Elizabeth and Her German Garden

“Truth is always rude, my dear,” he replied complacently. Then he added, “If I were commissioned to draw up a new legal code, and had previously enjoyed the privilege, as I have been doing lately, of listening to the conversation of you three young ladies, I should make precisely the same classification.”

Even Minora was incensed at this.

“You are telling us in the most unvarnished manner that we are idiots,” said Irais.

“Idiots? No, no, by no means. But children,—nice little agreeable children. I very much like to hear you talk together. It is all so young and fresh what you think and what you believe, and not of the least consequence to any one.

“Not of the least consequence?” cried Minora. “What we believe is of very great consequence indeed to us.”

“Are you jeering at our beliefs?” inquired Irais sternly.

“Not for worlds. I would not on any account disturb or change your pretty little beliefs. It is your chief charm that you always believe every-thing. How desperate would our case be if young ladies only believed facts, and never accepted another person’s assurance, but preferred the evidence of their own eyes! They would have no illusions, and a woman without illusions is the dreariest and most difficult thing to manage possible.”

“Thing?” protested Irais.

The Man of Wrath, usually so silent, makes up for it from time to time by holding forth at unnecessary length. He took up his stand now with his back to the fire, and a glass of Glubwein in his hand. Minora had hardly heard his voice before, so quiet had he been since she came, and sat with her pencil raised, ready to fix for ever the wisdom that should flow from his lips.

“What would become of poetry if women became so sensible that they turned a deaf ear to the poetic platitudes of love? That love does indulge in platitudes I suppose you will admit.” He looked at Irais.

“Yes, they all say exactly the same thing,” she acknowledged.

“Who could murmur pretty speeches on the beauty of a common sacrifice, if the listener’s want of imagination was such as to enable her only to distinguish one victim in the picture, and that one herself?”

Minora took that down word for word,—much good may it do her.

“Who would be brave enough to affirm that if refused he will die, if his assurances merely elicit a recommendation to diet himself, and take plenty of outdoor exercise? Women are responsible for such lies, because they believe them. Their amazing vanity makes them swallow flattery so gross that it is an insult, and men will always be ready to tell the precise number of lies that a woman is ready to listen to. Who indulges more recklessly in glowing exaggerations than the lover who hopes, and has not yet obtained? He will, like the nightingale, sing with unceasing modulations, display all his talent, untiringly repeat his sweetest notes, until he has what he wants, when his song, like the nightingale’s, immediately ceases, never again to be heard.”

“Take that down,” murmured Irais aside to Minora—unnecessary advice, for her pencil was scribbling as fast as it could.

“A woman’s vanity is so immeasurable that, after having had ninety-nine object-lessons in the difference between promise and performance and the emptiness of pretty speeches, the beginning of the hundredth will find her lending the same willing and enchanted ear to the eloquence of flattery as she did on the occasion of the first. What can the exhortations of the strong-minded sister, who has never had these experiences, do for such a woman? It is useless to tell her she is man’s victim, that she is his plaything, that she is cheated, down-trodden, kept under, laughed at, shabbily treated in every way—that is not a true statement of the case. She is simply the victim of her own vanity, and against that, against the belief in her own fascinations, against the very part of herself that gives all the colour to her life, who shall expect a woman to take up arms?”

“Are you so vain, Elizabeth?” inquired Irais with a shocked face, “and had you lent a willing ear to the blandishments of ninety-nine before you reached your final destiny?”

“I am one of the sensible ones, I suppose,” I replied, “for nobody ever wanted me to listen to blandishments.”

Minora sighed.

“I like to hear you talk together about the position of women,” he went on, “and wonder when you will realise that they hold exactly the position they are fitted for. As soon as they are fit to occupy a better, no power on earth will be able to keep them out of it. Meanwhile, let me warn you that, as things now are, only strong-minded women wish to see you the equals of men, and the strong-minded are invariably plain. The pretty ones would rather see men their slaves than their equals.”

“You know,” said Irais, frowning, “that I consider myself strong-minded.”

“And never rise till lunch-time?”

