"Let them think you idiotic, dear—that goes without saying because you're a man—but not that you're a tyrant to whom a poor-spirited wife must succumb.
"And you'll see Americans, dear, who've come over to find out why these effete regions and peoples still linger on the earth, and to them you'll only be a 'blarsted Britisher,' and you're not to resent it if they treat you accordin'. And there'll be Internationalists, to whom you're a 'bloated aristocrat,' and they won't have, to say nice manners. Then if you don't take Mrs. Malise down, you'll may be squire some grand new light. I can't tell you how to behave, for I don't know if the men of the future are to be deferential, or free and easy; but you must take a hint from the behavior of the other men. She'll wear a garnet-silk gown trimmed with white Yak lace, a pea-green ostrich feather, and ribbons in her hair, and a profusion of jingling Berlin steel ornaments, and she'll either trample you under foot and heap you over with wisdom, or she'll find you're her affinity. And if that happens, never mind me, love. If you wish to go after affinities, go! I shall always be the same—the meek, forgiving woman who knows that a wife's duty is to smile always—to upbraid never. Leave me and your poor angel child if you will! We both believed in indissoluble marriage once, but that needn't hinder you. Renounce——"
And about here, I think it was, my eloquence and pathos were suddenly checked in their flow. Men, husbands especially, take such mean advantages! And reasoning, and calm, intellectual conversation have, somehow, so little charm for them! I tell you painful truths, my Susie, but they're for your good and guidance. I know that long-legged, yellow-haired laddie out in New Zealand is a demi-god. Of course he is—they all are—but it's best not to marry 'em—if one can help it!
But the dinner. I was dreadfully puzzled what to wear—whether to get myself up as a severe matron, or appear in the costume suited to me—a frivolous woman, jeune encore, and with a mind not above millinery—when a little note from Mrs. Malise, felicitating herself and me that the day of our dinner was also their reception evening, turned the scale against the brown silk in favor of a quite celestial palest green-blue Irish poplin I got in Dublin this last visit. The tint suits my pale dark face admirably, and with rather a profusion of white lace, and pink coral ornaments that Ronayne's brother Gus, the major, just home from India, gave me at Christmas—exquisite swinging fuchsias, with golden stamens and leaves—the toilette was so effective that I was quite ready to hear Ronayne's, "Oh, what a gorgeous swell!" when I exhibited myself just before starting. And, "Ould Ireland for ever!" as his eye fell on the gown he helped me to choose. "And are these the laces my father gave you?" taking hold of one of my frills. "Do they look like antimacassars? Because if they don't, they never were fabricated in your tight little island, my Paddy. I'd do a deal for you. You couldn't help being born there, poor boy; mais toute chose a son terme, and even my devotion won't stretch to the wearing Irish lace."
Our host and hostess received us in the confederate drawing-room, where were three or four other guests already, and the greater number of the associate household and the lacking members presented themselves before dinner was announced. Fourteen or fifteen people in all, and not, to the casual glance, differing strikingly from unassociate dwellers in "isolate homes and dreary lodgings."
There were, first, a brusque-mannered but uncommonly handsome Lady —— ——. If there's a lord, or plain mister —— ——, I don't know, but certainly he's not en evidence. Lady —— —— is an authoress on the woman question and on marriage, and is generally given to the most forward of "advanced" opinions and ideas. Ronayne insultingly says they won't harm me, for I should never get a notion of what they really are—a speech which I treated with the oblivious contempt it deserved, though inwardly tickled at the lucky shot; for it's quite true that, attracted by her great beauty—the most singular combination you can fancy—boldly cut features, softened by babyish roundness of curves, and enchanting dimples, not a wrinkle or crow-foot to be traced, an infantine complexion, all transparent and softly pink, and this grownup baby's face surmounted by a mass of crisp-waved, snowy, but glitteringly snowy hair!—I hovered around her for awhile during the evening, and could make nothing whatsoever of the oracular sentences she let fall. With her her son, a man of twenty-six to thirty, priggish, argumentative, contrary-minded—altogether the most cub-like young Briton I have lately encountered. Next, a widow with two daughters—the mother what, of all things, but a Plymouth sister!—given to hospital and prison work, tract distribution, and mothers' meetings—a tall, spare, gentle-faced woman, dressed with almost Quakerish simplicity. And run over and away with by her daughters, no question—two monstrous girls of thirty, if a day; real grenadiers, nearly six feet high; one painfully thin and large-eyed, the other as stout as tall, and both overpowering in spirits and flippant or cynic smartness of talk. One, the thin one, whom I liked best, amused me during the evening by telling me how she got rid of bores—young, feeble little society men, brief of stature and of wit. "I endure the little creature as long as I can, and when he has buzzed all his little buzzes about the weather, and subjects suited to his size, there comes a pause—a long pause, for I don't help him. Then, if he is too young to know that he should take himself off, and he begins desperately upon some other threadbare topic, then I act. I am seated on a low lounge or ottoman; I begin to rise as if I caught sight of some one I knew at a distance; and I rise, rise, slowly, slowly, but up, up, up I go, till sometimes I stand on tiptoe, or on a hassock, my long skirts hiding all that, and the little man, who has watched me first idly, then curiously, gradually gets horror-struck, and finally bursts desperately away, absolutely tongue-tied with fright."
