_ CHAPTER XI. THE WIDOW'S DEAL
"WHO is the ideal woman?" asked the widow pensively, laying down her embroidery hoop and clasping her hands behind her head.
The bachelor blew a smoke ring reflectively and squinted through it at the widow.
"You've got powder on your nose!" he remarked disapprovingly.
The widow snatched up a diaphanous lace handkerchief and began rubbing her nose.
"Have I got too much on?" she asked anxiously.
"Any," replied the bachelor, with dignified scorn, "is too much--in a man's eyes."
The widow laughed and stopped rubbing her nose.
"But it isn't in his eyes," she protested, "if it is put on so artistically that he doesn't see it. Getting it on straight is such an art!" and the widow sighed.
"Black art, you mean," exclaimed the bachelor disgustedly. "A made-up woman is like paste jewelry and imitation bric-a-brac. She looks cheap and unsubstantial and as though she wouldn't wear well. Even granting that you aren't half good enough for us----"
"What!"
"And that you don't come up to our standards----"
The widow dropped her embroidery hoop and sat up with blazing eyes.
"You flatter yourself, Mr. Travers!"
"No, I don't!" retorted the bachelor. "It's you who flatter us, when you think it necessary to plaster over your defects and put additions on your figures and rouge on your cheeks and frills on your manners. As a matter of fact," he added decisively, "a man's ideal is a natural woman with a natural complexion and natural hair and natural ways and natural self-respect."
The widow sighed and took up her embroidery hoop again.
"I used to think so, too," she said sadly.
The bachelor lifted his eyebrows inquiringly.
"Before I discovered," she explained, "that it was just as often a woman with butter-colored hair and a tailor-made figure and a 'past' and a manufactured 'bloom of health.' The truth is," she concluded, stabbing her needle very carefully into the centre of an unhealthy looking green silk rose, "that no two men admire the same woman, and no one man admires the same thing in two women. Now, there's Miss Gunning, who wears a sweater and says 'damn' and is perfectly natural and self-respecting and----"
"No man gets ecstatic over a bad imitation of himself!" expostulated the bachelor.
"Then why," said the widow, laying down her needle and fixing the bachelor with a glittering eye, "do you spend so much time on the golf links, and out driving and hunting and walking with her?"
"Because," explained the bachelor, meekly, "she sometimes hits the ball, and she can sit in her saddle without being tied there, and she doesn't grab the reins nor call a 'hoof' a 'paw.' But," he added fervently, "I'd take my hat and run if she asked me to spend my life with her."
"Oh, well," the widow tossed her head independently. "She won't. Miss Gunning can take care of herself."
"That's just it!" pursued the bachelor. "The very fact that she can take care of herself and get across gutters alone and pick up things for herself and handle her own horse and beat me at golf and tennis, takes away that gratifying sense of protection--"
"And superiority," interposed the widow softly.
"That a man likes to feel toward a woman," concluded the bachelor, ignoring her. "Muscle and biceps and a 32-inch waist," he added, "are 'refreshing,' but in time they get on your nerves. It may not be immoral for a dear little thing to say 'damn,' but it affects a man just as it would to hear a canary bird squawking like a parrot. When a chap is going for a walk cross country he may pick out the girl with the stride and the strong back, who can leap a fence and help herself over puddles, to accompany him, but when he is ready for a walk to the altar he naturally prefers somebody who understands the art of leaning gently on the masculine arm and who hasn't any rough edges or----"
"Sharp points of view," suggested the widow.
"Or opinions on the equality of the sexes," added the bachelor.
"Or on politics."
"Or the higher life."
"Or on anything but the latest way to curl her hair and make over a hat," finished the widow. "Isn't it funny," she added thoughtfully twisting a French knot into the centre of the sickly green rose, "how many men idealize a fool?"
The bachelor started.
"I---I beg your pardon," he stammered.
"All a woman has got to know in order to wear a halo," went on the 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." _