Mr. Pennyfeather Likes the Ladies

I

IRAN across Pennyfeather last week at the Halyards’ party for their daughter Hope. He was sitting alone downstairs in the little reception room, or whatever the apartment is called which ladies use for interviewing servants, reporters, charity canvassers, and so on: a dead, shiny cell beside the front door, furnished with fancy chairs and a few wedding-present vases and an empty desk and an ornate, stiff little sofa. He was smoking a cigar, with a tall glass on his knee. The hour being after supper, the waiters had already cleared the place of the empty dishes and glasses which débutantes and their mates like to abandon under the furniture after using.

I saw him with pleasure and surprise — he does n’t go much to parties — and sat down beside him with relief, as I, wifeless for the evening, had been acting the part of the dutiful dupe among the less admired ladies. The room seemed a refuge; the music was not more than soothingly audible: we could hear the thump-thump, but not the squawking and wailing. Pennyfeather looked very peaceful and contented, and rather pleased with himself.

‘Trust you!’ I said grimly, mopping my face. (I had been dancing with the elder Topping sister, the one who keeps animals. She likes to do the leading whether her partner be horse, dog, or man.)

‘Trust me?’ He smiled, self-satisfied. ‘Right! “A peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience.” You would n’t know what that was from. Why did n’t I see you upstairs?’

‘I don’t know. I was there. Been dancing?’

‘Hmph!’ he snorted. ‘If you call it dancing. I like to dance, you know; but I can stand only so much of watching these young jellyfish oozing round the room. That kind of dancing’s immoral. Strolling along, side by side! They get in my way, too; and they keep cutting in.’ He sounded plaintive.

‘It’s their party,’ I reminded him. Pennyfeather is nothing if not a vigorous dancer.

‘I know it’s their party. But why don’t they dance? My God, they ask a girl for a dance, some luscious little pet, all curls and eyes — and then, instead of picking her up and dancing with her, what do they do? Hold her like a dead fish, mince a few steps, and drop her; then they sidle along together like a couple of waltzing mice. It’s indecent!’

‘All, well,’ I soothed him, ‘it’s just a fashion. It’ll pass.’

‘Fashion!’ he barked. ‘Who makes the fashions? Women make ’em!’ He finished his drink at a gulp, and stood up. ‘Sounds like a waltz,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s do it.’

‘All right,’ I replied, ‘just one. Then I think I’ll go home.’

‘Nonsense,’ he said, pushing me ahead of him towards the stairs. ‘You’ll come over to my place for a nightcap.’

‘You’ve just had a nightcap,’ I reminded him. ‘That’s no reason for not having another.’

II

Bessie’s parties are fun because she thinks of them as parties, occasions for being giddy among friends. She has a good time herself, and assumes that everyone else is there for the same purpose. To-night, she looked young and pretty in a red velvet gown, and I knew from the feeling in the air, like electricity, that this party was up to standard.

The polished floor of the long drawingroom reflected the candles and flowers and moving couples in a confused pattern of soft light and motion. The girls, in their many-colored dresses, looked young and fresh and pretty against its dark surface. Now that those among them who don’t have much fun at parties had gone home, with most of the older people, the room was only comfortably filled. I thought of those young fugitives in a flash of pity: how little it mattered whether or not they were ‘popular’ during this brief period of their lives, and how enormously the system conspired to make them think that nothing else would ever matter.

I leaned against the wall, by the door, and looked on. Pennyfeather was waltzing strongly with Bessie Halyard, shielding her with his body and knocking the young people about with magnificent assurance. He could waltz, all right, and so could she. A group of boys and girls, gravely entranced, were watching the deft fingers of the little pianist weave a complicated obbligato into the flowing current of the waltz. In the centre of the room stood a knot of young men, lounging, observant, like kingfishers at the edge of a pool, keenly ready to pounce on favored fish as they swam by. Most of the couples were placed conventionally cheek to cheek, but a few of the more spirited were dancing in unlinked abandon, as if dancing were what they really enjoyed; and they, I noticed, were not among those who periodically broke apart to stroll arm-in-arm down the side of the room in the manner scorned by Pennyfeather.

