shrink or run," retorted the widow. "Matrimony is a
habit with them, and they feel like a cab-horse out of harness without
it. They long to feel the bit between their teeth and the gentle hand on
the reins----"
"And the basting threads," added the bachelor. "I wonder what it's
like," he went on, meditatively.
"You'll never know," said the widow, setting her cup on the tabourette.
"You're too old."
"Yes, I've got my second teeth," sighed the bachelor.
"And your bald spot."
"And I've sown my second crop of wild oats."
"And yet," said the widow leaning her chin in her hand and looking up
thoughtfully under her purple feather, "it would be a great triumph----"
"I won't be put in harness!" protested the bachelor.
The widow considered him gravely.
"There's plenty of material in you," she declared. "You could be trimmed
off and cut down and----"
"I'm too tough to cut!"
"And relined."
"I'm almost moth-eaten now!" moaned the bachelor.
The widow leaned forward and scrutinized him with interest.
"It would be a pity," she said slowly, "to let the wrong woman botch
you. The next time you propose to me," she added thoughtfully, "I think
I'll----"
"Did I ever propose to you?" broke in the bachelor with real fright.
"Oh, lots of times," said the widow; "it's almost a habit now."
"But you refused me!" pleaded the bachelor. "Say you refused me."
"I did," said the widow promptly. "I wasn't looking for--remnants."
"Never mind!" retorted the bachelor. "Some day you may find I've been
grabbed up."
"You'll have lost all your--starch and style by then," said the widow as
she patted her back hair and started for the door.
The bachelor followed, putting on his gloves.
"How do you know that?" he asked, when they had bidden their hostess
good-afternoon and stood on the portico saying goodby.
"Well," said the widow, "it would take an artist to make you over. The
wrong woman would utterly ruin you."
"And who is the wrong woman?" The bachelor tried to look into the
widow's eyes beneath the purple feather.
But the widow only glanced out over the lawn and swung her parasol.
"Who is the wrong woman?" persisted the bachelor.
The widow studied the tip of her patent leather toe.
"Who is the wrong woman?"
The widow looked up suddenly under her violet feather.
"The other woman," she said softly, "of course."
X
MARRIAGE.
"ISN'T all this talk about 'trial marriages' absurd?" remarked the
widow, laying her newspaper on the tabourette and depositing two small
red kid toes on the edge of the fender.
"It is," agreed the bachelor, cheerfully, with his eyes on the red kid
toes, "considering that all marriages are--trials."
"Just fancy," went on the widow, scornfully, ignoring the flippancy,
"being leased to a husband or wife for a period of years, like a flat or
a yacht or--or----"
"A second-hand piano," suggested the bachelor.
"And knowing," continued the widow, gazing contemplatively into the
fire, "that when the lease or the contract or whatever it is expired,
unless the other party cared to renew it, you would be on the market
again."
"And probably in need of all sorts of repairs," added the bachelor,
reflectively, "in your temper and your complexion and your ideas."
"Yes," sighed the widow, "ten years of married life will rub all the
varnish off your manners, and all the color off your illusions and all
the finish off your conversation."
"And the hinges of your love making and your pretty speeches are likely
to creak every time you open your mouth," affixed the bachelor,
gloomily.
"And you are bound to be old-fashioned," concluded the widow, with
conviction, "and to compare badly with brand-new wives and husbands with
all the modern improvements. Besides," she continued, thoughtfully,
"even if you should be lucky enough to find another--another--"
"Tenant for your heart?" suggested the bachelor, helpfully.
The widow nodded.
"There would be the agony," she went on, "of getting used to him or
her."
"And the torture," added the bachelor, with a faint shudder, "of going
through with the wedding ceremony again and of walking up a green and
yellow church aisle with a green and yellow feeling and a stiff new
coat, and the gaping multitude gazing at you as if you were a new
specimen of crocodile or a curio or----"
"It takes nearly all of one lifetime," interrupted the widow,
impatiently, "to get used to one wife or husband; but, according to the
'trial marriage' idea, just as you had gotten somebody nicely trained
into all your little ways and discovered how to manage him----"
"And to bluff him," interpolated the bachelor.
"And what to have for dinner when you were going to show him the bill
for a new hat," proceeded the widow, "and how to keep him at home
nights----"
"And to separate him from his money," remarked the bachelor,
sarcastically.
"And to make him see things your way," concluded the widow, "it would
be time to pack up your trunks and leave. Any two people," she
continued, meditatively, "can live together fairly comfortably after
they have discovered the path around one another's nerves--the little
things not to say and not to do in order to avoid friction, and the
little things to say and to do that will oil the matrimonial wheels. But
it would take all the 'trial' period to get the domestic machine
running, and then----"
"You'd be running after another soul-mate," finished the bachelor,
sympathetically.
"Yes." The widow crossed the red kid toes and then drew them quickly
under the ruffles of her skirts as she caught the bachelor staring at
them. "And--I've--forgotten what I was going to say," she finished,
turning the color of her slippers.
"Oh, it doesn't matter," said the bachelor, consolingly.
"What!"
