The dinner had been unusually long and the summer evening
warm. During the wait before the dancing began I must have
dropped asleep in the dark corner of the piazza where I had
installed myself, to smoke my cigar, away from the other men and
their tiresome chatter of golf and racing. Through the open
window groups of women could be seen in the ball-room, and the
murmur of their conversation floated out, mingling with the
laughter of the men.
Suddenly, in that casual way peculiar to dreams, I found
myself conversing with a solemn young Turk, standing in all the
splendor of fez and stambouline beside my chair.
“Pardon, Effendi,” he was murmuring.
“Is this an American ball? I was asked at nine
o’clock; it is now past eleven. Is there not some
mistake?”
“None,” I answered. “When a hostess
puts nine o’clock on her card of invitation she expects her
guests at eleven or half-past, and would be much embarrassed to
be taken literally.”
As we were speaking, our host rose. The men, reluctantly
throwing away their cigars, began to enter the ball-room through
the open windows. On their approach the groups of women
broke up, the men joining the girls where they sat, or inviting
them out to the lantern-lit piazza, where the couples retired to
dim, palm-embowered corners.
“Are you sure I have not made a mistake?” asked my
interlocutor, with a faint quiver of the eyelids. “It
is my intention, while travelling, to remain faithful to my
harem.”
I hastened to reassure him and explain that he was in an
exclusive and reserved society.
“Indeed,” he murmured incredulously.
“When I was passing through New York last winter a lady was
pointed out to me as the owner of marvellous jewels and vast
wealth, but with absolutely no social position. My
informant added that no well-born woman would receive her or her
husband.
“It’s foolish, of course, but the handsome woman
with the crown on sitting in the centre of that circle, looks
very like the woman I mean. Am I right?”
“It’s the same lady,” I answered,
wearily. “You are speaking of last year. No one
could be induced to call on the couple then. Now we all go
to their house, and entertain them in return.”
“They have doubtless done some noble action, or the
reports about the husband have been proved false?”
“Nothing of the kind has taken place. She’s
a success, and no one asks any questions! In spite of that,
you are in a society where the standard of conduct is held higher
than in any country of Europe, by a race of women more virtuous,
in all probability, than has yet been seen. There is not a
man present,” I added, “who would presume to take, or
a woman who would permit, a liberty so slight even as the resting
of a youth’s arm across the back of her chair.”
While I was speaking, an invisible orchestra began to sigh out
the first passionate bars of a waltz. A dozen couples rose,
the men clasping in their arms the slender matrons, whose smiling
faces sank to their partners’ shoulders. A blond
mustache brushed the forehead of a girl as she swept by us to the
rhythm of the music, and other cheeks seemed about to touch as
couples glided on in unison.
The sleepy Oriental eyes of my new acquaintance opened wide
with astonishment.
“This, you must understand,” I continued, hastily,
“is quite another matter. Those people are
waltzing. It is considered perfectly proper, when the
musicians over there play certain measures, for men to take
apparent liberties. Our women are infinitely
self-respecting, and a man who put his arm around a woman (in
public) while a different measure was being played, or when there
was no music, would be ostracized from polite society.”
“I am beginning to understand,” replied the
Turk. “The husbands and brothers of these women guard
them very carefully. Those men I see out there in the dark
are doubtless with their wives and sisters, protecting them from
the advances of other men. Am I right?”
“Of course you’re not right,” I snapped out,
beginning to lose my temper at his obtuseness. “No
husband would dream of talking to his wife in public, or of
sitting with her in a corner. Every one would be laughing
at them. Nor could a sister be induced to remain away from
the ball-room with her brother. Those girls are
‘sitting out’ with young men they like, indulging in
a little innocent flirtation.”
“What is that?” he asked.
“Flirtation?”
“An American custom rather difficult to explain.
It may, however, be roughly defined as the art of leading a man a
long way on the road to—nowhere!”
“Women flirt with friends or acquaintances, never with
members of their family?”
“The husbands are those dejected individuals wandering
aimlessly about over there like lost souls. They are mostly
rich men, who, having married beautiful girls for love, wear
themselves out maintaining elaborate and costly establishments
for them. In return for his labor a husband, however,
enjoys but little of his wife’s society, for a really
fashionable woman can rarely be induced to go home until she has
collapsed with fatigue. In consequence, she contributes
little but ‘nerves’ and temper to the
household. Her sweetest smiles, like her freshest toilets,
are kept for the public. The husband is the last person
considered in an American household. If you doubt what I
say, look behind you. There is a newly married man speaking
with his wife, and trying to persuade her to leave before the
cotillion begins. Notice his apologetic air! He knows
he is interrupting a tender conversation and taking an
unwarrantable liberty. Nothing short of extreme fatigue
would drive him to such an extremity. The poor millionnaire
has hardly left his desk in Wall Street during the week, and only
arrived this evening in time to dress for dinner. He would
give a fair slice of his income for a night’s rest.
See! He has failed, and is lighting another cigar,
preparing, with a sigh, for a long wait. It will be three
before my lady is ready to leave.”
