Here the decorous gravity of the audience entirely gave way, and the whole place rang with laughter. The gentleman in the balcony became wildly obstreperous and exclaimed spasmodically, “Hooray! True for you, my boy. Go it, go it!” till he was smothered once more into silence. The laughter lasted some seconds, and the reporter on my left hand, the man with the beery beard, wiping away the moisture of merriment from his eyes, bent towards me in the openness of his heart and whispered confidentially, “What a game, isn’t it?”
I looked at him with a sad and frozen stare — I was too wretched to be indignant — and managed to force a smile and stiff nod of assent. He seemed rather taken aback by my expression, for the mirth passed off his face, leaving only a whimsical surprise. He mused within himself for a while, and again the ale-scented beard approached my ear.
“Know her, perhaps, do you?”
“I — I knew her once!” I replied sombrely.
He glanced at me more curiously than before.
“I wonder where her husband is?” was his next remark.
“Can’t imagine,” I said with curt and desperate sternness.
He relapsed into meditative silence, and began drawing a little caricature of Honoria on a blank page of his note-book. She meanwhile resumed:
“I am very glad, ladies and gentlemen, that I have provoked you to laughter — very glad, as this behaviour on your part convinces me more than ever of the value of my theory! All great ideas have been first laughed at ever since the world began. The notion of steam as a motive power was laughed at; the Atlantic cable-wire was laughed at; and naturally the proposition of men’s clothing for women must, like all other reforming propositions, be at the outset laughed to scorn also. But nevertheless it will take root — it is taking root — and it will win its way in spite of all opposition. Certain objections have been raised to my views on behalf of trade; the question as to what would become of a large portion of trade if women dressed like men has often been represented to me as a very serious obstruction. But I say that the freedom, health, and comfort of women are more to be considered than any trade! Let trade take care of its own concerns as best it may! Injured in one branch it will balance itself in another, and we are not bound to take it at all into our calculations. The liberty — the perfect liberty — of Woman is what we have to strive for; and part of this grand object will be attained when we have secured for her the untrammelled physical condition boasted of and enjoyed by her would-be oppressor, Man!”
“Say, would you nurse the babies in jacket and trousers?” asked some one at the back of the hall, in a high nasal tone which was distinctly Transatlantic. A ripple of laughter again ran through the audience, and Honoria looked about her defiantly.
“It is not my province to reply to the queries of mere vulgar impertinence,” she snapped out; — (cries of “Oh, Oh!”) “There seems to be some inebriated individual present. Let us hope he may be persuaded to retire!”
Then ensued a vast deal of officious scrambling on the part of the gentleman with the yellow teeth, and a general confused murmur, which ended in the “inebriated individual” openly standing up and showing himself to be a tall, rather fine-looking fellow, with that sort of ease and good-humour about him which often characterizes the Western American settler.
“I’m not ‘inebriated,’ my gel,” he observed cheerfully; “but I’ll leave this hall at once with a good deal more pleasure than I came into it. Why, it riles me all the wrong way to hear you going on like this about equality in clothes and such-like nonsense! Go home, my gel, go home, and get into a pretty gown and fallals; take two or three hours to fix yourself before your looking-glass if you like, and when you’ve rigged yourself up as sweet and pretty as you can be, see if you don’t make more way with the ruling of man than you ever will prancing on a platform! That’s all I want to say. I’m off home, and apologise for interrupting the performance! Good-night!”
And amid the smiles and encouraging glances of the whole audience, the long-limbed “inebriate” departed amiably; and as he went I saw him “tip” the gentleman with the yellow teeth, who became crook-backed with servility in consequence. With his departure, Honoria took up the thread of her discourse, but she was now very angry and evidently very impatient. Her Transatlantic visitor had put her into an extremely bad humour. She made short work of the “Cheapness, quality, and durability of men’s clothing,” but when she reached the “Advantages of Social Uniformity” she became positively tempestuous. Regardless of coherence or sequence, she raged against the “contemptibility of the system of marriage as now practised of the “drudgery” and “degradation” inflicted on women who thus fulfilled their “miserable” (but still natural) destiny; of the “crushing” methods employed deliberately by the male sex to break the spirit and render insupportable the position of the feminine; and touching on the subject of “love” she seemed to grow inflamed inwardly and outwardly with scorn.
