widow, calmly fastening the French knot with a jerk of her needle, "is
how to keep it on straight. All a man demands of her is the negative
virtues and the knowledge of how not to do things; how not to think, how
not to argue, how not to nag, how not to theorize, how not to be
athletic, how not to spend money, how not to take care of herself, how
not----"
"You've got your ideas into a French knot!" broke in the bachelor
desperately. "You're all tangled up in the thread of your argument. It
isn't how not to do things but how to do them that is important to a
woman. It isn't what she does but how she does it that matters. She may
commit a highway murder or low down burglary; and if she does it in a
ruffled skirt and a picture hat any man will forgive her. Her morals
may be as crooked and dark as a lane at midnight; but if her manners are
smooth and gentle and guileless and tender she can deceive the cleverest
man alive into believing her a nun. It isn't what she says but how she
says it that counts. There are some women who could read your death
warrant or repeat the multiplication table in such a confiding voice and
with such a tender glance that you would want to take them in your arms
and thank them for it. It isn't what a woman wears but how she wears it;
it's not her beauty nor her talents nor her frocks that make her
fascinating, but her ways, the little earmarks of femininity that God
put on every creature born to wear petticoats; and if she's got those
she may be a Lucretia Borgia or a Bloody Mary at heart; she may be
brown or yellow or pale green; she may be old or young, big or little,
stupid or clever, and still wear a beautiful halo. The trouble," he
added, flicking the end of his cigar thoughtfully, "is not with man's
ideal but with woman's deal. She holds all the cards, but she plays them
badly. When a two-spot of flattery would win her point, she deals a chap
the queen of arguments; when the five of smiles would take the trick for
her, she plays the deuce of a pout. When the ace of sympathy or the ten
of tact would put the whole game of love into her hands, she thinks it
is time to be funny and flings a man the joker."
The widow laid her work on the table beside her, folded her hands in
her lap and smiled at the bachelor sweetly.
"That's just what I said," she remarked, gently.
"What you said!"
The widow nodded and rubbed her nose reminiscently with the end of her
handkerchief.
"Yes," she replied, "it isn't putting powder on your nose or rouge on
your cheeks or perfume on your petticoats or a broad 'A' on your accent
that shocks a man, but putting them on inartistically. It isn't the
things you do but the things you overdo that offend masculine taste.
It's the 'over-done' woman that a man hates--the woman who is
over-dressed or overly made-up, or overly cordial or overly flattering,
or overly clever, or overly good, or overly anything. He doesn't want
to see how the wheels go around at the toilet table or in a woman's head
or her heart; and it's the subtle, illusive little thing that he doesn't
notice until he steps on her and finds her looking up adoringly at him
under his nose that he idealizes."
"And marries," added the bachelor conclusively.
"And then forgets," sighed the widow, "while he goes off to amuse
himself with the obvious person with peroxide hair and a straight-front
figure. I don't know," she added tentatively, "that it's much fun being
an ideal woman."
"Who said you were?" demanded the bachelor suddenly.
The widow started and turned pink to her chin.
"Oh--nobody--that is, several people, Mr. Travers."
"Had you refused them?" asked the bachelor thoughtfully.
The widow blushed a deeper pink and bent over her pale green rose so low
that the bachelor could not see her eyes.
"Why--that is--I don't see what that has to do with it."
"It has everything to do with," replied the bachelor positively.
"And you haven't told me yet," continued the widow, suddenly changing
the subject, "whom you consider the ideal woman."
"Don't you know?" asked the bachelor insinuatingly.
The widow shook her head without lifting her eyes.
"Well, then, she is--but so many of them have told you."
"You haven't," persisted the widow.
The bachelor sighed and rose to go.
"The ideal woman," he said, as he slipped on his gloves, "is--the woman
you can't get. Is that the firelight playing on your pompadour?" he
added, looking down upon the widow through half-closed eyes. "Do you
know--for a moment--I thought it was a halo."
XII
NEW YEAR'S IRRESOLUTIONS.
"ISN'T it hard," said the widow, glancing ruefully at the holly-wreathed
clock above the mantel-piece, "to know where to begin reforming
yourself?"
"Great heavens!" exclaimed the bachelor, "you are not going to do
anything like that, are you?"
The widow pointed solemnly to the hands of the clock, which indicated
11.30, and then to the calendar, on which hung one fluttering leaf
marked December 31.
