sound in your arithmetic; but, do what you will, you can never come to
the rule by which five hundred a year can be made to compass the
expenditure of a thousand. If you whisper secret supplies, concealed
resources, your sphinx will not so much as wink her eyelid. How she
contrives to make her ostensible five hundred do the work of a
thousand--how she gets velvet and satin for the value of cotton and
stuff, and how, though always complaining of poverty, she keeps
unfailingly flush of cash--how all this is done is her secret, and she
holds it sacred. And you may be quite sure of one thing--it is a
secret she will never share with you nor any one else.
The rapidly-working _littérateur_ is another sphinx worth
studying as a curiosity--we might say, indeed, a living miracle. There
he stands, a jovial, self-indulgent, enjoying man, out in society
every night in the week; by no means abstinent from champagne, and as
little given to early rising as he is to consumption of the midnight
oil. But he gets through a mass of work which would be respectable in
a mere copyist, and which is little less than miraculous in an
original producer. How he thinks, when he finds time to make up his
plots, to work out his characters, even to correct his proofs, are
riddles unanswerable by all his friends. Taking the mere mechanical
act alone, he must write faster than any living man has ever been
known to write, to get through all that goes under his name. And when
is it done? Literary sphinxes of this kind go about unchallenged;
indeed, they are very much about, and to be beheld everywhere; and one
looks at them with respect, not knowing of what material they are
made, nor of what mysterious gifts they are the possessors. Novels,
plays, essays, poems, come pouring forth in never slackening supply.
The railway stations and all hoardings are made gorgeous by the
announcement of their feats set out in red and blue and yellow. No
sooner has one blaze of triumph burnt itself out than another blaze of
triumph flares up; and nothing but death or a rich inheritance seems
likely to stop their mysterious fecundity. How is it done? That is the
secret of the literary sphinx, to which the admiring and amazed
brotherhood is anxiously seeking some clue; but up to the present hour
it has been kept jealously guarded and no solution has been arrived
at.
There is another form of the literary sphinx in the Nobodies and Anons
who speak from out the darkness and let no man see whence the voice
proceeds. They are generally tracked to their lair sooner or later,
and the sphinx's head turns out to be only a pasteboard mask behind
which some well-known Apuleian hid himself for a while, working much
amazement among the wondering crowd while the clasps held good, but
losing something of that fervid worship when the reality became known.
Others, again, of these Anons have, like Junius, kept their true abode
hidden and their name a mystery still, though there be some who swear
they have traced the footsteps and know exactly where the sphinx
lives, and what is the name upon his frontlet, and of what race and
complexion he is without his mask. It may be so. But as every
discoverer has a track of his own, and as each swears that his sphinx
is the real one and no other, the choice among so many becomes a
service of difficulty; and perhaps the wisest thing to do is to
suspend judgment until the literary sphinx of the day chooses to
reveal himself by the prosaic means of a title-page, with his name as
author printed thereon and his place of abode jotted down at the foot
of the preface.
_FLIRTING._
There are certain things which can never be accurately
described--things so shadowy, so fitful, so dependent on the mood of
the moment, both in the audience and the actor, that analysis and
representation are equally at fault. And flirting is one of them. What
is flirting? Who can define or determine? It is more serious than
talking nonsense and not so serious as making love; it is not chaff
and it is not feeling; it means something more than indifference and
yet something less than affection; it binds no one; it commits no one
though it raises expectations in the individual and sets society on
the look-out for results; it is a plaything in the hands of the
experienced but a deadly weapon against the breast of the unwary; and
it is a thing so vague, so protean, that the most accurate measurer of
moral values would be puzzled to say where it exactly ends and where
serious intentions begin.
But again we ask: What is flirting? What constitutes its essence? What
makes the difference between it and chaff on the one hand, and it and
love-making on the other? Has it a cumulative power, and,
according to the old saying of many a pickle making a mickle, does a
long series of small flirtings make up a concrete whole of love? or is
it like an unmortared heap of bricks, potential utilities if
conditions were changed, but valueless as things are? The man who
would be able to reduce flirting to a definite science, who could
analyze its elements and codify its laws, would be doing infinite
service to his generation; but we fear that this is about as difficult
as finding the pot of gold under the end of a rainbow, or catching
small birds with a pinch of salt.