“Love!” she exclaimed derisively. “We all know what it is now-a-days — a silly and always condescending consent to ‘spoon’ on the part of the man, and an equally silly but disgracefully ready willingness to be ‘spooned’ on the part of the girl who is not yet awake to the responsibilities of her position! Nothing more than this! It is ridiculous! What can be more utterly absurd than to see a free and independent woman allowing her hand to be kissed — or her lips, for that matter — by a so-called ‘lover,’ who is after all accepted merely as a business-partner in life, and who pays her these grotesque attentions only as a sort of immense favour, out of his offensive benevolence for her supposed weakly-clinging and helpless nature? Oh, it is time we should rebel against such complacent affabilities! It is time, I say, that women who are resolved to walk in the full light of liberty, should cast off the trammels of old barbaric custom and prejudice, and adopt every right, every privilege, which the other sex wish to debar them from enjoying! Let ultra-foolish feminine minds cling, if they will do so, to the delusion that man’s love will protect and defend them; that it is their chief glory of life to be loved; and that their chief aim is to render themselves worthy of love; these are the wretched dupes of their own imaginations, and their intellects will never expand! True progress is barred to them; the door of wisdom is slammed in their faces! Those who wilfully choose this chimera called Love, must sacrifice everything else; it is a binding, narrowing influence in which one life depends almost entirely upon the other, that other often proving too feeble and insufficient to support even itself! Be free, women — be free! Freedom never palls, Independence never satiates, Progress never tires! Be ashamed to allow men one iota of that ‘superiority’ they wrongfully claim to possess! Dispute with them for every inch of the ground in every profession that you are desirous of entering; and beware — beware of yielding one single point of your hardly-gained independence! They will flatter you; they will tell the plainest of you that she is a Venus, to gain their own private ends; they will make big eyes at you, and will sigh audibly when they find themselves next to you at a concert or theatre; but these tricks are practised for a purpose — to inveigle and dupe you into becoming their slaves! Resist them — resist them with your utmost might! You will find the task easier when you have thrown aside all useless frippery and adornment, and adopted their garments, and with their garments their liberty! They will accept you then as equals, as comrades, as friends” — (“No, they won’t!” shouted the person in the balcony)—” they will leave off their foolish, unbecoming endearments” — (“By Jove, that they certainly will!” cried the voice again)—” and you will occupy that distinct equality of position which will entitle you, if intellectually gifted, to rank with all the male geniuses of the century! Freedom! — that should be woman’s watch-word. Freedom! — entire and absolute! Fight for it, women! Work for it — die for it, if need be — and resist to the last gasp the treacherous enslavement and drudgery called Love imposed upon you by man!”
With this rhodomontade she concluded, rolled up he
r manuscript, gave it a thump, and bowed. Of course the audience applauded her to the echo, so great was their good nature and sense of the ridiculous; and when she clapped on her “deerstalker” and marched off the platform, they summoned her back again, just for the fun of seeing her lift that hat of hers in airy response to their demonstrations. The reporters on each side of me rose. I rose also and groped for my over-coat under the seat.
“She’s great fun,” said the man with the beard to his comrade, yawning capaciously; “she’s going to the States, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” replied the other; “she’ll draw there, and no mistake!”
“I wonder,” said the first speaker again musingly—” I wonder where the poor devil of a husband is?”
“Far enough away, I should think,” returned his friend. “These sort of women never have any husbands — they take ‘business partners,’ don’t you know — and whenever there’s a difference of opinion, they split!”
Getting their coats on they sauntered down the hall, grinning — I following them with dazed, aching eyes and a burning brow. I glanced back once, and once only, at the now vacant platform. Ah! you may wait, Honoria — you may wait as long as you please, expecting to see me come to you and make an appointment to “dine at the Grosvenor,” but you will wait in vain! The “degradation” of a husband shall never afflict you more; the “contemptibility” of the married state shall never again debar you from the enjoyment of your masculine independence! William Hatwell-Tribkin removes himself from your path, and the only reminder you will ever have of his existence is your allowance, paid quarterly, through your bankers, with unflinching regularity and exactitude! Thus I mused, as I mingled with the crowd pouring itself out of Prince’s Hall, and heard the jeers and sneers and “chaff” freely bestowed on the lady lecturer by several members of her late audience.
“What a cure she looked!” said one man, as he elbowed himself past me.
“What a fool she made of herself!” remarked another. “I wonder she isn’t ashamed!”
“Ashamed! My dear fellow, don’t expect ladies in trousers to be ashamed of anything! Their blushing days are past!”
After hearing this, I made haste to pass through the throng and escape into the open air as speedily as possible, for though Honoria might not be able to blush, I blushed for her — blushed so painfully that I felt my blood tingling to the very tips of my ears. To be compelled to listen while my wife’s name was bandied about from one to the other with careless jest and light impertinence was exceedingly bitter to me; and I breathed a sigh of relief when I found myself in the outer vestibule. Here, close by the door, were two individuals — young men — one apparently propping up the other, who was almost in a dying condition of laughter. Laughing so much, indeed, that it appeared he could not stop himself, and again and again his explosive guffaws broke out till he laid his head feebly back against the wall with his mouth still open, and shutting his eyes, pressed one hand upon his side, and seemed about to slip helplessly on the ground, a convulsed prey to excess of risibility. His companion was laughing too, but less violently.
