THE LITTLE WIDOW
A little widow is a dangerous thing; but is there not always a fascination in dangerous things? A little learning, for instance, gives a sparkling flavour to life, whereas much learning oppresses it. Now a little widow is perilously fascinating, as a great, tall widow rarely is; her very littleness constitutes an element of danger, since it coaxingly compels sympathy, and when one sympathises with a widow, when one says “Poor little woman!”—one is lost. Though one may not marry her, one is nevertheless her slave. Little Mrs. Willoweed is the most irresistible woman I ever met. I defy any man not to fall in love with her, be it for a day, a week, a year; and it must be always a sudden fall. He is heart-whole one day, and desperately in love the next. It is magnetic and mysterious.
When it happened to me, for the life of me I could not tell how it came about, or why I was in love. I only knew there was a kind of spell in the atmosphere. We were together up the river, the afternoon tea-basket had done its duty, the rest of our party had scattered in different directions, and Mrs. Willoweed and I had wandered into a cornfield, where we discussed Shelley and plucked poppies in the soft sunny haze of an August afternoon. Whether it was the passionate suggestiveness of the poppies, or whether it was the influence of “Epipsychidion,” I know not; but it seemed to me on a sudden that Mrs. Willoweed was the only being worth living for, and, as our hands were drawn by some mysterious impulse to the same poppy, I took her hand instead of the flower and held it. She did not take it away, but let it rest in mine almost caressingly, while she said, with a bewitchingly mischievous smile “Isn’t this a little ridiculous?” The incongruity of the remark and the action completely captured me. What could I do but justify my impulse with a declaration of love? She listened with a pretty, feigned surprise, and said exactly the things which experience no doubt had taught her would drive her victory home. You see she was a little widow, and was consequently a complete compendium of the art of love. That is why little widows are so dangerous. They not only know their own sex, but they know ours too, and knowledge is power.
Of course I wanted to marry Mrs. Willoweed, because she declared she would never marry again; and day after day I would exercise all my persuasive ingenuity in arguing her into a matrimonial frame of mind. But she was obdurate; a second husband presented no attraction to her. She had tasted the sweets of wedded life, she knew all about conjugal bliss, but somehow single blessedness, decked in the latest môde of widow’s weeds, offered her a more alluring programme than a revival of the marriage vows. So, although she accepted my devotion along with the rest, she persisted in saying me nay; but she said it in such a fascinating manner that I was never tired of listening to it. She would always veil her “No!” with a delicate gauzy suggestion of “Yes!” She would keep a distant chance of an affirmative hovering in the air, as it were, and I consequently never broached the subject without that sort of sensation which a gambler experiences at a roulette table, or that which excited the members of the Suicide Club when the president used to deal the fateful cards; and while she kept me hovering on the brink of matrimony she would play upon my affections with the most exquisite science. She would assert her positive incapacity to be constant, which to a man of sentiment and spirit, as I trust I am, was of course a positive challenge to prove her otherwise. Constancy has always been one of woman’s proudest boasts, whether truthfully or not is a question of individual experience, and therefore for a woman to urge her probable inconstancy as an excuse for not marrying a man who asked her, was only to make him more ardent in his suit. Then, again Mrs. Willoweed would tell me quite frankly that to be engaged to me would make her uninteresting in the eyes of all her other male acquaintances, while her women friends would cease to be jealous of her. Perhaps this latter reason was not very complimentary to me, but it had the intended effect, it made me still more demonstrative in my devotion.
Little Mrs. Willoweed has the science of flirtation at her finger-tips, she has reduced the teasing of hearts to a mathematical system, and she sets herself problems merely for the pleasure of solving them, and judging the effect upon her own vanity. Her flirtation is as different from that of the ingénue, or the experienced spinster, or even the flighty married woman, as a complex algebraical equation is from a simple rule-of-three sum. With all the experience of married life she has the sense of perfect freedom and irresponsibility; consequently her flights in flirtation are as daring as they are without fear or reproach.
But let it not be thought that Mrs. Willoweed has ever flown defiantly into the face of Mrs. Grundy, though that estimable lady keeps her hawk-eyes wide open and constantly fixed upon Mrs. Willoweed’s movements. Naturally the unfettered and unchaperoned conditions of her life invite gossip, but nobody has ever been able to say a word against her morality. They certainly whisper, here and there, that a little more circumspection might be advisable, but then whose life would be worth living encased in cast-iron conventionalities and pinioned by prudery? Mrs. Willoweed enjoys her life, she revels in her freedom, and captures as many heart-slaves as she can; but she never trips. She can always look society in the face without a blush, she can always laugh in the face of propriety without offence.
Though I no longer want to marry Mrs. Willoweed, having lived to learn all her little ways through watching her practise her experiments on those others whom I had once thought my rivals, I will yet yield to none in my admiration for her, and I am prepared to champion her through thick and thin. She is a delightful little creature, and it is not her fault if men will fall in love with her; she only helps them to do it pleasantly. And there is a great charm in loving a woman who is versed in the lore of love, and who is practised in all the sleight-of-heart tricks of it. The woman who merely subjects herself to a man’s love, and adds no fresh fuel from her own sentimental activity, soon wearies him so that the flame dies out; but the woman who employs her arts in feeding the love of a man, who knows by instinct and experience when to tease and when to coax, when to starve and when to feast, may keep that love as long as she cares to.