"It doesn't matter what you say," explained the bachelor, "it's the way
you say it, and----"
"About soul-mates," broke in the widow, collecting herself, "there'd
always be the chance," she pursued hurriedly, "that you'd have to take a
second-hand one."
"Sometimes," remarked the bachelor, blowing a smoke ring and gazing
through it at the place where the widow's toes had been, "second-hand
goods are more attractive than cheap, new articles. For instance,
widows----"
"Oh, widows!" interrupted the widow impatiently, "They're different.
They're like heirlooms--only parted with at death. But it would be
different with a wife who was relinquished because she wasn't wanted. If
anybody is anxious to get rid of something it is a pretty sure sign that
it isn't worth having. It's nearly always got a flaw somewhere and it's
seldom what it is represented to be. Besides, I've noticed that the
woman who can't get along with one husband, usually finds it just as
difficult to get along with another."
"There would always be the chance," protested the bachelor, "that you
might get the party who had done the discarding."
"And who might want to do it again," objected the widow triumphantly.
"Just imagine," she added irrelevantly, "living with a person whom
somebody else had trained!"
"Oh, that would have its advantages," declared the bachelor. "A horse
broken to harness is always easier to handle."
"Perhaps," agreed the widow leaning back and thoughtlessly putting her
red kid toes on the fender again, "but when two horses are going to
travel together it is always best for them to get used to one another's
gait from the first. Don't you look at it that way?"
"Which way?" asked the bachelor, squinting at the fender with his head
on the side.
"Fancy," said the widow not noticing the deflection, "marrying a man who
had been encouraged to take an interest in the household affairs and
having him following you about picking up things after you; or one,
whose first wife had trained him to sit by the fire in the evening, and
whom it took a derrick to get to the theatre or a dinner party; or one
who had been permitted to smoke a pipe and put his feet all over the
furniture and growl about the meals and boss the cook!"
"Or to a wife," interpolated the bachelor, "who had always handled the
funds and monopolized the conversation and chosen her husband's collars
and who threw all her past husbands at you every time you did something
she wasn't used to or objected to something she was used to."
"Yes," agreed the widow with a little shiver, "what horrid things two
people could say to one another."
"Such as 'Just wait until the lease is up!'" suggested the bachelor.
The widow nodded.
"Or, 'The next time I marry, I'll be careful not to take anybody with
red hair,' or, 'Thank goodness it won't last forever!'" she added.
"That's the beauty of it!" broke in the bachelor enthusiastically. "It
wouldn't last forever! And the knowledge that it wouldn't would be such
an anaesthetic."
"Such a what!" the widow sat up so suddenly that both toes slipped from
the fender and her heels landed indignantly on the floor.
"It would be the lump of sugar," explained the bachelor, "that would
take away the bitter taste and make you able to swallow all the trials
more easily. It's the feeling that a painful operation won't last long
that makes it possible to grin and bear it. Besides, it would do away
with all sorts of crimes, like divorce and wife murder and ground glass
in the coffee. Knowing that the marriage was only temporary and that we
were only sort of house-party guests might make us more polite and
agreeable and entertaining, so as to leave a good impression behind us."
"I do believe," cried the widow, sitting up straight and looking at the
bachelor accusingly, "that you're arguing in favor of 'trial marriage.'"
"I'm not arguing in favor of marriage at all," protested the bachelor
plaintively. "But marrying for life is like putting the whole dinner on
the table at once. It takes away your appetite. Marrying on trial would
be more like serving it in courses."
"And changing the course would be such a strain," declared the widow.
"Why, when the contract was up how would you know how to divide
things--the children and--"
"The dog and the cat."
"And all the little mementos you had collected together and the things
you had shared in common and the favorite arm chair and the things you
had grown used to and fond of----"
"Oh, well, in that case," remarked the bachelor, "you might have grown
so used to and fond of one another that when it came to the parting of
the ways, you would not want to part them. After all," he went on
soberly, "if 'trial marriages' were put into effect, they would end nine
times out of ten in good old fashioned matrimony. A man can get as
accustomed to a woman as he does to a pipe or a chair----"
"What!"
"And a woman," pursued the bachelor, "can become as attached to a man
and as fond of him as she is of an old umbrella or a pair of old shoes
that have done good service. No matter how battered or worn they may
become, nor how many breaks there are in them, we can never find
anything to quite take their place. Matrimony, after all, is just a
habit; and husbands and wives become habits--habits that however
disagreeable they may be we don't want to part with. 'Trial marriages,'
even if they should be tried, wouldn't alter things much. As long as two
people can stand one another they will cling together anyhow, and if
they can't they won't anyhow; and whether it's a run out lease or a
divorce or prussic acid that separates them doesn't make much
difference. Custom, not the wedding certificate, is the tie that binds
most of us. The savage doesn't need any laws to hold him to the woman of
his choice. Habit does it; and if habit doesn't the woman will!"
The widow sighed and leaned back in her chair.
"I suppose so," she said, "but it seems dreadfully dreary."
"What seems dreadfully dreary?" inquired the bachelor.
