Half-Hours with the Idiot, Page 2

  II

  AS TO THE FAIR SEX

  "I observe with pain," said the Idiot, as he placed the Bibliomaniac'spat of butter under his top waffle, "that there is a more or lessacrimonious dispute going on as to the propriety of admitting women tothe Hall of Fame. The Immortals already in seem to think thatimmortality belongs exclusively to the male order of human beings, andthat the word is really 'Him-mortality', and decline to provide even astrap for the ladies to hang on in the cars leading to the everlastingheights, all of which causes me to rejoice that I am not an Immortalmyself. If the one durable joy in life, the joy that neither crocks norfades, association with the fair sex, a diversion which age cannotwither nor custom stale its infinite variety, is something an Immortalmust get along without, it's me for the tall timbers of famelessexistence. I rejoice that I am but a plain, common-garden, everydaymortal thing, ready for shipment, f. o. b., for the last terminalstation on the road to that well-known Irish settlement, O'Blivion."

  "I didn't know that you were such an admirer of the fair sex, Mr.Idiot," said the Doctor. "Many years' residence in a refined home forsingle gentlemen like this would seem to indicate that the allurementsof feminine society were not for you."

  "Quite the contrary," said the Idiot. "It proves rather my interest inthe fair sex as a whole. If I had specialized sufficiently upon onesingle blessed damozel with pink cheeks, snappy brown eyes, and apompadour that might strike a soaring lark as the most desirable nest inthe world, to ask her to share my lot, and go halves with me in aninvestment in the bonds of matrimony, it might have been said--I evenhope it would have been said--that the allurements of feminine societywere not for me. Marriage, my dear Doctor, is no symptom that a man isinterested in women. It is merely evidence of the irresistibleattraction of one person for another. It's like sampling a box ofcandy--you may find the sample extremely pleasing and gobble it upferociously, but if you were to gobble up the whole box with equalvoracity it might prove hateful to you. In my case, I confess that I amso deeply interested in the whole box of tricks that it is the sample Ifight shy of, and I have remained single all these years because myheart is no miserable little one-horse-power affair that beats only forone single individual, but a ninety-million horse-power dynamo thatwhirls madly around day and night, on time and overtime, on behalf ofall. I could not possibly bring myself to love only one pair of blueeyes to the utter exclusion of black, brown, or gray; nor can I be surethat if in some moment of weakness I were to tie up irrevocably to apair of black eyes, somewhere, some day, with the moon just right, andcertain psychological conditions wholly propitious, a pair ofcoruscating brown beads, set beneath two roguish eyebrows, would laborin vain to win a curve of interest from my ascetic upper lip. To put itin the brief form of a cable dispatch, rather than in magazine languageat fifteen cents a word, I love 'em all! Blonde, brunette, or inbetween, in every maid I see a queen, as Shakespeare would have said ifhe had thought of it."

  "That's rather promiscuous, isn't it?" asked the Bibliomaniac.

  "No, it's just playing safe, Mr. Bib," said the Idiot. "It's like a manwith a million dollars to invest. It isn't considered quite prudent forhim to put every red cent of that million into one single stock. If heput his whole million into U. S. Hot Air Preferred, at 97-7/8, forinstance, and some day Hot Air became so cheap that the bottom droppedout of the market, and the stock fell to 8-3/8 that man wouldpractically be a busted community. But if like a true sage he dividedhis little million up into twenty fifty-thousand dollar lots, and puteach lot into some separate stock or bond, the general average wouldprobably maintain itself somewhere around par whether the tariff onlyonnaise potatoes was removed or not. So it is with my affections. If Icould invest them in some such way as that I might have to move out ofhere, and seek some pleasant little domestic Eden where matrimony is notfrowned upon."

  "I rather guess you would have to move out of here," sniffed Mrs.Pedagogy the Landlady. "I might be willing to forego my rules and takesomebody in here with one wife, but when a man talks about havingtwenty--why, I am almost disposed to give you notice now, Mr. Idiot."

