CHAPTER VI.

How the Duchess wanted to appear.

That was how the Great Church Bazaar originated and how the Rev. Melitos Smith came to resurrect the beautiful mediæval custom which brought him so much kudos and extracted such touching sentiments from hardened journalists. The Bazaar lasted a week, and raised a number of ladies in the social scale, and married off three of my girl-friends, and cut me off the visiting list of the Duchess of Dash. She was pining for a chance of coming out in a comic opera chanson, but this being a Church Bazaar I couldn't allow her to kick up her heels. Everything could be bought at that Bazaar, from photographs of the Rev. Melitos Smith to impracticable mouse-traps, from bread-and-cheese to kisses. There were endless side-shows, and six gipsy girls scattered about the rooms, so that you could have your fortune told in six differentways. I should not like to say how much that Bazaar cost me when the bill for the Bells came in, but then Lord Arthur sang daily in the Concert Hall, and I could also deduct the price of the pair of gloves Captain Athelstan gave me. For the Captain honorably stood the loss of his wager, nay, more, cheerfully accepted his defeat, and there on the spot—before the "Portrait of another Gentleman"—offered to enlist in the Bazaar. And very useful he proved, too. We had to be together, organizing it, nearly all day and I don't know what I should have done without him. I don't know what his Regiment did without him, but then I have never been able to find out when our gallant officers do their work. They seem always to be saving it up for a rainy day.

I was never more surprised in my life than when, on the last night of the Bazaar-boom, amid the buzz of a brisk wind-up, Lord Arthur and Captain Athelstan came into the little presidential sanctum, which had been run up for me, and requested a special interview.

"I can give you five minutes," I said, for I felt my finger was on the pulse of the Bazaar, and my time correspondingly important.

They looked grateful, then embarrassed. Captain Athelstan opened his mouth and closed it.

"Youhad better tell her," he said, nervously, to Lord Arthur.

"N-n-no, y-y-y-y——"

"What is it, Captain Athelstan?" I interrupted, pointedly, for I had only five minutes.

"Princess, we both love you," began the Captain, blushing like a hobbledehoy, and rushingin medias res. I allowed them to call me Princess, because it was not my Christian name.

"Is this the time—when I am busy feeling the pulse of the Bazaar?"

"You gave us five minutes," pleaded the Captain, determined to do or die, now he was in the thick of it.

"Go on," I said, "I will forgive you everything—even your love of me—if you are only brief."

"We both love you. We are great friends. We have no secrets. We told each other. We are doubtful if you love either—or which. We have come together."

He fired off the short, sharp sentences as from a six-barrelled revolver.

"Captain Athelstan—Lord Arthur," I said. "I am deeply touched by the honor you have done your friendship and me. I will be equally frank—and brief—with you. I cannot choose either of you, because I love you both. Like every girl, I formed an ideal of a lover. I have been fortunate in finding my ideal in the flesh. I have been unfortunate in finding it in two pieces. Fate has bisected it, and given the form to one and the voice to the other. My ideal looks like you, Captain Athelstan, and sings like you, Lord Arthur. It is a stupid position, I know, and I feel like the donkey between two bundles of hay. But under the circumstances I have no choice."

They looked at each other half-rapturously, half-despairingly.

"Then what's to be done?" cried the Captain.

"I don't know," I said, hopelessly. "Love seems not only blind, but a blind alley, this time."

"D-do you m-m-ean," asked Lord Arthur, "'how happy could I be with either, were t'other dear charmer away?'"

I was glad he sang it, because it precipitated matters.

"That is the precise position," I admitted.

"Oh, then, Arthur, my boy, I congratulate you," said the Captain, huskily.

"N-n-no, I'll g-g-go away," said the singer.

They wrangled for full ten minutes, but the position remained a block.

Bazaar proposal of Marriage.

"Gentlemen," I interposed, "if either of you had consented to accept the other's sacrifice, the problem would have been solved; only I should have taken the other. But two self-sacrifices are as bad as none."

"Then let us toss up for you, Princess," said the Captain, impulsively.

"Oh, no!" I cried, with a shudder. "Submit my life to the chances of head or tail! It would make me feel like a murderess, with you for gentlemen of the jury."

