II
HE DISCUSSES THE IDEAL HUSBAND
"Well, I see the Ideal Husband has broken out again," said the Idiot,after reading a short essay on that interesting but rare individual byGladys Waterbury Shrivelton of the Woman's Page of the Squehawkett_Gazoo_. "I'd hoped they had him locked up for good, he's been so littlein evidence of late years."
"Why should you wish so estimable an individual to be locked up?"demanded Mr. Pedagog, who, somehow or other, seemed to take the Idiot'ssuggestion as personal.
"To keep his idealness from being shattered," said the Idiot. "Nothingagainst the gentleman himself, I can assure you. It would be a pity, Ithink, once you have really found an Ideal Husband, to subject him tothe coarse influences of the world; to let him go forth into the maddingcrowd and have the sweet idyllic bloom rubbed off by the attritions ofthe vulgar. I feel about the Ideal Husband just as I do about abeautiful peachblow vase which is too fragile, too delicate to bebrought into contact with the ordinary earthen-ware of society. Theearthen-ware isn't harmed by bumping into the peachblow, but thepeachblow will inevitably turn up with a crack here and a nick there anda hole somewhere else after such an encounter. If I were a woman andsuddenly discovered that I had an Ideal Husband, I think at my personalsacrifice I'd present him to the Metropolitan Museum of Art or immurehim in some other retreat where his perfection would remain foreversecure--say, up among the Egyptian mummies of the British Museum. Wecannot be too careful, Mr. Pedagog, of these rarely beautiful thingsthat are now and again vouchsafed to us."
"What is an Ideal Husband, anyhow?" asked Mr. Brief. "Has the recipefor such an individual at last been discovered?"
"Yes," put in Mrs. Pedagog, before the Idiot had a chance to reply, andhere the dear old landlady fixed her eyes firmly and affectionately uponher spouse, the school-master. "I can tell you the recipe for the IdealHusband. Years, sixty-three--"
"Sixty-two, my dear," smiled Mr. Pedagog, "and--er--a fraction--vergingon sixty-three."
"Years, verging on sixty-three," said Mrs. Pedagog, accepting thecorrection. "Character developed by time and made secure. Eyes, blue;disposition when vexed, vexatious; disposition when pleased, happy;irritable from just cause; considerate always; calm exterior, heart ofgold; prompt in anger and quick in forgiveness; and only one old womanin the world for him."
"A trifle bald-headed, but a true friend when needed, eh?" said theIdiot.
"I try to be," said Mr. Pedagog, pleasantly complacent.
"Well, you succeed in both," said the Idiot.
"For your trifling baldness is evident when you remove your hat, which,like a true gentleman, you never fail to do at the breakfast-table, and,after a fifteen years' experience with you, I for one can say that Ihave found you always the true friend when I needed you--I never toldhow, without my solicitation and entirely upon your own initiative, youonce loaned me the money to pay Mrs. Pedagog's bill over which she wasbecoming anxious."
"John," cried Mrs. Pedagog, severely, "did you ever do that?"
"Well, my dear--er--only once, you know, and you were so relieved--"began Mr. Pedagog.
"You should have lent the money to me, John," said Mrs. Pedagog, "andthen I should not have been compelled to dun the Idiot."
"I know, my dear, but you see I knew the Idiot would pay me back, andperhaps--well, only perhaps, my love--you might not have thought of it,"explained the school-master, with a slight show of embarrassment.
"The Ideal Husband is ever truthful, too," said the landlady, with asmile as broad as any.
"Well, it's too bad, I think," said the Lawyer, "that a man has to beverging on sixty-three to be an Ideal Husband. I'm only forty-four, andI should hate to think that if I should happen to get married within thenext two or three years my wife would have to wait at least fifteenyears before she could find me all that I ought to be. Moreover, I havebeen told that I have black eyes."
"With the unerring precision of a trained legal mind," said the Idiot,"you have unwittingly put your finger on the crux of the whole matter,Mr. Brief. Mrs. Pedagog has been describing _her_ Ideal Husband, and Iam delighted to know that what I have always suspected to be the case isin fact the truth: that _her_ husband in her eyes is an ideal one.That's the way it ought to be, and that is why we have always found herthe sweetest of landladies, but because Mrs. Pedagog prefers Mr. Pedagogin this race for supremacy in the domain of a woman's heart is noreason why you who are only bald-headed in your temper, like most of us,should not prove to be equally the ideal of some other woman--in fact,of several others. Women are not all alike. As a matter of fact, agentleman named Balzac, who was the Marie Corelli of his age in France,once committed himself to the inference that no two women ever werealike, so that, if you grant the truth of old Balzac's inference, theIdeal Husband will probably vary to the extent of the latest count ofthe number of women in the world. So why give up hope because you areonly forty-nine?"
"Forty-four," corrected the Lawyer.
"Pardon me--forty-four," said the Idiot. "When you are in the roaringforties, five or six years more or less do not really count. Lots of menwho are really only forty-two behave like sixty, and I know one oldduffer of forty-nine who has the manners of eighteen. The age questiondoes not really count."
"No--you are proof of that," said the Bibliomaniac. "You have beentwenty-four years old for the last fifteen years."
"Thank you, Mr. Bib," said the Idiot. "You are one of the few people inthe world who really understand me. I have tried to be twenty-four forthe past fifteen years, and if I have succeeded, so much the better forme. It's a beautiful age. You feel that you know so much when you'retwenty-four. If it should turn out to be the answer to 'How old is Ann?'the lady should be congratulated. But, as a matter of fact, you can bean Ideal Husband at any old age."
