IXWITH AN ENGAGED GIRL
Miss Velrose and Rollington will be engaged within twenty-four hours.
In the sanctuary of love we find many who came to scoff and remain to pray; and Cupid in the sacristy, tugging at his vestments, is guilty of a purely voluntary and perhaps not wholly decorous drooping of one eyelid.
Miss Velrose and Rollington have come back from the boathouse. They are sitting on the stone bench under that maple.
Ah! Cupid has changed! Now he is reared in a kindergarten and is object-taught rather than book-taught. Arrows have gone out. Anyway,they sometimes were geared with a white feather. Cupid is now using a repeater—and smokeless powder. You can’t locate him.
It is not so much that there is any difference in Rollington. The difference is in Miss Velrose. I have seen it coming on. They will be engaged to-day.
A man might propose and give no sign. There may be nothing absurd in the supposition that men ceased going on their knees when they abandoned knee-breeches and began wearing trousers, to which such an attitude is assumed to be an injustice. The theory has a chronological plausibility. But doubtless we shall find that there are other, if less pictorial, reasons for the change.
Hello! they have left the bench under the maple! Where did they go? It is a dangerously fine day. A proposal on such a day shouldn’t be binding.
Probably a general decadence in the habit of bending the knee has something to do with the disappearance of this feature of the proposal. Indeed, it is quite easy to see that the whole language of gesture is undergoing a change. Witness the present simplicity of the hat-removing gesture as compared with the highly circuitous symbolism of the seventeenth century; and there is quite as great a change between the bow of our day and that of the colonial era as between the kowtow of the Japanese, and the elegant salutation of the first Empire. Emerson complained of hand-shaking, though he was never stingy of his own friendlygrasp, and the most cordial of modern hand-shakes is a great modification. As Perry says, the girls now give you only one joint. All merely physical expressions of deference are perceptibly dwindling. There is no telling where these changes may stop. Kissing, long condemned both by science and by cynicism, survives variously and without apparent abatement. But we can not doubt that it is doomed. It may be the last of the inter-personal physical salutations to disappear; yet it must go. It is enough that we think, or at most look, our cordiality, and a woman, trained to these subtle readings, could not see a man physically kneel without laughing. In a telepathic millennium, not, perhaps, so far away, men will propose and be accepted without sign or sound, and the thought of photographic, or even of phonographic, record will be a meaningless joke.
O! there they are, crossing the tennis court in the direction of the arbor near the pine grove.
We learn from chemistry that not merely elements but sequences affect final quality. A sentimental situation may be tritely made up in this way: A woman; a man; a question; an answer. But how variously these may be put together!
Undoubtedly they are visible through the foliage of the arbor if any one chose to look. Let them alone.
It takes talent to reject a man gracefully; genius gracefully to accept him. Many a woman loses her last chance of supremacy, if she does not imperilher equality, in the manner of her acceptance. I have heard a woman say that she never forgave her husband the artistic order and self-possession of his proposal. The brutality of such a thing lies in the fact that she cannot effectively do the same thing, though he might deserve it. Deny her surprise or confusion or some assumption of unpreparedness and you deny her a sophistry which sentiment seems by no means ready to give up.
Of course they are still in the arbor. Who builds arbors? What do they build them for? Have those who build them prophetic souls?
Why, it was Miss Velrose herself who once spoke to me about unfair advantages. I can hear her very words: “And he took her away to sit out a dance,—yes, on a romantic balcony where the moon gave everything a theatrical color; where you could hear only the chirp of the piccolo, and the chuckle of the ’cello, and sang to her the song of songs. It wasn’t fair, of course. No girl could stand that. And a man who could live up to such a proposal would be a miracle.” “Be patient,” I urged, “there are new miracles.” “But they are not called men,” she said.
I know they are in the arbor, for there is Mrs. Velrose standing squarely in the middle of the coach road staring in that direction.
When I asked Miss Velrose the other day who was in love with her now, she looked at me quizzically and asked: “Do you mean, who is abusing me now?” I presume that is the only abuse Miss Velrose ever has had to suffer,—that of young men who have tried to scold her into being less obdurate. Women are not likely to reward abuse unless it is accompanied by tremendous persistency. In spite of time and change, persistency remains the greatest of all factors in courtship. Courting is like advertising—you must keep it up.
Mrs. Velrose has taken the butterfly net from the Winkinson midget and is chasing a papilio ajax—in the direction of the arbor. Mrs. Velrose is late.
It has been droll to see Mrs. Velrose guarding, with maternal persistency, her tall, white, sparkling daughter. No human partridge has ever more energetically fluttered to detract attention from the presence of her young. Mrs. Velrose is a prodigious talker. A mother who is a prodigious talker occupies a very important place in a girl’s fortunes.
