"The Other Woman"
"The other woman" is the chief bugbear of life. On desert islands and in a very few delightful books, her baneful presence is not. The girl a man loves with all his heart can see a long line of ghostly ancestors, and requires no opera-glass to discern through the mists of the future a procession of possible posterity. It is for this reason that men's ears are tried with the eternal, unchanging: "Am I the only woman you ever loved?" and "Will you always love me?"
The woman who finally acquires legalpossession of a man is haunted by the shadowy predecessors. If he is unwary enough to let her know another girl has refused him, she develops a violent hatred for this inoffensive maiden. Is it because the cruel creature has given pain to her lord? His gods are not her gods—if he has adored another woman.
These two are mutually "other women," and the second one has the best of it, for there is no thorn in feminine flesh like the rejected lover who finds consolation elsewhere. It may be exceedingly pleasant to be a man's first love, but she is wise beyond books who chooses to be his last, and it is foolish to spend mental effort upon old flames, rather than in watching for new ones, for Cæsar himself is not more utterly dead than a man's dead love.
Women are commonly supposed to worry about their age, but Father Time is a trouble to men also. The girl of twenty thinks it absurd for women to be concerned about the matter, but the hour eventually comes when she regards the subject with reverence akin to awe. There is only one terror in it—the dreadful nines.
Scylla and Charybdis
"Twenty-nine!" Might she not as well be thirty? There is little choice between Scylla and Charybdis. Twenty-nine is the hour of reckoning for every woman, married, engaged, or unattached.
The married woman felicitates herself greatly, unless a tall daughter of nine or ten walks abroad at her side. The engaged girl is safe—she rejoices in the last hours of her lingering girlhood and hems table linen with more resignation. The unattached girl has a strange interest in creams and hair tonics, and usually betakes herself to the cloister of the university for special courses, since azure hosiery does not detract from woman's charm in the eyes of the faculty.
Men do not often know their ages accurately till after thirty. The gladsome heyday of youth takes no note of the annual milestones. But after thirty, ah me! "Yes," a man will say sometimes, "I am thirty-one, but the fellows tell me I don't look a day over twenty-nine." Scylla and Charybdis again!
Perennial Youth
Still, age is not a matter of birthdays, but of the heart. Some women are mature cynics at twenty, while a grey-haired matronof fifty seems to have found the secret of perennial youth. There is little to choose, as regards beauty and charm, between the young, unformed girl, whose soft eyes look with longing into the unyielding future which gives her no hint of its purposes, and the mature woman, well-groomed, self-reliant to her finger-tips, who has drunk deeply of life's cup and found it sweet. A woman is never old until the little finger of her glove is allowed to project beyond the finger itself and she orders her new photographs from an old plate in preference to sitting again.
In all the seven ages of man, there is someone whom she may attract. If she is twenty-five, the boy who has just attained long trousers will not buy her striped sticks of peppermint and ask shyly if he may carry her books. She is not apt to wear fraternity pins and decorate her rooms in college colours, unless her lover still holds his alma mater in fond remembrance. But there are others, always the others—and is it less sweet to inspire the love which lasts than the tender verses of a Sophomore? Her field of action is not sensibly limited, for at twentymen love woman, at thirty a woman, and at forty, women.
Three Weapons
Woman has three weapons—flattery, food, and flirtation, and only the last of these is ever denied her by Time. With the first she appeals to man's conceit, with the second to his heart, which is suspected to lie at the end of the œsophagus, rather than over among lungs and ribs, and with the third to his natural rivalry of his fellows. But the pleasures of the chase grow beautifully less when age brings rheumatism and kindred ills.
Besides, may she not always be a chaperone? When a political orator refers effectively to "the cancer which is eating at the heart of the body politic," someway, it always makes a girl think of a chaperone. She goes, ostensibly, to lend a decorous air to whatever proceedings may be in view. She is to keep the man from making love to the girl. Whispers and tender hand clasps are occasionally possible, however, for, tell it not in Gath! the chaperone was once young herself and at times looks the other way.