"And no wonder!" I couldn't help saying, for she had mounted and mounted as she described the scene, until there really was something supernatural and alarming in the slim, white-draped length of lady, and the height from which the big blue eyes in their hollow orbits shone down upon me.
Then an editor and his wife—the editor of "The Food Regenerator," if you please—and a dark, unwholesome looking, wizened little man, who I am sure would have been the better for a good rubbing with sand-paper and emery powder. His wife was a plaintive, helpless, hapless, washed-out woman, who, sidling apologetically about in a frowsy costume of some yellow-white woollen stuff, made me think of a dirty white cat—a likeness I was sorry to have forced on me when I had heard a bit of her history; for the only wonder is how she's kept courage enough to go on dressing or living at all. It seems that M. le mari is by way of being a social as well as dietetic regenerator, and is as full of uncomfortable fads as man can be. They have no fortune, unless you reckon as such seven small children, and over and over again he's thrown up a good appointment or salary because he "must be free to write his convictions—great truths the world needs." And to lighten matters still further, he believes that service should be bartered, not paid for in coin; so they could almost never have a servant, and when they did get one it was of course some poor wretch who was glad to shelter herself on any terms for the moment, but who could be trusted no more than puss in the dairy. Besides carrying her own fardel, this poor wife was expected to fold and direct wrappers for her husband's precious journal, he finding "mechanical writing too exhausting and stultifying."
Next—let me see—two gentlemen, bachelors, one a pugnacious fellow-countryman to whose tremendous r-r's my heart warmed in this lisping land of Cockaigne—a proof-reader at one of the great publishing houses; the other as curious a specimen as I've encountered—a man of sixty or so, of courtly manners, an ex-Anglican parson, an ex-Catholic convert, a present "seeker after truth"—a man who knows something about everything and believes the last thing—but sure of nothing save that this world's a comfortable place, and loving nothing, one would swear, but his pug dog, a superb creature, fairly uncanny for wisdom, but a vilely ill-tempered beast, gurr-ing if one but looked at it.
And three ladies make up, I believe, the tale of the household: a rather young widow, charming in an unearthly, seeress-like fashion—finest porcelain to her finger-tips, but frail as a breath; a handsome, solid blonde girl, with cold blue eyes, and no gold in her fair hair, studying to be what she calls "a healer"—an earnest advocate of the food-regenerating editor's views upon diet, but quite out-Heroding Herod in her practice, for her fare seems only to lag a pace behind Nebuchadnezzar's in simplicity; and last a witty Americaine, an art student at the South Kensington school, with whom I fraternized directly, and from whom I had all the information my own eyes didn't glean. A girl twenty-four or five years old, I fancy, and oh, so satisfyingly handsome—not tall, but majestic in proportions and pose: a beautifully shaped head whose outlines were only revealed by closely-pinned braids of fine dark hair, and a face like a lily for calm and purity—too pale, indeed, for brilliant health, but the faint shadows under the eyes, about the temples and mouth that she owes to months in dimly-lighted rooms are really most effective aids to her peculiar beauty. She captivated me quite; Ronayne, too, who is a great conquest, for usually he dislikes Americans, finding them, he says, so shallow and yet so cockahoop. And the other guests at dinner were a lady lecturer, American, too, young, decidedly pretty, but pert as a pigeon, an Englishwoman who's doing something very notable in reformatories and kindergartens, a Liberal M.P. dancing attendance on the young lady lecturer, and a grand old white-headed lion of a man, a famous literary M.D.—heterodox to a frightful degree, I'm told, but certainly one of the most delightful neighbors I ever had at a dinner table.