Propositions and proposals

SYLVIA LYON

The predatory male on the hoof, as seen by Bianca, who has learned to tabulate both the enemy and the strategy

B Despite my having reserved a table for lunch, immediately upon my return to Paris, it was with difficulty that I not only found Bianca but that we found our table, so crowded was the Ritz, cote Cambon.

"1 hope, Bianca," I said, "that during my absence you have been behaving yourself."

"You hope nothing of the sort," said Bianca sharply, "men are all alike."

"When girls say such things," I said, "it usually means that they have been acquiring new beaux. Let me know the worst."

"The worst," began Bianca agreeably, "was a man whom I will refer to as Henry, The Wild Man. It bad to be my luck to meet him this vear. when be considered it to be fashionable to be 'German.' He asked me, William, to call him Heinschen, and be bad a waltzy glaze in his eyes, and talked about the old days in Vienna, which made me laugh because he must then have been aged two. Henry thought himself God's Anointed, the original Contact Man. 'What you need, Liebesgesicht. to make a real artist out of you,' he recommended, 'is to have an affair with me.' 'Don't make me laugh—my lips are chapped,' I pleaded. 'Laugh, that's it, laugh and show your ignorance,' he simply snarled, closing his eyes and breathing heavily (so fetching I. Henry took three careful steps backward, as taught in the old Viennese dancing-schools for backfisch, then leaped forward, clasping me delicately in the manner of a steam-shovel and snorting down my neck. 'Oh. come on, lx; a woman,' Henry cajoled, 'come on, be a woman,' as though until that moment 1 had been a bicycle.

"In order to break down what he considered my maidenly reserve, he discarded, for originality's sake, the usual list of famous amorous women of history, limiting his citations to celebrated women of today. 'My friend Patrick Gydisdorf Mope, the great polo-player and bacteriologist, told me,' declared Henry, 'that he would be happy to die tomorrow, if only because he had had a loveaffair with the Crown Princess of Zlop.' 'Nice lot of friends you have,' I snapped, 'who tell.'

"Seeing he had made a mistake, Henry made more, lie is so conceited that he is proud of anything he makes, even hiccoughs. In order to encourage me he deplored the virtue of every woman on earth, excepting of course, his own female antecedents and relatives. I ventured a list of various women who have made a success of their lives despite their chastity, but Henry only shut his eyes and jaw with an I-could-tell-but-won't air, hoping I would deduce that they had all been his mistresses. He then gazed at me solemnly and said that I should have an affair with him, then I should settle down and marry somebody else and have lots of children. If I didn't, he advised me cheerfully, 1 would go insane. I told him that I would rather take Kruschen salts every morning, instead, and he went into a perfect rage, William. Then right out the door went Henry, and he wouldn't speak to me for weeks. But yesterday when I met him at a cocktail-party he laughed hollowly and said. 'Dear little Bianca. I was only fooling. I wanted to see what you'd do.' . . . And then, William," proceeded Bianca after a pause, "then there w'as Samuel."

"A man named Samuel," I said, "does not sound very dangerous."

■ "But Samuel's danger," said Bianca, "was the insidious, the retroactive kind, working like a slow poison." Bianca ceased suddenly, clapping her hand to her mouth childishly. "What is the matter," I asked. "Behind our table," she murmured, "sits a member of the Medicis family. One must be careful. . . . Samuel, as I was saying, embodies the spirit of sacrifice and has helped himself to an option on the eternity of things. Fifteen minutes after we had met for the first time, he said, with the assurance of a statistician, that we had known each other for years. The next time he said he would be willing to marry me if I could wait until he had established himself as a ghost-writer. In all innocence I asked him if that meant he wrote spirit messages for people like Sir Oliver Lodge, and Samuel said that anybody so ignorant as myself would not be much aid to his career, in fact that one remark would delay our wedding at least one year. I went to a cinema with him once or twice and he held my hand tenderly, while thinking. I am convinced, that if he were not a gentleman lie would seduce me. It never dawned upon Samuel that it would be unladylike of me to take advantage of him. Oh, Lord."