That is, unless she is the girl's mother. Trust a parent for keeping two eyes and a pair of glasses on a girl! Trust the non-matchmaking mother for four new eyes under her back hair and a double row of ears arranged laterally along her anxious spine! And yet, if the estimable lady had not been married herself, it is altogether likely that the girl would never have thought of it.
The Chaperone
The reason usually given for chaperonage is that it gives the girl a chance to become acquainted with the man. Of course, in the presence of a chaperone, a man says and does exactly the same things he would if he were alone with the maiden of his choice. He does not mind making love to a girl in her mother's presence. He does not even care to be alone with her when he proposes to her. He would like to have some chaperone read his letters—he always writes with this intention. At any time during the latter part of the month it fills him with delight to see the chaperone order a lobster after they have all had oysters.
Nonsense! Why do not the leaders of society say, frankly: "This chaperone businessis just a little game. Our husbands are either at the club or soundly asleep at home. It is not nice to go around alone, and it is pathetic to go in pairs, with no man. We will go with our daughters and their young friends, for they have cavaliers enough and to spare. Let us get out and see the world, lest we die of ennui and neglect!" It is the chaperone who really goes with the young man. She takes the girl along to escape gossip.
Behold his House!
It is strange, when it is woman's avowed object to make man happy, that she insists upon doing it in her own way, rather than in his. He likes the rich, warm colours; the deep reds and dark greens. Behold his house!
Renaissance curtains obscure the landscape with delicate tracery, and he realises what it might mean to wear a veil. Soft tones of rose and Nile green appear in his drawing-room. Chippendale chairs, upon which he fears to sit, invite the jaded soul to whatever repose it can get. See the sofa cushions, which he has learned by bitter experience never to touch! Does he rouse a quiescent Nemesis by laying his weary head upon that elaborate embroidery? Not unless his memory is poor.
Home Comforts
Take careful note of the bric-à-brac upon his library table. See the few square inches of blotting paper on a cylinder which he can roll over his letter—the three stamps stuck together more closely than brothers, generously set aside for his use. Does he find comfort here? Not very much of it.
See the dainty dinner which is set before the hungry man. A cup of rarest china holds four ounces of clear broth. A stick of bread or two crackers are allotted to him. Then he may have two croquettes, or one small chop, when his soul is athirst for rare roast beef and steak an inch thick. Then a nice salad, made of three lettuce leaves and a suspicion of oil, another cracker and a cubic inch of cheese, an ounce of coffee in a miniature cup, and behold, the man is fed!
Why should he go to his club, call loudly for flesh-pots, sink into a chair he is not afraid of breaking, and forget his trouble in the evening paper, while his wife is at home, alone, or having a Roman holiday as a chaperone?
It is a simple thing to acquire a lover, but it is a fine art to keep him. Clubs were originally intended for the homeless, as distinguished from the unmarried. The rare woman who rests and soothes a man when he is tired has no rival in the club. Misunderstanding, sorrowful, yearning for what she has lost, woman contemplates the wreck of her girlish dream.
The Heart of a Woman
There are three things man is destined never to solve—perpetual motion, the square of the circle, and the heart of a woman. Yet he may go a little way into the labyrinth with the thread of love, which his Ariadne will gladly give him at the door.
The dim chambers are fragrant with precious things, for through the winding passages Memory has strewn rue and lavender, love and longing; sweet spikenard and instinctive belief. Some day, when the heart aches, she will brew content from these.
There are barriers which he may not pass, secret treasures that he may not see, dreams that he may not guess. There are dark corners where there has been torture, of which he will never know. There are shadows and ghostly shapes which Penelope has hidden with the fairest fabrics of her loom. Thereare doors, tightly locked, which he has no key to open; rooms which have contained costly vessels, empty and deep with dust.