Young Hope Halyard swung past me over the gleaming floor, dancing with a tall lad with red hair and eyeglasses. Fascinated, I watched her little redslippered feet dancing, dancing, quick and light as mice, as if she herself were weightless, and her feet the independent agencies of pure rhythm. I cut in on her the next time she came by. Innocently she held her damp, soft cheek up to mine, and I nearly kissed it, forgetting for a moment that I was supposed merely to place my own bleak jowl against it. But I told her I’d been born too soon, and she laughed at me in pity and affection, and gave me a little hug for my sad toll of years. She was light and mobile as any unsubstantial creature; but I reminded her that she was n’t as good as her mother — not yet, anyway. She said of course she was n’t, Mother was marvelous; but I knew she did n’t believe me. The boy with the red hair cut in again, and she looked at him happily, and they swung off down the room, not speaking.

Pennyfeather rested by the door, swabbing his face. I lifted an eyebrow at him and he nodded. So we said goodnight to Bessie and got our hats and coats and let ourselves out into the empty shining street.

III

Pennyfeather lives only a couple of blocks away, in an old remodeled brownstone front, of which he occupies the second floor. We sat in the room at the back, a big room, high-ceilinged, furnished with comfortable leather chairs, faded and used, very pleasant.

Pennyfeather saluted with his glass. ‘I had a good time to-night,’ he said.

‘Nice party,’ I agreed. ‘Nice lot of girls. I don’t see any cause for worrying about the young, do you?’

‘None whatever. But what extraordinary creatures they are! Girls — women — females! Look at them objectively, as I was doing to-night —’ ‘You advocate loaded dice?’ I smiled sourly. ‘I advocate nothing. I merely point to a condition of affairs which seems to work — one, moreover, in which the early relationship of pursuer and pursued is never wholly abandoned. Every man is happier, really, during pursuit than after the kill, and a hell of a sight more lively and amusing to the little girl of his dreams. Also, this relationship gives her the edge, which she deserves as a reward for her superior intelligence.

‘You!’ I laughed. ‘You damn near trampled them to death to-night! I was watching you.’

‘Nonsense. Cold scientific detachment. Still, it’s an interesting age — eighteen, nineteen, thereabouts.’

‘My nurse had a theory,’ I interposed, ‘that all girl babies are born perfect, and then gradually deteriorate till they die of old age. What about that?’

‘I don’t know much about girl babies,’ he admitted.

‘Naturally not,’ I agreed. ‘And you miss something. I’m telling you: woman is at her best between the ages of six months and three years. After three, she begins her career of phases, and it’s no use trying to keep track.’

‘Phases!’ said Pennyfeather. ‘Don’t I know! You’re nothing but a father. But I’ve watched them from outside, as a neutral. That’s why I know that they’re most interesting in their late teens. Objectively I mean, of course. They’re beginning to settle seriously on their rôles. They’re reckoning up their points, in earnest for the first time; deciding whether to depend on looks, or charm, or bounce, or brains, or what they have. I was watching that young Lucy Barnard to-night: she’s a snuggler, just like her mother before her. Very popular number. I felt like warning her, though: I felt like telling her the boys don’t like it made too easy. And the Regis girl — did you happen to notice her?’

‘The thin one?’

‘My God, man, that’s no identification. She spent most of the evening sitting out with that young archæologist, and they never cracked a smile between them. Same game, different technique. Smart. That’s what they are, smart!’

‘They can’t all be smart,’ I objected.

‘Yes, they can — smarter than we are, anyway. Right from the beginning. You take almost any girl between eight and twelve or thirteen — why, she despises boys. At that age she knows that men are her inferiors; she sees the male sex as it is: vain, foolish, sentimental, clumsy, honorable, full of catch phrases about fair play — what does she care about playing the game? “Whose game? ” she says. Naturally she despises him: has n’t got sense enough to pull her hair!

‘And then, by gosh, — maybe the very next day, — instead of despising the brutes, she suddenly loves them, just as indiscriminatingly. Of course she’s not capable, at this stage, of causing a boy to “fall in love” with her any more than she’s capable of “being in love” herself with any one of them, for more than a few weeks at a time.’

‘Hence the legend of fickle woman, eh?’

‘That’s the age it’s based on, I suppose. Then she grows up, at a bound, and begins polishing up her technique — knowing she’s grown up, but not. knowing anything else. She’s just obeying an instinct which tells her to get into the scrimmage and grab herself a man. Presently, when she’s all loaded and aimed, she concentrates on some poor dolt and gives him the works: gets him goggle-eyed and panting; lures him on and on. And when she knows she’s got him — click! — she permits herself the luxury of falling in love with him. She marries him. And thereafter their chances of happiness rest on other grounds.’