Every one has his or her ideas of what constitutes flirting;
consequently every one judges of that pleasant exercise according to
individual temperament and experience. Faded flowers, who see
impropriety in everything they are no longer able to enjoy, say with
more or less severity that Henry and Angelina are flirting if they are
laughing while whispering together in an alcove, probably the most
innocent nonsense in the world; but the fact that they are enjoying
themselves in their own way, albeit a silly one, is enough for the
faded flower to think they are after mischief, flirting being to her
mind about the worst bit of mischief that a fallen humanity can
perpetrate. The watchful mother, intent on chances, says that dancing
together oftener than is necessary for good breeding and just the
amount of attention demanded by circumstances, is flirting; timid
girls newly out, and not yet used to the odd ways of men, think
they are being flirted with outrageously if their partner fires off
the meekest little compliment at them, or looks at them more tenderly
than he would look at a cabbage; but bolder spirits of both sexes
think nothing worthy of the name which does not include a few
questionable familiarities, and an equivoke or two, more or less
risky. With some, flirting is nothing but the passing fun of the
moment; with others, it is the first lesson of the great unopened book
and means the beginning of the end; with some, it is not even angling
with intent; with others, it is deep-sea fishing with a broad,
boldly-made net, and taking all fish that come in as good for sport if
not for food.
Flirts are of many kinds as well as of all degrees. There are quiet
flirts and demonstrative flirts; flirts of the subtle sort whose
practice is made by the eyes alone, by the manner, by the tender
little sigh, by the bend of the head and the wave of the hand, to give
pathos and point to the otherwise harmless word; and flirts of the
open and rampant kind, who go up quite boldly towards the point, but
who never reach it, taking care to draw back in time before they
fairly cross the border. This is the kind which, as the flirt male,
does incalculable damage to the poor little fluttering dove to whom it
is as a bird of prey, handsome, bold, cruel; but this is the kind
which has unlimited success, using as it does that immense moral
leverage we call 'tantalizing'--for ever rousing hopes and exciting
expectations, and luring a woman on as an _ignis fatuus_ lures us
on across the marsh, in the vain belief that it will bring us to our
haven at last.
Akin to this kind are those male flirts who are great in the way in
which they manage to insinuate things without committing themselves to
positive statements. They generally contrive to give the impression of
some mysterious hindrance by which they are held back from full and
frank confession. They hint at fatal bonds, at unfortunate
attachments, at a past that has burnt them up or withered them up, at
any rate that has prevented their future from blossoming in the
direction in which they would fain have had it blossom and bear fruit.
They sketch out vaguely the outlines of some thrilling romance; a few,
of the Byronic breed, add the suspicion of some dark and melancholy
crime as a further romantic charm and personal obstacle; and when they
have got the girl's pity, and the love that is akin to pity, then they
cool down scientifically, never creating any scandal, never making any
rupture, never coming to a moment when awkward explanations can be
asked, but cooling nevertheless, till the thing drops of its own
accord and dies out from inanition; when they are free to carry their
sorrows and their mysteries elsewhere. Some men spend their lives in
this kind of thing, and find their pleasure in making all the women
they know madly or sentimentally in love with them; and if by chance
any poor moth who has burned her wings makes too loud an outcry,
the tables are turned against her dexterously, and she is held up to
public pity--contempt would be a better word--as one who has suffered
herself to love too well and by no means wisely, and who has run after
a Lothario by no means inclined to let himself be caught.