There is no other step than his, for he walks there alone; sometimes to the music of dead days and sometimes to the laughter of a little child. The petals of crushed roses rustle at his feet—his roses—in the inmost places of her heart. And beyond, of spotless marble, with the infinite calm of mountains and perpetual snow, is something which he seldom comprehends—her love of her own whiteness.
It is a wondrous thing. For it is so small he could hold it in the hollow of his hand, yet it is great enough to shelter him forever. All the world may not break it if his love is steadfast and unchanging, and loving him, it becomes deep enough to love and pity all the world.
It is a tender thing. So often is it wounded that it cannot see another suffer, and its own pain is easier far to bear. It makes a shield of its very tenderness, gladly receiving the stabs that were meant for him, forgiving always, and forgetting when it may.
The Solace
Yet, after all, it is a simple thing. For in times of deepest doubt and trouble, it requires for its solace only the tender look, the whispered word which brings new courage, and the old-time grace of the lover's way.
The Prevailing Theme
A modern novelist has greatly lamented because the prevailing theme of fiction is love. Every story is a love story, every romance finds its inspiration in the heart, and even the musty tomes of history are beset by the little blind god.
One or two men have dared to write books from which women have been excluded as rigorously as from the Chinese stage, but the world of readers has not loudly clamoured for more of the same sort. A story of adventure loses none of its interest if there is some fair damsel to be rescued from various thrilling situations.
The realists contend that a single isolated fact should not be dwelt upon to the exclusion of all other interests, that love plays but a small part in the life of the average man or woman, and that it is unreasonable to expand it to the uttermost limits of art.
Strangely enough, the realists are all men. If a woman ventures to write a book which may fitly be classed under the head of realism, the critics charitably unite upon insanity as the cause of it and lament the lost womanliness of a decadent generation.
If realism were actually real, we should have no time for books and pictures. Our days and nights would be spent in reclaiming the people in the slums. There would be a visible increase in the church fair—where we spend more than we can afford for things we do not want, in order to please people whom we do not like, and to help heathen who are happier than we are.
The Root of all Good
The love of money is said to be the root of all evil, but love itself is the root of all good, for it is the very foundation of the social structure. The universal race for the elusive shilling, which is commonly considered selfish, is based upon love.
Money will buy fine houses, but who would wish to live in a mansion alone! Fast horses, yachts, private cars, and the feasts of Lucullus, are not to be enjoyed in solitude; they must be shared. Buying jewels and costly raimentis the purest philanthropy, for it gives pleasure to others. Sapphires and real lace depreciate rapidly in the cloister or the desert.
The envy which luxury sometimes creates is also altruistic in character, for in its last analysis, it is the wish to give pleasure to others, in the same degree, as the envied fortunately may. Nothing is happiness which is not shared by at least one other, and nothing is truly sorrow unless it is borne absolutely alone.
Love
Love! The delight and the torment of the world! The despair of philosophers and sages, the rapture of poets, the confusion of cynics, and the warrior's defeat!
Love! The bread and the wine of life, the hunger and the thirst, the hurt and the healing, the only wound which is cured by another! The guest who comes like a thief in the night! The eternal question which is its own answer, the thing which has no beginning and no end!
The very blindness of it is divine, for it sees no imperfections, takes no reck of faults, and concerns itself only with the hidden beauty of the soul.
It is unselfishness—yet it tolerates no rival and demands all for itself. It is belief—and yet it doubts. It is hope and it is also misgiving. It is trust and distrust, the strongest temptation and the power to withstand it; woman's need and man's dream. It is his enemy and his best friend, her weakness and her strength; the roses and the thorns.
Woman's love affairs begin in her infancy, with some childish play at sweethearts, and a cavalier in dresses for her hero. It may be a matter of affinity in later years, or, as the more prosaic Buckle suggests, dependent upon the price of corn, but at first it is certainly a question of propinquity.