A painful silence fell upon the sanctum. Unwitting of the tragedy playing within, all the fun of the fair went on without.

"Listen," I said, at last. "I will be the wife of him who wins me. Chance shall not decide, but prowess. Like the princesses of old, I will set you a task. Whoever accomplishes it shall win my hand."

"Agreed," they said eagerly, though not simultaneously.

"Ay, but what shall it be?" I murmured.

"Why not a competition?" suggested the Captain.

"Very well, a competition—provided you promise to fight fair, and not play into each other's hands."

They promised, and together we excogitated and rejected all sorts of competitions. The difficulty was to find something in which each would have a fair chance. At length we arranged that they should play a game of chess, the winner to be mated. They agreed it would be a real "match game." The five minutes had by this time lasted half an hour, so I dismissed them, and hastened to feel the pulse of the Bazaar, which was getting more and more feverish as the break-up drew nigh.

They played the game in Lord Arthur's study. Lord Arthur was white and the Captain black. Everything was fair and above board. But they played rather slowly. Every evening I sent the butler over to make inquiries.

"The Princess's compliments," he was told to say, "and how is it to-day?"

"It is getting on," they told him, and he came back with a glad face. He was a kind soul despite his calves, and he thought there was a child dying.

Once a week I used to go over and look at it. Ostensibly I called in connection with the Bazaar accounts. I could not see any difference in the position from one week's end to another. There seemed to be a clump of pawns in the middle, with all the other pieces looking idly on; there was no thoroughfare anywhere.

They told me it always came like that when you played cautiously. They said it was a French opening. I could not see any opening anywhere; it certainly was not the English way of fighting. Picture my suspense during those horrible weeks.

"Is this the way all match-games are played?" I said once.

"N-n-o," admitted Lord Arthur. "We for-g-g-ot to p-p-p-ut a t-t-t-t-t-time-limit."

"What's the time-limit?" I asked the Captain, wishing my singer could learn to put one to his sentences.

"So many moves must be made in an hour—usually fifteen. Otherwise the younger champion would always win, merely by outliving the elder. We forgot to include that condition."

At length our butler brought back word that "it couldn't last much longer." His face was grave and he gave the message in low tones.

"What a blessing. It's been lingering long enough! I wish they would polish it off," I murmured fretfully. After that I frequently caught him looking at me as if I were Lucrezia Borgia.

The end came suddenly. The butler went across to make the usual inquiry. He returned, with a foolish face ofhorror and whispered, "It is all over. It has been drawn by perpetual check!"

"Great Heavens!" I cried. My consternation was so manifest that he forgave the utterance of a peevish moment. I put on my nicest hat at once and went over. We held a council of war afresh.

"Let's go by who catches the biggest trout," suggested the Captain.

"No," I said. "I will not be angled for. Besides, the biggest is not grammatical. It should be the bigger."

Thus reproved, the Captain grew silent and we came to a deadlock once more. I gave up the hunt at last.

"I think the best plan will be for you both to go away and travel. Go round the world, see fresh faces, try to forget me. One of you will succeed."

"But suppose we both succeed?" asked the Captain.

"That would be more awkward than ever," I admitted.

"And if neither succeed?" asked Lord Arthur at some length.

"I should say neither succeeds," I remarked severely. "Neither takes a singular verb."

"Pardon me," said Lord Arthur with some spirit. "The plurality is merely apparent. 'Succeed' is subjunctive after if."

"Ah, true," I said. "Then suppose you go round the world and I give my hand to whoever comes back and proposes to me first."

"Something like the man in Jules Verne!" cried the Captain. "Glorious!"

"Except that it can be done quicker now," I said.

Lord Arthur fell in joyously with the idea, which was a godsend to me, for the worry of having about you two men whom you love and who love you cannot be easily conceived by those who have not been through it. They, too, were pining away and felt the journey would do themgood. Captain Athelstan applied for three months' furlough. He was to put a girdle round the earth from West to East, Lord Arthur from East to West. It was thought this would work fairly—as whatever advantages one outgoing route had over the other would be lost on the return. Each drew up his scheme and prepared his equipment. The starting-point was to be my house, and consequently this was also the goal. After forty-eight days had passed (the minimum time possible) I was to remain at home day and night, awaiting the telegram which was to be sent the moment either touched English soil again. On the receipt of the telegram I was to take up my position at the front window on the ground floor, with a white rose in my hair to show I was still unwon, and to wait there day and night for the arrival of my offer of marriage, which I was not to have the option of refusing. During the race they were not to write to me.