Then there are certain men who flirt only with married women, and
others who flirt only with girls; and the two pastimes are as
different as tropical sunlight and northern moonshine. And there are
some who are 'brothers,' and some who are 'fathers' to their young
friends--suspicious fathers on the whole, not unlike Little Red
Ridinghood's grandmother the wolf, with perilously bright eyes, and
not a little danger to Red Ridinghood in the relationship, how
delightful soever it may be to the wolf. Some are content with
cousinship only--which however breaks down quite sufficient fences;
and some are 'dearest friends,' no more, and find that an exceedingly
useful centre from which to work onward and outward. For, if any peg
will do on which to hang a discourse, so will any relationship or
adoption serve the ends of flirting, if it be so willed.
But what is flirting? Is sitting away in corners, talking in low
voices and looking personally affronted if any unlucky outsider comes
within earshot, flirting? Not necessarily. It is just possible that
Henry may be telling Angelina all about his admiration for her sister
Grace; or Angelina may be confessing to Henry what Charley said to
her last night;--which makes her lower her eyes as she is doing now,
and play with the fringe of her fan so nervously. May be, if not
likely. So that sitting away in corners and whispering together is not
necessarily flirting, though it may look like it. Is dancing all the
'round' dances together? This goes for decided flirting in the code of
the ball-room. But if the two keep well together? If they are really
fond of dancing, as one of the fine arts combining science and
enjoyment, they would dance with each other all night, though outside
the 'marble halls' they might be deadly enemies--Montagues and
Capulets, with no echo of Romeo and Juliet to soften their mutual
dislike. So that not even dancing together oftener than is absolutely
necessary is unmistakeable evidence, any more than is sitting away in
corners, seeing that equal skill and keeping well in step are reasons
enough for perpetual partnership, making all idea of flirtation
unnecessary. In fact, there is no outward sign nor symbol of flirting
which may not be mistaken and turned round, because flirting is so
entirely in the intention and not in the mere formula, that it becomes
a kind of phantasm, a Proteus, impossible to seize or to depict with
accuracy.
One thing however, we can say--taking gifts and attentions, offered
with evident design and accepted with tacit understanding, may be
certainly held as constituting an important element of flirting. But
this is flirting on the woman's side. And here you are being
continually taken in. Your flirt of the cunningly simple kind,
who smiles so sweetly and seems so flatteringly glad to see you when
you come, who takes all your presents and acted expressions of love
with the most bewitching gratitude and effusion, even she, so simple
as she seems to be, slips the thread and will not be caught if she
does not wish to be caught. At the decisive moment when you think you
have secured her, she makes a bound and is away; then turns round,
looks you in the face, and with many a tear and pretty asseveration
declares that she never understood you to mean what you say you have
meant all along; and that you are cruel to dispel her dream of a
pleasant and harmless friendship, and very wicked indeed because you
press her for a decision. Yes; you are cruel, because you have
believed her honest; cruel, because you did not see through the veil
of flattery and insincerity in which she clothed her selfishness;
cruel, because she was false. This is the flirt's logic when brought
to book, and forced to confess that her pretended love was only
flirting, and that she led you on to your destruction simply because
it pleased her vanity to make you her victim.
Then there are flirts of the open and rollicking kind, who let you go
far, very far indeed, when suddenly they pull up and assume an
offended air as if you had wilfully transgressed known and absolute
boundaries--girls and women who lead you on, all in the way of good
fellowship, to knock you over when you have got just far enough to
lose your balance. That is their form of the art. They like to
see how far they can make a man forget himself, and how much stronger
their own delusive enticements are than prudence, experience and
common-sense. And there are flirts of the artful and 'still waters'
kind, something like the male flirts spoken of just now; sentimental
little pusses--perhaps pretty young wives with uncomfortable husbands,
whose griefs have by no means soured nor scorched, but just mellowed
and refined, them. Or they may be of the sisterly class; creatures so
very frank, so very sisterly and confiding and unsuspicious of evil,
that really you scarcely know how to deal with them at all. And there
are flirts of the scientific kind; women who have studied the art
thoroughly; and who are adepts in the use of every weapon known--using
each according to circumstances and the nature of the victim, and
using each with deadly precision. From such may a kind Providence
deliver us! As the tender mercies of the wicked, so are the scientific
flirts--the women and the men who play at bowls with human hearts, for
the stakes of a whole life's happiness on the one side and a few weeks
of gratified vanity on the other.
