Part 2

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.

_MY MOTHER_

This is my birthday, and it is not unnatural that I should be thinking of my mother. Let me talk to you of her, for in all the world of women I know of none so near perfection. I say this in no mere boastful spirit. It is my firm conviction, the result of a life’s experience; and I say it, moreover, in the full consciousness that there are millions of men ready to challenge my statement in favour of their own mothers. And it is well that it should be so. I am glad to think it, for good mothers, by their very love-worthiness, preserve the moral equilibrium of the world. Therefore, I am happy to believe that other men think their mothers superior to mine though I have the advantage of them, for they do not know mine as I do, in the relation of mother and son. That makes all the difference. To every man worthy of the name his mother must be an angel of goodness, the object of his holiest devotion. Why, the very word suggests the most sacred sentiments of humanity; it is a beautiful word, and one that most readily inspires all that is tender and gentle and pure in feeling. What, for instance, could be more tender than those lines of Edgar Allan Poe’s, most passionate, intemperate, and truly poetic of poets?

“Because I feel that, in the heavens above, The angels, whispering to one another, Can find among their burning terms of love, None so devotional as that of ‘mother.’”

But I am not going to dilate upon the merits of mothers generally. I only want to tell you what manner of mother mine is, and how happy I am to be able to say _is_ and not _was_, like so many poor bachelors of my acquaintance. For a man who is growing old, with neither wife nor child to bring him loving greetings on his birthday, I can conceive nothing more awful than to have no mother who shall say, “Bless you, my son!” while in so doing she happily remembers, in a gentle autumn mood of love, all that full flowering summer love with which she greeted him on that first birthday of his. In a man’s youth, when all the world is opening before him, with its exuberant growth of possibilities tempting him in all directions, and when the gaudy butterflies of passion are leading him a chase through brakes and brambles with their deep wounding prickles and nettles that sting, his mother ceases for a time to be the guiding star of his life as she had been in his childhood, for there are so many other lights that flash across his way, and one serves as well as another to illuminate his onward course. But when he retraces his steps, wounded and weary, and longing for rest, he seeks again the steady starlight of a mother’s love. A man who has known any sorrow or disappointment or disillusioning, turns childlike, by instinct to the repose and the solace of his mother’s bosom, where there is always a fount of love as fresh as in the days when he would come to her to stop his floods of childish tears with those caresses that only a mother can give to her child.

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Yes, it is my birthday, and I am happy; but last night I was in a melancholy mood, and wandered aimlessly through green lanes and over a bridge, while across the moonlit river, which looked so peacefully beautiful, there came from a riverside house, whose lights gleaming through the grey leafy curtains of the willows gave it the appearance of some enchanted palace, sounds of jovial choruses. And these jarred upon me, for I was lonely, and I was mourning the dead years and their buried opportunities. Then I wandered on till I came to the wall of a graveyard, and large trees stood on either side of the road and darkened my way with their shadows, and I would not walk onwards, for those black shadows seemed to me like the ghosts of future years, and I was alone among them, quite alone. So I retraced my steps, and the moonlight was over the churchyard, and I stopped and gazed at the tombs, all mystic in the moonlight, and they seemed to look at me so piteously and enviously, for they were the records of dead lives and dead hopes, and I was still living, I still had love and hope. Then I looked up into the starry heavens, and they were very sweet, and I fancied the stars were so disposed as to spell the word “mother.” And then a pure and gentle joy stole through my soul, and I felt that I was not alone, that though many a mother lay cold and dead in that churchyard, my own dear little mother lived, lived cheerful, happy, and full of love. So last night’s melancholy passed away at the thought of her, and to-day I feel in the mood to bless all the world and everything in it that I have a mother, and such a mother, too.

And still, you will say, I have not described her to you. Well, how can a man describe his own mother? She is just—my mother, and that is all I can tell you. That must convey to you a picture of ideal goodness, common sense, and unselfish love—in fact, as I said before, motherhood in perfection.

