_ CHAPTER VII. A SHORT CUT
"WHAT ought I to do," asked the widow, carefully licking all the gum off the flap of a violet envelope and then trying to make it stick, "to a silly boy, who--asked me for a kiss?"
"What ought you to do?" repeated the bachelor, laying down his cigar and regarding the widow severely. "Refuse him, of course."
"Oh, of course," agreed the widow, rubbing the envelope spasmodically with the end of her handkerchief, "but what ought I do to teach him better?"
"I can't think of anything--better," replied the bachelor, charitably reaching for the violet envelope and closing it firmly with his fist.
"How about just taking the kiss--without asking for it?" inquired the widow naively, as she leaned luxuriously back among the cushions of the divan. "Wouldn't that have been better--for him, I mean?"
"Would it?" The bachelor looked the widow straight in the eye.
"Well," replied the widow weakly, toying with some fringe on a satin sofa pillow and carefully avoiding the bachelor's gaze, "he would have gotten it."
"And now he never will," rejoined the bachelor with a confidence he did not feel.
"Oh, I don't know." The widow became suddenly interested in the arrangement of the fringe on the satin sofa pillow. "But it isn't the man who asks a woman for a kiss or--or anything--who gets it. It's the man who takes for granted."
"Takes--what?"
"Takes her by surprise, Mr. Travers," explained the widow, "and doesn't give her time to think or to say no. The short cut to managing a woman is not argument or reason. It's action. She may like to be coaxed, but it's the man who orders her about whom she admires--and obeys. Eve has never forgotten that she is only a rib and when Adam forgets it, she----"
"Makes him feel like a small part of the vertebrae," interpolated the bachelor tentatively.
"Naturally," returned the widow, tying the sofa pillow fringe in a hard knot and then untying it again, "when a man comes to her on his knees she is clever enough to keep him there; but when he comes to her with a scepter in his hand and determination in his eye, she has a wholesome respect for him. It's not the man who begs but the one who demands that receives. It's not the man who asks a girl to marry him, but the one who tells her that she is going to marry him, who gets her. It's not the husband who requests the privilege of carrying a latch-key or staying down town at night who can do so without fear and trembling, but the one who calmly takes the latch-key and telephones his wife that he is going to stay down town and then rings off as though the matter were settled. The question of who's going to have the whip hand in love or matrimony is decided the very first time a man looks at a woman and lets her know who's master."
The bachelor flicked the ashes off his cigar and regarded the widow curiously.
"Are you talking Christian Science or Hypnotism?" he inquired patiently.
"Neither," replied the widow, "I'm talking facts, Mr. Travers. Haven't you ever seen a little short-legged man with a snub nose married to a beautiful, queenly creature, whom he ordered about as if she were the original Greek slave and who obeyed him as if he were Nero himself, and adored him in proportion to his overbearing qualities? And have you never seen a magnificent, six-foot-two specimen of masculine humanity, who was first in war and first everywhere but in his own home, where he was afraid to put his feet on a chair or light a pipe or make an original remark, because some little dried-up runt of a woman had him hypnotized into believing that he was the thirty-second vertebrae and she all the rest of the bones and sinew of the human race? A woman is like a darky, who fancies that 'freedom' means three-quarters of the sidewalk, or a small boy who imagines that doing as he pleases means smashing his sister's toys and stealing sweets from the pantry. Put her in her place and she will stay there; but give her an inch of power and she'll take an ell of liberty and boss you off your own door sill. The biggest, boldest woman that ever lived is built like a barge, to be towed; and any little man who puffs up enough steam and makes a loud enough noise can attach her to himself and tow her all the way up the river of life."
The bachelor laid down his cigar and gazed at the widow in awe.
"And I never knew it," he whispered huskily.
"I suppose," said the widow, beginning to toy with the fringe again, "that you've been asking girls to kiss you, all this time."
"Not
all the time," protested the bachelor.
"And, of course," continued the widow maliciously, "they've all refused you."
"Not
all," repeated the bachelor, pensively.
"What?" The widow glanced up quickly.
"Once," explained the bachelor apologetically, "I didn't have a bald spot."
