about I don’t know. I haven’t listened to him for years.
lady stutfield
Have you never forgiven him then? How sad ·49· that seems! But all life is very, very sad, is it not?
mrs. allonby
Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a mauvais quart d’heure made up of exquisite moments.
lady stutfield
Yes, there are moments, certainly. But was it something very, very wrong that Mr. Allonby did? Did he become angry with you, and say anything that was unkind or true?
mrs. allonby
Oh dear, no. Ernest is invariably calm. That is one of the reasons he always gets on my nerves. Nothing is so aggravating as calmness. There is something positively brutal about the good temper of most modern men. I wonder we women stand it as well as we do.
lady stutfield
Yes; men’s good temper shows they are not so sensitive as we are, not so finely strung. It makes a great barrier often between husband and wife, does it not? But I would so much like to know what was the wrong thing Mr. Allonby did.
mrs. allonby
Well, I will tell you, if you solemnly promise to tell everybody else.
·50· lady stutfield
Thank you, thank you. I will make a point of repeating it.
mrs. allonby
When Ernest and I were engaged he swore to me positively on his knees that he never had loved any one before in the whole course of his life. I was very young at the time, so I didn’t believe him, I needn’t tell you. Unfortunately, however, I made no enquiries of any kind till after I had been actually married four or five months. I found out then that what he had told me was perfectly true. And that sort of thing makes a man so absolutely uninteresting.
lady hunstanton
My dear!
mrs. allonby
Men always want to be a woman’s first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about things. What we like is to be a man’s last romance.
lady stutfield
I see what you mean. It’s very, very beautiful.
lady hunstanton
My dear child, you don’t mean to tell me that you won’t forgive your husband because he never loved any one else? Did you ever hear such a thing, Caroline? I am quite surprised.
·51· lady caroline
Oh, women have become so highly educated, Jane, that nothing should surprise us now-a-days, except happy marriages. They apparently are getting remarkably rare.
mrs. allonby
Oh, they’re quite out of date.
lady stutfield
Except amongst the middle classes, I have been told.
mrs. allonby
How like the middle classes!
lady stutfield
Yes—is it not?—very, very like them.
lady caroline
If what you tell us about the middle classes is true, Lady Stutfield, it redounds greatly to their credit. It is much to be regretted that in our rank of life the wife should be so persistently frivolous, under the impression apparently that it is the proper thing to be. It is to that I attribute the unhappiness of so many marriages we all know of in society.
mrs. allonby
Do you know, Lady Caroline, I don’t think the ·52· frivolity of the wife has ever anything to do with it. More marriages are ruined now-a-days by the common sense of the husband than by anything else. How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly rational being?
lady hunstanton
My dear!
mrs. allonby
Man, poor, awkward, reliable, necessary man belongs to a sex that has been rational for millions and millions of years. He can’t help himself. It is in his race. The History of Woman is very different. We have always been picturesque protests against the mere existence of common sense. We saw its dangers from the first.
lady stutfield
Yes, the common sense of husbands is certainly most, most trying. Do tell me your conception of the Ideal Husband. I think it would be so very, very helpful.
mrs. allonby
The Ideal Husband? There couldn’t be such a thing. The institution is wrong.
lady stutfield
The Ideal Man, then, in his relations to us.
·53· lady caroline
He would probably be extremely realistic.
mrs. allonby
The Ideal Man! Oh, the Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions. He should always say much more than he means, and always mean much more than he says.
lady hunstanton
But how could he do both, dear?
mrs. allonby
He should never run down other pretty women. That would show he had no taste, or make one suspect that he had too much. No; he should be nice about them all, but say that somehow they don’t attract him.
lady stutfield
Yes, that is always very, very pleasant to hear about other women.
mrs. allonby
If we ask him a question about anything, he should give us an answer all about ourselves. ·54· He should invariably praise us for whatever qualities he knows we haven’t got. But he should be pitiless, quite pitiless, in reproaching us for the virtues that we have never dreamed of possessing. He should never believe that we know the use of useful things. That would be unforgiveable. But he should shower on us everything we don’t want.
lady caroline
As far as I can see, he is to do nothing but pay bills and compliments.
mrs. allonby
He should persistently compromise
