Victorian England - Articles and Stories

THE RACE FOR WEALTH. CHAPTER XXIII.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "GEORGE GEITH," "MAXWELL DREWITT," &c.

CHAPTER XXIII.

PREPARING FOR The PARTY.

There is little originality in the observation that men are not like women ; that, in their virtues and vices, their talents, modes of thought, rules of action, powers of mind, greatnesses and meannesses, they are wide as the poles asunder.

The remark has been made over and over again : for anything we can tell to the contrary, Adam may have ventured to intimate as much to Eve, and the patriarchs very probably were as well aware of this " diverseness " as those who repeat the truism (seeming to think it a new discovery) at the present day.

But for all that, most women will persist in judging of men's feelings by their own ; and many men think women ought to look out over the plains of life from the male side of the hill : and therefore, as women as well as men read these pages, it is necessary once again to state a fact which people are so apt to forget, in order that ladies may understand how it came to pass there was actually no jealousy in those early days, of which I am writing, between Lawrence Barbour and Percy Forbes.

Men are not like women ! If Mr. Jones start a dog-cart, with lamps complete — to borrow the advertising formula — if he purchase a high-stepping horse, and having ornamented the animal with silver-mounted harness, he adventure to drive himself to business or the station, Brown does not instantly detest his neighbour and " hope he can honestly afford it." Suppose, on the contrary, Brown makes a lucky hit, and adds a new wing to his house, or buys his wife a brougham, or takes a mansion down the North-Western lino, Robinson never thinks of feeling his friend has committed the " unpardonable sin," though he maybe twice as rich and prosperous as himself. Let Mrs. Jones, however, refurnish her drawing-room ; let her daughter be provided by a too partial parent with one of Collard's Repetition Trichord grand pianos, on which to fight out her daily battle with Thalberg and Czerny; let Mrs. Brown engage a man-servant, or Mrs. Robinson drive out with a pair, to return the Hon. Mrs. Blank's call, and there is a row in the rookery forthwith.

The ladies, God bless them, are apt to be a little envious at times about trifles, or things which seem trifles from a man's point of view, and it is difficult for them to under stand how, so long as Mr. Jones does not interfere with Mr. Brown, so long as he does |y not take away his clients or meddle with his customers, the latter gentleman should be so "mean-spirited" as rather to admire his "turn-out," and be glad of a lift in it when occasion serves.

There is a grand indifference about husbands, which seems wonderful in the eyes of the softer sex ; they have a way of neglecting the business of their neighbours, and of at tending to their own, that cannot fail to be aggravating to the female mind. If they are able to make a handsome income they do not care whether their brother-in-law be "coining" or not. Of course, there are exceptions to all rules — Haman and Mordecai, Saul and David, for instance ; but these exceptions only prove the rule. Men are not like women; for which reason, when Percy Forbes left the west, and took up his abode due east, when he invested his thousands, and bought some substantial household gods, and shrined them in one of the sweetest spots a man need desire to inhabit — Lawrence Barbour did not retire to Mrs. Pratting's first floor disconsolate ; he neither refused food nor kicked the Skye terrier, nor blew up the foreman in Distaff Yard, nor quarrelled with Mr. Sondes, nor sought a convenient excuse for weeping bitterly, nor for indulging in a fit of hysterics. He was not jealous of Percy Forbes, he did not grudge him his legacy, he did not detest him because his residence was the perfection of a dwelling, because he was a beggar no longer but a man likely, if he stuck to business, to get on well in the world and become in time rich.