Latter Day Helens

The Ninth of a Series of Impressions of Modern Feminine Types: Niobe, Vierge Forte

W. L. GEORGE

MAN, says Nietzsche, is for war, and woman for recreation of the warrior. Thus it comes to be that the history of a man is the tale of his struggles, while the history of a woman is the story of her marriage. Niobe's story is not that. It relates only why she did not marry. And it is not a story at all. When one considers Niobe, especially if one does this in a favourable light, one is surprised, for she is tall, slim, has red hair, green eyes, all that is required for a life of orchids and tiger skins. Only, when the light ceases to be favourable, as must happen to all lights, one perceives that the red of that hair cousins the colour of sand, that the skin is dry, that the freckles which once brought out its whiteness now blend with a tint recalling paste. There are lines upon the neck, where the skin has the texture of sugar, while the hands are akin to claws, except that they do not grip.

Niobe is forty, and it is strange to see her with her sister Claudia, who is forty-five. For Claudia has been married for twenty years; where Niobe shows wrinkles, Claudia exhibits folds; for the dryness of the blossom pressed in a book, Claudia substitutes the humid rosiness of the adipose life. So, when people see them together, they would take Niobe for Claudia's aunt. She is an aunt. Niobe always was an aunt whom no one ever called Auntie.

Some think that Niobe has a history, for this they always charge upon those of whom nothing is known. It does not occur to them that often nothing is known because there is nothing to know. Niobe has not had even her share of the history of mankind which Anatole France describes as "follies, miseries and crimes". She has stooped to no follies, has ignored her miseries, and only by ihe side of Claudia ever considered crime. During her girlhood she lived between two shadows which fell across her, and darkened what might nave been her fu^jre. Her elder sister, Claudia, was pursued by men who admired her face, and wished to kiss it; her younger sister, Hera, was pursued by men who enjoyed her wit. Niobe was a bridesmaid at both their weddings.

Niobe's Destiny

IT could not be helped, for Niobe was predestined to spinsterhood as some are predestined to divorce. She must wither while others bloomed. At her birth a good fairy gave her a pleasant face, intelligence, and the capacity to know that green ribbons ill-beseem a pink frock.

All would have been well if a bad fairy had not added: "She shall be a really nice girl". Niobe was a nice girl and this was her ruin. She had everything with which to please except the knowledge how to do it. In other words she lacked charm. She did not know the airs that entrance, the retreats which incite, the advances which terrify, the lies that soften truth, the truth-telling which concedes, the confidence which stimulates, the reserve which stimulates still more, the taste for rouge required by one, the taste for soap demanded by another, the drooping eyelashes beloved of the roue, and the bold glow of eye which ensnares the boy. Niobe had had too good an education. She had had so good an education that she was notable for the things she did not know, more than for those which she did.

Which does not mean that Niobe did not take her share in male admiration, for male admiration is akin, if not to the tiger seeking whom it may devour, yet to a devout worshipper in need of an altar on which to lay its garland. Niobe was admired because men must admire something, and they admired Niobe when there was nobody else about. If Niobe had been wrecked with Robinson Crusoe, all would have gone very well, provided of course that no Woman Friday were cast away upon the island. Her capacity to attract, and her incapacity to hold, made up in Niobe's life a portentous mystery: it was the only mystery there.

She did not discover this until she was thirty, and it was then she became fastidious. Fastidiousness is the umbrella of sterile emotion. It is the father of "might have been", and it never gives life to "may be". For Niobe was proud. This quality was enhanced by the fact that she had nothing to be proud of, for the pride of woman behaves like the bear, which in winter lives upon its feet.

Never having been sought in marriage, she. developed disdain for the institution. She saw the evil from which she had escaped, and yet failed in gratitude for the mercy vouchsafed to her. She felt that nobody would do. One was so short as to make her absurd; one so tall as to be inaccessible without the help of a chair. One too rich and swollen in the head; another too poor and a born fortune hunter. So, one by one, Niobe set them aside, which was quite as well as no man had definitely placed himself in the foreground. This greatly stimulated Niobe's pride. She found that woman lives not by bread alone, but also by self-complacency.

Aggressive Self-Sufficiency

AT the same time the humility which in all of us runs in double harness with selfsatisfaction developed into aggressiveness. Niobe found herself more and more inclined to assertions. Men especially exasperated her; by degrees she replied to their dutiful approaches only by "I don't think so", "Nonsense", and "Not at all". Pale Daphnis, at a dinner party, discovering her interest in education, supposed she was a teacher. Niobe detonated: "I'm a professor", she hissed

across the crystallized violets. "I suppose you call me a teacher because you despise me". Pale Daphnis flushed and held out a basket of ginger: he should have chosen a more soothing sweet.

By degrees, however, Niobe has realized that she is what she is, and that this is something to be. She is not so aggressive as she was, for she is more assured. She has embraced the evil of life, and made it into virtue. Her judgments are still crisp, and she can declare with emphasis that the moon is made of cream cheese. This is not denied, for very few care about the moon. Their silence strengthens Niobe: she may not care, but still she predominates. Only, one has to justify oneself: to this end, though Niobe has a weak heart, and turns her toes out when she runs, she more and more assumes the weatherbeaten air, the loud voice, the brisk walk, the swinging arm of one who prefers bat, bail, shot gun and dog to powder puff that clouds, and lipstick which illustrates. She has almost developed virility.

Thus it is not extraordinary that Niobe has turned away from the companionship of men and found in women one that is more congenial. On the whole she prefers single women, with whom she has a fellowship in good fortune, and whom she can turn to an intelligent glee in their happy situation. She gave a tea party once to talk against the brutes, which did not trouble the brutes much because they did not come. Married women she sympathizes with, and so far as she can she encourages divorce. Once or twice she has laid the last rose leaf of grievance upon the cold water that fills the matrimonial tumbler, and so made it overflow.

Retrospection Without Regret

ONE must, however, truthfully acknowledge that Niobe suffers lapses. Sometimes, when she is not sure of herself, when a man looks at her and then suddenly away, she mistakes him. She has a lapse; she becomes one vast lapse; she giggles; her voice goes up; she induces the man to talk about himself. Later she realizes with a thrill of shame how low she has sunk, how she has given herself over to nature and the horrid tricks it plays. She has abased herself before man, and he has not returned the compliment. She is vile.

Later she emerges from the depression, eats a pound of steak to demonstrate to herself that she is a tartar; drinks a pint of claret to show that she has a head; whacks her dog to show that her spirit is stern; puts on-a stiff collar, after finding her collar stud under the chest of drawers and cursing it in proper male style. Then she strides out to the office of the Society for the Prevention of Charity with a firm determination to make the world smile on the wrong side of its face.

Sometimes to a confidante, who is generally a sycophant, Niobe talks of the men she might have had if she had chosen. They are a varied gallery in her imagination she owns more scalps than did Bluebeard. There was the man who handed her plum cake with an air of meaning; the man who danced with her three times the night that girls were rather scarce; and the man who not only walked with her to the railway station, but travelled in the same train and got out at the station preceding by only a mile the one at which he generally alighted.

Accident and slight words, in those moods they grow important. They enter the vast realm of "might have been": they make part of day dreams. Sometimes, when she is alone, Niobe lives again the slight past. Then she is great, beautiful, adored; she is a queen; or even places orange blossom in her hair. Nobody knows this. Niobe would be ashamed. In her life there is no room for dreams; and yet as time goes on the dream shall be more insistent. She will surrender to it more and more energy, and in its unreality life may become sweeter as it takes upon itself the gentle contours of a vision.