Somebody told me the other day that a woman cannot possibly devote herself equally to her husband and her children; that one must give way to the other, and she—it was a woman who said this—instanced the cases of several devotedly domestic women of our mutual acquaintance. And, when we came to examine facts, I was bound to admit that she was right in every case she had cited; but this did not convince me that her argument held good invariably. I refuted it at one fell swoop with my mother.

I am absolutely certain that my father—God bless him!—would bear me out in this, after all his forty odd years of wedded life, and I can confidently count upon the confirmatory evidence of my brothers and sisters. Never have we or my father had the slightest reason to be jealous of one another on account of my mother’s attention to the other. She has the most marvellous power of dividing her devotion equally between her husband and her children, and this supremely womanly virtue has enabled her always to preserve an equilibrium of happiness between her husband, her children, and herself. It makes me so angry to hear cynics sneering at the possibility of enduring happiness in married life, when I think of my father and mother sitting together in their old age as cheerfully as when the romance of life was still fresh for them, and urging folks to matrimony because it is the happier state. To see him at his piano, pouring out in melodious reverie the emotions that are ever fresh in him, while she sits close by in her armchair, revelling in love stories that would set the hearts of romantic schoolgirls aflame, is, I think, one of the most beautiful sights in the world, and it makes one feel that a burden of seventy or eighty years may be borne lightly and easily if only love be there to keep the heart young.

In childhood one’s mother seems always such a distance off in the matter of age, but when one has reached middle life, and the wheels of existence need oiling with the encouragement of affection, one’s mother comes nearer, and seems younger and less sophisticated than ourselves. For instance, to-day I feel a kind of Methuselah, and, as I think of my mother and all her little ways, I can scarcely believe that she is so much older than I. I think of her now as she was when we were all children; I recall the fairy stories she used to tell us to keep us good and quiet, while my father was busily occupied with his music, and quiet was absolutely necessary for him to produce work that satisfied him. So did she maintain a practical sympathy with his pursuits, while she rejoiced our young minds. So has she ever been; in sickness or in health she has never sacrificed her husband or her children for each other, but considered them equally.

I remember once when I was seriously ill, and my father was taken ill at the same time, how she would spend her whole time equally between the two sickrooms, yet never allow either to feel the slightest want. Most devoted and skilful of sick nurses, her gentle cheerfulness, her little touches of humour, especially when there is any noxious physic to be swallowed, and her undemonstrative sympathy, make her presence by the invalid couch a sweet restorative in itself. How many weary hours of illness has she solaced for me, from childhood to manhood! One says confidently to the woman one loves that life without her would be empty and unbearable; and it is a beautiful dispensation that the emotion of love can make one feel this. But let the man who has known a mother’s devotion through life, imagine what it would mean to be rett of that. _I_ dare not, and why should I? My mother is as young a woman for her seventy-five years as you would wish to meet, and as her grandchildren come, she seems to grow younger for her joy of them. For she loves children, and understands them, and she knows how to win their love and make them happy. I do not believe there was ever so scientifically sympathetic a tender of babies as my mother. She seems to divine their dumb eloquence, and know exactly what they feel and want to express.

My mother is brimming over with humanity, and her indignation is easily aroused by anything approaching to injustice. She cannot sit quietly in a theatre during the performance of a play wherein children are ill-treated, but must loudly give vent to her indignation. If she sees two boys fighting in the street, she will promptly push her way through the encouraging crowd, and threaten to “call a policeman” if they do not desist; and if she comes across a woman who is chastising a naughty child, or a man who is correcting an obstreperous animal, she will not hesitate to stop and “give it to them well,” as she calls the delivering of a reprimand. She is actively compassionate towards all suffering, sympathetic with all sorrow, and pityingly tolerant of any error arising from that ignorance which is the heritage of poverty or the disadvantages of birth. But, on the other hand, she is aggressively intolerant of all cant and its consequences; she is a sworn foe to humbug in any shape or form, and candour is personified in her attitude towards all men and all women.