‘You seem to know a lot,’ I said, ‘for a bachelor. What grounds?’

‘I use my eyes. What grounds? Well, whenever I’ve observed a happy marriage, I’ve noticed one distinctive feature: neither the wife nor the husband is in sole command. It’s a kind of standoff. If he develops into a stubborn blockhead and she gives up and lets him boss her, she loses her self-respect. If he turns into a henpecked slave, she loses her respect for him. In either case, snap go the holy bonds.’

‘Yes, a happy marriage is one in which neither is wholly in command, but in which the husband is perhaps the leeeast little bit in the world the underdog: not so obviously that other people notice it, but so they both know it themselves even if they never mention it openly. Anyway, decent men don’t want obedience from their wives. What they want is the pretense of it, to flatter their vanity; and that’s pie for any woman. One of the prominent credos among the fictioneers is that woman glories in prostrating herself before her man as a sort of sacrificial symbol of her devotion. That’s pure pork. If she loves him she glories in physical surrender, of course; but that’s a long way from surrendering her will. She’s got sense enough to keep her powder dry, all right. Don’t you agree?’ His face wore a look of placid assurance.

‘I have n’t the remotest intention of telling you whether I agree or not,’ I retorted, a little nettled. ’I’ve only had a wife about twenty years. I have n’t had your advantages.’

IV

He grinned, cynically. ‘Don’t be jealous, my lad. Well, you must have learned something in twenty years.’

I paused for a moment, to cast back over the accumulation of instinctive reflexes which, I suppose, represent the reality of what we like to call married experience. Pennyfeather took the opportunity of going to the window to air the room, which was growing a little stuffy. I suppose I have, like other men, learned something, by a gradual process of erosion and accretion. But Pennyfeather’s tone of conscious superiority annoyed me a little. The saying goes that every man knows all about women — till he meets the next one. But experience has taught me to translate this aphorism into different terms, to declare that a man who succeeds in learning all there is to know about one woman has done a good life’s work. Not that he can ever hope to know all: it’s enough if he thinks he does.

I did n’t go into these matters for Pennyfeather’s benefit, however. I fed him a dried herring. Reverting to his last question, I said: ‘I’ve learned that women can’t abide the creatures who marry their bachelor friends, and—’

‘Suppose I got married to-morrow,’ he interrupted. ‘You mean all would be over between Ellie and me? I’ve loved Ellie longer than you have.’

‘Maybe so. She’s often told me how she tried to get you. And she’s still quite fond of you in a patronizing sort of way. (Of course, she’s spoiled, now.) It’s the maternal in her. But you go ahead and get married to-morrow, and bring the bride around to see Ellie. She’s used to having you kicking around the house, but not with female attachments. You’ll see. Ellie’s generous for a woman, too.’

‘Well, I’m happy single. But speaking of the maternal, have you ever taken a good look at mothers? Have you noticed how rare it is for mothers and daughters-in-law to click? That is, unless the mother did the picking herself? And then the marriage is a flop. The maternal instinct is to blame for a lot. Women have a way of sublimating it, though. The way they sublimate their emotion for winsome young curates, for instance, by pretending that what they feel is religious emotion.’

‘Oh, come now,’ I objected.

‘Of course,’ he went on, ignoring me, ‘it all depends on the curate. But the point is that women are essentially different organisms, differently nourished and conditioned. For one thing, they are born with an interest in men which is unlike man’s interest in woman. He is more — well, important to her than she to him.’

‘Prove it.’

‘O. K. Clubs — men form clubs; they keep the gals out and like it. The converse is unimaginable.’

‘Women have clubs.’

‘Not clubs — restaurants, committee rooms, bridge tables. Real clubs are designed for sociability and nothing else. For social purposes women are n’t happy alone together. They need the men. Women are now emancipated, as the current cliché hints. They could form clubs till the cows come home if they felt like it. But they don’t want to. Of course, women have sense: they know well enough without ever going into one that most clubs are thumping bores; but that does n’t alter the fact that a real woman’s club is an impossibility.’

‘All right,’ I agreed, ‘women are different and they can’t form clubs. You used the word “emancipation” just now. What about it?’

