The Spinster Book Part 15

[Sidenote: The Bitter Proof]

"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." So spake the prophet in Jerusalem and the centuries have brought the bitter proof. Vanity has reared palaces which have vanished like the architecture of a mirage. Vanity has led the hosts against itself.

Where are Babylon and Nineveh; the hanging gardens and the splendour of forgotten kings? Where are Caesar and Cleopatra; Trianon and Marie Antoinette? Where is the lordly Empire of France? Is it buried with military honours, in the grave of the exiled Napoleon?

Vanity's pomp endureth for a day, but Vanity itself is perennial. Vanity sets whole races of men in motion, pitting them against each other across intervening seas.

One woman has a stone, no larger than a pea, brought from a mine in South Africa. Vanity sets it proudly upon her breast and leads other women to envy her its possession, for purely selfish reasons. One woman's gown is made from a plant which grows in Georgia and she is unhappy because it is not the product of a French or j.a.panese worm.

One woman's coat is woven from the covering of a sheep, and she is not content because it has not cost a greater number of silver pieces and more bits of green paper, besides the life of an Arctic seal, that never harmed her nor hers.

Vanity allows a tender-hearted woman, who cannot see a child or a dumb brute in pain, to order the tails of her horses cut to the fashionable length and to wear upon her hat the pitiful little body of a song-bird that has been skinned alive.

Vanity permits a woman to trim the outer garments of the little stranger for whose coming she has long waited and prayed, with pretty, fluffy fur torn from the unborn baby of another mother--who is only a sheep. Vanity permits a woman to insist that her combs and pins shall be real tortoise-sh.e.l.l, which is obtained from the quivering animal by roasting it alive before a slow fire.

[Sidenote: All is Vanity]

"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" The mad race still goes on. It is insatiate vanity which wrecks lives, ruins homes, torments one's fellows, and blinds the clear vision of its victims. It harms others, but most of all one's self.

[Sidenote: The Conqueror]

There is only one place from which it is shut out--from the union with that other soul. Great as it is, there is still a greater force; there is the inevitable conqueror, for Vanity cannot exist side by side with Love.

Widowers and Widows

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Widowers and Widows

Next to burglars, mice, and green worms, every normal girl fears a widow. Courtships have been upset and expected proposals have vanished into thin air, simply because a widow has come into the game. There is only one thing to do in such a case; retreat gracefully, and leave the field to her.

[Sidenote: The Charm]

A widow's degree of blandishment is conservatively estimated at twenty-five spinster power. At almost every session of spinsters, the question comes up for discussion. It is difficult to see just where the charm lies.

A widow has, of course, a superior knowledge of ways and means. She has fully learned the value of silence, of food, and of judicious flattery.

But these accomplishments may be acquired by the observing spinster who gives due attention to the subject.

The mystery lies deeper than is first suspected. It is possible that the knowledge of her own limitations has something to do with it. A girl who has been flattered, adored, placed upon a pedestal and worshipped, naturally comes to the conclusion that she belongs there. She issues her commands from that height and conveys to man various delicate reminders of his servility.

[Sidenote: The Pedestal Idea]

When the same girl is married and by due operation of natural law becomes a widow, she doubtless has come to a better understanding of the pedestal idea. Hence she does not attempt the impossible, and satisfies herself with working those miracles which are comparatively simple.

A widow has all of the freedom of a girl, combined with the liberty of a married woman. She has the secure social position of a matron without the drawback of a husband. She is nearer absolute independence than other women are ever known to be.

Where a girl is strong and self-reliant, a widow is helpless and confiding. She can never carry her own parcels, put on her own overshoes, or b.u.t.ton her own gloves. A widow's shoe laces have never been known to stay tied for any length of time, unless she has shapeless ankles and expansive feet.

A widow's telegrams must always be taken to the office by some man.

Time-tables are beyond her understanding and she never knows about trains. It frequently takes three or four men to launch a widow upon a two-hundred-mile journey, while a girl can start across the continent with considerably less commotion.

