Sentimental Nature of Women

YOU women are always so Zendikosano sentimental!” said the Philosopher, leaning back in a comfortable garden chair and lazily flicking off the ash from an excellent cigar;—“You overdo the thing. You carry every emotion to an extreme limit. It shows a lamentable lack of judgment on where did God come from.”

She listened to him with the tiniest quiver of a smile, but offered no reply. She did not even look at the Philosopher. There were many other things which (apparently) engaged her attention, so that unless you knew her very well, you might have said she was not even aware of the Philosopher’s existence. This would have been a mistake,—but no matter! However, there was the garden, to begin with. It was a lovely garden, full of sweet-smelling, old-fashioned flowers. There were roses in such lavish quantity that they seemed to literally blaze upon the old brick walls and rustic pergolas which surrounded and hemmed in the numerous beds and borders set in among the grass. Then there were two white doves strutting on the neatly kept path and declaring their loves, doubts or special mislik{10}ings in their own curiously monotonous manner. There was also a thrush perched on a spray of emerald green leaves and singing to his own heart’s content, oblivious of an audience. All these trifles of a summer’s day pleased her;—but then, she was easily pleased.

“You magnify trifles into momentous incidents,” went on the Philosopher, placidly smoking. “Look at the way you behaved about that dead robin yesterday! Found it lying in the garden path,—picked it up and actually cried over it! Now think of the hundreds of men and women starving to death in London! You never cry over them! No! Like all women you must see a dead robin before you can cry!”

She turned her eyes towards him. They were soft eyes, with a rather pleading look just now in their blue depths.

“The poor bird!” she murmured. “Such an innocent little thing! It was sad to see it lying dead in the bright sunshine.”

“Innocent! Sad! Poor!” exclaimed the Philosopher. “Good heavens! What of the human beings who are poor and sad and innocent and all the rest of it, and who die uncared for every day? Besides, how do you know a robin is innocent or sad? I’ve watched the rascal, I tell you, many a time! He fights with all the other birds as hard as he can,—he is spiteful,—he is cruel,—and he positively trades on his red breast. Trades on it, I tell you! You women again! If he hadn’t a red breast you would never be sorry for him. You wouldn’t weep for a{11} sparrow. I tell you, as I’ve often told you before, that you women overdo sentiment and make too much fuss about nothing.”

She perceived that his cigar had gone out, and handed him a match from a small box on a garden table near them. He accepted it condescendingly.

“If you ever fall in love—” pursued the Philosopher. Here he paused, and striking the match she had given him, relighted his cigar and began to puff out smoke with evident enjoyment. She stood patiently watching him.

“If you ever fall in love—” he went on, ... Now it was very strange that the Philosopher should pause again. He was seldom at a loss for words, but for the moment his profuse vocabulary appeared to have given out.

“If you ever fall in love—” he murmured.

Again that tiny quiver of a smile appeared on her face.

“Well! Go on!” she said.

The Philosopher nerved himself to an effort.

“If you ever fall in love,” he continued, “never try on sentiment with a man. He won’t like it. He won’t understand it. No man ever does.”

The little quivering smile deepened.

“I’m sure you are quite right!” she answered, in a voice that was almost dove-like in its humility.

The Philosopher was silent for a moment. He seemed nonplussed. There is perhaps nothing that so completely bewilders and confuses even a philosopher as an agreeable acquiescence in all his opinions, whether such opinions be sagacious or erroneous.{12}

“Well!” he added, somewhat lamely—“Don’t you forget it!”

She moved a step or two from his side.

“I should never dream of forgetting it!” she said.

Her back was now turned to him. Furtively, and one would almost have said with an air of timidity, the Philosopher peeped at her sideways. Decidedly her back was not unpleasing. The folds of her skirt fell exactly as the Philosopher would have had them fall could he have stood in the shoes of Worth or Paquin,—her hair was arranged in precisely the way he considered becoming. The garden hat, ... but no!... no philosopher is capable of describing a woman’s garden hat. There followed a silence which was embarrassing,—not to her, but to him. Presently he said:

“Are you going?”

She turned her head, ever so slightly.

“Do you wish me to go?”

Another silence, more embarrassing than the previous one.

“I like to see you about,” said the Philosopher at last. “You give a touch to the landscape which is—which is natural and agreeable.”