"It is time," she sighed, "to begin our mental housecleaning, to sweep
out our collection of last year's follies, and dust off our petty sins
and fling away our old vices and----"
"That's the trouble!" broke in the bachelor. "It's so hard to know just
what to throw away and what to keep. Making New Year's resolutions is
like doing the spring housecleaning or clearing out a drawer full of old
letters and sentimental rubbish. You know that there are lots of things
you ought to get rid of, and that are just in the way, and that you
would be better off without, but the minute you make up your mind to
part with anything, even a tiny, insignificant vice, it suddenly becomes
so dear and attractive that you repent and begin to take a new interest
in it. The only time I ever had to be taken home in a cab was the day
after I promised to sign the pledge," and the bachelor sighed
reminiscently.
"And the only time I ever overdrew my bank account," declared the
widow, "was the day after I had resolved to economize. I suppose," she
added pensively, "that the best way to begin would be to pick out the
worst vice and discard that."
"And that will leave heaps of room for the others and for a lot of new
little sins, besides, won't it?" agreed the bachelor cheerfully. "Well,"
he added philosophically, "I'll give up murdering."
"What!" The widow started.
"Don't you want me to?" asked the bachelor plaintively, rubbing his bald
spot. "Or perhaps I might resolve not to commit highway robbery any
more, or to stop forging, or----"
"All of which is so easy!" broke in the widow sarcastically.
"There'd be some glory and some reason in giving up a big vice," sighed
the bachelor, "if a fellow had one. But the trouble is that most of us
men haven't any big criminal tendencies, merely a heap of little follies
and weaknesses that there isn't any particular virtue in sacrificing or
any particular harm in keeping."
"And which you always do keep, in spite of all your New Year's vows,"
remarked the widow ironically.
"Huh!" The bachelor laughed cynically. "It's our New Year's vows that
help us to keep 'em. The very fact that a fellow has sworn to forego
anything, whether it's a habit or a girl, makes it more attractive. I've
thrown away a whole box of cigars with the finest intentions in the
world and then gotten up in the middle of the night to fish the pieces
out of the waste basket. And that midnight smoke was the sweetest I ever
had. It was sweeter than the apples I stole when I was a kid and than
the kisses I stole when----"
"If you came here to dilate on the joys of sin, Mr. Travers," began the
widow coldly.
"And," proceeded the bachelor, "I've made up my mind to stop flirting
with a girl, because I found out that she was beginning to--to----"
"I understand," interrupted the widow sympathetically.
"And by jove!" finished the bachelor, "I had to restrain myself to keep
from going back and proposing to her!"
"How lucky you did!" commented the widow witheringly.
"But I wouldn't have," explained the bachelor ruefully, "if the girl had
restrained herself."
"Nevertheless," repeated the widow, "is was lucky--for the girl."
"Which girl?" asked the bachelor. "The girl I broke off with or the girl
that came afterward?"
"I suppose," mused the widow, ignoring the levity and leaning over to
arrange a bunch of violets at her belt, "that is why it is so difficult
for a man to keep a promise or a vow--even a marriage vow."
"Oh, I don't know." The bachelor leaned back and regarded the widow's
coronet braid through the smoke from his cigar. "It isn't the marriage
vows that are so difficult to keep. It's the fool vows a man makes
before marriage and the fool promises he makes afterward that he
stumbles over and falls down on. The marriage vows are so big and vague
that you can get all around them without actually breaking them, but if
they should interpolate concrete questions into the service such as, 'Do
you, William, promise not to growl at the coffee'----"
"Or 'Do you, Mary, promise never to put a daub of powder on your nose
again?'" broke in the widow.
"Nor to look twice at your pretty stenographer," continued the bachelor.
"Nor to lie about your age, or your foot or your waist measure."
"Nor to juggle with the truth whenever you stay out after half past
ten."
"Nor to listen to things that--that anybody--except your husband--may
say to you in the conservatory--oh, I see how it feels!" finished the
widow with a sympathetic little shudder.
"And yet," reflected the bachelor, "a woman is always exacting vows and
promises from the man she loves, always putting up bars--for him to jump
over; when if she would only leave him alone he would be perfectly
contented to stay within bounds and graze in his own pasture. A man
hates being pinned down; but a woman doesn't want anything around that
she can't pin down, from her belt and her theories to her hat and her
husband."