Through the kindergarten and the multiplication table, the pretty game goes on. Before she is thirteen, she decides to marry, and selects an awkward boy a little older for the happy man. She cherishes him in her secret heart, and it does not matter in the least if she does not know him well enough to speak to him, for the good fairies who preside over earthly destinies will undoubtedly lead The Prince to become formally acquainted at the proper time.
The Self-Conscious Period
Later, the self-conscious period approaches and Mademoiselle becomes solicitous as to ribbons and personal adornment. She pleads earnestly for long gowns, and the first one is never satisfying unless it drags. If she can do her hair in a twist "just like mamma's," and see the adored one pass the house, while she sits at the window with sewing or book, she feels actually "grown up."
When she begins to read novels, her schoolmates, for the time being, are cast aside, because none of them are in the least like the lovers who stalk through the highly-coloured pages of the books she likes best. The hero is usually "tall and dark, with a melancholy cast of countenance," and there are fascinating hints of some secret sorrow. The watchful maternal parent is apt to confiscate these interesting volumes, but there are always school desks and safe places in the neighbourhood of pillows, and a candle does not throw its beams too far.
The books in which the love scenes are most violent possess unfading charm. A hero who says "darling" every time he opens his finely-chiselled mouth is very nearperfection. That fondness lasts well into the after-years, for "darling" is, above all others, the favourite term of endearment with a woman.
Were it not for the stern parents and wholesome laws as to age, girls might more often marry their first loves. It is difficult to conjecture what the state of civilisation might be, if it were common for people to marry their first loves, regardless of "age, colour, or previous condition of servitude."
Age and Colour
Age and colour are all-important factors with Mademoiselle. She could not possibly love a boy three weeks younger than herself, and if her eyes are blue and her hair light, no blondes need apply.
There is a curious delusion, fostered by phrenologists and other amiable students of "temperament," to the effect that a brunette must infallibly fall in love with a blonde and vice versa. What dire misfortune may result if this rule is not followed can be only surmised, for the phrenologists do not know. Still, the majority of men are dark and it is said they do not marry as readily as of yore—is this the secret of the widespread havoc made by peroxide of hydrogen?
The lurid fiction fever soon runs its course with Mademoiselle, if she is let alone, and she turns her attention once more to her schoolmates. She has at least a dozen serious attacks before she is twenty, and at that ripe age, is often a littleblasé.
The Pastime and the Dream
But the day soon comes when the pretty play is over and the soft eyes widen with fear. She passes the dividing line between childhood and womanhood when she first realises that her pastime and her dream have forged chains around her inmost soul. This, then, is what life holds for her; it is ecstasy or torture, and for this very thing she was made.
Some man exists whom she will follow to the end of the world, right royally if she may, but on her knees if she must. The burning sands of the desert will be as soft grass if he walks beside her, his voice will make her forget her thirst, and his touch upon her arm will change her weariness into peace.
When he beckons she must answer. When he says "come," she must not stay. She must be all things to him—friend, comrade, sweetheart, wife. When the infinite meaning of her dream slowly dawns upon her, is it strange that she trembles and grows pale?
Soon or late it comes to all. Sometimes there is terror at the sudden meeting and Love often comes in the guise of a friend. But always, it brings joy which is sorrow, and pain which is happiness—gladness which is never content.
A woman wants a man to love her in the way she loves him; a man wants a woman to love him in the way he loves her, and because the thing is impossible, neither is satisfied.
The Strongest Passion
Man's emotion is far stronger than woman's. His feeling, when it is deep, is a force which a woman may but dimly understand. The strongest passion of a man's life is his love for his sweetheart; woman's greatest love is lavished upon her child.
"One is the lover and one is the loved." Sometimes the positions are reversed, to the misery of all concerned, but normally, man is the lover. He wins love by pleading for it, and there is no way by which a woman may more surely lose it, for while woman's pity is closely akin to Love, man's pity is a poor relation who wears Love's cast-off clothes.
