The Project Gutenberg EBook of Here are Ladies, by James Stephens

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Here are Ladies

Author: James Stephens

Release Date: December 19, 2006 [EBook #20127]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HERE ARE LADIES ***

Produced by Al Haines

HERE ARE LADIES

BY

JAMES STEPHENS

AUTHOR OF 'THE CROCK OF GOLD'

NEW YORK

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1914

COPYRIGHT, 1913

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1913

Reprinted March, 1914.

CONTENTS

WOMEN THREE HEAVY HUSBANDS A GLASS OF BEER ONE AND ONE THREE WOMEN WHO WEPT THE TRIANGLE THE DAISIES THREE ANGRY PEOPLE THE THREEPENNY PIECE BRIGID THREE YOUNG WIVES THE HORSES MISTRESS QUIET EYES THREE LOVERS WHO LOST THE BLIND MAN SWEET-APPLE THREE HAPPY PLACES THE MOON THERE IS A TAVERN IN THE TOWN

HERE ARE LADIES

WOMEN

  Listen! If but women were
  Half as kind as they are fair
  There would be an end to all
  Miseries that do appal.

  Cloud and wind would fly together
    In a dance of sunny weather,
  And the happy trees would throw
  Gifts to travellers below.

  Then the lion, meek and mild,
  With the lamb would, side by side,
  Couch him friendly, and would be
  Innocent of enmity.

  Then the Frozen Pole would go,
  Shaking off his fields of snow,
  To a kinder clime and dance
  Warmly with the girls of France.

  These; if women only were
  Half as kind as they are fair.

THREE HEAVY HUSBANDS

I

He had a high nose. He looked at one over the collar, so to speak. His regard was very assured, and his speech was that short bundle of monosyllables which the subaltern throws at the orderly. He had never been questioned, and, the precedent being absent, he had never questioned himself. Why should he? We live by question and answer, but we do not know the reply to anything until a puzzled comrade bothers us and initiates that divine curiosity which both humbles and uplifts us.

He wanted all things for himself. What he owned he wished to own completely. He would give anything away with the largest generosity, but he would share with no one—

"Whatever is mine," said he, "must be entirely mine. If it is alive I claim its duty to the last respiration of its breath, and if it is dead I cannot permit a mortgage on it. Have you a claim on anything belonging to me? then you may have it entirely, I must have all of it or none."

He was a stockbroker, and, by the methods peculiar to that mysterious profession, he had captured a sufficiency of money to enable him to regard the future with calmness and his fellow-creatures with condescension—perhaps the happiest state to which a certain humanity can attain.

So far matters were in order. There remained nothing to round his life into the complete, harmonious circle except a wife; but as a stated income has the choice of a large supply, he shortly discovered a lady whose qualifications were such as would ornament any, however exalted, position—She was sound in wind and limb. She spoke grammar with the utmost precision, and she could play the piano with such skill that it was difficult to explain why she played it badly.

This also was satisfactory, and if the world had been made of machinery he would have had the fee-simple of happiness. But to both happiness and misery there follows the inevitable second act, and beyond that, and to infinity, action and interaction, involution and evolution, forging change for ever. Thus he failed to take into consideration that the lady was alive, that she had a head on her shoulders which was native to her body, and that she could not be aggregated as chattel property for any longer period than she agreed to.

After their marriage he discovered that she had dislikes which did not always coincide with his, and appreciations which set his teeth on edge. A wife in the house is a critic on the hearth—this truth was daily and unpleasantly impressed upon him: but, of course, every man knows that every woman is a fool, and a tolerant smile is the only recognition we allow to their whims. God made them as they are—we grin, and bear it.

His wife found that the gospel of her husband was this—Love me to the exclusion of all human creatures. Believe in me even when I am in the wrong. Women should be seen and not heard. When you want excitement make a fuss of your husband.—But while he entirely forgot that his wife had been bought and paid for, she did not forget it: indeed, she could not help remembering it. A wrong had been done her not to be obscured even by economics, the great obscurer. She had been won and not wooed. (The very beasts have their privileges!) She had been defrauded of how many teasing and provoking prerogatives, aloofnesses, and surrenders, and her body, if not her mind, resented and remembered it.

There are times when calmness is not recognised as a virtue. Of course, he had wooed her in a way. He took her to the opera, he gave her jewels, he went to Church with her twice every Sunday, and once a month he knelt beside her in more profound reverences: sometimes he petted her, always he was polite—

But he had not told her that her eyes were the most wonderful and inspiring orbs into which a tired man could look. He never said that there would not be much to choose between good and evil if he lost her. He never said that one touch of her lips would electrify a paralytic into an acrobat. He never swore that he would commit suicide and dive to deep perdition if she threw him over—none of these things. It is possible that she did not wish him to say or do such extravagances, but he had not played the game, and, knowing that something was badly wrong, she nursed a grievance, that horrid fosterling.

He was fiercely jealous, not of his love, but of his property, and while he was delighted to observe that other men approved of his taste, he could not bear that his wife should admire these outsiders. This was his attitude to her: Give me your admirations, all of them, every note of exclamation of which you are mistress, every jot and tittle of your thoughts must be mine, for, lacking these, I have nothing. I am good to you. I have interposed between you and the buffets of existence. I temper all winds to the bloom of your cheek. Do you your part, and so we will be happy.

There was a clerk in his office, a black-haired, slim, frowning young man, who could talk like a cascade for ten minutes and be silent for a month: he was a very angry young man, with many hatreds and many ambitions. His employer prized him as a reliable and