Further Foolishness Part 11

My husband thinks the French body is far better modelled than ours. He saw ever so many of them. He thought of bringing one over with him, but it costs such a lot to keep them in good order."

"The theatres?" said another lady. "How you must have enjoyed them. I just love the theatres. Last week my husband and I were at the _Palatial_--it's moving pictures--where they have that film with the motor collision running. It's just wonderful. You see the motors going at full speed, and then smash right into one another--and all the people killed--it's really fine."

"Have they all gone insane?" said Mr. Blinks to his wife after the guests had gone.

"Dreadful, isn't it?" she a.s.sented. "I never was so bored in my life."

"Why, they talk of nothing else but their motor-cars!"

said Blinks. "We've got to get a car, I suppose, living at this distance from the town, but I'm hanged if I intend to go clean crazy over it like these people."

And the guests as they went home talked of the Blinkses.

"I fear," said Dr. Domb to Judge Ponderus, "that Blinks has hardly profited by his time in Europe as much as he ought to have. He seems to have observed _nothing_. I was asking him about the new Italian touring car that they are using so much in Rome. He said he had never noticed it. And he was there a month!"

"Is it possible?" said the Judge. "Where were his eyes?"

All of which showed that Mr. and Mrs. Blinks were in danger of losing their friends for ever.

But it so happened that about three weeks later Blinks came home to his residence in an obvious state of excitement. His face was flushed and he had on a silly little round cap with a glazed peak.

"Why, Clarence," cried his wife, "whatever is the matter?"

"Matter!" he exclaimed. "There isn't anything the matter!

I bought a car this morning, that's all. Say, it's a beauty, a regular peach, four thousand with ten off. I ran it clean round the shed alone first time. The chauffeur says he never saw anybody get on to the hang of it so quick. Get on your hat and come right down to the garage.

I've got a man waiting there to teach you to run it.

Hurry up!"

Within a week or two after that one might see the Blinkses any morning, in fact every morning, out in their car!

"Good morning, Judge!" calls Blinks gaily as he pa.s.ses, "how's that carburettor acting?--Good morning. Archdeacon, is that plug trouble of yours all right again?--Hullo, Professor, let me pick you up and ride you up to the college; oh, it's no trouble. What do you think of the bearings of this car? Aren't they just dandy?"

And so Mr. Blinks has got all his friends back again.

After all, the great thing about being crazy is to be all crazy together.

VI. The Two s.e.xes in Fives or Sixes.

A Dinner-party Study

"But, surely," exclaimed the Hostess, looking defiantly and searchingly through the cut flowers of the centre-piece, so that her eye could intimidate in turn all the five men at the table, "one must admit that women are men's equals in every way?"

The Lady-with-the-Bust tossed her head a little and echoed, "Oh, surely!"

The Debutante lifted her big blue eyes a little towards the ceiling, with the upward glance that stands for innocence. She said nothing, waiting for a cue as to what to appear to be.

Meantime the Chief Lady Guest, known to be in suffrage work, was pinching up her lips and getting her phrases ready, like a harpooner waiting to strike. She knew that the Hostess meant this as an opening for her.

But the Soft Lady Whom Men Like toyed with a bit of bread on the tablecloth (she had a beautiful hand) and smiled gently. The other women would have called it a simper.

To the men it stood for profound intelligence.

The five men that sat amongst and between the ladies received the challenge of the Hostess's speech and answered it each in his own way.

From the Heavy Host at the head of the table there came a kind of deep grunt, nothing more. He had heard this same talk at each of his dinners that season.

There was a similar grunt from the Heavy Business Friend of the Host, almost as broad and thick as the Host himself.

He knew too what was coming. He proposed to stand by his friend, man for man. He could sympathise. The Lady-with-the-Bust was his wife.

But the Half Man with the Moon Face, who was known to work side by side with women on committees and who called them "Comrades," echoed:

"Oh, surely!" with deep emphasis.

The Smooth Gentleman, there for business reasons, exclaimed with great alacrity, "Women equal! Oh, rather!"

Last of all the Interesting Man with Long Hair, known to write for the magazines--all of them--began at once:

"I remember once saying to Mrs. Pankhurst--" but was overwhelmed in the general conversation before he could say what it was he remembered saying to Mrs. Pankhurst.

In other words, the dinner-party, at about course number seven, had reached the inevitable moment of the discussion of the two s.e.xes.

It had begun as dinner-parties do.

Everybody had talked gloomily to his neighbour, over the oysters, on one drink of white wine; more or less brightly to two people, over the fish, on two drinks; quite brilliantly to three people on three drinks; and then the conversation had become general and the European war had been fought through three courses with champagne.

Everybody had taken an extremely broad point of view.

The Heavy Business Friend had declared himself absolutely impartial and had at once got wet with rage over cotton.

The Chief Lady Guest had explained that she herself was half English on her mother's side, and the Lady-with- the-Bust had told how a lady friend of hers had a cousin who had travelled in Hungary. She admitted that it was some years ago. Things might have changed since. Then the Interesting Man, having got the table where he wanted it, had said: "I remember when I was last in Sofia--by the way it is p.r.o.nounced Say-ah-fee-ah--talking with Radovitch--or Radee-ah-vitch, as it should be sounded--the foreign secretary, on what the Sobranje--it is p.r.o.nounced Soophrangee--would be likely to do"--and by the time he had done with the Sobranje no one dared speak of the war any more.

But the Hostess had got out of it the opening she wanted, and she said:

"At any rate, it is wonderful what women have done in the war--"

"And are doing," echoed the Half Man with the Moon Face.

And then it was that the Hostess had said that surely every one must admit women are equal to men and the topic of the s.e.xes was started. All the women had been waiting for it, anyway. It is the only topic that women care about. Even men can stand it provided that fifty per cent or more of the women present are handsome enough to justify it.

"I hardly see how, after all that has happened, any rational person could deny for a moment," continued the Hostess, looking straight at her husband and his Heavy Business Friend, "that women are equal and even superior to men. Surely our brains are just as good?" and she gave an almost bitter laugh.

"Don't you think perhaps--?" began the Smooth Gentleman.

"No, I don't," said the Hostess. "You're going to say that we are inferior in things like mathematics or in logical reasoning. We are not. But, after all, the only reason why we are is because of training. Think of the thousands of years that men have been trained. Answer me that?"

"Well, might it not be--?" began the Smooth Gentleman.

"I don't think so for a moment," said the Hostess. "I think if we'd only been trained as men have for the last two or three thousand years our brains would be just as well trained for the things they were trained for as they would have been now for the things we have been trained for and in that case wouldn't have. Don't you agree with me," she said, turning to the Chief Lady Guest, whom she suddenly remembered, "that, after all, we think more clearly?"

Here the Interesting Man, who had been silent longer than an Interesting Man can, without apoplexy, began:

"I remember once saying in London to Sir Charles Doosey--"