There are two other ways in which a woman loses her lover. One is by marrying him and the other by retaining him as her friend. If she can keep him as her friend, she never believes in his love, and husbands and lovers are often two very different possessions.
A man's heart is an office desk, wherein tender episodes are pigeon-holed for future reference. If he is too busy to look them over, they are carried off later in Father Time's junk-wagon, like other and more profane history.
All the isolated loves of a woman's life are woven into a single continuous fabric. Love itself is the thing she needs and the man who offers it seldom matters much. Man loves and worships woman, but woman loves love. Were it not so, there would be no actor's photograph upon the matinée girl's dressing-table, and no bit of tender verse would be fastened to her cushion with a hat pin, while she herself was fancy free.
Gift and Giver
All her life long she confuses the gift with the giver, and loving with the pride of being loved, because her love is responsive rather than original.
The Forgotten Harp
She demands that the lover's devotion shall continue after marriage; that every look shall be tender and every word adoring. Failing this, she knows that love is dead. She is inevitably disappointed in marriage, because she is no longer his fear, intoxication, and pain, but rather his comrade and friend. The vibrant strings, struck from silence and dreams to a sounding chord, are trembling still—whispering lingering music to him who has forgotten the harp.
When a woman once tells a man she loves him, he regards it as some chemical process which has taken place in her heart and he never considers the possibility of change. He is little concerned as to its expression, for he knows it is there. On the contrary, it is only by expression that a woman ever feels certain of a man's love.
Doubt is the essential and constant quality of her nature, when once she loves. She continually demands new proof and new devotion, consoling herself sometimes with the thought that three days ago he said he loved her and there has been no discord since.
As for him, if his comfort is assured, henever thinks to question her, for men are as blind as Love. If she seems glad to see him and is not distinctly unpleasant, she may even be a little preoccupied without arousing suspicion. A man likes to feel that he is loved and a woman likes to be told.
The use of any faculty exhausts it. The ear, deafened by a cannon, is incapable for the moment of hearing the human voice. The eyes, momentarily blinded by the full glare of the sun, miss the delicate shades of violet and sapphire in the smoke from a wood fire. We soon become accustomed to condiments and perfume, and the same law applies to sentiment and emotion.
The Lover's Devotion
Thus it seems to women that men love spasmodically—that the lover's devotion is a series of unrelated acts based upon momentary impulse, rather than a steady purpose. They forget that the heart may need more rest than the interval between beats.
Attraction and Repulsion
If a man and woman who truly loved each other were cast away upon a desert island, he would tire of her long before she wearied of him. The sequence of attraction and repulsion, the ultimate balance of positive andnegative, are familiar electrical phenomena. Is it unreasonable to suppose that the supreme form of attraction is governed by the same law?
Strong attractions frequently begin with strong repulsions, sometimes mutual, but more often on the part of the attracting force. A man seldom develops a violent and inexplicable hatred for a woman and later finds that it has unaccountably changed to love.
Yet a woman often marries a man she has sincerely hated, and the explanation is simple enough, perhaps, for a woman never hates a man unless he is in some sense her master. Love and hate are kindred passions with a woman and the depth of the one is the possible measure of the other.
She is wise who fully understands her weapon of coquetry. She will send her lover from her at the moment his love is strongest, and he will often seek her in vain. She will be parsimonious with her letters and caresses and thus keep her attraction at its height. If he is forever unsatisfied, he will always be her lover, for satiety must precede repulsion.
No woman need fear the effect of absenceupon the man who honestly loves her. The needle of the compass, regardless of intervening seas, points forever toward the north. Pitiful indeed is she who fails to be a magnet and blindly becomes a chain.
The age has brought with it woman's desire for equality, at least in the matter of love. She wishes to be as free to seek a man as he is to seek her—to love him as freely and frankly as he does her. Why should she withhold her lips after her heart has surrendered? Why should she keep the pretence of coyness long after she has been won?