"Well," protested the widow, studying the toe of her slipper, "it is a
satisfaction to know you've got your husband fastened on straight by
his promises and held in place by his vows and that he loves you enough
to----"
"Usually," interrupted the bachelor, "a man loves you in inverse ratio
to his protestations. The lover who promises all things without reserve
is too often like the fellow who doesn't question the hotel bill nor ask
the price of the wine, because he doesn't intend to pay it anyway. The
fellow who is prodigal with vows and promises and poetry is generally
the one to whom such things mean nothing and, being of no value, can be
flung about generously to every girl he meets. The firm with the biggest
front office is likely to be the one with the smallest deposit in the
safe. The man who swears off loudest on New Year's is usually the one
they have to carry home the morning after. And the chap who promises a
girl a life of roses is the one who will let her pick all the thorns off
for herself."
"Perhaps," sighed the widow, chewing the stem of a violet thoughtfully,
"the best way to cure a man of a taste for anything, after all, is to
let him have too much of it, instead of making him swear off. If you
want him to hate the smell of a pipe insist on his smoking one all the
time. If you want him to sign the temperance pledge serve him wine with
every course. If you want him to hate a woman invite her to meet him
every time he calls, and tell him how 'suitable' she would be."
"And if you want him to love you," finished the bachelor, "don't ask
him to swear it, but tell him that he really ought not to. The best way
to manage a donkey--human or otherwise--is to turn his head in the wrong
direction, and he'll back in the right one."
"Then," said the widow decisively, "we ought to begin the New Year by
making some irresolutions."
"Some--what?"
"Vows that we won't stop doing the things we ought not to do," explained
the widow.
"All right," agreed the bachelor thoughtfully, "I'll make an
irresolution to go on making love to you as much as I like."
"You mean as much as I like, Mr. Travers," corrected the widow severely.
"How much do you like?" asked the bachelor, leaning over to look into
the widow's eyes.
The widow kicked the corner of the rug tentatively.
"I like--all but the proposing," she said slowly. "You really ought to
stop that----"
"I'm going to stop it--to-night," said the bachelor firmly.
The widow looked up in alarm.
"Oh, you don't have to commence keeping your resolutions until to-morrow
morning," she said quickly.
"And you are going to stop refusing me--to-night," continued the
bachelor firmly.
The widow studied the corner of the rug with great concern.
[Illustration: "OH don't. In a moment we'll be making promises." _Page
177_]
"And," went on the bachelor, taking something from his pocket and toying
with it thoughtfully, "you are going to put on this ring"--he leaned
over, caught the widow's hand and slipped the glittering thing on her
third finger. "Now," he began, "you are going to say that you will----"
The widow sprang up suddenly.
"Oh, don't, don't, don't!" she cried. "In a moment we'll be making
promises."
"We don't need to," said the bachelor, leaning back nonchalantly, "we
can begin by making--arrangements. Would you prefer to live in town or
at Tuxedo? And do you think Europe or Bermuda the best place for
the----"
"Bermuda, by all means," broke in the widow, "and I wish you'd have that
hideous portico taken off your town house, Billy, and----" But the rest
of her words were smothered in the bachelor's coat lapel--and something
else.
"Then you do mean to marry me, after all?" cried the bachelor
triumphantly.
The widow gasped for breath and patted her hair anxiously.
"I--I meant to marry you all the time!" she cried, "But I never thought
you were really in earnest and----"
"'Methinks'," quoted the bachelor happily, "'that neither of us did
protest too much.' We haven't made any promises, you know."
"Not one," rejoined the widow promptly, "as to my flirting."
"Nor as to my clubs."
"Nor as to my relatives."
"Nor my cigars."
"And we won't make any vows," cried the widow, "except marriage vows."
"And New Year's irresolutions," added the bachelor.
"Listen," cried the widow softly, with her fingers on her lips.
A peal of a thousand silver bells rang out on the midnight air.
"The chimes!" exclaimed the widow. "They're full of promises!"
"I thought it sounded like a wedding bell," said the bachelor,
disappointedly.
"Maybe," said the widow, "it was only Love--ringing off."
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Page 11, "irresistable" changed to "irresistible" (alluring and
irresistible)
Page 21, "Appollo" changed to "Apollo" (face of an Apollo)
Page 51, "bachelor" changed to "bachelors" (bachelors successfully
resist)
Page 53, "etherial" changed to "ethereal" (and ethereal, and)
Page 120, "as the" added to the text (as the purple plume)