  "Don't you worry your kindly soul about me on that score, Mrs. Pedagog,"smiled the Idiot. "With ostrich feathers at seventy-five dollars aplume, and real Connecticut sealskin coats made of angora plush going atninety-eight dollars, and any old kind of a falal selling in the openmarket at a hundred and fifty per frill, there is no danger of mystartling this company by bringing home one bride, much less twenty. Iwas only speculating upon a theoretical ideal of matrimony, a sort of_e pluribus unum_ arrangement which holds much speculative charm, butwhich in practice would undoubtedly land a man in jail."

  "I had no idea that any of my boarders could ever bring themselves toadvance a single word in favor of polygamy," said the Landlady sternly.

  "Nor I," said the Idiot. "I don't believe even Mr. Bib here wouldadvocate anything of the sort. I was merely trying to make clear to theDoctor, my dear lady, why I have never attempted to make some womanhappy for a week and a martyr for the rest of time. It is due to my deepadmiration for the whole feminine sex, and not, as he seemed to think,to a dislike of feminine society. The trace of polygamy which you seemto find in my discourse is purely academic, and it is clear to me thatyou have quite misunderstood my scheme. A true marriage, one of thoseabsolutely indestructible companionships that we read about in poetry,involves so many more things than any ordinary human being is reallycapable of, that one who thinks about the matter at all cannot resistthe temptation to speculate on how things might be if they weredifferent. The active man of affairs these busy times needs many diversethings in the way of companionship. He needs a helpmate along so manydifferent lines that no single daughter of Eve can reasonably hope tosupply them all. For example, if a man marries a woman who is deeplyinterested in Ibsen and Bernard Shaw abroad, and deep thinkers likeWilliam J. Bryan and Thomas Riley Marshall at home, she no doubt makeshim ecstatically happy in those solemn moments when his mind wishes tograpple understandingly with the infinite. But suppose that poor chapcomes home some night worn to a frazzle with the worries andcomplications of his business affairs, his spirit fairly yearning forsomething fluffy and intellectually completely restful, do you supposefor a moment that he is going to be lifted out of the morass of his woeby a conversation with that lady of his on the subject of theInestimable Infinitude of the Protoplasmic Suffragette as outlined byProfessor Sophocles J. Plato in the latest issue of the _South AmericanReview_? Not he, my dear Mrs. Pedagog. What he wants on that occasion issomebody to sit alongside of him while he pulls away on his oldbriarwood pipe, holding his tired little paddy in her soft right hand,while she twitters forth George Ade's latest Fable on 'The Flipper thatFlapped', or something else equally diverting. The reverse of thepicture is equally true. If there is anything in the world that drives aman to despair it is to have to listen to five o'clock tea gabble whenhe happens to be in a mood for the Alexander Hamilton, or Vice-PresidentMarshall style of discourse. The facts are the same in both cases. TheBernard Shaw lady is a delight to the heart and soul in his Bernard Shawmoods. The George Ade lady is a source of unalloyed bliss in a GeorgeAde mood, but they don't reverse readily, and in most cases they can'treverse at all. Then there are other equally baffling complicationsalong other lines. A man may be crazy about poetry, and he falls inlove, as he supposes, with a dainty little creature in gold-rimmedeyeglasses, who writes the most exquisite lyrics, simply because hethinks at the moment that those lyrics are going to make his life justone sweet song after another. He marries the little songbird, and thenwhat happens?"

  "Never having married a canary, I don't know," said the Landlady, witha glance at her husband.

