Читать книгу The Widow [To Say Nothing of the Man] - Rowland Helen - Страница 2

"THERE," said the bachelor as he bowed to a little man across the room, "sits the eighth wonder of the world – a man with a squint and a cork leg and no income to speak of, who has just married for the third time. What makes us so fascinating?"

The widow laid down her oyster fork and gazed thoughtfully at the beautiful girl in blue chiffon sitting opposite the man with the squint.

"Don't generalize," she said, turning rebukingly to the bachelor. "You mean what makes the little man so fascinating?"

The bachelor jabbed an oyster viciously.

"Well," he grumbled, "what does make him so fascinating? Is it the squint or the cork – "

The widow looked at him reproachfully.

"Don't be envious," she said. "He might have two squints and yet be successful with women. Haven't you ever seen a runty, plain little man before, with nothing on earth, apparently, to recommend him except his sex, who could draw the women as a magnet does needles?"

The bachelor dropped his oyster and stared at the widow.

"It's hypnotism!" he declared with solemn conviction.

The widow laughed.

"It's nothing of the sort," she contradicted. "It's because he holds man's winning card and knows how to play it. Just observe the tender solicitude with which he consults her about that fish."

"You mean," inquired the bachelor suspiciously, "that he has a fascinating way?"

"That's all he needs," responded the widow promptly, "to make him irresistible."

"Then, how do you account," argued the bachelor, indicating a Gibsonesque young man eating his dinner alone under a palm at the corner table, "for the popularity of that Greek god over there? He's a perfect boor, yet the women in this hotel pet him and coax him and cuddle him as if he were a prize lion cub."

"Oh," remarked the widow, "if you were all Greek gods – that would be different. But, unfortunately, the average man is just an ungainly looking thing in a derby hat and hideous clothes, with knuckly hands and padded shoulders and a rough chin."

"Thank you," said the bachelor sweetly. "I see – as in a looking glass. Evidently our countenances – "

"Pooh!" jeered the widow, "your countenances just don't count. That's all. What profiteth it a man though he have the face of an Apollo if he have the legs of a Caliban? A woman never bothers about a man's face. It's his figure that attracts her. She will forgive weak eyes and a cut-off chin twice as quickly as weak shoulders and cut-off legs."

"That's why we pad them – the shoulders," explained the bachelor.

"You wouldn't need to," retorted the widow, "if you knew how to play the winning card."

"What IS the winning card?" implored the bachelor, leaning across the table anxiously.

The widow laid down her soup spoon and bent to arrange the violets in her belt meditatively.

"Well," she said, "Sir Walter Raleigh played it and it won him a title; and Mr. Mantellini played it and it kept him in spending money and fancy waistcoats for years without his doing a stroke of work; and Louis XIV. – but oh, pshaw! You know all about that. Briefly speaking, a man's winning card is his knowledge of how to treat a woman. Specifically, it is a tender, solicitous, protecting manner. A woman just loves to be 'protected,' whether there is anything to be protected from or not. She loves to know that you are anxious for her safety and comfort, even when there is no cause in the world for your anxiety. She loves to have you wait on her, even when there is a room full of hired waiters about. She loves to be treated like an adorable, cunning, helpless child, even when she is five feet ten and weighs a cool two hundred. She delights in having a mental cloak laid down for her to walk over and every time you do it she secretly knights you."

"It sounds awfully easy," said the bachelor.

"But it isn't," retorted the widow, "if it were all men would try it – and all men would be perfectly irresistible."

"Well, aren't they?" asked the bachelor, innocently. "I thought they – "

"The winning way, the irresistible masculine manner," pursued the widow, ignoring the interruption, "is something subtle and inborn. It can't be put on or varnished over. It is neither a pose nor a patent. It is the gift of one of the good fairies at birth. If it is going to be trained into a man he must be caught and schooled very early – say, before he is ten years old. It's his ingrain attitude toward women and he begins by practicing it on his mother. If he is not to the manner born and tries to cultivate it late in life, he must watch very carefully to see that he does not overdo it like a lackey or a dancing master or the villain in a melodrama. Of course, it can be cultivated to a certain extent, like music or Christian Science, but it's hard for a man to learn that a woman is a fragile creature and needs a bodyguard, after he has been twenty years letting his sisters pack their own trunks and lug their own satchels and golf clubs. Besides, most men are too busy or too self-absorbed to cultivate it, if they could."

"Most men," remarked the bachelor, stirring his coffee and lighting his cigarette, "aren't anxious to become the sort of 'mother's darling' you describe."

"Nonsense," retorted the widow. "Richard the Third was a perfectly adorable ladies' man and he couldn't be called exactly – a 'mother's darling.' Yet the things he said to poor Lady Anne and the way he said them would have turned any feminine brain. It isn't milk and water that women admire; it's the milk of human interest. It's the feeling that a man is gazing at you instead of through you at his own reflection – or some other woman."

"But if it means giving up all the easy chairs," protested the bachelor, "and packing all the family trunks and putting out your pipe every time a female member of the family approaches and eating dishes you don't want and running round doing household errands, a man hasn't got time – "

"It doesn't!" declared the widow. "It has nothing to do with morals or with selfishness. Some of the most selfish men in the world are those whom a poor little woman will work her fingers to the bone to support, simply because when she comes home at night after her labors her husband puts his arms around her and tells her how sad it makes him feel to see her struggle so, and how young and beautiful she keeps in spite of it all and orders her to lie down and let him run out and fetch her some ice cream and read to her. A man with that sort of way with him can get anything on earth out of a woman and then make her eternally grateful to him. Look at the husbands who slave all day earning money for their wives to spend and go home tired out and grouchy and never get a word of thanks. Yet, a man can stay out six nights in the week, and if he will come home on the seventh with a kiss and a compliment and a box of candy and any old lie and a speech about sympathy and all that, a nice sensible wife will forgive and forget – and adore him."

"But are there any nice sensible wives?" asked the bachelor plaintively.

"Have you finished your cigarette, Mr. Travers?" inquired the widow coolly.

"Because if there are, that is just what I am looking – "

"If you have," pursued the widow, "I think we had better go."

The bachelor rose with alacrity. "I think so, too," he acquiesced, pleasantly. "That Greek god over yonder under the palm has been staring at me as if he contemplated murder for the last half hour."

The widow blushed.

"Perhaps," she said with a one-cornered smile, "he is envying you – "

"Undoubtedly!" agreed the bachelor.

"Envying you," pursued the widow, "your fascinating ways."

"Oh," cried the bachelor, "then I have got it."

"What?" said the widow.

"The winning card. The charm!"

"Well," said the widow, putting her head on the side and gazing at him speculatively, "you wear a derby hat."

"I take it off in the house and in the presence of ladies," protested the bachelor.

"And your shoulders – " began the widow.

"They are my own!" declared the bachelor.

"And your – "

"They also are mine," broke in the bachelor quickly.

"And besides all that," added the widow, "you have that little bald spot in the middle of your head. And yet – "

"Go on," said the bachelor, "you have said the worst."

"I broke an engagement with a nice boy to dine with you to-night."

"That doesn't prove anything," said the bachelor scornfully. "Maybe he hasn't played the winning card."

"No, it proves you have," declared the widow.

"I can't see it!" protested the bachelor.

"Well, just look at the Greek god over under the palm and then look in the glass at yourself and – work it out."

"But why look at the Greek god?"

"Because," said the widow, turning to the mirror and carefully tilting her hat, "he is the nice boy with whom I broke the engagement."