“I shall never be thankful for that, Miss Hilda, and it is equally certain that I shall never propose to Miss Hemster. If I were a speculative adventurer I’d venture to wager on it.”
“Most men who see her, propose to her; therefore you must not imagine that Gertrude has not been sought after. I should not be at all certain of your success were it not that every man she has hitherto met has flattered her, while you have merely left the marks of your fingers on her wrists and have threatened to box her ears. This gives you a tremendous advantage if you only know how to use it. I have read somewhere that there is a law in Britain which allows a husband to punish his wife with a stick no bigger than his little finger. I therefore advise you to marry the girl, take something out of the full purse and buy back the ancestral acres, then go into the forest and select a switch as large as the law allows. After that, the new comedy of ‘The Taming of the Shrew,’ with the married pair living happily ever afterward. You should prove the most fortunate of men, in that you will possess the prettiest, richest, and most docile wife in all your island.”
“I am not a barrister, Miss Stretton, therefore can neither affirm nor deny the truth you have stated regarding the law of the stick. If, however, a belief in that enactment has led you to reject my proposal, I beg to inform you that I have no ancestral acres containing a forest; therefore I cannot possess myself of a twig of the requisite size without trespassing on some one else’s timber. So you see you need have no fear on that score.”
“I am not so sure,” replied Hilda, shaking her pretty head, “I imagine there must be a Wife-Beaters’ Supply Company in London somewhere, which furnishes the brutal Britisher at lowest rates with the correct legal apparatus for matrimonial correction. I tremble to think of the scenes that must have been enacted in the numerous strong castles of Britain which have had new copper roofs put on with the money brought over by American brides. Girls, obstreperous and untrained, but wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, have gone across, scorning the honest straightforward American man, who in my opinion is the most sincere gentleman of all the world. These rich but bad-tempered jades have disappeared within the castle, and the portcullis has come down. Have we ever heard a whimper from any one of them? Not a whisper even. If they had married American men there would have been tremendous rows, ending with divorce cases; but not so when they have disappeared into the castle. You never hear of an American woman divorcing a lord, and Lord knows some of those lords are the riff-raff of creation. History gives us grim pictures of tragical scenes in those old strongholds, but I shudder to think of the tragedies which must occur nowadays when once the drawbridge is up, and the American girl, hitherto adored, learns the law regarding flagellation. The punishment must be exceedingly complete, for the lady emerges cowed and subdued as the Kate that Shakespeare wrote about. And how well that great man understood a wilful and tyrannical woman! Oh, you needn’t look shocked, Mr. Tremorne. Haven’t you an adage on that benighted island which says ‘A woman, a dog, and a walnut-tree; the more you beat them the better they be?’”
“Great heavens, girl, what an imagination you have! You should really write a novel. It would be an interesting contribution toward international love affairs.”
“I may do so, some day, if music-teaching fails. I should like, however, to have the confession of one of the victims of an international matrimonial match.”
“Which victim? The English husband or the American wife?”
“The wife, of course. I think I shall wait until you and Miss Hemster are married a year or two, and then perhaps she will look more kindly on me than she does at present, and so may tell me enough to lend local colour to my book.”
“I can give you a much better plan than that, Miss Stretton. Hearsay evidence, you know, is never admitted in courts of law, and by the same token it amounts to very little in books. I am given to understand that, to be successful, an author must have lived through the events of which he writes, so your best plan is to accept my offer; then we will purchase a moated grange in England, and you can depict its horrors from the depths of experience.”
“Where are we to get the money for the moated grange? I haven’t any, and you’ve just acknowledged that you are penniless.”