"Matrimony," replied the widow solemnly. "It IS like those old chairs
and pipes and shoes and things you were speaking of; it's full of holes
and breaks and bare spots, and it won't always work--but there's nothing
that will quite take the place of it."
"Nothing," said the bachelor, promptly. "That's why I want to--"
The widow rose quickly and shook out her skirts.
"Now, don't begin that, Billy," she said, trying to be severe, "you're
too old!"
"Oh, well, I'm still in good repair," protested the bachelor.
The widow shook her head.
"All the varnish is worn off your ideals," she objected, "and the hinges
of your enthusiasm creak and you've got a bare spot on the top of your
head, and----"
[Illustration: "NO," said the widow, "you're shop-worn." _Page 149_]
"But I've most of the modern improvements," broke in the bachelor,
desperately, "and I'm not second-hand, anyway!"
"No," said the widow, looking him over critically, "you're shop-worn.
But, originally, you were an attractive article, and you're genuine and
good style and well preserved, and if----"
"Well?" The bachelor looked up expectantly.
"If there WERE such a thing as 'trial marriages'--" The widow hesitated
again.
"You'd give me a trial?" asked the bachelor eagerly.
"Oh," said the widow, studying the toes of her red slippers, "it
wouldn't be--such a trial!"
XI
THE WIDOW'S DEAL.
"WHO is the ideal woman?" asked the widow pensively, laying down her
embroidery hoop and clasping her hands behind her head.
The bachelor blew a smoke ring reflectively and squinted through it at
the widow.
"You've got powder on your nose!" he remarked disapprovingly.
The widow snatched up a diaphanous lace handkerchief and began rubbing
her nose.
"Have I got too much on?" she asked anxiously.
"Any," replied the bachelor, with dignified scorn, "is too much--in a
man's eyes."
The widow laughed and stopped rubbing her nose.
"But it isn't in his eyes," she protested, "if it is put on so
artistically that he doesn't see it. Getting it on straight is such an
art!" and the widow sighed.
"Black art, you mean," exclaimed the bachelor disgustedly. "A made-up
woman is like paste jewelry and imitation bric-a-brac. She looks cheap
and unsubstantial and as though she wouldn't wear well. Even granting
that you aren't half good enough for us----"
"What!"
"And that you don't come up to our standards----"
The widow dropped her embroidery hoop and sat up with blazing eyes.
"You flatter yourself, Mr. Travers!"
"No, I don't!" retorted the bachelor. "It's you who flatter us, when you
think it necessary to plaster over your defects and put additions on
your figures and rouge on your cheeks and frills on your manners. As a
matter of fact," he added decisively, "a man's ideal is a natural woman
with a natural complexion and natural hair and natural ways and natural
self-respect."
The widow sighed and took up her embroidery hoop again.
"I used to think so, too," she said sadly.
The bachelor lifted his eyebrows inquiringly.
"Before I discovered," she explained, "that it was just as often a
woman with butter-colored hair and a tailor-made figure and a 'past' and
a manufactured 'bloom of health.' The truth is," she concluded, stabbing
her needle very carefully into the centre of an unhealthy looking green
silk rose, "that no two men admire the same woman, and no one man
admires the same thing in two women. Now, there's Miss Gunning, who
wears a sweater and says 'damn' and is perfectly natural and
self-respecting and----"
"No man gets ecstatic over a bad imitation of himself!" expostulated the
bachelor.
"Then why," said the widow, laying down her needle and fixing the
bachelor with a glittering eye, "do you spend so much time on the golf
links, and out driving and hunting and walking with her?"
"Because," explained the bachelor, meekly, "she sometimes hits the ball,
and she can sit in her saddle without being tied there, and she doesn't
grab the reins nor call a 'hoof' a 'paw.' But," he added fervently, "I'd
take my hat and run if she asked me to spend my life with her."
"Oh, well," the widow tossed her head independently. "She won't. Miss
Gunning can take care of herself."
"That's just it!" pursued the bachelor. "The very fact that she can take
care of herself and get across gutters alone and pick up things for
herself and handle her own horse and beat me at golf and tennis, takes
away that gratifying sense of protection--"
"And superiority," interposed the widow softly.
"That a man likes to feel toward a woman," concluded the bachelor,
ignoring her. "Muscle and biceps and a 32-inch waist," he added, "are
'refreshing,' but in time they get on your nerves. It may not be immoral
for a dear little thing to say 'damn,' but it affects a man just as it
would to hear a canary bird squawking like a parrot. When a chap is
going for a walk cross country he may pick out the girl with the stride
and the strong back, who can leap a fence and help herself over puddles,
to accompany him, but when he is ready for a walk to the altar he
naturally prefers somebody who understands the art of leaning gently on
the masculine arm and who hasn't any rough edges or----"
"Sharp points of view," suggested the widow.
"Or opinions on the equality of the sexes," added the bachelor.
"Or on politics."
"Or the higher life."
"Or on anything but the latest way to curl her hair and make over a
hat," finished the widow. "Isn't it funny," she added thoughtfully
twisting a French knot into the centre of the sickly green rose, "how
many men idealize a fool?"
The bachelor started.
"I---I beg your pardon," he stammered.