The Old, Old Law
Far beneath the tinsel of our restless age lies the old, old law, and she who scorns it does so at the peril of all she holds most dear. Legislation may at times be disobeyed, but never law, for the breaking brings swift punishment of its own.
Too often a generous-hearted woman makes the mistake of full revelation. She wishes him to understand her every deed, her every thought. Nothing is left to his imagination—the innermost corners of her heart are laid bare. Given the woman and the circumstances, he would infallibly know her action.This is why the husbands of the "practical," the "methodical," and the "reasonable" women may be tender and devoted, but are never lovers after marriage.
If Alexander had been a woman, he would not have sighed for more worlds to conquer—woman asks but one. If his world had been a clever woman he would have had no time for alien planets, because a man will never lose his interest in a woman while his conquest is incomplete.
The woman who is most tenderly loved and whose husband is still her lover, carefully conceals from him the fact that she is fully won. There is always something he has yet to gain.
A Carmen at Heart
After ten years of marriage, if the old relation remains the same, it is because she is a Carmen at heart. She is alluring, tempting, cajoling and scorning in the same breath; at once tender and commanding, inspiring both love and fear, baffling and eluding even while she is leading him on.
She gives him veiled hints of her real personality, but he never penetrates her mask. Could he see for an instant into the secretdepths of her soul, he would understand that her concealment and her coquetry, her mystery and her charm, are nothing but her love, playing a desperate game against Time and man's nature, for the dear stake of his own.
Dumas draws a fine distinction when he says: "A man may have two passions but never two loves: whoever has loved twice has never loved at all." If this is true, the dividing line is so exceedingly fine that it is beyond woman's understanding, and it may be surmised that even man does not fully realise it until he is old and grey.
The Cords of Memory
Yet somewhere, in every man's heart, is hidden a woman's face. To that inner chamber no other image ever finds its way. The cords of memory which hold it are strong as steel and as tender as the heart-fibre of which they are made.
There is no time in his life when those eyes would not thrill him and those lips make him tremble—no hour when the sound of that voice would not summon him like a trumpet-call.
No loyalty or allegiance is powerful enough to smother it within his own heart, in spite ofthe conditions to which he may outwardly conform. Other passions may temporarily hide it even from his own sight, yet in reality it is supreme, from the day of its birth to the door of his grave.
He may be happily married, as the world counts happiness, and She may be dead—but never forgotten. No real love or hate is wrought upon by Lethe. The thousand dreams of her will send his blood in passionate flow and the thousand memories of her whiten his face with pain. Friendship is intermittent and passion forgets, but man's single love is eternal.
Because woman's love is responsive, it never dies. Her love of love is everlasting. Some threads in the fabric she has woven are like shining silver; others are sombre, broken, and stained with tears. When a man has once taught a woman to believe his love is true, she is already, though unconsciously, won.
All the beauty in woman's life is forever associated with her love. Violets bring the memory of dead days, when the boy-lover brought them to her in fragrant heaps. Somewomen say man's love is selfish, but there is no one among them who has ever been loved by a boy.
Some Lost Song
Broken, hesitant chords set some lost song to singing in her heart. The break in her lover's voice is like another, long ago. Summer days and summer fields, silver streams, and clouds of apple blossoms set against the turquoise sky, bring back the Mays of childhood and all the childish dreams.
This is another thing a man cannot understand—that every little tenderness of his wakes the memory of all past tenderness, and for that very reason is often doubly sweet. This is the explanation of sudden sadness, of the swift succession of moods, and of lips, shut on sobs, that sometimes quiver beneath his own.
Woman keeps alive the old ideals. Were it not for her eager efforts, chivalry would have died long ago. King Arthur's Court is said to be a myth, and Lancelot and Guenevere were only dreams, but the knightly spirit still lives in man's love for woman.