It used to be an old schoolboy maxim that no real gentleman could be
refused by a lady, because no real gentleman could presume beyond his
line of encouragement. _À fortiori_, no lady would or could give more
encouragement than she meant. What are we to say then of our flirts if
this maxim be true? Are they really 'no gentlemen' and 'no ladies,'
according to the famous formula of the kitchen? Perhaps it would
be said so if gentlehood meant now, as it meant centuries ago, the
real worth and virtue of humanity. For flirting with intent is a
cruel, false, heartless amusement; and time was when cruelty and
falsehood were essentially sins which vitiated all claims to
gentlehood. And yet the world would be very dull without that innocent
kind of nonsense which often goes by the name of flirting--that
pleasant something which is more than mere acquaintanceship and less
than formal loverhood--that bright and animated intercourse which
makes the hours pass so easily, yet which leaves no bitter pang of
self-reproach--that indefinite and undefinable interest by which the
one man or the one woman becomes a kind of microcosm for the time, the
epitome of all that is pleasant and of all that is lovely. The only
caution to be observed is:--Do not go too far.
_SCRAMBLERS._
There are people who are never what Northern housewives call
'straight'--people who seem to have been born in a scramble, who live
in a scramble, and who, when their time comes, will die in a scramble,
just able to scrawl their signature to a will that ought to have been
made years ago, and that does not embody their real intentions now.
Emphatically the Unready, they are never prepared for anything,
whether expected or unexpected; they make no plans more stable than
good intentions; and they neither calculate nor foresee. Everything
with them is hurry and confusion; not because they have more to do
than other people, but because they do it more loosely and less
methodically--because they have not learnt the art of dovetailing nor
the mystery of packing. Consequently half their pleasures and more
than half their duties slip through their fingers for want of the
knack of compact holding; and their lives are passed in trying to pick
up what they have let drop and in frantic endeavours to remedy their
mistakes. For scramblers are always making mistakes and going through
an endless round of forgetting. They never remember their
engagements, but accept in the blandest and frankest way imaginable
two or more invitations for the same day and hour, and assure you
quite seriously when, taught by experience, you push them hard and
probe them deep, that they have no engagement whatever on hand and are
certain not to fail you. In an evil hour you trust to them. When the
day comes they suddenly wake to the fact that they had accepted Mrs.
So-and-So's invitation before yours; and all you get for your empty
place and your careful arrangements ruthlessly upset, is a hurried
note of apology which comes perhaps in the middle of dinner, perhaps
sometime next day, when too late to be of use.
If they forget their own engagements they also ignore yours, no matter
how distinctly you may have tabulated them; and are sure to come
rattling to your house on the day when you said emphatically you were
engaged and could not see them. If you keep to your programme and
refuse to admit them, more likely than not you affront them.
Engagements being in their eyes moveable feasts, which it does not in
the least degree signify whether they keep on the date set down or
not, they cannot understand your rigidity of purpose; and were it not
that as a tribe they are good-natured, and too fluid to hold even
annoyance for any length of time, you would in all probability have a
quarrel fastened on you because your scrambling friends chose to make
a calendar for themselves and to insist on your setting your diary by
it.
As they ignore your appointed hours, so do they forget your
street and number. They always stick to your first card, though you
may have moved many times since it was printed, duly apprizing them of
each change as it occurred. That does not help you, for they never
note the changes of their friends' addresses, but keep loyally to the
first. It all comes to the same in the end, they say, and the postman
is cleverer than they. But they do not often trouble their friends
with letters on their own account, for they have a speciality for not
answering such as are written to them. When they do by chance answer
them, they never reply to the questions asked nor give the news
demanded. They do not even reply to invitations like other people, but
leave you to infer from their silence the acceptance or rejection they
are meditating. When they in their turn invite you, they generally
puzzle you by mismatching the day of the week with the date of the
month, leaving you tormented with doubt which you are to go by; and
they forget to give you the hour. Besides this, they write an
illegible hand; and they are famous for the blots they make and the
Queen's heads they omit.
