The machine stopped its clicking the moment I spoke, and the words, “Hullo, old chap!” were no sooner uttered than my face grew red as a carnation pink. I felt as if I had committed some dreadful faux-pas, and instead of gazing steadfastly into the vacant chair, as I had been wont to do in my conversation with Boswell, my eyes fell, as though the invisible occupant of the chair were regarding me with a look of indignant scorn.
“I beg your pardon,” I said.
“I should think you might,” returned the types. “Hullo, old chap! is no way to address a woman you've never had the honor of meeting, even if she is of the most advanced sort. No amount of newness in a woman gives a man the right to be disrespectful to her.”
“I didn't know,” I explained. “Really, miss, I—”
“Madame,” interrupted the machine, “not miss. I am a married woman, sir, which makes of your rudeness an even more reprehensible act. It is well enough to affect a good-fellowship with young unmarried females, but when you attempt to be flippant with a married woman—”
“But I didn't know, I tell you,” I appealed. “How should I? I supposed it was Boswell I was talking to, and he and I have become very good friends.”
“Humph!” said the machine. “You're a chum of Boswell's, eh?”
“Well, not exactly a chum, but—” I began.
“But you go with him?” interrupted the lady.
“To an extent, yes,” I confessed.
“And does he GO with you?” was the query. “If he does, permit me to depart at once. I should not feel quite in my element in a house where the editor of a Sunday newspaper was an attractive guest. If you like that sort of thing, your tastes—”
“I do not, madame,” I replied, quickly. “I prefer the opium habit to the Sunday-newspaper habit, and if I thought Boswell was merely a purveyor of what is known as Sunday literature, which depends on the goodness of the day to offset its shortcomings, I should forbid him the house.”
A distinct sigh of relief emanated from the chair.
“Then I may remain,” was the remark rapidly clicked off on the machine.
“I am glad,” said I. “And may I ask whom I have the honor of addressing?”
“Certainly,” was the immediate response. “My name is Socrates, nee Xanthippe.”
I instinctively cowered. Candidly, I was afraid. Never in my life before had I met a woman whom I feared. Never in my life have I wavered in the presence of the sex which cheers, but I have always felt that while I could hold my own with Elizabeth, withstand the wiles of Cleopatra, and manage the recalcitrant Katherine even as did Petruchio, Xanthippe was another story altogether, and I wished I had gone to the club. My first impulse was to call up-stairs to my wife and have her come down. She knows how to handle the new woman far better than I do. She has never wanted to vote, and my collars are safe in her hands. She has frequently observed that while she had many things to be thankful for, her greatest blessing was that she was born a woman and not a man, and the new women of her native town never leave her presence without wondering in their own minds whether or not they are mere humorous contributions of the Almighty to a too serious world. I pulled myself together as best I could, and feeling that my better-half would perhaps decline the proffered invitation to meet with one of the most illustrious of her sex, I decided to fight my own battle. So I merely said:
“Really? How delightful! I have always felt that I should like to meet you, and here is one of my devoutest wishes gratified.”
I felt cheap after the remark, for Mrs. Socrates, nee Xanthippe, covered five sheets of paper with laughter, with an occasional bracketing of the word “derisively,” such as we find in the daily newspapers interspersed throughout the after-dinner speeches of a candidate of another party. Finally, to my relief, the oft-repeated “Ha-ha-ha!” ceased, and the line, “I never should have guessed it,” closed her immediate contribution to our interchange of ideas.
“May I ask why you laugh?” I observed, when she had at length finished.
“Certainly,” she replied. “Far be it from me to dispute the right of a man to ask any question he sees fit to ask. Is he not the lord of creation? Is not woman his abject slave? I not the whole difference between them purely economic? Is it not the law of supply and demand that rules them both, he by nature demanding and she supplying?”
Dear reader, did you ever encounter a machine, man-made, merely a mechanism of ivory, iron, and ink, that could sniff contemptuously? I never did before this encounter, but the infernal power of either this type-writer or this woman who manipulated its keys imparted to the atmosphere I was breathing a sniffing contemptuousness which I have never experienced anywhere outside of a London hotel, and then only when I ventured, as few Americans have dared, to complain of the ducal personage who presided over the dining-room, but who, I must confess, was conquered subsequently by a tip of ten shillings.