“Come home, old fellow! I say, do come home,” he implored; “don’t stand grinning there! You’ll have a crowd round you — come on!”
“I can’t!” gasped the hilarious one; “I shall drop down on the way! Oh, by Jove! Wasn’t it just rich! The comfort of trousers! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! And she wore them! Ha, ha, ha! That was the best of it, she wore them! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”
And off he went again into hysterical spasms. I surveyed him with mild wonder and scorn; it was rather dark, and at first I could not distinguish his features very clearly, especially in their contorted condition; but as I passed out into Piccadilly and had the advantage of the brilliant light over the doorway I saw and recognised him — recognised him with more indignation than a whole dictionary of powerful epithets could express; it was that horrid “Bobbie!” Bobbie with the moustaches! Wretch! Not “on the river” this time — not in the river, where in that first savage moment I would have willingly pitched him! He had actually come to grin at Honoria, and gloat over my misery, and make game, in his sublimely idiotic fashion, of the whole spectacle! It was a wonder I did not knock him down on the spot; but he did not appear to see me, and I marched haughtily past him and his noodlelooking friend, out into Piccadilly, where I solemnly swore, before all the coming and going omnibuses, that if ever I met the fellow again I would cut him dead! Not that he would mind that a bit, but it would at any rate be some slight satisfaction to my deeply wounded feelings!
And now there remains but little more to add to this “plain unvarnished” domestic history. With that night — that wretched night — ended all the hope I had ever entertained of coming to a better and happier understanding with Honoria. She is still famed for her masculine prowess, and I, in consequence, am still a lonely man. My boy goes to school now — a bright little chap, who up to the present has never seen his mother since his unreflective infancy. He takes his holidays at Richmoor House, in Kent, whither I accompany him, and behold in little Georgie a womanly wife who knows how to make her husband perfectly happy. But all the same, my wife is notorious, and the young Countess of Richmoor is not. Georgie never gets into the papers at all, except when she is mentioned in the list of ladies at the Queen’s Drawing-room; Honoria is always figuring in them, in season and out of season. She has lectured in America; she has lectured in Australia; she has made the tour of all the world. She has even shot tigers in India; and during a visit to Turkey took to the real original long meerschaum pipe, concerning the delights of which she wrote an elaborate essay in one of the “sporting” papers. And here I may as well mention that I myself am no longer a lover of tobacco in any shape or form. My marriage with a female smoker cured me of that vice — if it was a vice. Anyhow, I am positively convinced that if Honoria had not learned how to smoke from that Brighton school riding-master (accursed be his memory!) she would scarcely have adopted, one by one, as she did, all the other “mannish” habits which followed in the train of her first cigarette. It is all very well to tell me that Spanish women, and Russian women, and Turkish women smoke. Let them do so if they like; they are nothing to us, nor we to them; but for Heaven’s sake let us ward off that vulgarity from our sweet, fair English women, who are the pride of our country, and the prettiest and freshest to look at in the whole world! My wife is now an incorrigible smoker; I believe she is never seen without a cigar in her mouth; and I have unfortunately been powerless to prevent it, but I think — nay, I almost venture to hope — she is an exceptional sort of woman! Old and intimate friends when speaking of her to me, always say, “That wonderful wife of yours!” and I know she is wonderful; I am sure she is! I admire her respectfully — from a distance! I have no moral offences to charge against her; she is what the Americans call “square” in every particular. She is clever, she is brilliant, she is daring, and though she is now getting rather coarse in. build, she is still handsome. She is “run after” by a certain portion of society, and adulated by a certain class of young men (she has not yet got her way about men’s clothes, and has to conform to the “barbaric” usages of society in that respect ); the eyes of the curious public are fastened upon her wherever she appears, and she enjoys that doubtful celebrity which attaches to people who are always pushing themselves to the front without any tangible claim to remarkable merit. But — it was I who married her; to my unhappy lot it fell to test her value as a wife — her tenderness as a mother! And, as the melancholy result of that experience, I must honestly declare that, wonderful as she is, and wonderful as she always will be, I am still regretfully compelled to acknowledge that, notwithstanding all her wonderfulness — and in spite of whatever the worshipful Daily Telegraph may think of me — the deplorable fact remains — namely, that I — her husband — am unable to live with her!
The Song of Miriam and Other Stories
CONTENTS
THE SONG OF MIRIAM
THE SO
UL OF THE NEWLY BORN
THE SILENCE OF THE MAHARAJAH
ONE OF THE WORLD’S WONDERS
Please note: other stories in the collection previously appeared in Cameos.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 917