Yes, Mrs. Velrose is too late. Rollington and his companion have emerged from the bower into the paththat skirts the pine grove. Probably they are going down to that wooded point by the lake shore. There is a rustic seat there.... Yes, that is where they are going.
Beyond doubt, the sweet inanities of courtship would be less sweet if not threatened with observation and interruption. The side glances of the world, the caution of parents, the inhibitions of society all play their parts.
Mrs. Velrose has abandoned the papilio ajax. She is coming back.
A daughter is a great responsibility. But so also is a mother. It is wrong to suppose that children feel no sense of responsibility for their progenitors. That larger education which so many women receive vicariously when their daughters go to college is one enforcing nice discrimination upon the educator as well as upon the educated. The American does not object to being governed. He only asks to select the machinery and the engineer. The American’s daughter expounds him. If every husband contrives to let his wife know how he likes to be managed, every daughter may find ways of making the yoke of her daughterhood exceeding light. In the debated matter of authority the American mother gives that she may receive. I don’t suppose there ever was a more perfect partnership, taken at its best, than the partnership of an American mother and her daughter, until marriage, which dissolves all other partnerships, brings its great readjustments....
Miss Velrose’s voice ... behind my chair. I must have dozed off for a while there.... Yes, it is Miss Velrose.
“It was an interesting picture,” laughed Miss Velrose from beyond the back of another chair, “‘Philosophy Asleep.’”
“Philosophy has been caught napping before this—and by Woman.”
“I should think Philosophy might need a good deal of sleep.”
“It learns more when it is awake.” I looked straight across into Miss Velrose’s burning blue eyes. “Where is Rollington?”
Miss Velrose underwent a slight change of color. “A person who has just awakened often asks such curious questions,” she said.
“I was awake a little while ago—when you were walking on the path leading from the pine grove. I wish you would be seated. It has been dull here. And you must be tired after walking from the Point.”
“I sha’n’t sit down unless you can explain why you are so well acquainted with my movements. Were youtrackingme?”
“Dear me, no! I had been sitting here reading the diary of a Puritan woman, Jonathan Edwards’ sister.”
“Prying into a woman’s diary.”
“That is what diaries are written for—to be pried into. What better luck could sister Esther ask than so reverent a reader. You must let meread you a few scraps of it. We shall let Rollington go for the present.”
She gave me a queer look and seated herself in profile. Few girls have a profile like Miss Velrose’s. She would delight a cameo cutter. Her nose is just right, and noses are important in profiles.
“You may see,” I said, “that even these Puritan girls had their troubles. It is on the first of May that sister Esther writes: ‘The time draws near when I must determine which of the two gentlemen to proceed with.’Which of the twogentlemen. Even in those days girls met with an embarrassment of riches. What strikes me is that they were very grateful. Her ‘considerable sense of spiritual things,’ in September, is followed by this declaration: ‘I was also in the evening stirred up to thankfulness by a new garment.’ Probably I never shall see your diary, Miss Velrose, but if I should it would be with no expectation of finding any thankfulness for the new garment. You modern girls take things dreadfully for granted.”
“I didn’t understand that you were to preach a sermon,” murmured Miss Velrose.
“You have labelled me Philosophy, and Philosophy must expound. Listen again: ‘Thanked the Lord for more than usual comeliness of countenance.’ Imagine your expressing thanks for gifts in that direction! You takethemfor granted, too. But here is an important point. I think I shall pigeonhole it for an essay on ‘The Antiquity of Feminine Skepticism.’ It was in 1739 that MissEdwards wrote: ‘Mr. Hopkins praised me and I began to think that I was a clever creature and was much elated, but rejected all as coming from Satan.’ No flattery for sister Esther! Ah, Hopkins! you were almost clever enough! She ‘began to think’! If you had been a little more adroit she might have believed altogether,—and what a comfort it might have been to her! Probably, Hopkins, you didn’t give sufficient attention to the little accessories. Maybe there was no romantic balcony handy,—or an arbor on the edge of a grove; perhaps not even a rustic seat on a wooded point overlooking a lovely violet lake.”
“The trouble is,” said Miss Velrose, “that men are so poor in invention. They are very dependent on accessories.”
“But their dependence on accessories, on a correct setting for the scene, is the result, first, of a becoming diffidence; second, of an evolved delicacy. Let us suppose, for a moment, that a fellow is proposing to a girl.”
“How droll!” said Miss Velrose, still keeping her profile in position.
“In other words, fancy the most delicate situation in the processes of civilization. He has a certain thing to ask; she has a certain thing to answer. When it has gone so far, it is not so much what he asks as how he asks it. It is like lighting a Welsbach lamp. Sometimes it blazes up in a yellow, smoky flame. Then you have to turn it out and start again. You never can tell why the flame actsso. The flame has its own reasons for coquetting with the match.”