"Mustn't say things like that," I chided.

"Indeed no, you are right, William. The Duchesse de Levis-Mirepoix might be listening. Must never say, in Paris, Oh Lord, or Oh God, or anything like that. Don't you know. William, that the Levis-Mirepoix descend from the tribe of Levis in the Bible from which the Blessed Mary descended? Every night when the Duchesse de Levis-Mirepoix says her prayers she addresses herself to 'Ma Cousine'. I am not being sacrilegious, William. I am just showing you what a small, swell world we live in. My next cavalier w'as Alexander. . . ."

"Careful, Bianca," I interrupted with sarcasm, "there might be . . ."

Bianca laughed. "Only interior decorators," said she, "are touchy on the subject of Alexander. . . . My Alexander was a Cold Man."

"Ah," I exclaimed.

"Ah, nothing," Bianca retorted, "all, ha. He was the diamond-in-the-rough-and-tumble species, but a canny fellow indeed who spoke of everything but love until we stepped into a taxi. After a few moments' silence be announced, with great intensity, that he was Cold, and let one arm fall heavily across my shoulders. To his astonishment, I remained unresponsive, politely suggesting that if he was cold he could shut the cab-window, I didn't mind. There followed another silence, then he said ferociously, 'What are you thinking about?' 'Nothing,' I said, in surprise. 'You are lying,' he contradicted hoarsely, grinding his teeth. A second or two later Alexander reiterated, with a pitiful whine in his voice, that he was cold. Nothing so alarms me as an appeal to my maternal instinct and I sprang forward wondering, with some bitterness, how many women, all over the world at this moment were having bestowed upon them the status of fur rugs. Once more I rejected the cosy bliss of his arms or a kiss from Cupid himself, reincarnated in this stark brute at my side. Then Alexander said with the loathsome voice of one who understands, 'You think you're happy but you're not.' 'You are right.' I said sadly, 'I am drying up, I am dying on the vine.'

B " "Why, Bianca,' he said, with that deep 'cello note proper on such occasions, 'that was just what I was going to say. You must be one of those girls who think.' "Oh 1 don't exactly think,' l said modestly, 'I merely have a good memory. So helpful. You didn't know it, did you, but I was the girl who helped the Duchesse de Tonnerre und Blitzen to write her Memoirs of a Woman with Amnesia' "

"Bianca Forest," I said, "this is too much."

"That's just what Alexander said, as he looked at the taxi-meter. But please, William," added Bianca, wide-eyed, "don't get up and leave me flat, as lie did. Although that, in this case, would have its points. If you left me to pay the check, people would think me an heiress and I would have so many proposals I wouldn't know what to do."

"You have accounted so far. Bianca," I said, "for two propositions and one proposal. Who else was, or is, there?"

"Walter, my Clinical Case," supplied Bianca with a readiness that dismayed me. "Although Walter can barely tell the difference between strawberries and electricity, be has a label, a tiroir for everything. If I cry at a cinema, I am a masochist. If 1 blush at anything at all, Walter says that I have horrible inhibitions, verified by my passion for Savora mustard and Worcestershire sauce and my admission that I am able to sleep well on trains. If somebody says I am, and look young for my age, Walter says it is because I am a hyperthyroid. After one hour in his company my nerves and mirror tell me that I have just lost most of my thyroids.

"He came to see me one day, handed me some very comme-il-faut roses and said, quoting Gertrude Stein. 'A rose is a rose, is a rose, is a rose.'

" 'Well, that's settled,' I said.

"'What's settled?' lie asked, very astonished.

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(Continued from page 46)

" 'The rose-question, dear-heart,' I replied.