The Lady of the Court
The Lady of the Court was wont to send her knight into danger at her sweet, capriciouswill. Her glove upon his helmet, her scarf upon his arm, her colours on his shield—were they worth the risk of horse and spear? Yet the little that she gave him, made him invincible in the field.
To-day there is a subtle change. She is loved as dearly as was Guenevere, but she gives him neither scarf nor glove. Her love in his heart is truly his shield and his colours are the white of her soul.
He needs no gage but her belief, and having that, it is a trust only a coward will betray. The battle is still to the strong, but just as surely her knight comes back with his shield untarnished, his colours unstained, and his heart aglow with love of her who gave him courage.
The centuries have brought new striving, which the Lady of the Court could never know. The daughter of to-day endeavours to be worthy of the knightly worship—to be royal in her heart and queenly in her giving; to be the exquisitely womanly woman he sees behind her faulty clay, so that if the veil of illusion he has woven around her should ever fall away, the reality might be even fairer than his dream.
Through the sombre pages of history the knights and ladies move, as though woven in the magic web of the Lady of Shalott. Tournament and shield and spear, the Round Table and Camelot, have taken on the mystery of fables and dreams.
By Grace of Magic
Yet, by the grace of magic, the sweet old story lives to-day, unforgotten, because of its single motive. Elaine still dies for love of Lancelot, Isolde urges Tristram to new proofs of devotion, and Guenevere, the beautiful, still shares King Arthur's throne. For chivalry is not dead—- it only sleeps—and the nobleness and valour of that far-off time are ever at the service of her who has found her knight.
Liberty of Choice
Civilisation is so acutely developed at present that the old meaning of courtship is completely lost. None of the phenomena which precede a proposal would be deemed singular or out of place in a platonic friendship. This state of affairs gives a man every advantage and all possible liberty of choice.
Our grandparents are scandalised at modern methods. "Girls never did so," in the distant years when those dear people were young. If a young man called on grandmother once a week, and she approved of him and his prospects, she began on her household linen, without waiting for the momentous question.
Judging by the fiction of the period and by the delightful tales of old New England, which read like fairy stories to this generation, the courtships of those days were too leisurelyto be very interesting. Ten-year engagements did not seem to be unusual, and it was not considered a social mistake if a man suddenly disappeared for four or five years, without the formality of mentioning his destination to the young woman who expected to marry him.
Faithful Maidens
We have all read of the faithful maidens who kept on weaving stores of fine linen and making regular pilgrimages for the letter which did not come. Years afterward, when the man finally appeared, it was all right, and the wedding went on just the same, even though in the meantime the recreant knight had married and been bereaved.
Two or three homeless children were sometimes brought cheerfully into the story, and assisted materially in the continuation of the interrupted courtship. The tears which the modern spinster sheds over such a tale are not at the pathos of the situation, but because it is possible, even in fiction, for a woman to be so destitute of spirit.
Without Saying a Word
"In dem days," as Uncle Remus would say, any attention whatever meant business. Small courtesies which are without significance now were fraught with momentous import then. In this year of grace, among all races except our own, there are ways in which a man may definitely commit himself without saying a word.
A flower or a serenade is almost equivalent to a proposal in sunny Spain. A "walking-out" period of six months is much in vogue in other parts of Europe, but the daughter of the Anglo-Saxon has no such guide to a man's intentions.
Among certain savage tribes, if a man is in love with a girl and wishes to marry her, he drags her around his tent by the hair or administers a severe beating. It may be surmised that these attentions are not altogether pleasant, but she has the advantage of knowing what the man means.
Flowers are a pretty courtesy and nothing more. The kindly thought which prompts them may be as transient as their bloom. Three or four men serenade girls on summer nights because they love to hear themselves sing. Books, and music, and sweets, which convention decrees are the only proper gifts for the unattached, may be sent to any girl,without affecting her indifference to furniture advertisements and January sales of linen.