[Sidenote: The Inference]

The inference is, of course, that she has been accustomed to these delicate attentions--that the dear departed has always done such things.

The pretty way in which she asks favours carries out the delusion. He would be a brute, indeed, who could refuse the little service for which she pleads.

The dear departed, naturally, was delighted to do these things, or he would not have done them--such being the way of the married man.

Consequently, the lady was very tenderly loved--and men follow each other like sheep in matters of the heart.

The attraction a widower has for a girl is in inverse proportion to a widow's influence over a man. It is true that the second wife is usually better treated than the first, and that the new occupant of a man's heart reaps the benefit of her predecessor's training. But it is not until spinsterhood is fully confirmed by grey hair and the family Bible that a girl begins to look with favour upon the army of the detached.

[Sidenote: The Food of her Soul]

It seems to her that all the romance is necessarily gone--and it is romance upon which her soul feeds. There can be none of that dear delight in the first home building, which is the most beautiful part of marriage to a girl. Her pretty concern about draperies and colours is all an old story to the man. She may even have to buy her kitchen ware all alone, and it is considered the nicest thing in the world to have a man along when pots and pans are bought.

If widowers and widows would only mate with each other, instead of trespa.s.sing upon the hunting grounds of the unmarried! It is an exceptional case in which the bereaved are not mutually wary. They seem to prefer the unfair advantage gained by having all the experience on one side.

The normal man proposes with ease and carelessness, but the ceremony is second nature to a widower. If he meets a girl he likes, he proceeds at once to business and is slow indeed for his kind if he does not offer his hand and heart within a week.

A clever man once wrote a story, describing the coming of a girl to a widower's house. With care and forethought, the dying wife had left a letter for her successor, which the man fearlessly gave her before she had taken off her hat, because, as the story-teller naevely adds, "she was twenty-eight and very sane."

[Sidenote: A Nice Letter]

This letter proved to be various admonitions to the bride and earnest hopes that she might make her husband happy. It was all very pretty and it was surely a nice letter, but no woman could fail to see that it was an exquisite revenge upon the man who had been rash enough to install another in the place of the dead.

There was not a line which was not kind, nor a word which did not contain a hidden sting. It would be enough to make one shudder all one's life--this hand of welcome extended from the grave. Yet everything continued happily--perhaps because a man wrote the story.

A woman demands not only all of a man's life, but all of his thoughts after she is dead. The grave may hide much, but not that particular quality in woman's nature. If it is common to leave letters for succeeding wives, it is done with sinister purpose.

Romance is usually considered an attribute of youth, and possibly the years bring views of marriage which are impossible to the younger generation. No girl, in her wildest moments, ever dreams of marrying a widower with three or four children, yet, when she is well on in her thirties, with her heart still unsatisfied, she often does that very thing, and happily at that.

[Sidenote: The Hidden Heartache]

Still, there must be a hidden heartache, for woman, with her love of love, is unable to understand the series of distinct and unrelated episodes which make up the love of a man. It is hard to take the crumbs another woman has left, especially if a goodly portion of a man's heart is suspected to lie in the grave.

It is harder still, if helpless children are daily to look into her face, with eyes which are neither hers nor his, and the supreme crucifixion in the life of a woman whose ideals have not changed, is to go into a home which has been made by the hands of a dead and dearly loved wife.

To a woman, material things are always heavily laden with memories.

There is not a single article of furniture which has not its own individuality. She cannot consider a piece of embroidery apart from the dead hands that made it, nor a chair without some a.s.sociation with its previous occupants.

Sometimes the rooms are heavily laden with portraits which are to confront her from day to day with the taunting presence. She is obliged to tell callers that the crayon upon the opposite wall is "the first Mrs. ----." There are also pictures of the first wife's dead children, and here and there the inevitable photograph, of years gone by, of bride and groom in wedding garments--the man sitting down, of course, while his wife stands behind him, as a servant might, with her hand upon his chair.