‘Oh well,’ he said deprecatingly, ‘there’s an awful lot of rubbish talked about that. Women don’t want emancipation from men — only from the silly rules men have built up round them for their protection. Virginity, all that. Well, God knows the girls are emancipated in that direction. They can vote — much good it’s done! — and they’ve pretty well won their economic independence, too. But do you see any fundamental change in their natures, or in their tactics? I don’t. Except now they have a chance to sell their brains and abilities in the open market —’

‘Instead of only their fair white bodies?’

‘Yes. And it’s a big advance. But you know it has n’t given them greater power over men than they had before. What they want, and have always wanted, and always will, is independence of men, and power over them. The smart ones get it by using men as their instruments, same as ever. The dumb ones try to fight men with men’s own weapons, and they’re licked from the start. Most of the rot about emancipation comes from the female nitwits who try to use men’s methods, who deliberately assume masculine characteristics, and by so doing throw away their most potent weapon — their femininity. When they do that they forfeit the respect not only of all men, but also — and much more important — of the women too.’

V

Experience has taught me that when Pennyfeather gets rolling along in a flow of spurious generalities there is only one way to stop him: change the subject to himself. So I said: —

‘You know your reputation as a woman hater, I suppose?’

‘Me a woman hater?’ He seemed genuinely astonished. ‘I don’t hate women. I like ’em fine—one at a time. In crowds, I admit, they do get me down. They frighten me. Not for any designs they may have on me, — I can protect myself, — but for the way they treat each other. Ruthless! When you see one of them looking at another’s hat, you wonder that it does n’t burst into flames. And the way they push, and make straight for what they want: the ticket window, or the exit, or a better seat!

‘Maybe it’s because no woman is happy against a background of other women: each one knows that in any such gathering there can be only one prettiest, or best dressed, or one who is genuinely a lady, and she suspects she is n’t It, and is jealous of all the others who might be It. But there’s a deeper reason: their knowledge that life, for the female especially, is a competition — a battle, by gum, with no quarter. They show each other neither mercy nor pity, and don’t expect to receive any. Ravening sheep, that’s a flock of women. No, you can have ’em in crowds; I’ll take them one at a time.’

‘How about church?’ I suggested. ‘They’re nice in church.’

‘Very. Especially at weddings: all emotional and pretty best hats and white gloves. Great things, white gloves. But take ’em at a matinée! And in bars! They don’t belong in bars. They swallow a few cocktails and the result is ghastly. New Year’s Eve! God help us all!

‘No, I’m not a woman hater — but there are plenty of women I can get along without. Clubwomen. Organizers. Lion hunters. Possessive hostesses. Women who puff smoke in your face. And women on platforms! When a woman gets up on a platform — not to dance or sing or play something, but to speak — she puts herself in a false position, and all the other women present know that it is false, and despise her. You can tell by the calibre of their sweet smiles, by the way they look at her. It is false because it is imitative — of man, who invented the platform as one more outlet for his vanity.’

‘Are n’t you rather generalizing?’ I put in.

‘I am. But that’s no crime — except with women. You know the old story of the chap who told his wife that no woman could listen to a generalization without applying it to herself?’

‘Sure,’ I said, ‘who has n’t?’

‘And she said, “But darling, I can.” Anyway, remember that I’m talking about women. None of it applies to a lady, a real lady.’

‘And what, my dear Bones,’ I asked maliciously, ‘is the definition of a lady?’

He gave me a dirty look and said I knew perfectly well what a lady was. I said of course I knew — I wanted to find out whether he did. He said he was no good at definitions.

‘But,’ he went on, ‘fundamentally, I suppose, it’s a matter of inherent quality. You find ladies in all sorts of environments, in the most unexpected places; sometimes even among the very rich. I was reading a poem a few days ago — I think the author taped out the essential qualities pretty well: a gentle spirit, he said; a low voice; grace in her bearing; candor in her eyes. She must be loved by everyone, men and women, above and below her; she must have a fine man’s sense of honor, and pity, and generosity. She must be light-hearted, and unafraid; her affectations must be innocent ones, and her pride for others. There was more. For my part, I’d have her romantic, too, if she could be romantic without being sentimental. But — loveliness and gentleness and spirit! What more can you ask?’

‘How about a little acid?’ I said. ‘The lady sounds too sweet.’