The long-looked-for day of their departure duly arrived. Two hansoms were drawn up side by side, in front of the house. A white rose in my hair, I sat at the window. A parting smile, a wave of my handkerchief, and my lovers were off. In an instant they were out of sight. For a month they were out of mind, too. After the exhausting emotions I had undergone this period of my life was truly halcyon. I banished my lovers from my memory and enjoyed what was left of the season and of my girlish freedom. In two months I should be an affianced wife and it behoved me to make the best of my short span of spinsterhood. The season waned, fashion drifted to Cowes, I was left alone in empty London. Then my thoughts went back to the two travellers. As day followed day, my anxiety and curiosity mounted proportionately. The forty-eight days went by, but there was no wire. They passed slowly—oh, so slowly—into fifty, while I waited, waited, from dawn to midnight, with ears pricked up, forthat double rat-tat which came not or which came about something else. The sands of September dribbled out, and my fate still hung in the balance. I went about the house like an unquiet spirit. In imagination I was seeing those two men sweeping towards me—one from the East of the world, one from the West. And there I stood, rooted to the spot, while from either side a man was speeding inevitably towards me, across oceans and continents, through canals and tunnels, along deserts or rivers, pressing into his service every human and animal force and every blind energy that man had tamed. To my fevered imagination I seemed to be between the jaws of a leviathan, which were closing upon me at a terrific rate, yet which took days to snap together, so wide were they apart, so gigantic was the monster. Which of the jaws would touch me first?

The fifties mounted into the sixties, but there was no telegram. The tension became intolerable. Again and again I felt tempted to fly, but a lingering sense of honor kept me to my post. On the sixty-first day my patience was rewarded. Sitting at my window one morning I saw a telegraph-boy sauntering along. He reached the gate. He paused. I rushed to the door and down the steps, seized the envelope and tore it frantically open.

"Coming, but suppose all over.—Arthur."

I leaned on the gate, half fainting. When I went to my room, I read the wire again and noted it had been handed in at Liverpool. In four or five hours at most I should cease to belong to myself. I communicated the news to the Honorable Miss Primpole who congratulated me cordially. She made no secret of her joy that the nobleman had won. For my part I was still torn with conflicting emotions. Now that I knew it was to be the one, I hankered after the other. Yet in the heart of the storm there was peacein the thought that the long suspense was over. I ordered a magnificent repast to be laid for the home-coming voyager, which would also serve to celebrate our nuptials. The Honorable Miss Primpole consented to grace the board and the butler to surrender the choicest vintages garnered in my father's cellar.

Two hours and a half dragged by; then there came another wire—I opened it with some curiosity, but as my eye caught the words I almost swooned with excitement. It ran:

"Arrived, but presume too late.—Athelstan."

With misty vision I strove to read the place of despatch. It was Dover. A great wave of hope surged in my bosom. My Saga-hero might yet arrive in time. Half frenziedly I turned over the leaves of Bradshaw. No, after sending that wire, he would just have missed the train to Victoria! Cruel! Cruel! But stay! there was another route. He might have booked for Charing Cross. Yes! Heaven be praised, if he did that, he would just catch a train. And of course he would do that—surely he would have planned out every possibility while crossing the Channel, have arranged for all—my Captain, my blue-eyed Berserker! But then Lord Arthur had had two and a half hours' start.—I turned to Liverpool and essayed to discover whether that was sufficient to balance the difference of the two distances from London. Alas! my head swam before I had travelled two stations. There were no less than four routes to Euston, to St. Pancras, to King's Cross, to Paddington! Still I made out that if he had kept his head very clear, and been very, very fortunate, he might just get level with the Captain. But then on a longer route the chances of accidental delays were more numerous. On the whole the odds were decidedly in favor of the Captain. But one thing wascertain—that they would both arrive in time for supper. I ordered an additional cover to be laid, then I threw myself upon a couch and tried to read. But I could not. Terrible as was the strain, my thoughts refused to be distracted. The minutes crawled along—gradually peace came back as I concluded that only by a miracle could Lord Arthur win. At last I jumped up with a start, for the shades of evening were falling and my toilette was yet to make. I dressed myself in a dainty robe of white, trimmed with sprays of wild flowers, and I stuck the white rose in my hair—the symbol that I was yet unasked in wedlock, the white star of hope to the way-worn wanderer! I did my best to be the fairest sight the travellers should have seen in all the world.

