“We are merely waiting, my sweetheart and I, until the old millionaire dies. Then we shall inherit his wealth, and live happily ever after.”
There was a moment of shocked silence. Some one suggested that I was joking, but was immediately overruled by the others. This, they insisted, was a common practice in the United States. Anything was possible among Americans! And was I not even jealous that I must wait while my beloved lived with another?
“Not at all. I’ve cabled a second girl, and she’ll be my wife until the first one is free. We do that regularly.”
My love affairs became the sensation of the community. And the story did not reach the breaking point until the first girl, in the furor of her love for me, announced in an imaginary cable that she had poisoned her husband, and that the millions were ours. Even then, there were several doubtful inquiries as to whether I really meant it. And when I confessed that the whole story was fictitious, they were vastly disappointed. It was all so in keeping with their visions of the United States that they wished to believe it.
IX
In all of these women one observed a strangely child-like quality.
When better conversational subjects were exhausted, several of them requested that I guess their ages. Oddly enough, in this land where frankness is seldom encountered, women make no effort to hide the number of their years. Perhaps it is because their personal vanity, so very manifest in younger girls, practically ceases after marriage has been achieved.
One of them I judged to be fifty. To please her I guessed forty. She proved in reality to be thirty-two. They grow old so quickly here. Yet in their manner they retain toward men that air of a child toward a parent. Should a husband see fit to discuss with them any serious subject, they listen in awed admiration to his opinions, exclaiming occasionally, “I see! Ah, I understand!”
It would probably offend the average Latin-American to discover that his spouse knew as much about anything as he did himself. He likes the rôle of the patient mentor. He prefers that his wife be a gentle pet rather than a comrade. I dined one day with a Salvadorean gentleman and his wife; the lady, who came from one of the leading families, had been educated abroad and had traveled extensively; yet the gentleman, although he conversed quite brilliantly with the men at the table, chattered only playful nonsense to his wife. In consideration of his pride, she artfully concealed the fact that she was his intellectual equal.
Now and then one reads in our newspapers or magazines about the equal suffrage movement in Mexico or the organization of a new women’s club in Chile. But such innovations have yet to gain an extensive following. With the same conflict of idealism and materialism that distinguishes Latin-American men, the women may verbally deplore their lack of liberty but are in reality quite satisfied with it. They are of a race which is inclined to follow the easiest course, and the easiest course is to attach themselves to some convenient man and allow him to worry about life’s problems. In these pleasant tropical countries no girl of the lower classes escapes maternity; most girls of the middle classes, not being over-critical about whom they marry, can land some one; even in the more particular aristocratic circles the spinster is a rarity. The wife usually has her own way when questions arise about the household or the children. Beyond that she is quite content with complete male dominance. And she is passively happy.