  "Well, I'll tell you," said the Idiot. "He has a honeymoon of lovelyimages. He feels like a colt put out to pasture on the slopes ofParnassus. Life runs along with the lilt of a patter song--and then, toindulge in a joke worthy of the palmiest days of London Punch, he comesout of Patter-Song! There dawns a day when he is full chock-a-block u
pto his neck with poetry, and the inner man craves the re-enforcement ofthe kind of flapjacks his mother used to make. One good waffle wouldplease him more than sixty-seven sonnets on the subject of 'Aspiration.'Nothing short of a lustrous, smoking, gleaming stack of fresh buckwheatscan hold him on the pinnacle of joy, and the lovely little lyrist, towhom he has committed himself, his destinies, and all that he has undera vow for life, hies herself singing to the kitchen, mixes thenecessary amount of concrete, serves the resulting dishes at thebreakfast table, and gloom, gloom unmitigated, falls upon that house.After eating two of her cakes poor old hubby begins to feel as if he hadswallowed the corner stone of a Carnegie library. That lyric touch thatHerrick might have envied and Tennyson have viewed with professionalalarm has produced a buckwheat cake of such impenetrable density thatthe Navy Department, if it only knew about it, would joyously grant herthe contract for furnishing the armor plate for the newsuperdreadnoughts we are about to build so as to be prepared for Peaceafter Germany gets through with us. While eating those cakes the victimspeculates on that old problem, Is Suicide a Sin? A cloud rises upon thehorizon of his joy, and without intending any harm whatsoever, his mindinvoluntarily reverts to another little lady he once knew, who, whileshe couldn't tell the difference between a sonnet and a cabriolet, andhad a dim notion when she heard people speaking of Keats that keats weresome sort of a shellfish found on the rocks of the Hebrides at low tide,and much relished by the natives, could yet put together a tea biscuitso delicately tenuous of character that it melted in the mouth like aflake of snow on the smokestack of a Pittsburgh blast furnace. Thus anapparently secured joy loses its keen edge, and without anybody beingreally to blame, life becomes thenceforward, very gradually, but nonethe less surely, a mere test of endurance--a domestic marathon whichmust be run to the end, unless the runners collapse before reaching thefinish."

  "For both parties!" snapped the Landlady, pursing her lips severely."You needn't think that the men are the only ones to suffer--don't youfool yourself on that point."

  "Oh, indeed I don't, Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot. "It's just as badfor the woman as for the man--sometimes a little worse, for there is nodenying that women are after all more chameleonic, capable of a greatervariety of emotions than men are. A man may find several women inone--in fact, he generally does. It is her frequent unlikeness toherself that constitutes the chief charm of some women. Take my friendSpinks' wife, for instance. She's the most exacting Puritan at home thatyou ever met. Poor Spinksy has to toe a straight mark for at leastsixteen hours out of every twenty-four. Mrs. Spinks rules him with a rodof iron, but when that little Puritan goes to a club dance--well,believe me, she is the snappiest eyed, most flirtatious little tangoerin ninety-seven counties. Sundays in church she is the demurest bit ofsartorial impressiveness in sight, but at the bridge table you want tokeep your eyes wide open all the time lest your comfortable littlebalance at the bank be suddenly transformed into a howling overdraft. Ishould say that on general principles Mrs. Spinks is not less than nineor ten women, all rolled into one--Joan of Arc, Desdemona, LucreziaBorgia, Cleopatra, Nantippe, Juliet, Mrs. Pankhurst, Eve, and the lateCarrie Nation. But Spinks--poor old Spinksy--there's no infinite varietyabout him. At most Spinks is only two men--Mr. Henpeck at home and Mr.Overworked when he gets out."

  "I suppose from all of this nonsense," said the Landlady, "that yourmatrimonial ideal would be found in a household where a man rejoiced inthe possession of a dozen wives--one frivolous little Hebe for hisjoyous moods; one Junoesque thundercloud for serious emergencies; onecapable seamstress to keep his buttons sewed on; one first-classhousekeeper to look after his domestic arrangements; one suffragette totalk politics to; one blue-stocking for literary companionship; onehighly-recommended cook to preside over his kitchen; one musical wife tobang on the piano all day; one athletic girl for outdoor consumption,and a plain, common-garden giggler to laugh at his jokes."

