HE, SHE, AND IT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11771, 28 September 1901, Page 5 (Supplement)

HE, SHE, AND IT.

" What is the matter with the men?" asked a writer in the Free Lance some weeks, back. He gave various reasons to account for the presence of so many bachelors among us, but I would suggest another cause for their avoidance of matrimony. They are far too pleasantly engrossed in playing the part of attache to fascinating young married women whose husbands are, it may be, too busy to see what is going on or too indifferent to try to find out.

The allegiance of an unmarried man to a married woman need not necessarily be productive of harm. . There are women whc can gather round them a court of admiring bachelors, among whom they dispense, their favours equally. They can honestly say, with one of Miss Fowler's characters, "I always let my men marry!" and this sorb of connection probably has a civilising effect upon the bachelor who is detached from family ties, and is living in barracks, flats, or rooms with no refined womanly element in bis life. THE BACHELOR CHUM. But there are other cases fraught with danger, if not tragedy. Take a young married woman who has begun to find her life unsatisfying., She has not come quite happily out of the stage of disillusion that too often follows marriage. She wants a new interest, and meets the bachelor, who seems likely to supply what is lacking. She claims him as an affinity, and has the game in her own hands. She'gels her husband to call on the bachelor, and then she does the rest. Ho becomes her chum, her daily and devoted attendant. She can. and does «ffer him hospitality. She feeds him, amuses him, smokes with him. He has no responsibility, nothing is expected of him but to take the good things offered, and any return he may wish to make is amply represented by gifts of flowers or sweets, and the willing homage of personal service. He is very happy. There is no ogre of " intentions" or " settlements" overshadowing the pleasant Intercourse as would be the case with an unmarried girl. He knows Mrs Charming can never be anything more than a chum ; but " she's such a jolly little woman." " There's no end of go in her, and she cheers a fellow up when he is down on his luck." So he starts with a delightful sense of well-being. She is enchanted with her new toy. " Benedict is so busy making money for her to spend, or so absorbed in his dogs and horses, that he is no companion for her." The bachelor is always there when she wants him, and "he is such a nice boy!" " It is so much better for him to be with me than with that horrid Miss Dash, or spending his money on a. star from the halls." THEY DRIFT. So they both begin with good intentions, they neither of them mean any harm, and they drift—drift into what? This sort of connection by no means always ends in the unsavoury purlieus of the Divorce Court; but for all that the best part of three lives may be spoilt. The wife and the bachelor are thrown so much together, they find so much in common. Opportunity and propinquity work wonders. There is the delicious suggestion of forbidden fruit to stimulate his attentions, the knowledge that he is fiee to go elsewhere to make her the more anxious to hold him. He is always ready to take her to the theatre, whereas Benedict is kept late at the office or has gone for a couple of days' shooting. The bachelor can invariably get a day off for the —what those days cost him he only knows later on—but Benedict thinks he did his share before marriage, and fails to realise that a woman does not get tired of lover-liko attentions. So the. two that belong to each other have a third between them, and that third is only there on sufferance, not by right. He discovers, when too late, that his whole heart is given to the woman who can ony come to him from the side of her dead husband or through the muddy waters of shame. She knows, as every woman must know, what she has done, and, with, sorry playfulness, tells him " he must go and marry some nice girl." She knows what his answer will be, or she would not. have dared to say the words, for she cannot part with him vet. And so they drift. THE CLIMAX. Benedict's position is a difficult one even if he suspects how the land really lies. He is probably a long time finding it out. He does not realise that another man can so easily taks his place in his wife's life so long as be is still at the head of his own table. When some kind friend tries to open his eyes his first impulse is to punch the gossip's head ; but when the truth does begin to dawn upon him he has only two rather unsatisfactory lines open to him. He ! must, either insult his wife and the bachelor \ by assuming that things are going too far, or he must close his eyes and let things drift. In the latter case, unless he seeks consolation elsewhere, his friends will take him for a fool. The wife knows all this and scores again. Th? faintest hint from him rouses a, storm of injured innocence, and with a man's hatred of a scene he avoids the subject for the future. It is when a woman thus gratifies her insatiable vanity by the capture of a heart for which she can give no honest return, when she prevents a man from finding happiness with a woman who is free to crown his life with the gift of herself, that she is doing a grievous wrong to her husband, her lover, and some unknown woman. She is, moreover, sowing seeds in the mind of the bachelor that will bear ugly fruit for her kind. She is lowering his standard of womanhood. She. is teaching him to be cynical and suspicious till he will refuse to believe ill the existence of a modem " Caesar's wife." She is a greater danger to social life than one who is openly defying the moral code, for her methods are more insinuating and her influence more extended. JIABEIBD AND UNMARRIED. What chance has the unmarried girl against her? The wife has experience freedom of action, an apparent security of position, and, at first, asks nothing in return. The girl is trammelled by conventionality. She may not take the initiative, and a man, who is a man, would not like it if she did— save in quite exceptional cases. She cannot ask him to the house alone ; she may not be seen constantly in his society without running the gauntlet of gossip, and it is more often the fear of such, gossip reaching his ears than its effect on herself that holds her back.

The money question is another score for the married woman. The bachelor cannot afford to take a wife ; he must wait for success, or promotion, or possibly dead men's shoes. He could not give nice little presents to an unmarried girl without raising hopes in her heart or the parental mind which he may not be able to realise ; but he can, and docs, spend bis spare cash—probably a good deal more—on dainty trifles for another man's wife, because he knows she has someone else to buy her frocks and pav her household bills.

So the married woman has her way. The husband to whom she has pledged her vows comes in very usefully to provide means of enjoyment for her and the bachelor. It would seem as if she had merely used marriage as a stepping-stone to pleasures in which her husband has no part. She wants to be flattered and amused ; the bachelor is there to do it. The husband, as we have seen, is not the master of the situation, and the girls remain unmarried.

Who can blame them when they strike out a line for themselves? And if they are a little too marked in their indifference to men, may it not be from a healthy reluctance to accept the poor offering of the married woman's attache, who, perchance, has at length followed the example of the longsuffering worm? Free Lance.