A Woman of No Importance

most modern men. I wonder we women stand it as well as we do. Lady Stutfield Yes; men’s good temper shows they are not so sensitive as we are, not so finely strung. It makes a great barrier often between husband and wife, does it not? But I would so much like to know what was the wrong thing Mr. Allonby did. Mrs. Allonby Well, I will tell you, if you solemnly promise to tell everybody else. Lady Stutfield Thank you, thank you. I will make a point of repeating it. Mrs. Allonby When Ernest and I were engaged, he swore to me positively on his knees that he had never loved anyone before in the whole course of his life. I was very young at the time, so I didn’t believe him, I needn’t tell you. Unfortunately, however, I made no enquiries of any kind till after I had been actually married four or five months. I found out then that what he had told me was perfectly true. And that sort of thing makes a man so absolutely uninteresting. Lady Hunstanton My dear! Mrs. Allonby Men always want to be a woman’s first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about things. What we like is to be a man’s last romance. Lady Stutfield I see what you mean. It’s very, very beautiful. Lady Hunstanton My dear child, you don’t mean to tell me that you won’t forgive your husband because he never loved anyone else? Did you ever hear such a thing, Caroline? I am quite surprised. Lady Caroline Oh, women have become so highly educated, Jane, that nothing should surprise us nowadays, except happy marriages. They apparently are getting remarkably rare. Mrs. Allonby Oh, they’re quite out of date. Lady Stutfield Except amongst the middle classes, I have been told. Mrs. Allonby How like the middle classes! Lady Stutfield Yes⁠—is it not?⁠—very, very like them. Lady Caroline If what you tell us about the middle classes is true, Lady Stutfield, it redounds greatly to their credit. It is much to be regretted that in our rank of life the wife should be so persistently frivolous, under the impression apparently that it is the proper thing to be. It is to that I attribute the unhappiness of so many marriages we all know of in society. Mrs. Allonby Do you know, Lady Caroline, I don’t think the frivolity of the wife has ever anything to do with it. More marriages are ruined nowadays by the common sense of the husband than by anything else. How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly rational being? Lady Hunstanton My dear! Mrs. Allonby Man, poor, awkward, reliable, necessary man belongs to a sex that has been rational for millions and millions of years. He can’t help himself. It is in his race. The History of Woman is very different. We have always been picturesque protests against the mere existence of common sense. We saw its dangers from the first. Lady Stutfield Yes, the common sense of husbands is certainly most, most trying. Do tell me your conception of the Ideal Husband. I think it would be so very, very helpful. Mrs. Allonby The Ideal Husband? There couldn’t be such a thing. The institution is wrong. Lady Stutfield The Ideal Man, then, in his relations to us. Lady Caroline He would probably be extremely realistic. Mrs. Allonby The Ideal Man! Oh, the Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions. He should always say much more than he means, and always mean much more than he says. Lady Hunstanton But how could he do both, dear? Mrs. Allonby He should never run down other pretty women. That would show he had no taste, or make one suspect that he had too much. No; he should be nice about them all, but say that somehow they don’t attract him. Lady Stutfield Yes, that is always very, very pleasant to hear about other women. Mrs. Allonby If we ask him a question about anything, he should give us an answer all about ourselves. He should invariably praise us for whatever qualities he knows we haven’t got. But he should be pitiless, quite pitiless, in reproaching us for the virtues that we have never dreamed of possessing. He should never believe that we know the use of useful things. That would be unforgiveable. But he should shower on us everything we don’t want. Lady Caroline As far as I can see, he is to do nothing but pay bills and compliments. Mrs. Allonby He should persistently compromise us in public, and treat us with absolute respect when we are alone. And yet he should be always ready to have a perfectly terrible scene, whenever we want one, and to become miserable, absolutely miserable, at a moment’s notice, and to overwhelm us with just reproaches in less than twenty minutes, and to be positively violent at the end of half an hour, and to leave us forever at a quarter to eight, when we have to go and dress for dinner. And when, after that, one has seen him for really the last time, and he has refused to take back the little things he has given one, and promised never to communicate with one again, or to write one any foolish letters, he should be perfectly brokenhearted, and telegraph to one all day long, and send one little notes every half-hour by a private hansom, and dine quite alone at the club, so that everyone should know how unhappy he was. And after a whole dreadful week, during which one has gone about everywhere with one’s husband, just to show how absolutely lonely one was, he may be given a third last parting, in the evening, and then, if his conduct has been