" 'What a minx you are,' he said, 'I feared you had guessed I was about to propose marriage to you. I was afraid roses might be too revealing.' 'Perhaps,' I suggested, 'if you had handed me a bomb I might have thought otherwise, or perhaps I might not have had time to think at all.' 'Women are really impossible,' he said, 'taking things so lightly.' Walter then smiled, (he precious, and said unconvincingly, 'Nowadays men marry for intellectual companionship.'

"All I could think," laughed Bianca, "was that if I married him I would die of loneliness within a week. But he rattled on, saying that I would he an inspiring wife for him. 'If you think that, Walter,' I told him, 'it is because you have delusions of grandeur.'

"To hear me turn his own table of conversational contents upon him so upset him that his features crumpled and dissolved. 'Delusions, delusions, indeed,' he said angrily, and stalked off and bought an Isotta-Fraschini, just to show me. ... I spoiled all his fun, of course, by telling him that the upkeep of such a car was far less than the upkeep of a wife, before he could say so.

"The next," proceeded Bianca, "was Hugo the Reformer, who also wanted to make an Honest Woman out of me. Because I live alone, he was convinced that I don't. I met Hugo at a dinner at Lady Wallop's, and he eagerly asked me if I would have tea or lunch or dinner with him one day soon. When I said yes he looked at me with a certain air of mistrust, demanding if I was one of those girls who are booked weeks in advance. When I said no, my rating fell, but he chivalrously offered to take me home. As he was about to call a cab, I told him not to bother: I love to walk. In the lamplit street I could see confusion in his eyes: was I really given to nocturnal exercise, or was I unspoiled and considerate and only accustomed to going out with Left Bankers? No sooner had we advanced ten steps than I caused complete bewilderment by saying I lived next door to the Wallops—so convenient.

"A cautious week later Hugo telephoned and asked me what I was doing that evening. When I said I was doing nothing his voice became impregnated with charity and he asked me to have dinner with him. I said I didn't want to go out, but that he should come over to have just a little talk before dinner. William you should have seen his face when he saw that the reason I didn't want to go out was because I was in bed, and that there were four or five people in the room, including my doctor. He left, of course, with the doctor. Hugo not only still had his doubts about me, but was devoted to them. He had been leading a wild life too, he said and what he wanted to do was to buy a farm miles from any neighbor and on a had road at that and with no telephone and to settle down on it with me. He added that he didn't suppose I was vierge but he would forgive ine. I was literally dumbfounded and he took my silence for guilt. Looking like the Last Judgment in person he asked, 'Tell me, Bianca, have there, have there been many?' 'Hundreds of them,' I said carelessly, and yawned. Which dispensed with Hugo."

I had to laugh, but warned Bianca against such dangerous jokes. "If I did not have to go away next week on a month's business trip in Roumania," I said, "I would stay in Paris to keep an eye on you."

"You would have to he cock-andwall-eyed to do that," said Bianca evenly, "because a childhood beau is arriving on tomorrow's boat, and just this morning two Italians left letters of introduction on me. They are . . ."

"Chasseur," I interrupted, and asked for a telegraph-blank. Within a few moments I had despatched a wire cancelling my trip. When I told Bianca what I had done, she laughed and said, "You are a responsibility too, William. I must confess the truth: my childhood beau is arriving but the Italians are products of my imagination."

"Why did you do that?" I demanded sternly.

"I was wary of your destination. Roumania, indeed. Oh no, I thought, my little William doesn't go there, where business is pleasure. In fact," she chuckled, "I have often wondered why on earth they have office-lniildings. Of course," she added, "you can always cancel that telegram. It probably will never be delivered anyhow, and if you make a complaint they will blame it on Hungary."

"Even your dragging in politics," I said, "won't make me change my mind again. I am staying in Paris and I am going to reserve this table for every Monday and Friday, half-past one."

"Such a nice time-table," said Bianca with her most angelic smile. As she lighted her cigarette writh her "To the King" air, I said, "I often wonder, Bianca, what you say to other men about me."

"Nothing at all, you darling," she answered, "because you have never proposed anything at all, you idiot."