Irais blushed. Although I don’t approve of such conduct, it is very convenient in more ways than one; I get through my housekeeping undisturbed, and whenever she is disposed to lecture me, I begin about this habit of hers. Her conscience must be terribly stricken on the point, for she is by no means as a rule given to meekness.

“A woman without vanity would be unattackable,” resumed the Man of Wrath. “When a girl enters that downward path that leads to ruin, she is led solely by her own vanity; for in these days of policemen no young woman can be forced against her will from the path of virtue, and the cries of the injured are never heard until the destroyer begins to express his penitence for having destroyed. If his passion could remain at white-heat and he could continue to feed her ear with the protestations she loves, no principles of piety or virtue would disturb the happiness of his companion; for a mournful experience teaches that piety begins only where passion ends, and that principles are strongest where temptations are most rare.”

“But what has all this to do with us?” I inquired severely.

“You were displeased at our law classing you as it does, and I merely wish to justify it,” he answered. “Creatures who habitually say yes to everything a man proposes, when no one can oblige them to say it, and when it is so often fatal, are plainly not responsible beings.”

“I shall never say it to you again, my dear man,” I said.

“And not only that fatal weakness,” he continued, “but what is there, candidly, to distinguish you from children? You are older, but not wiser,—really not so wise, for with years you lose the common sense you had as children. Have you ever heard a group of women talking reasonably together?”

“Yes—we do!” Irais and I cried in a breath.

“It has interested me,” went on the Man of Wrath, “in my idle moments, to listen to their talk. It amused me to hear the malicious little stories they told of their best friends who were absent, to note the spiteful little digs they gave their best friends who were present, to watch the utter incredulity with which they listened to the tale of some other woman’s conquests, the radiant good faith they displayed in connection with their own, the instant collapse into boredom, if some topic of so-called general interest, by some extraordinary chance, were introduced.” “You must have belonged to a particularly nice set,” remarked Irais.

“And as for politics,” he said, “I have never heard them mentioned among women.”

“Children and idiots are not interested in such things,” I said.

“And we are much too frightened of being put in prison,” said Irais.

“In prison?” echoed Minora.

“Don’t you know,” said Irais, turning to her “that if you talk about such things here you run a great risk of being imprisoned?”

“But why?”

“But why? Because, though you yourself may have meant nothing but what was innocent, your words may have suggested something less innocent to the evil minds of your hearers; and then the law steps in, and calls it dolus eventualis, and everybody says how dreadful, and off you go to prison and are punished as you deserve to be.”

Minora looked mystified.

“That is not, however, your real reason for not discussing them,” said the Man of Wrath; “they simply do not interest you. Or it may be, that you do not consider your female friends’ opinions worth listening to, for you certainly display an astonishing thirst for information when male politicians are present. I have seen a pretty young woman, hardly in her twenties, sitting a whole evening drinking in the doubtful wisdom of an elderly political star, with every appearance of eager interest. He was a bimetallic star, and was giving her whole pamphletsful of information.”

“She wanted to make up to him for some reason,” said Irais, “and got him to explain his hobby to her, and he was silly enough to be taken in. Now which was the sillier in that case?”

She threw herself back in her chair and looked up defiantly, beating her foot impatiently on the carpet.

“She wanted to be thought clever,” said the Man of Wrath. “What puzzled me,” he went on musingly, “was that she went away apparently as serene and happy as when she came. The explanation of the principles of bimetallism produce, as a rule, a contrary effect.”

“Why, she hadn’t been listening,” cried Irais, “and your simple star had been making a fine goose of himself the whole evening.

“Prattle, prattle, simple star,
Bimetallic, wunderbar.
Though you’re given to describe
Woman as a dummes Weib.
You yourself are sillier far,
Prattling, bimetallic star!”

“No doubt she had understood very little,” said the Man of Wrath, taking no notice of this effusion.

“And no doubt the gentleman hadn’t understood much either.” Irais was plainly irritated.

“Your opinion of woman,” said Minora in a very small voice, “is not a high one. But, in the sick chamber, I suppose you agree that no one could take her place?”