FullReads

“Schopenhauer,” and he wrinkled his brows and glanced half whimsically down the page. “I never can get used to a woman reading that stuff–and in French, at that. If you took it up to perfect your German there would be some sense in it.”

Mrs. Shattuck did not reply. When a moment later, she did speak it was to ignore his remark utterly, and ask:

“The Kaiser Wilhelm got off in good season this morning–speaking of German things?”

“Oh, yes,” was the indifferent reply, “at ten o’clock, quite promptly.”

“I suppose she was comfortable, and that you explained why I could not come?”

“Certainly. One of your beastly head-aches. She understood.”

“Thank you.”

Shattuck yawned lazily, and changed the subject, which did not seem to interest him.

“Do you mean to say,” he asked, still turning the leaves of the book he held, “that this pleases you?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well, amuses you? Instructs you, if you like that better?”

“No, I mean to say simply–since you insist–that he speaks the truth, and there are some–even among women–who must know the truth and abide by it.”

“Well, thank Heaven,” said the man, pulling at his cigar, “that most women are more emotional than intelligent–as Nature meant them to be.”

Mrs. Shattuck examined her daintily polished nails, rubbed them carefully on the palm of her hand, as women have a trick of doing, and then polished them on her lace handkerchief, before she said, “Yes, it is a pity that we are not all like that,–a very great pity–for our own sakes. Yet, unluckily, some of us will think.”

“But the thinking woman is so rarely logical, so unable to take life impersonally, that Schopenhauer does her no good. He only fills her mind with errors, mistrust, unhappiness.”

“You men always argue that way with women–as if life were not the same for us as for you. Pass me the book. I wager that I can open it at random, and that you cannot deny the truth of the first sentence I read.”

He passed her the book.

She took it, laid it open carelessly on her knees, bending the covers far back that it might stay open, and she gave her finger tips a final rub with her handkerchief before she looked at the page. She paused a bit after she glanced at it, then picked up the book and read: “‘ L’homme est par Nature porte a l’inconstance dans l’amour, la femme a la fidelite. L’amour de l’homme baisse d’une facon sensible a partir de l’instant ou il a obtenu satisfaction: il semble que toute autre femme ait plus d’attrait que celle qu’il possede.‘”

She laid the book down, but she did not look at him.

“Rubbish,” was his remark.

“Yes, I know. You men always find it so easy to say ‘rubbish’ to all natural truths which you prefer not to discuss.”

“Well, my dear Naomi, it seems to me that if you are to advocate Schopenhauer, you must go the whole length with him. The fault is in Nature, and you must accept it as inevitable, and not kick against it.”

“I don’t kick against Nature–as you put it–I kick against civilization, which makes laws regardless of Nature, which deliberately shuts its eyes to all natural truths in regard to the relations of men to women,–and is therefore forced to continually wink to avoid confessing its folly.”

“Civilization seems to me to have done the best it could with a very difficult problem. It has not actually allowed different codes of morals to men and women, and it may have had to wink on that account. Right there, in your Schopenhauer, you have a primal reason, that is, if you chose to follow your philosopher to the extent of actually believing that Nature has deliberately, from the beginning, protected women against that sin of which so much is made, and to which she has, as deliberately, for economic reasons of her own, tempted men.”