"Humph! At seven, for instance?" drawled Mr. Brief.
"Seven is not any old age," retorted the Idiot. "It is a very certainold youth. Nor does it depend upon the color of the eyes, so long asthey are neither green nor red. Nobody could ever make an Ideal Husbandout of a green-eyed man, or a chap given to the red eye, either--"
"It all depends upon the kind of a man you are, eh?" said theBibliomaniac.
"Not a bit of it," said the Idiot. "It depends on the kind of wifeyou've got, and that's why I say that the Ideal Husband varies to theextent of the latest count of the women in the world. Take the case ofMr. Pedagog here. Mrs. Pedagog accuses him of being an Ideal Husband,and he, without any attempt at evasion, acknowledges the corn, like thehonorable gentleman he is. But can you imagine Mr. Pedagog being anIdeal Husband to some lady in the Four Hundred, with a taste for grandopera that strikes only on the box; with a love for Paris gowns that areworth a fortune; with the midnight supper and cotillion after habitfirmly intrenched in her character; with an ambition to shine all summerat Newport, all autumn at Lenox, all winter at New York, with a dash toEngland and France in the merry, merry springtime? Do you suppose ourfriend John Pedagog here would be in it with Tommie Goldilocks VanVarick as the Ideal Husband of such a woman? Not on your life. Well,then, take Tommie Goldilocks Van Varick, who'd be the Ideal Spouse ofthis brilliant social light Mrs. Van Varick. How would he suit Mrs.Pedagog, rising at eleven-thirty every day and yelling like mad for thelittle blue bottle which clears the head from the left-over cobwebs ofyesterday; eating his egg and drinking his coffee with a furrow in hisbrow almost as deep as the pallor of his cheek, and now and then makinga most awful grimace because the interior of his mouth feels like abargain day at the fur-counter of a department store; spending hisafternoon sitting in the window of the Hunky Dory Club ogling thepassers-by and making bets on such important questions as whether morehansoms pass up the Avenue than down, or whether the proportion ofred-haired girls to white horses is as great between three and fourP.M. as between five and six--"
"I don't see how a woman could stand a man like that," said Mrs.Pedagog. "Indeed, I don't see where his ideal qualities come in, anyhow,Mr. Idiot. I think you are wrong
in putting him among the Ideal Husbandseven for Mrs. Van Varick."
"No, I am not wrong, for he is indeed the very essence of her idealbecause he doesn't make her stand him," said the Idiot. "He neverbothers Mrs. Van Varick at all. On the first of every month he sends hera check for a good round sum with which she can pay her bills. Hepresents her with a town house and a country house, and a Limousine car,and all the furs she can possibly want; provides her with an opera-box,and never fails, when he himself goes to the opera, to call upon her andpay his respects like a gentleman. If she sustains heavy losses atbridge, he makes them good, and when she gives a dinner to her set, orto some distinguished social lion from other zoos, Van Varick is alwayson hand to do the honors of his house, and what is supposed to be histable. He and Mrs. Van Varick are on the most excellent terms; in fact,he treats her with more respect than he does any other woman he knows,never even suggesting the idea of a flirtation with her. In other words,he does not interfere with her in any way, which is the only kind ofman in the world she could be happy with."
"It's perfectly awful!" cried Mrs. Pedagog. "If they never see eachother, what on earth did they ever get married for?"
"Protection," said the Idiot. "And it is perfectly splendid in itsresults. Mrs. Van Varick, being married to so considerate an absentee,is able to go about very much as she pleases backed with the influenceand affluence of the Van Varick name. This as plain little Miss FloydPoselthwaite she was unable to do. She has now an assured position, andis protected against the chance of marrying a man who, unlike VanVarick, would growl at her expenditures, object to her friends, andinsist upon coming home to dinner every night, and occasionally turn upat breakfast."
"Sweet life," said the Bibliomaniac. "And what does the Willieboyhusband get out of it?"
"Pride, protection, and freedom," said the Idiot. "He's as proud asPunch when he sees Mrs. Van V. swelling about town with her name keptas standing matter in every society column in the country. His freedomhe enjoys, just as she enjoys hers. If he doesn't turn up for six weeksshe never asks any questions, and so Van Varick can live on easy termswith the truth. If he sits up all night over a game of cards, there'snobody to chide him for doing so, and--"
"But where does his protection come in? That's what I can't see," saidthe Bibliomaniac.
"It's as plain as a pike-staff," said the Idiot. "With Mrs. Van Varickon the _tapis_, Tommie is safe from designing ladies who might marry himfor his money."
"Well, he's a mighty poor ideal!" cried Mr. Pedagog.
"He certainly would not do for Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot. "But youwould yourself be no better for Mrs. Van Varick. The red Indian makes anIdeal Husband for the squaw, but he'd never suit a daughter of theBritish nobility any more than the Duke of Lacklands would make a goodhusband for dusky little Minnehaha. So I say what's the use ofdiscussing the matter any further with the purpose of arbitrarilysettling on what it is that constitutes an Ideal Husband? We may allhope to be considered such if we only find the girl that likes ourparticular kind."
"Then," said Mr. Brief, with a smile, "your advice to me is not todespair, eh?"
"That's it," said the Idiot. "I wouldn't give up, if I were you. There'sno telling when some one will come along to whom you appear to be theperfect creature."
"Good!" cried Mr. Brief. "You are mighty kind. I don't suppose you cangive me a hint as to how soon I may expect to meet the lady?"
"Well--no, I can't," said the Idiot. "I don't believe even Edison couldtell you about when to look for arrivals from Mars."