A scrambling wife is no light cross to a man who values order and
regularity as part of his home life. She may be, and probably is, the
best-tempered creature in the world--a peevish scrambler would be too
unendurable--but a fresh face, bright eyes and a merry laugh do not
atone for never-ending disorder and discomfort. This kind of thing
does not depend on income and is not to be remedied by riches. The
households where my lady has nothing to do but let her maid keep
her to the hours she herself has appointed are just as uncomfortable
in their way as poorer establishments, if my lady is a scrambler, and
cannot be taught method and the value of holding on by the forelock.
Sometimes my lady gets herself into such an inextricable coil of
promises and engagements, all crossing each other, that in despair she
takes to her bed and gives herself out as ill, and so cuts what she
cannot untie. People wonder at her sudden indisposition, looking as
she did only yesterday in the bloom of health; and they wonder at her
radiant reappearance in a day or two without a trace of even languor
upon her. They do not know that her retirement was simply a version of
the famous rope trick, and that, like the Brothers Davenport, she went
into the dark to shake herself free of the cords with which she had
suffered herself to be bound. It is a short and easy method certainly,
but it has rather too much of the echo of 'Wolf' in it to bear
frequent repetition.
In houses of a lower grade, where the lady is her own housekeeper, the
habit of scrambling of course leads to far greater and more manifest
confusion. The servants catch from the mistress the trick of
overstaying time; and punctuality at last comes to mean an elastic
margin, where fixed duties and their appointed times appear
cometically at irregular intervals. The cook is late with dinner; the
coachman begins to put-to a little after the hour he was ordered
to be at the door; but they know that, however late they are, the
chances are ten to one their mistress will not be ready for them, and
that in her heart she will be grateful to them for the shelter their
own unpunctuality affords her. This being so, they take their time and
dawdle at their pleasure; thus adding to the pressure which always
comes at the end of the scrambler's day, when everything is thrown
into a chaotic mass and nothing comes out straight or complete.
Did any one ever know a scrambling woman ready at the moment in her
own house? That she should be punctual to any appointment out of her
house is, of course, not to be thought of; but she makes an awkward
thing of it sometimes at home. Her guests are often all assembled, and
the dinner hour has struck, before she has torn off one gown and
dragged on another. What she cannot tie she pins; and her pins are
many and demonstrative. She wisps up her hair, not having left herself
time to braid it; and the consequence is that before she has been half
an hour in the room ends and tails are sure to stray playfully from
their fastenings and come tumbling about her ears. Her jewels are
mismatched, her colours ill-assorted, her belt is awry, her bouquet
falling to pieces. She rushes into the drawing-room in her morning
slippers, smiling and good-tempered, with a patch-work look about
her--something forgotten in her attire that makes her whole appearance
shaky and unfinished--fastening her last button or clasping on
her first bracelet. She is full of regrets and excuses delivered in
her joyous, buoyant manner, or in a voice so winning, an accent so
coaxing, that you cannot be annoyed. Besides, you leave the annoyance
to her husband, who is sure to have in reserve a pickle quite
sufficiently strong for the inevitable rod, as the poor scrambler
knows too well. All you can do is to accept her apologies with a good
grace, and to carry away with you a vivid recollection of an awkward
half-hour, a spoilt dinner, and a scrambling hostess all abroad and
out of time, sweeping through the room very heated, very
good-tempered, only half-dressed and chronically out of breath.
Scramblers can never learn the value of money, neither for themselves
nor for others. They are famous for borrowing small sums which they
forget to return; but, to do them justice, they are just as willing to
lend what they never dream of asking for again. Long ago they caught
hold of the fact that money is only a circulating medium, and they
have added an extra speed to the circulation at which slower folk
stand aghast. To be sure, the practical results of their theory are
not very satisfactory, and the confusion between the possessive
pronouns which distinguishes their financial catechism is apt to lead
to unpleasant issues.