This is the secret of Mrs. Willoweed’s supremacy. She knows all this, and never makes a mistake. This is how she keeps so many of her old admirers. Life is to her a game of cards, in which hearts are always trumps; and she plays the game so prettily that, even though she never loses, there is never a whisper of unfairness. Perhaps if she were a little more cautious not to let outsiders see so much of the game, it would be none the worse for her; but, with all her skill at heart-conjuring, she is a very guileless little person.
Her own heart is open as the day to melting sympathy, and she is as innocent as daylight. She never hides anything, she never does anything to hide; she only tries to live cheerily and pleasantly, and make as many people happy as possible. Why should she be condemned to wear moral sackcloth and ashes all her life because she is a widow and does not choose to marry again? She does not concern herself about the goings-on of other women; why should they be so anxious to catch her tripping, why should they be always on the watch? Of course she never means to give them the chance, but, nevertheless, it is irksome to feel that every woman’s eye is open against her, every woman’s ear ready to catch the faintest suggestion of an echo of a rumour. Why is it?
Surely it is not because Mrs. Willoweed is exceedingly pretty and remarkably accomplished, for other women have been equally so, and yet have failed to awaken the suspicions of their sex and to keep Mrs. Grundy on the qui vive. It cannot be because Mrs. Willoweed dresses so beautifully, that, whether in walking costume, tea-gown, or ball-dress, she looks as though the art of attire has reached on her its climax of perfection, for there be as good dresses in Bond Street as ever came out of it, and all beautiful women are made to be well-dressed—Mrs. Willoweed has no monopoly.
Mrs. Willoweed is a pretty little widow, and there is the gist of the matter. Like Hester Prynne, she carries about her a scarlet letter, though visible only to the mental eye of women with husbands and brothers and lovers, and that letter is D, which stands for Dangerous. You see there is no barrier of ingenuousness to be broken down, no safeguard of a husband-in-law. She is experienced, accessible, and free, and withal fatally fascinating. She is a dead shot with Cupid’s arrow, and never misses her mark. It is not, therefore, to be wondered that women with susceptible male belongings fear to trust them within the magic sphere of Mrs. Willoweed, and that their fears are apt to get the better of their reason and their charity. But, after all, poor little Mrs. Willoweed is entirely innocent of the matrimonial or amorous designs that are placed to her charge in such a sweeping and illogical fashion.
She has a handsome competence of her own, and therefore has no mercenary motives for marriage; and, indeed, she has no intention of binding any man to her for life—she always puts it that way, as it sounds kinder and more philanthropic—but really she has no desire to part with her liberty again. She is very happy as she is.
She cannot live without lovers, but she never lets them get out of their depth, she always keeps them in check, so that she can pull them back into the safer waters of friendship whenever she will. Some women cannot have a man friend without wishing him to be a lover, and when he is a lover, wishing him to be a friend again. Mrs. Willoweed is one of these. Like this grand little kingdom of ours, she has a passion for conquest and empire, but, once the conquest is assured, the annexation completed, and the excitement of the contest over, she sets herself to the task of establishing friendly relations of an enduring character. That is why you never hear a man say an unkind or severe thing about Mrs. Willoweed, dainty, delightful butterfly though she be.
She never quarrels with her admirers, but makes them all feel that it is a privilege to love her, and when we can feel that about a woman, we may be sure there is a great deal of good in her, and we need not be surprised to find there is more chivalrous feeling in us than we gave ourselves credit for. Truly, an innocently frank flirt, like Mrs. Willoweed, can open the valves of a man’s heart, and purge it of much unhealthy sentimentality.
Mrs. Willoweed enjoys existence. She lives in an atmosphere of prettiness and lightness, and treads a rosy path with almost winged feet. Wherever she goes she casts her spell of fascination, and she is always the centre of the pleasantest group. Where she is, there will gather the brave, the gallant, the witty, and, where these are, beauty is drawn as by magnetic attraction, however jealous it may be of the original magnet—the little widow. Haughty beauty may sneer, and Mrs. Grundy may put on her spectacles, and gather her skirts close, but little Mrs. Willoweed—bright, innocent, playful little Mrs. Willoweed—is the queen of the hour. All the men love her, and “she is such fun.”
See her dispensing afternoon tea in her own dainty drawing-room, with its bizarre Orientalism suggesting the boudoir of some Eastern princess in the “Arabian Nights”; she is clad in a picturesque tea-gown, which is itself quite a poem in drapery, while her graceful movements are its rhythm. Can you wonder at that group of admirers sitting around her, each seeming most anxious for the departure of the others? It is a pleasant spell to be under; I would not be out of its reach for worlds. Why, Mrs. Willoweed’s busy talk is a mental tonic, and her laugh is as exhilarating as sparkling wine. To drink tea with her tête-à-tête of an afternoon is a delightful privilege; and there is always the added excitement of fearing the intrusion of other visitors. Unfortunately, there are always so many candidates for this pleasure.
You see, Mrs. Willoweed is not a woman with a mission of any kind; she has plenty of money, plenty of leisure, and nothing to do, and she devotes her life to doing it as delightfully as possible. A little widow may be a dangerous thing, but the danger is harmless; at least, I am sure it is so with little Mrs. Willoweed.