The Honorable Miss Primpole started when she saw me. "What have you been doing to yourself, Princess?" she said. "You're lovelier than I ever dreamed."

And indeed the crisis had lent a flush to my cheek and a flash to my eye which I would not willingly repay. My bosom rose and fell with excitement. In half an hour I should be in my Saga-hero's arms! I went down to the ground-floor front and seated myself at the open window and gazed at the Square and the fiery streaks of sunset in the sky. The Honorable Miss Primpole lay upon an ottoman, less excited. Every now and again she asked,

"Do you see anything, Princess?"

"Nothing," I answered.

Of course she did not take my answer literally. Several times cabs and carriages rattled past the window, but with no visible intention of drawing up. Duskier, duskier grew the September evening, as I sat peering into the twilight.

"Do you see anything, Princess?"

"Nothing."

A moment after a hansom came dashing into sight—ahead protruded from it. I uttered a cry and leant forward, straining my eyes. Captain Athelstan. Yes! No! No! Yes! No!No!Will it be believed that (such is the heart of woman) I felt a sensation of relief on finding the issue still postponed? For in the moment when the Captain seemed to flash upon my vision—it was borne in upon me like a chilling blast that I had lost my Voice. Never would that glorious music swell for me as I sat alone with my husband in the gloaming.

The streaks of sunset faded into gray ashes.

"Do you see anything, Princess?"

"Nothing."

Even as I spoke I heard the gallop of hoofs in the quiet Square, and, half paralyzed by the unexpected vision, I saw Lord Arthur dashing furiously up on horseback—Lord Arthur, bronzed and bearded and travel-stained, but Lord Arthur beyond a doubt. He took off his hat and waved it frantically in the air when he caught sight of my white figure, with the white rose of promise nestling in my hair. My poor Saga-hero!

At the winning Post.

He reined in his beautiful steed before my window and commenced his proposal breathlessly.

"W-w-w——"

Even Mr. Gladstone, if he had been racing as madly as Lord Arthur might well have been flustered in his speech. The poor singer could not get out the first word, try as he would. At last it came out like a soda-water cork and 'you' with it. But at the 'be' there was—O dire to tell!—another stoppage.

"B-b-b-b-b——"

"Fire! Fire! Hooray!" The dull roar of an advancing crowd burst suddenly upon our ears, mingled with the piercing exultation of small boys. The thunderous clatter of the fire-engine seemed to rock the soil of the Square.

But neither of us took eyes off the other.

"Be!" It was out at last. The end was near. In another second I should say "Yes."

"Fire! Fire!" shrieked the small boys.

"M-m-m-y——"

Lord Arthur's gallant steed shifted uneasily. The fire-engine was thundering down upon it.

"W-w-w——"

"Will you be——" The clarion notes of the Captain rang out above the clatter of the fire-engine from which he madly jumped.

"Wife?" }"Mine?" } the two travellers exclaimed together.

"Dead heat," I murmured, and fell back in a dead faint. My overwrought nerves could stand no more.