After a silence of some minutes, during which he appeared to
be turning these remarks over in his mind, the young Oriental
resumed: “The single men who absorb so much of your
women’s time and attention are doubtless the most
distinguished of the nation,—writers, poets, and
statesmen?”
I was obliged to confess that this was not the case; that, on
the contrary, the dancing bachelors were for the most part
impecunious youths of absolutely no importance, asked by the
hostess to fill in, and so lightly considered that a woman did
not always recognize in the street her guests of the evening
before.
At this moment my neighbor’s expression changed from
bewilderment to admiration, as a young and very lovely matron
threw herself, panting, into a low chair at his side. Her
décolleté was so daring that the doubts of half an
hour before were evidently rising afresh in his mind.
Hastily resuming my task of mentor, I explained that a
décolleté corsage was an absolute rule for evening
gatherings. A woman who appeared in a high bodice or with
her neck veiled would be considered lacking in politeness to her
hostess as much if she wore a bonnet.
“With us, women go into the world to shine and
charm. It is only natural they should use all the weapons
nature has given them.”
“Very good!” exclaimed the astonished
Ottoman. “But where will all this end? You
began by allowing your women to appear in public with their faces
unveiled, then you suppressed the fichu and the collarette, and
now you rob them of half their corsage. Where, O Allah,
will you stop?”
“Ah!” I answered, laughing, “the tendency of
civilization is to simplify; many things may yet
disappear.”
“I understand perfectly. You have no prejudice
against women wearing in public toilets that we consider fitted
only for strict intimacy. In that case your ladies may walk
about the streets in these costumes?”
“Not at all!” I cried. “It would
provoke a scandal if a woman were to be seen during the daytime
in such attire, either at home or abroad. The police and
the law courts would interfere. Evening dress is intended
only for reunions in private houses, or at most, to be worn at
entertainments where the company is carefully selected and the
men asked from lists prepared by the ladies themselves. No
lady would wear a ball costume or her jewels in a building where
the general public was admitted. In London great ladies
dine at restaurants in full evening dress, but we Americans, like
the French, consider that vulgar.”
“Yet, last winter,” he said, “when passing
through New York, I went to a great theatre, where there were an
orchestra and many singing people. Were not those
respectable women I saw in the boxes? There were no
moucharabies to screen them from the eyes of the
public. Were all the men in that building asked by special
invitation? That could hardly be possible, for I paid an
entrance fee at the door. From where I sat I could see
that, as each lady entered her box, opera-glasses were fixed on
her, and her ‘points,’ as you say, discussed by the
crowd of men in the corridors, who, apparently, belonged to quite
the middle class.”
“My poor, innocent Padischa, you do not understand at
all. That was the opera, which makes all the
difference. The husbands of those women pay enormous
prices, expressly that their wives may exhibit themselves in
public, decked in jewels and suggestive toilets. You could
buy a whole harem of fair Circassians for what one of those
little square boxes costs. A lady whose entrance caused no
sensation would feel bitterly disappointed. As a rule, she
knows little about music, and cares still less, unless some
singer is performing who is paid a fabulous price, which gives
his notes a peculiar charm. With us most things are valued
by the money they have cost. Ladies attend the opera simply
and solely to see their friends and be admired.
“It grieves me to see that you are forming a poor
opinion of our woman kind, for they are more charming and modest
than any foreign women. A girl or matron who exhibits more
of her shoulders than you, with your Eastern ideas, think quite
proper, would sooner expire than show an inch above her
ankle. We have our way of being modest as well as you, and
that is one of our strongest prejudices.”
“Now I know you are joking,” he replied, with a
slight show of temper, “or trying to mystify me, for only
this morning I was on the beach watching the bathing, and I saw a
number of ladies in quite short skirts—up to their knees,
in fact—with the thinnest covering on their shapely
extremities. Were those women above suspicion?”
“Absolutely,” I assured him, feeling inclined to
tear my hair at such stupidity. “Can’t you see
the difference? That was in daylight. Our customs
allow a woman to show her feet, and even a little more, in the
morning. It would be considered the acme of indecency to
let those beauties be seen at a ball. The law allows a
woman to uncover her neck and shoulders at a ball, but she would
be arrested if she appeared décolleté on the beach
of a morning.”
A long silence followed, broken only by the music and laughter
from the ball-room. I could see my dazed Mohammedan remove
his fez and pass an agitated hand through his dark hair; then he
turned, and saluting me gravely, murmured:
“It is very kind of you to have taken so much trouble
with me. I do not doubt that what you have said is full of
the wisdom and consistency of a new civilization, which I fail to
appreciate.” Then, with a sigh, he added: “It
will be better for me to return to my own country, where there
are fewer exceptions to rules.”
With a profound salaam the gentle youth disappeared into the
surrounding darkness, leaving me rubbing my eyes and asking
myself if, after all, the dreamland Oriental was not about
right. Custom makes many inconsistencies appear so logical
that they no longer cause us either surprise or emotion.
But can we explain them?