At any rate, there was a sniff of contempt imparted, as I have said, to the atmosphere I was breathing as Xanthippe answered my question, and the sniff saved me, just as it did in the London hotel, when I complained of the lordly lack of manners on the part of the head waiter. I asserted my independence.
“Don't trouble yourself,” I put in. “Of course I shall be interested in anything you may choose to say, but as a gentleman I do not care to put a woman to any inconvenience and I do not press the question.”
And then I tried to crush her by adding, “What a lovely day we have had,” as if any subject other than the most commonplace was not demanded by the situation.
“If you contemplate discussing the weather,” was the retort, “I wish you would kindly seek out some one else with whom to do it. I am not one of your latter-day sit-out-on-the-stairs-while-the-others-dance girls. I am, as I have always been, an ardent admirer of principles, of great problems. For small talk I have no use.”
“Very well, madame—” I began.
“You asked me a moment ago why I laughed,” clicked the machine.
“I know it,” said I. “But I withdraw the question. There is no great principle involved in a woman's laughter. I have known women who have laughed at a broken heart, as well as at jokes, which shows that there is no principle involved there; and as a problem, I have never cared enough about why women laugh to inquire deeply into it. If she'll just consent to laugh, I'm satisfied without inquiring into the causes thereof. Let us get down to an agreeable basis for yourself. What problem do you wish to discuss? Servants, baby-food, floor-polish, or the number of godets proper to the skirt of a well-dressed woman?”
I was regaining confidence in myself, and as I talked I ceased to fear her. Thought I to myself, “This attitude of supreme patronage is man's safest weapon against a woman. Keep cool, assume that there is no doubt of your superiority, and that she knows it. Appear to patronize her, and her own indignation will defeat her ends.” It is a good principle generally. Among mortal women I have never known it to fail, and when I find myself worsted in an argument with one of man's greatest blessings, I always fall back upon it and am saved the ignominy of defeat. But this time I counted without my antagonist.
“Will you repeat that list of problems?” she asked, coldly.
“Servants, baby-food, floor-polish, and godets,” I repeated, somewhat sheepishly, she took it so coolly.
“Very well,” said Xanthippe, with a note of amusement in her manipulation of the keys. “If those are your subjects, let us discuss them. I am surprised to find an able-bodied man like yourself bothering with such problems, but I'll help you out of your difficulties if I can. No needy man shall ever say that I ignored his cry for help. What do you want to know about baby-food?”
This turning of the tables nonplussed me, and I didn't really know what to say, and so wisely said nothing, and the machine grew sharp in its clicking.
“You men!” it cried. “You don't know how fearfully shallow you are. I can see through you in a minute.”
“Well,” I said, modestly, “I suppose you can.” Then calling my feeble wit to my rescue, I added, “It's only natural, since I've made a spectacle of myself.”
“Not you!” cried Xanthippe. “You haven't even made a monocle of yourself.”
And here we both laughed, and the ice was broken.
“What has become of Boswell?” I asked.
“He's been sent to the ovens for ten days for libelling Shakespeare and Adam and Noah and old Jonah,” replied Xanthippe. “He printed an article alleged to have been written by Baron Munchausen, in which those four gentlemen were held up to ridicule and libelled grossly.”
“And Munchausen?” I cried.
“Oh, the Baron got out of it by confessing that he wrote the article,” replied the lady. “And as he swore to his confession the jury were convinced he was telling another one of his lies and acquitted him, so Boswell was sent up alone. That's why I am here. There isn't a man in all Hades that dared take charge of Boswell's paper—they're all so deadly afraid of the government, so I stepped in, and while Boswell is baking I'm attending to his editorial duties.”
“But you spoke contemptuously of the Sunday newspapers awhile ago, Mrs. Socrates,” said I.
“I know that,” said Xanthippe, “but I've fixed that. I get out the Sunday edition on Saturdays.”
“Oh—I see. And you like it?” I queried.
“First rate,” she replied. “I'm in love with the work. I almost wish poor old Bos had been sentenced for ten years. I have enough of the woman in me to love minding other people's business, and, as far as I can find out, that's about all journalism amounts to. Sewing societies aren't to be mentioned in the same day with a newspaper for scandal and gossip, and, besides, I'm an ardent advocate of men's rights—have been for centuries—and I've got my first chance now to promulgate a few of my ideas. I'm really a man in all my views of life—that's the inevitable end of an advanced woman who persists in following her 'newness' to its logical conclusion. Her habits of thought gradually come to be those of a man. Even I have a great deal more sympathy with Socrates than I used to have. I used to think I was the one that should be emancipated, but I'm really reaching that stage in my manhood where I begin to believe that he needs emancipation.”