‘Acid?’ Pennyfeather repeated. ‘No. But we might make her a bit of a flirt — though she’ll be that anyway, lady or no. The best way to spot her is still by the look in her eye: a tricky guide for the novice, but for the judicious a reliable one. Another is the way she treats inferiors. Young Hope Halyard told me to-night that when she was visiting some of her swell friends on Long Island they scolded her for saying “please” and “ thank you ” to the servants. When you find someone lacking in consideration for servants’ feelings, you’ve found a person of ill breeding, or an imitationEnglish snob, or both; probably both. Of course, that kind of sympathy can be carried too far. My sister Elizabeth’s entire life is governed by her solicitude for her servants; the thought of their comfort is never out of her mind. And you can tell by the way she drops her voice —’

‘Shucks,’ I said, ‘they all do that. I had a couple of aunts out day-sailing last summer, just the three of us, all alone, miles offshore. They got talking housekeeping. As soon as the word “servant” was mentioned, I’ll be damned if they both did n’t start whispering.’

Pennyfeather chuckled. ‘I know; they’re all alike.’

VI

When he spoke again it was to change the subject; and I must confess that he surprised me.

‘Did you know that I was engaged once?’ he asked casually.

‘I did not. What happened?’

‘Another chap married my fiancée.’

‘When was this?’

‘Couple of years after college. I was pretty sore at the time. But I got over it.’

He really surprised me. Apart from being aware that ho is no monk, I don’t suppose I actually know much about Pennyfeather’s relations with women. I’ve always put him down for a wily bird who has successfully protected his bachelorhood behind a cunningly jointed shield of discretion and shrewdness. His shrewdness, to my mind, however, is less a set code of conduct than an inherent nimbleness, a wariness, the spontaneous and instinctive use of expedient. I believe that he himself attributes his bachelorhood to luck; and I have heard him speak of a bit of litmus paper in his heart which turns a deep blue when exposed to a certain light in the feminine eye.

I’ve noticed, of course, for a long time, the speculative way women look at him, as if they’d like to own him — even, in some cases, when it meant trading in their current husbands for him. I knew it could n’t be for his beaux yeux, which are not beaux at all — shaggy, rather; thatched and hooded. So I naturally attribute the sex’s unanimous desire to land him to his inaccessibility and indifference. Had lie the professional charmer’s smiling, confident manner, they would politely avoid him and secretly despise him. But he gives nothing out. He keeps himself locked up. Naturally, every woman is interested in finding out whether she has the key to fit. It had never occurred to me that one of them had ever come near to succeeding — even so long ago.

All I said was: ‘I think it’s a pity she did n’t marry you. Don’t you ever get tired of giving your imitation of a crusty old bachelor?’

He thought that over for a moment, then answered my question’s implication.

‘I truly believe,’ he said slowly, ‘that if I ’d married Olivia I’d have turned out just about the way I am now. I know that sounds rather self-satisfied, but I don’t mean it like that. God knows I’ve nothing to be conceited about.’

That is true. He is too simple a man to have room for anything closer to conceit than ordinary self-respect. The complicated responsibilities of marriage — not to mention its subtle uncertainties — are notoriously agents of growth. Yet Pennyfeather’s character has matured quite naturally without benefit of these stimuli — in fact, he might pass anywhere for a comfortably married man. He has none of the typical bachelor’s dependence on the pathetic little devices they invent, in self-defense, for killing off the days, the various little hobbies and habits of the male vieille fille. He does n’t collect things; he does n’t fuss; he has avoided committees; he plays the tame cat to no woman — these are small examples of what I mean.

Thinking of these things, I said: ‘Yes, I think you’ve done a good job with the single state, none better, but—’

‘But you’d like to see me jump in with my clothes on?’

‘Well, yes. I would, rather,’ I replied defiantly. ‘And it’s time I went home.’

He got up with me. ‘I’m not fifty,’ he said, smiling. ‘I may do it yet. Think I’d make a good splash?’

‘Yes,’ I said, as I started down the stairs. ‘Quite a splash. Good night.’

‘Good night,’ he called after me, laughing. ‘But don’t worry — I know how to swim.’

He can swim, I thought to myself, as I started on foot for my house: he could jump in with his clothes on and drag a wife ashore in his teeth. And what’s more, I thought, she’d like it.