Nevertheless it was a gay supper-party; the air was thick with travellers' tales, and the butler did not spare the champagne. We could not help being tickled by the quaint termination of the colossal globe-trotting competition, and we soothed Lord Arthur's susceptibilities by insisting that if he had only remembered the shorter proposal formula employed by his rival, he would have won by a word. It was a pure fluke that the Captain was able to tie, for he had not thought of telegraphing for a horse, but had taken a hansom at the station, and only exchanged to the fire-engine when he heard people shouting there was a fire in Seymour Street. Lord Arthur obliged five times during the evening, and the Honorable Miss Primpole relaxed more than ever before and accompanied him on the banjo. Before we parted, I had been persuaded by my lovers to give them one last trial. That night three months I was to give another magnificent repast, to which they were both to be invited. During the interval each was to do his best to become famous, and at the supper-party I was to choose the one who was the more widely knownthroughout the length and breadth of the kingdom. They were to place before me what proofs and arguments they pleased, and I was to decide whose name had penetrated to the greater number of people. There was to be no appeal from my decision, nor any limitation to what the candidates might do to force themselves upon the universal consciousness, so long as they did not merely advertise themselves at so much a column or poster. They could safely be trusted not to do anything infamous in the attempt to become famous, and so there was no need to impose conditions. I had a secret hope that Lord Arthur might thus be induced to bring his talents before the world and get over his objection to the degradation of public appearances. My hope was more than justified.

"Ba, ba, ba, boodle-dee."

I grieve to say neither strove to benefit his kind. His lordship went on the music-hall stage, made up as a costermonger, and devoted his wonderful voice and his musical genius to singing a cockney ballad with a chorus consisting merely of the words "Ba, ba, ba, boodle-dee" repeatedsixteen times. It caught on like a first-class epidemic. "Ba, ba, ba, boodle-dee" microbes floated in every breeze. The cholera-chorus raged from Piccadilly to Land's End, from Kensington to John o'Groats. The swarthy miners hewed the coal to it. It dropped from passing balloons, the sailors manned the capstan to it, and the sound of it superseded fog-horns. Duchesses danced to it, and squalid infants cried for it. Divines with difficulty kept it out of their sermons, philosophers drew weighty lessons from it, critics traced its history, and as it didn't mean anything the greatest Puritans hummed it inaccurately. "Ba, ba, ba, boodle-dee," sang Lord Arthur nightly at six halls and three theatres, incidentally clearing off all the debts on the family estates, and, like a flock of sheep, the great British public took up the bleat, and in every hall and drawing-room blossomed the big pearl buttons of the cockney costermonger.

But Captain Athelstan came to the front far more easily, if less profitably. He sent a testimonial to the Perfect Cure Elixir. The Elixir was accustomed to testimonials from the suffering millions. The spelling generally had to be corrected before they were fit for publication. It also received testimonials which were useless, such as: "I took only one bottle of your Elixir and I got fourteen days." But a testimonial from a Captain of the Guards was a gold-mine. The Captain's was the best name the Elixir had ever had, and he had enjoyed more diseases than it had hitherto professed to cure. Astonished by its own success the Elixir resolved to make a big spurt and kill off all its rivals. For the next few months Captain Athelstan was rammed down the throats of all England. He came with the morning milk in all the daily papers, he arrived by the first post in a circular, he stared at people from every dead wall when they went out to business, he was with them at lunch, in little plaques and placards in everyrestaurant, he nodded at them in every bar, rode with them in every train and tram-car, either on the wall or on the back of the ticket, joined them at dinner in the evening papers and supplied the pipe lights after the meal. You took up a magazine and found he had slipped between the sheets, you went to bed and his diseased figure haunted your dreams. Life lost its sweetness, literature its charm. The loathsome phantasm of the complexly-afflicted Captain got between you and the sunshine. Stiff examination papers (compiled from the Captain) were set at every breakfast-table, and you were sternly interrogated as to whether you felt an all-gone sensation at the tip of your nose, and you were earnestly adjured to look at your old diseases. You began to read an eloquent description of the Alps, and lo! there was the Captain perched on top. You started a thrilling story of the sea, and the Captain bobbed up from the bottom; you began a poetical allegory concerning the Valley of the Shadow, and you found the Captain had been living there all his life—till he came upon the Elixir. A little innocent child remarked, "Pater, it is almost bath-time," and you felt for your handkerchief in view of a touching domestic idyl, but the Captain froze your tears. "Why have sunstroke in India?" you were asked, and the Captain supplied the answer. Something came like a thief in the night. It was the Captain. You were startled to see that there was "A Blight Over All Creation," but it turned out to be only the Captain. Everything abutted on the Captain—Shakespeare and the musical glasses, the Venus of Milo and the Mikado, Day and Night and all the seasons, the potato harvest and the Durham Coal Strike, the advantages of early rising, and the American Copyright Act. He was at the bottom of every passage, he lurked in every avenue, he was at the end of every perspective. The whole world was familiar with hisphysical symptoms, and his sad history. The exploits of Julius Cæsar were but a blur in the common mind, but everybody knew that the Captain's skin grew Gobelin blue, that the whites of his eyes turned green, and his tongue stuck in his cheek, and that the rest of his organism behaved with corresponding gruesomeness. Everybody knew how they dropped off, "petrified by my breath," and how his sympathetic friends told him in large capitals

