FLIRTING.
There are certain things which can never be accurately described—things so shadowy, so fitful, so dependent on the mood of the moment, both in the audience and the actor, that analysis and representation are equally at fault. And flirting is one of them. What is flirting? Who can define or determine? It is more serious than talking nonsense and not so serious as making love; it is not chaff and it is not feeling; it means something more than indifference and yet something less than affection; it binds no one; it commits no one though it raises expectations in the individual and sets society on the look-out for results; it is a plaything in the hands of the experienced but a deadly weapon against the breast of the unwary; and it is a thing so vague, so protean, that the most accurate measurer of moral values would be puzzled to say where it exactly ends and where serious intentions begin.
But again we ask: What is flirting? What constitutes its essence? What makes the difference between it and chaff on the one hand, and it and love-making on the other? Has it a cumulative power, and, according to the old saying of many a pickle making a mickle, does a long series of small flirtings make up a concrete whole of love? or is it like an unmortared heap of bricks, potential utilities if conditions were changed, but valueless as things are? The man who would be able to reduce flirting to a definite science, who could analyze its elements and codify its laws, would be doing infinite service to his generation; but we fear that this is about as difficult as finding the pot of gold under the end of a rainbow, or catching small birds with a pinch of salt.
Every one has his or her ideas of what constitutes flirting; consequently every one judges of that pleasant exercise according to individual temperament and experience. Faded flowers, who see impropriety in everything they are no longer able to enjoy, say with more or less severity that Henry and Angelina are flirting if they are laughing while whispering together in an alcove, probably the most innocent nonsense in the world; but the fact that they are enjoying themselves in their own way, albeit a silly one, is enough for the faded flower to think they are after mischief, flirting being to her mind about the worst bit of mischief that a fallen humanity can perpetrate. The watchful mother, intent on chances, says that dancing together oftener than is necessary for good breeding and just the amount of attention demanded by circumstances, is flirting; timid girls newly out, and not yet used to the odd ways of men, think they are being flirted with outrageously if their partner fires off the meekest little compliment at them, or looks at them more tenderly than he would look at a cabbage; but bolder spirits of both sexes think nothing worthy of the name which does not include a few questionable familiarities, and an equivoke or two, more or less risky. With some, flirting is nothing but the passing fun of the moment; with others, it is the first lesson of the great unopened book and means the beginning of the end; with some, it is not even angling with intent; with others, it is deep-sea fishing with a broad, boldly-made net, and taking all fish that come in as good for sport if not for food.
Flirts are of many kinds as well as of all degrees. There are quiet flirts and demonstrative flirts; flirts of the subtle sort whose practice is made by the eyes alone, by the manner, by the tender little sigh, by the bend of the head and the wave of the hand, to give pathos and point to the otherwise harmless word; and flirts of the open and rampant kind, who go up quite boldly towards the point, but who never reach it, taking care to draw back in time before they fairly cross the border. This is the kind which, as the flirt male, does incalculable damage to the poor little fluttering dove to whom it is as a bird of prey, handsome, bold, cruel; but this is the kind which has unlimited success, using as it does that immense moral leverage we call 'tantalizing'—for ever rousing hopes and exciting expectations, and luring a woman on as an ignis fatuus lures us on across the marsh, in the vain belief that it will bring us to our haven at last.
Akin to this kind are those male flirts who are great in the way in which they manage to insinuate things without committing themselves to positive statements. They generally contrive to give the impression of some mysterious hindrance by which they are held back from full and frank confession. They hint at fatal bonds, at unfortunate attachments, at a past that has burnt them up or withered them up, at any rate that has prevented their future from blossoming in the direction in which they would fain have had it blossom and bear fruit. They sketch out vaguely the outlines of some thrilling romance; a few, of the Byronic breed, add the suspicion of some dark and melancholy crime as a further romantic charm and personal obstacle; and when they have got the girl's pity, and the love that is akin to pity, then they cool down scientifically, never creating any scandal, never making any rupture, never coming to a moment when awkward explanations can be asked, but cooling nevertheless, till the thing drops of its own accord and dies out from inanition; when they are free to carry their sorrows and their mysteries elsewhere. Some men spend their lives in this kind of thing, and find their pleasure in making all the women they know madly or sentimentally in love with them; and if by chance any poor moth who has burned her wings makes too loud an outcry, the tables are turned against her dexterously, and she is held up to public pity—contempt would be a better word—as one who has suffered herself to love too well and by no means wisely, and who has run after a Lothario by no means inclined to let himself be caught.