“Then you admit, do you,” I cried, with great glee, “that this new-woman business is all Tommy-rot?”
“Not by a great deal,” snapped the machine. “Far from it. It's the salvation of the happy life. It is perfectly logical to say that the more manny a woman becomes, the more she is likely to sympathize with the troubles and trials which beset men.”
I scratched my head and pulled the lobe of my ear in the hope of loosening an argument to confront her with, not that I disagreed with her entirely, but because I instinctively desired to oppose her as pleasantly disagreeably as I could. But the result was nil.
“I'm afraid you are right,” I said.
“You're a truthful man,” clicked the machine, laughingly. “You are afraid I'm right. And why are you afraid? Because you are one of those men who take a cynical view of woman. You want woman to be a mere lump of sugar, content to be left in a bowl until it pleases you in your high-and-mightiness to take her in the tongs and drop her into the coffee of your existence, to sweeten what would otherwise not please your taste—and like most men you prefer two or three lumps to one.”
I could only cough. The lady was more or less right. I am very fond of sugar, though one lump is my allowance, and I never exceed it, whatever the temptation. Xanthippe continued.
“You criticise her because she doesn't understand you and your needs, forgetting that out of twenty-four hours of your daily existence your wife enjoys personally about twelve hours of your society, during eight of which you are lying flat on your back, snoring as though your life depended on it; but when she asks to be allowed to share your responsibilities as well as what, in her poor little soul, she thinks are your joys, you flare up and call her 'new' and 'advanced,' as if advancement were a crime. You ride off on your wheel for forty miles on your days of rest, and she is glad to have you do it, but when she wants a bicycle to ride, you think it's all wrong, immoral, and conducive to a weak heart. Bah!”
“I—ah—” I began.
“Yes you do,” she interrupted. “You ah and you hem and you haw, but in the end you're a poor miserable social mugwump, conscious of your own magnificence and virtue, but nobody else ever can attain to your lofty plane. Now what I want to see among women is more good fellows. Suppose you regarded your wife as good a fellow as you think your friend Jones. Do you think you'd be running off to the club every night to play billiards with Jones, leaving your wife to enjoy her own society?”
“Perhaps not,” I replied, “but that's just the point. My wife isn't a good fellow.”
“Exactly, and for that reason you seek out Jones. You have a right to the companionship of the good fellow—that's what I'm going to advocate. I've advanced far enough to see that on the average in the present state of woman she is not a suitable companion for man—she has none of the qualities of a chum to which he is entitled. I'm not so blind but that I can see the faults of my own sex, particularly now that I have become so very masculine myself. Both sexes should have their rights, and that is the great policy I'm going to hammer at as long as I have Boswell's paper in charge. I wish you might see my editorial page for to-morrow; it is simply fine. I urge upon woman the necessity of joining in with her husband in all his pleasures whether she enjoys them or not. When he lights a cigar, let her do the same; when he calls for a cocktail, let her call for another. In time she will begin to understand him. He understands her pleasures, and often he joins in with them—opera, dances, lectures; she ought to do the same, and join in with him in his pleasures, and after a while they'll get upon a common basis, have their clubs together, and when that happy time comes, when either one goes out the other will also go, and their companionship will be perfect.”
“But you objected to my calling you old chap when we first met,” said I. “Is that quite consistent?”
“Of course,” retorted the lady. “We had never met before, and, besides, doctors do not always take their own medicine.”
“But that women ought to become good fellows is what you're going to advocate, eh?” said I.
“Yes,” replied Xanthippe. “It's excellent, don't you think?”
“Superb,” I answered, “for Hades. It's just my idea of how things ought to be in Hades. I think, however, that we mortals will stick to the old plan for a little while yet; most of us prefer to marry wives rather than old chaps.”
The remark seemed so to affect my visitor that I suddenly became conscious of a sense of loneliness.
“I don't wish to offend you,” I said, “but I rather like to keep the two separate. Aren't you man enough yet to see the value of variety?”
But there was no answer. The lady had gone. It was evident that she considered me unworthy of further attention.
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