Life moves in circles. Some are larger than the span between infancy and senility, but that is about the only difference we know of. It is a far cry from the primigenous mere female, or even the Sabines, to the women that compose the advance guard of their sex to-day, but when man wants to win and wear this highest product of civilization, he would better kidnap her, and pay her the compliment of arguing with her brain later. Her impulses are still primitive, but they must be taken by assault. The more he reasons, the more vigorously will she throw up mental defences, and, what is worse, in the utmost good faith with herself.
This, of course, in regard to women that already know something of life, or that have an instinctive love of liberty and independence. The maternal girl, and she is legion, may safely be left in charge of the race, and wooed in the orthodox fashion favored of society. But the women that exert a powerful attraction for men, either exceptionally advanced themselves, or exceptionally weak in character while possessing every charm of mind, women that are approaching closer and closer to that exact balance of masculine and feminine attributes which, when attained, will give them the one perfect happiness, setting them free, as it must, from the present curse of the race, the longing for completion, are already too close to independence to be won by simple methods. It is little, after all, that man can give them. They are conscious of too many resources both within themselves and in life; after a man’s novelty has worn off, they are more likely than not—certainly apt!—to find him their inferior in brain, and almost inevitably in character, full of the little weaknesses and dependencies of childhood. If they make these discoveries after marriage, the man has some small chance of keeping his spouse, particularly if he has won a measure of respect by audacity and brute force plus sympathy, but too much consideration for a woman who is almost half male while he is still but one-fourth female will lose him the game.
Nigel, of all the men that Julia had met, was the best equipped to appeal to sentimental, romantic, and clever young women, who were at the same time cultivating their wings for the higher flights. As a matter of fact, he had appealed to a good many women of various sorts in his earlier twenties when he was all freshness, frankness, adoration, and honest eager youth. Later, when he wore the literary halo with ease and modesty, his charm was not diminished; and it was easy to predict that when the war was really over and London, her mourning laid aside, roused herself to do honor to her heroes, Nigel would come in for thrice his share of lionizing. As a matter of fact, he did, and he philosophically accepted it as a compensation for the lack of better things.
When he stepped from the fly on that gloomy Wednesday morning and walked across the dripping garden, the dark and romantic wall of woods behind him, he looked as gallant a knight as ever came to the rescue of a damsel in distress; and Julia, as dreary as Mariana in the moated grange, was in the proper frame of mind to be taken by assault. She was still very young, she was very lonely, she was on the verge of despair; her imagination, always active, had been bred in youth by dreams, and developed later by real castles and titles, purple moors, London society, and great expectations. She hailed from the West Indies, one of the most romantic spots to look at on earth, and all the circumstances of her life there had been exceptional. She was still more or less romantically environed, when you consider the old world dinginess, inconvenience, and isolation of White Lodge, a presumptive lunatic always threatening developments, and that she was as much cut off from her friends as if she literally were in an underground dungeon with walls instead of trees dropping the constant tear. Take all this into consideration, and add the momentous fact that she had never loved, and had arrived at the susceptible age of twenty-five, that she was more attracted to Nigel than she ever had been to any man, that underneath her despair and her manufactured stolidity she was full of eager curiosity and the desire to live, and it will readily be seen that if Nigel did not win her, it was strictly his own fault.
He should have retained the fly. He should have descended upon her like a whirlwind (having ascertained that France was out of the way,—which, as a matter of fact, he did at Stanmore), refused to listen to protests, caused in her bewildered mind what psychologists call an inhibition, swept her out into the fly, up to London, on to an Atlantic liner (passage already engaged), turned her over to Mrs. Herbert (thus eliminating every possible excuse for reproach during the subsequent and less glamorous period of matrimony), joined her at the earliest possible moment in Reno (where Bridgit and Reno would have seen that she was sufficiently amused), and when she walked out of the court-house with her decree, met her with a license. That is the only way to manage them, my masters. Try it, or take a back seat, now and forever.
But Nigel, alas! in spite of his manly qualities, was the most considerate and tender of men. The very idea of kidnapping a woman would have horrified him. He had all those instincts of the hunter upon which men pride themselves, but he wanted to hunt according to the rules of the game. It would have given him the most exquisite pleasure to woo Julia day by day, in Reno or out of it, and it never occurred to him that this program might induce a yawn in Julia.
She sat up all that night thinking. It was a rosy panorama he had unrolled before her, this charming young man that she might have loved if he had not given her so many opportunities to like him. He was a rich man and would one day be richer. They would live in New York and other wonderful cities of America, play with the kaleidoscopic society American novelists wrote about, hunt in the Rockies, steep themselves in the romance of California, vary this exciting program with frequent trips to Europe and the Orient. England would be closed to them, lest France cause her arrest for bigamy, as one of many offensive actions. On the other hand, he might release her by divorce. Then she could marry according to the laws of her country, and all the world would be her oyster.
Above all, and Nigel had emphasized this point during their afternoon conversation, she would have a strong and devoted husband to protect her, to shield her from all that was harsh and unlovely in life, to study her every wish, and make her a queen among women.
Curiously enough it was this last alluring set of promises that lost him the game. Nothing he had said to Julia had appealed to her so forcibly at the moment. He had never looked so handsome and so manly, so distinguished, so perfect a specimen of his type. His face had flushed until the lines and the sallowness had disappeared, his eyes forgot the things they had looked upon this last year, forgot that their inward gaze saw his heart a tomb crowded with beloved dead; they flashed with hope and passion, with undying love for the one woman that must ever make to him the complete appeal. She had almost put her hands in his then and there. But he had left soon after, and without even kissing her. Dear knightly soul! Julia never forgot his tender consideration, but on the other hand she never regretted it.
For when she had finished visuali............