If there is any actual courtship at the present time, the girl does just as much of it as the man. Her dainty remembrances at holiday time have little more meaning than the trifles a man bestows upon her, though the gift latitude accorded her is much wider in scope.
Furniture
When a girl gives a man furniture, she usually intends to marry him, but often merely succeeds in making things interesting for the girl who does it in spite of her. The newly-married woman attends to the personal belongings of her happy possessor with the celerity which is taught in classes for "First Aid to the Injured."
One by one, the cherished souvenirs of his bachelor days disappear. Pictures painted by rival fair ones go to adorn the servant's room, through gradual retirement backward. Rare china is mysteriously broken. Sofa cushions never "harmonise with the tone of the room," and the covers have to be changed. It takes time, but usually by the first anniversary of a man's marriage, his penates have been noblyweeded out, and the things he has left are of his wife's choosing, generously purchased with his own money.
Woe to the girl who gives a man a scarf-pin! When the bride returns the initial call, that scarf-pin adds conspicuously to her adornment. The calm appropriation makes the giver grind her teeth—- and the bride knows it.
In the man's presence, the keeper of his heart and conscience will say, sweetly: "Oh, my dear, such a dreadful thing has happened! That exquisitely embroidered scarf you made for Tom's chiffonier is utterly ruined! The colours ran the first time it was washed. You have no idea how I feel about it—it was such a beautiful thing!"
The wretched donor of the scarf attempts consolation by saying that it doesn't matter. It never was intended for Tom, but as every stitch in it was taken while he was with her, he insisted that he must have it as a souvenir of that happy summer. She adds that it was carefully washed before it was given to him, that she has never known that kind of silk to fade, and that something must have been done to it to make the colours run.
A Pitched Battle
The short-sighted man at this juncture felicitates himself because the two are getting on so well together. He never realises that a pitched battle has occurred under his very nose, and that the honours are about even.
If Tom possesses a particularly unfortunate flash-light photograph of the girl, the bride joyfully frames it and puts it on the mantel where all may see. If the original of the caricature remonstrates, the happy wife sweetly temporises and insists that it remain, because "Tom is so fond of it," and says, "it looks just like her."
Devious indeed are the paths of woman. She far excels the "Heathen Chinee" in his famous specialty of "ways that are dark and tricks that are vain."
Courtship is a game that a girl has to play without knowing the trump. The only way she ever succeeds at it is by playing to an imaginary trump of her own, which may be either open, disarming friendliness, or simple indifference.
When a man finds the way to a woman's heart a boulevard, he has taken the wrong road. When his path is easy and his burdenlight, it is time for him to doubt. When his progress seems like making a new way to the Klondike, he needs only to keep his courage and go on.
For, after all, it is woman who decides. A clever girl may usually marry any man she sees fit to honour with the responsibility of her bills. The ardent lover counts for considerably less than he is wont to suppose.
The Only One They Know
There is a good old scheme which the world of lovers has unanimously adopted, in order to find out where they stand. It is so simple as to make one weep, but it is the only one they know. This consists of an intentional absence, judiciously timed.
Suppose a man has been spending three or four evenings a week with the same girl, for a period of two or three months. Flowers, books, and chocolates have occasionally appeared, as well as invitations to the theatre. The man has been fed out of the chafing-dish, and also with accidental cake, for men are as fond of sugar as women, though they are ashamed to admit it.
Suddenly, without warning, the man misses an evening, then another, then another. Twoweeks go by, and still no man. The neighbours and the family begin to ask questions of a personal nature.
It is at this stage that the immature and childish woman will write the man a note, expressing regret for his long absence, and trusting that nothing may interfere with their "pleasant friendship." Sometimes the note brings the man back immediately and sometimes it doesn't. He very seldom condescends to make an explanation. If he does, it is merely a casual allusion to "business." This is the only excuse even a bright man can think of.