Then there are certain men who flirt only with married women, and others who flirt only with girls; and the two pastimes are as different as tropical sunlight and northern moonshine. And there are some who are 'brothers,' and some who are 'fathers' to their young friends—suspicious fathers on the whole, not unlike Little Red Ridinghood's grandmother the wolf, with perilously bright eyes, and not a little danger to Red Ridinghood in the relationship, how delightful soever it may be to the wolf. Some are content with cousinship only—which however breaks down quite sufficient fences; and some are 'dearest friends,' no more, and find that an exceedingly useful centre from which to work onward and outward. For, if any peg will do on which to hang a discourse, so will any relationship or adoption serve the ends of flirting, if it be so willed.
But what is flirting? Is sitting away in corners, talking in low voices and looking personally affronted if any unlucky outsider comes within earshot, flirting? Not necessarily. It is just possible that Henry may be telling Angelina all about his admiration for her sister Grace; or Angelina may be confessing to Henry what Charley said to her last night;—which makes her lower her eyes as she is doing now, and play with the fringe of her fan so nervously. May be, if not likely. So that sitting away in corners and whispering together is not necessarily flirting, though it may look like it. Is dancing all the 'round' dances together? This goes for decided flirting in the code of the ball-room. But if the two keep well together? If they are really fond of dancing, as one of the fine arts combining science and enjoyment, they would dance with each other all night, though outside the 'marble halls' they might be deadly enemies—Montagues and Capulets, with no echo of Romeo and Juliet to soften their mutual dislike. So that not even dancing together oftener than is absolutely necessary is unmistakeable evidence, any more than is sitting away in corners, seeing that equal skill and keeping well in step are reasons enough for perpetual partnership, making all idea of flirtation unnecessary. In fact, there is no outward sign nor symbol of flirting which may not be mistaken and turned round, because flirting is so entirely in the intention and not in the mere formula, that it becomes a kind of phantasm, a Proteus, impossible to seize or to depict with accuracy.
One thing however, we can say—taking gifts and attentions, offered with evident design and accepted with tacit understanding, may be certainly held as constituting an important element of flirting. But this is flirting on the woman's side. And here you are being continually taken in. Your flirt of the cunningly simple kind, who smiles so sweetly and seems so flatteringly glad to see you when you come, who takes all your presents and acted expressions of love with the most bewitching gratitude and effusion, even she, so simple as she seems to be, slips the thread and will not be caught if she does not wish to be caught. At the decisive moment when you think you have secured her, she makes a bound and is away; then turns round, looks you in the face, and with many a tear and pretty asseveration declares that she never understood you to mean what you say you have meant all along; and that you are cruel to dispel her dream of a pleasant and harmless friendship, and very wicked indeed because you press her for a decision. Yes; you are cruel, because you have believed her honest; cruel, because you did not see through the veil of flattery and insincerity in which she clothed her selfishness; cruel, because she was false. This is the flirt's logic when brought to book, and forced to confess that her pretended love was only flirting, and that she led you on to your destruction simply because it pleased her vanity to make you her victim.
Then there are flirts of the open and rollicking kind, who let you go far, very far indeed, when suddenly they pull up and assume an offended air as if you had wilfully transgressed known and absolute boundaries—girls and women who lead you on, all in the way of good fellowship, to knock you over when you have got just far enough to lose your balance. That is their form of the art. They like to see how far they can make a man forget himself, and how much stronger their own delusive enticements are than prudence, experience and common-sense. And there are flirts of the artful and 'still waters' kind, something like the male flirts spoken of just now; sentimental little pusses—perhaps pretty young wives with uncomfortable husbands, whose griefs have by no means soured nor scorched, but just mellowed and refined, them. Or they may be of the sisterly class; creatures so very frank, so very sisterly and confiding and unsuspicious of evil, that really you scarcely know how to deal with them at all. And there are flirts of the scientific kind; women who have studied the art thoroughly; and who are adepts in the use of every weapon known—using each according to circumstances and the nature of the victim, and using each with deadly precision. From such may a kind Providence deliver us! As the tender mercies of the wicked, so are the scientific flirts—the women and the men who play at bowls with human hearts, for the stakes of a whole life's happiness on the one side and a few weeks of gratified vanity on the other.