Part 9 (1/2)
Yet the initiated know, for if a girl only praises a man's singing enough, he will most surely propose to her before many moons have pa.s.sed. The scheme has a two-fold purpose, because all may see that he finds the house attractive, and if no engagement is announced, the entire affair may easily be explained upon musical and platonic grounds.
[Sidenote: A Formal Proposal]
Owing to the distorted methods of courts.h.i.+p which prevail at the present day, a girl may never be sure that a man really cares for her until he makes a formal proposal. If a man were accepted the minute he proposed, he would think the girl had been his for some time, and would unconsciously cla.s.s her as among those easily won.
The insinuation that she has been easily won is the thing which is not to be borne. It may have been simple enough, in fact, but let a man beware how he trifles with this delicate subject, even after fifty years of marriage.
[Sidenote: On Probation]
Consequently, it is the proper thing to take the matter under advis.e.m.e.nt and never to accept definitely without a period of probation. This is the happiest time of a girl's life. She is absolutely sure of her lover and may administer hope, fear, doubt, and discouragement to her heart's content.
The delicate attentions which are showered upon her are the envy of every spinster on the street who does not know the true state of the affair. Sometimes, with indifferent generosity, she divides her roses and invites the less fortunate to share her chocolates. This always pleases the man, if he knows about it.
Also, because she is not in the least bound, she makes the best of this last freedom and accepts the same courtesies from other men. Nothing is so well calculated to sound the depths of original sin in man's nature, as to find his rival's roses side by side with his, when a girl has him on probation. And he never feels so entirely similar to an utter idiot, as when he sees a girl to whom he has definitely committed himself, flirting cheerfully with two or three other men.
Woe be to him if he remonstrates! For Mademoiselle is testing him with this end in view. If he complains bitterly of her outrageous behaviour, she dismisses him with sorrowful dignity, jealousy being the one thing she cannot tolerate in men.
[Sidenote: Opportunity for Fine Work]
There is opportunity for fine work in the situation which the young woman immediately develops. A man may take his choice of the evils which lie before him, for almost anything may happen.
He may complain, and if he shows anger, there is war. If he betrays jealousy, there is trouble which marriage will accentuate, rather than lessen. If he shows concern because his beloved is so fickle, and insinuates that so unstable a person will not make a good wife, he touches pride in a vital spot and his cause is no more. Let him be manfully unconcerned; as far above jealousy and angry reproach as a St.
Bernard is above a kitten--and Mademoiselle is his.
Philosophers laugh at woman's fickleness, but her constancy, when once awakened, endures beyond life and death, and sometimes beyond betrayal.
But this is not to be won by a jealous man, for jealousy is the mother-in-law of selfishness, and a woman never permits a man to rival her in her own particular field.
[Sidenote: Another Danger]
If a man safely pa.s.ses the test of probation, there is yet another danger which lies between him and the realisation of his ambition. This is the tendency of women to conduct excavations into a man's previous affairs.
He needs the wisdom of the serpent at this juncture, for under the smiling sweetness a dagger is often concealed. If the point is allowed to show during an engagement, the whole blade will frequently flash during marriage.
”Yes, dearest,” a man will say, tenderly, ”I have loved before, but that was long ago--long before I met you. She was beautiful, tall, dark, majestic, with a regal nature like herself--Good Heavens, how I loved her!”
This is apt to continue for some little time, if a man gets thoroughly interested in his subject and thinks he is talking rather well, before he discovers that his pet.i.te blonde divinity is either a frozen statue, or a veritable Niobe as to tears. And not one man in three hundred and nineteen ever suspects what he has done!
[Sidenote: The Thought of Defection]
A woman is more jealous of the girls a man has loved, whom she has never seen, than of any number of attractive rivals. In the blind adoration which he yields her, she takes no thought of immediate defection, for her smile always makes him happy--her voice never loses its mystic power over his senses.
On the contrary, a man never stoops to be jealous of the men who have pleaded in vain for what he has won, nor even of possible fiances whom later discretion has discarded. He is sure of her at the present moment and his doubt centres itself comfortably upon the future, which is always shadowy and unreal to a man, because he is less imaginative than woman.
And yet--there is no more dangerous companion for a woman than the man who has loved her. It is easier to waken a woman's old love than to teach her a new affection. Strangely enough, the woman a man has once loved and then forgotten is powerless in the after years. A man's dead friends.h.i.+p may dream of resurrection, but never his dead love.
Jealousy and distrust have never yet won a doubting heart. Bitterness never accomplishes miracles which sweetness fails to do. Too often men and women spend their time in wondering why they are not loved, trying various schemes and pitiful experiments, and pa.s.sing by the simple method of trying to be lovable and unconscious of self.