Occasionally my father will be carried away by that beautiful credulity and enthusiasm which belong to the idealist nature, but my mother’s common-sense view of the case will, after some discussion, invariably prove to be the true one. If this result in any disappointment concerning the character of a friend, or the gratitude of a _protégé_, my father will console himself with the reflection that there must always be exceptions, and he will continue to believe in universal goodness and the Providence that watches over it. But my mother will become shrewder in the future, and so her common-sense will act as a brake upon my father’s idealism. Not that she is matter offact, beyond realising the fact that the world is made to live in, as well as dream in, and that living is an obligation, whilst dreaming is a luxury. With her the _desiderata_ of life have always been peace and quiet; and her ideal of pleasure is to live in a cottage in the country, with a rose-covered porch, and a garden in which every imaginable flower, fruit, or vegetable may be cultivated, in which her grandchildren may have ample scope to play and enjoy themselves, and her husband and children may also find joy and comfort. She is never so happy as when in the country, where, freed from the cares of housekeeping, she is able to ramble about with a little grandson or granddaughter for companion, and gather ferns, or tend flowers, or feed birds. These simple pleasures are absolute delights to her; there is no humbug about them, no chance of their disturbing the calm with troublous argument.

How my memory goes back to those days of childhood, when we would all go to the seaside or to some country place in the summer months, and my mother would speedily become the beloved of the country folk by reason of her simple love of Nature, as well as by her sympathetic interest in their lives of toil, or her skill in suggesting remedies for the rheumatic aged or the ailing young. Wherever my mother has been she has always carried love and gratitude with her. And if this be so among strangers, what must it be with us who have known her love all our lives? Ah, we, her children, have indeed a store of gratitude, which it is the highest, most blessed privilege to feel. It is on a man’s birthday that he pauses to think of all this; to calculate the amount of love that is his, and the amount of love and gratitude that he gives in return, and when he can include a living mother’s love in the balance, he is blessed indeed. That is why I feel so happy to-day; my mother greets me, and you know that she is the sweetest, the—well, she is my mother, God bless her!

_THE SOCIALLY AMBITIOUS WOMAN_

Although there is little or nothing about Mrs. Vere Veneer that connoisseurs would mistake for Vere de Vere, to the casual observer and the Society “outsider” she presents quite an imposing appearance from the social point of view. Whenever she is present at any social function, the “Society papers” duly chronicle the gown she wore, and sometimes even the subject of her conversation as they imagine it to have been. She makes it her business to be seen everywhere, and she spares herself no fatigue. If she gives an “At Home,” eager paragraph-mongers, insidiously invited for the purpose, deluge the editors with elaborate accounts of the party, the decorations, the dresses, and the refreshments. Her public importance is, in fact, the manufacture of the Society Press. But why it should be so is one of those problems which I must leave for discussion till I write my treatise on the “Anatomy of Society.” Then, I believe, I shall be able to satisfactorily prove that nobody is anybody, in a relative sense; but in the meanwhile, of course, everybody is somebody, in a journalistic sense.

For instance, the other night I went to Mrs. Vere Veneer’s party at her large and sumptuously appointed house in Cromwell Road, and to-day I read in a descriptive paragraph that “everybody who is anybody was there.” It is a triumphant phrase from the hostess’ point of view; it is a seductive phrase to those whose ambition is social importance, for evidently to be seen at one of Mrs. Vere Veneer’s crushes is to be stamped with personal distinction. Well, certainly till I read this paragraph I had no idea I was “anybody,” nor, to tell the truth, had I any idea that Mrs. Vere Veneer herself—by the way, she was plain Mrs. Veneer in the old days—was anybody in particular. But there is a magic power of transformation in the pens of your Society journalists; they confer their own patent of notoriety.

But let me recall the motley assembly of the other night. There was a musical countess of Bohemian predilections, who was a centre of attraction to a number of professional musicians of more or less competence—often less—and an exuberance of manner. There was a funny little actor, who, finding himself for a few minutes unnoticed, skilfully revived attention by some impromptu buffoonery with a bust of a negro in the corner. Then a languid vocalist, who during the evening rapturously whispered his own mystical melodies, was sitting in a corner absorbed in the conversation of an enthusiastic young girl, while many mothers of families, some of them ladies of title, seemed to be jealously watching an opportunity to lure the fascinating singer to themselves. And when one or two of them succeeded, how comic were their fawning attitudes of triumph.

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