Miss Velrose gave a little snort.
“Of course the girl has the advantage. That is as it should be. It is like one of those suits in court where the defendant has the affirmative. She knows what he is going to ask. He doesn’t know what she is going to answer—then. She doesn’t know how many times he can be made to ask—whether there is more than one ask in him. There is a presumptive limit to his persistency and to her discrimination. If a girl is far enough gone, time, place and manner are of no importance. If she doesn’t like him quite so well, she might waive time and place, perhaps. There are infinite variations.”
“I was afraid you were going through them all,” said Miss Velrose.
“But above everything,” I pursued in defiance of Miss Velrose’s irony, “he must be definite. I once heard a girl say, ‘I believe I was proposed to last night, but I am not sure.’ Some men weakly dread to ask the old question in the old way. They introduce dangerous artistic variations.”
“Generally,” declared Miss Velrose, “it isn’t art; it is caution. They wish to be dead sure before they are quite definite. They are like governments who throw out a hint of a proposed movement to see how much and how many of the newspapers will howl.”
“You think he should plunge in with a gambler’sdefiance. You justify the gambling instinct when woman is the stakes.”
“It is cowardly to want to be sure.”
“It is worse than cowardly, for a man never can be sure. Yet a proposal is a big investment to a sensitive man. He can’t afford as many proposals as she can.”
“How could you like him unless he dared to lose all? If he is sure, the greater part of the compliment is absent. The greater the odds against him, the more it will hurt him to lose, the finer the honor he pays her.”
“Yet because he wants to win he must attend to every point. I only wish to defend him against your accessories imputation. There are kinds of courage you wouldn’t wish him to have. He may look an enemy in the eye, but he must not face the woman to whom he proposes if he wishes her to believe that he has a spark of sensibility. I once heard a man say that when he proposed he sat opposite a mirror. The brute!”
Miss Velrose’s cameo relaxed, and dissolved into a three-quarter view as her burning blue eyes turned toward me.
“Don’t!” I cried. “Don’t look at me that way, or I shall have to stop expounding! You prove that what I say is doubly true. Suppose she looked athimthat way when he was in the middle of it?”
“Suppose that was part of her test?”
“Impossible! Not in that crisis. The presumption is that she has inflicted that at an earlier stage. To be sure, if she wants to pile on the agony there is no one to prevent her. Be honest—shouldn’t you be afraid to live with a man who could look you in the eye when he proposed? Should you expect him to anticipate composedly living with a girl who could look him in the eye when she answered him?”
Miss Velrose laughed softly. “What do you suppose Lady Mary Montagu meant when she said that women see men with their ears? Didn’t she mean that they listen too much? Didn’t she mean that we should go into matrimony with our eyes open?”
“I have not the presumption to analyze the cynicism of Lady Mary. She said some rather mean things about men. But let that go. You never could even imitate her. It isn’t at all in your line. I am sure of that or I shouldn’t tease you.”
“Are you teasing me?” she asked, lifting her brows and lowering her lashes.
“Does that mean that no one ever has dared to tease you, and that you don’t even know the signs? When Rollington teases you, is it very different?”
“Rollington never teased me.”
“‘Neverteasedme.’Teased—past tense. Then I am right.”
Miss Velrose’s eyes were not as steady as she could have wished. She is a good tease herself. I owed her a few grudges. “Right about what?” she asked with a charming effect of indifference.
“Right about that rustic bench. Forgive me. A man so seldom is right that you can’t expect him to be wholly composed when he blunders into anything.”
“It is nice to see you so easily pleased. But just as a matter of reasonableness,” added Miss Velrose, “a past tense might have two meanings.”
“True,” I admitted. “It might. I admit that. But when one alternative is supported by unmistakable signs why consider the other? Look at Rollington.”
She bit her lip, and did not turn her head. Rollington was sauntering up the path from the boathouse. He was endeavoring to lookennuyé.
“He is trying to look calm,” I said, “but it is a case of radiant repression. Rollington is a fine fellow. Sometimes the right thing happens. I am going to be more of an optimist than ever—even though you may never speak to me again.”
“There are several things,” said Miss Velrosevery steadily, but with a little amused flutter of the lips, “which some one should say to you.”
“Oh, some one has!” I answered, getting up. “Don’t feel that you have to discipline me merely from a sense of duty.”
“I abandon you to your own conscience.”
“What cruelty!—you knowing that it is a Scotch conscience!”
“Your sophistry will help you out,” said Miss Velrose, in a voice as if she knew that Rollington was very near.
“I have at least one virtue,” I said. “I can keep a secret.”
A proposition which is perfectly apparent.