  "I think I could be true to such a household, madame," said the Idiot,"but please don't misunderstand me. I'm not advocating such a scheme. Iam only saying that since such a scheme is impossible under modernconditions I think it is the best thing that ever happened to my wifethat she and I never met."

  "Do you think a household of that sort would be satisfied with you?"asked the Bibliomaniac.

  "The chances are six to one that it wouldn't be," said the Idiot. "I'dprobably get along gloriously with Hebe and the giggler, but I guess theothers would stand a fair show of finding marriage a failure. Wherefoream I wedded only to my fancies, content that my days should not besubjected to the strain of trying to be all things to one woman,preferring as I do to remain one thing to all women instead--theirdevoted admirer and willing slave."

  "Well, to come back to the Immortals," said the Doctor. "You don'treally think, do you, that we have any women Immortals?"

  "Of course, I do," replied the Idiot. "The world is full of them, andalways has been."

  Mr. Brief, the lawyer, tapped his forehead significantly.

  "I'm afraid that screw has come loose again, Doctor," he said.

  "Looks that way," said the Doctor, "but we'll tighten it up again in ajiffy."

  He paused a moment, and then resumed.

  "Well, Mr. Idiot," he said, "of course our ideas may differ on thesubject of what makes an Immortal. Now, I should say that it is by theirfruits that ye shall know them."

  "A highly original remark," observed the Idiot, with a grin.

  "That aside," said the Doctor, coolly, "let's take up, for purposes ofdiscussion, a few standards. In music, Wagner was an Immortal, andproduced his great trilogy. In poetry, Milton was an Immortal, andproduced 'Paradise Lost.' In the drama, Shakespeare was an Immortal,and produced 'Hamlet', and, coming down to our own time, let us grantthe obvious fact that Edison is headed toward immortality because of hiswizardry in electricity."

  "Sure thing!" said the Idiot.

  "It is good to have you grant all I say so readily," said the Doctor."Now then--let me ask you where in all history you find four women whoin the matter of their achievement, in the demonstrated fruits of theirlabors, even measurably approached any one of these four I havementioned?"

  "Why, Doctor," grinned the Idiot, "why ask me to steal candy from ababy? Why suggest that I try to drive a tack with a sledgehammer, or cuta mold of currant jelly with the whirring teeth of a buzz saw--"

  "Sparring for time as usual," cried the Doctor triumphantly. "You can'tname one, and are simply trying to asphyxiate us with that peculiarvariety of natural gas for which you have long been famous."

  "I'll fill the roster with examples if you'll sit and listen," said theIdiot. "I can match every male genius that ever lived from Noah down toJosephus Daniels with a woman whose product was of equal if not evengreater value. Begin where you please--in any century before or sincethe flood, and I'll be your huckleberry--Wagner, Milton, Cromwell,Roosevelt, Secretary Daniels, Kaiser Wilhelm, Methuselah--I don't carewho or what he is--I'll match him."

  "All right," said the Doctor. "Suppose we begin low with that triflinglittle frivoler in literature, William Shakespeare!"

  "Good!" cried the Idiot. "He'll do--I'll just mark him off with Mrs.Shakespeare."

  "What?" chuckled the Doctor. "Anne Hathaway?"

  "No," said the Idiot. "Not Anne Hathaway, but Shakespeare's mother."

  "Oh, tush!" ejaculated the Bibliomaniac impatiently. "What rot! A whollyunknown provincial person of whom the world knows about as much as abeetle knows about Mars. What on earth did she ever produce?"

  "Shakespeare!" said the Idiot, in an impressive basso-profundo tone thatechoed through the room like a low rumble of thunder.

  And a silence fell upon that table so deep, so abysmally still, that onecould almost hear the snowflakes falling upon the trolley tracks sixteenblocks away.