"When a man asks for a kiss," pursued the widow, thoughtfully, "a girl HAS to refuse him; but when he takes it----"
"She has to take it, too," said the bachelor, chuckling.
"Would you mind," asked the widow, ignoring the last flippant bit of persiflage and picking up the violet envelope, "posting a letter for me?"
"May I look at the address?" demanded the bachelor.
"It's to the boy," began the widow, "who--who----"
"Took the roundabout way?" finished the bachelor, helpfully.
The widow nodded.
"I have written him," she explained, "that he mustn't--that it would be best if he wouldn't come here any more. That will keep him in his place, I think."
"On his knees?" inquired the bachelor sarcastically.
"And I told him," proceeded the widow, with a reproachful glance at the bachelor, "how very rude and foolish----"
"Did you explain," interrupted the bachelor, "that the foolishness consisted in not taking the kiss?"
"Mr. Travers!"
"And that the rudeness lay entirely in assuming that you might not want to be----"
"How dare you!" cried the widow, flaming as red as the scarlet satin sofa pillow behind her head. "I gave him a dreadful scolding!" she added, looking pensively at the sealed note and toying with the edge of the flap, as though she half wished it would come open again.
"In other words," remarked the bachelor laconically, "having him down, you proceeded to wipe your feet on him. Since he had turned the left cheek, you made him turn all the way round, so that you could stick pins in his back and make him feel like the thirty-second vertebrae and----"
"I had to, Mr. Travers," cried the widow pleadingly. "It was my duty."
"Your--what?"
"To teach him a lesson," explained the widow promptly. "He's got to learn that in the situation between man and woman there's only one throne and that whoever gets up on it first wields the sceptre. He's got to learn that the conquest of woman is not, like the Battle of Waterloo, an affair of strategy, but like the Battle of Bunker Hill or Sennacherib----"
"Or the Boston Tea Party or the Massacre of the Innocents," broke in the bachelor. "But aren't you a little hard on the girl? If you get him too well trained he'll beat her."
"Well," replied the widow promptly, "if he does she'll adore him. Besides, it's much better to have the matrimonial medicine administered in allopathic doses than in the little homeopathic pellets of caution and deceit, and lies and arguments which end in the divorce court, and a woman enjoys being bossed and bullied and ordered about by the man she loves quite as much as he enjoys the bossing and bullying. It's her natural instinct to look up, but she can't look up to a man who is figuratively at her feet. She may struggle against the man who attempts to conquer her by main force, but she enjoys being conquered just the same, and it takes a great burden off her soul to be able to lay her head on a broad, masculine shoulder and to know that every affair in life is going to be settled and decided for her.
"She may talk about thinking for herself and voting and all that, but she is always glad enough to sit back and be thought for and voted for by some man who has magnetized her into believing him the incarnation of intelligence. And any man can do it. If the average husband only had a little more nerve and fewer nerves, he could master his wife with one hand and his eyes shut. The heathen Turk can get along better with a whole harem full of women than the civilized man gets along with one lone, lorn wife. It isn't because he's any wiser or cleverer or kinder, but because the first Turk learned the short cut to managing a woman and passed the secret down in the family. They don't ask them to marry them over there, they order them; they don't request them to run an errand or sew on a button, they merely wave their hands and the women fight for the privilege of obeying. They have known for ages what the white man never seems to have learned, that the way to take a woman is by storm and the way to hold her is by force and that any man can manage any woman if he only knows how and has the audacity and the courage--What are you trying to do, Mr. Travers?"
"I'm taking a short cut to the divan," replied the bachelor, sitting down beside the widow, "and I've got the courage at last----"
"How dare you, Billy Travers!"
"And the audacity----"
"Stop! Stop!"
"And the nerve----"
"Mr. Taylor," announced the maid, appearing suddenly between the portieres at this critical moment.
"Oh, mercy!" cried the widow, "and my hair is just----"
"Am I intruding?" asked a fresh-faced young man, entering briskly between the portieres.
"Not at all, Bobby," said the widow sweetly, holding out one hand and feeling her back hair with the other. "You arrived just at the--psychological moment. We have been talking about you for the last half hour." _