"You will never get better, Captain,"

and how his weeping mother, anxious to soothe his last hours, remarked in reply to a request for another box of somebody else's pills,

"The only box you'll ever want will be a Coffin,"

and how

"He thought it was only Cholera,"

but how one dose of the Elixir (which new-born babies clamored for in preference to their mother's milk) had baffled all their prognostications and made him a celebrity for life. In private the Captain said that he really had these ailments, though he only discovered the fact when he read the advertisements of the Elixir. But the Mess had an inkling that it was all done for a wager, and christened him "The Perfect Cure." To me he justified himself on the ground that he had scrupulously described himself as having his tongue in his cheek, and that he really suffered from love-sickness, which was worse than all the ills the Elixir cured.

I need scarcely say that I was shocked by my lovers' practical methods of acquiring that renown for which so many gifted souls have yearned in vain, though I must admit that both gentlemen retained sufficient sense of decorum to be revolted by the other's course of action.They remonstrated with each other gently but firmly. The result was that their friendship snapped and a week before the close of the competition they crossed the Channel to fight a duel. I got to hear of it in time and wired to Boulogne that if they killed each other I would marry neither, that if only one survived I would never marry my lover's murderer, and that a duel excited so much gossip that, if both survived, they would be equally famous and the competition again a failure.

These simple considerations prevented any mishap. The Captain returned to his Regiment and Lord Arthur went on to the Riviera to while away the few remaining days and to get extra advertisement out of not appearing at his halls through indisposition. At Monte Carlo he accidentally broke the bank, and explained his system to the interviewers. To my chagrin, for I was tired of see-sawing, this brought him level with the Captain again. I had been prepared to adjudicate in favour of the latter, on the ground that although "Ba, ba, ba, boodle-dee" was better known than the Patent Cure Elixir, yet the originator of the song remained unknown to many to whom the Captain was a household word, and this in despite of the extra attention secured to Lord Arthur by his rank. The second supper-party was again sicklied over with the pale cast of thought.

"No more competitions!" I said. "You seem destined to tie with each other instead of with me. I will return to my original idea. I will give you a task which it is not likely both will perform. I will marry the man who asks me, provided he comes, neither walking nor riding, neither sailing nor driving, neither skating nor sliding nor flying, neither by boat nor by balloon nor by bicycle, neither by swimming nor by floating nor by anybody carrying or dragging or pushing him, neither by any movement of hand or foot nor by any extraordinary method whatever. Tillthis is achieved neither of you must look upon my face again."

"They looked aghast when I set the task. They went away and I have not seen them from that day to this. I shall never marry now. So I may as well devote myself to the cause of the Old Maids you are so nobly championing." She rolled up the MS.

"But," said Lillie excitedly, breaking in for the first time, "what is the way you want them to come?"

The Princess laughed a silvery laugh.

"No way. Don't you understand? It was a roundabout way of saying I was tired of them."

"Oh!" said Lillie.

"You see, I got the idea from a fairy-tale," said the Princess. "There, the doer evaded the conditions by being dragged at a horse's tail—I have guarded against this, so that now the thing is impossible." Again her mischievous laughter rang out through the misanthropic room.

Lillie smiled, too. She felt certain Lord Silverdale would find no flaw in the Princess's armor, and she was exultant at so auspicious an accession. For the sake of formality, however, she told her that she would communicate her election by letter.

The next day a telegram came to the Club.

"Compelled to withdraw candidature. Feat accomplished.Princess, Hotel Metropole, Brighton."

Equally aghast and excited, Lillie wired back, "How?" and prepaid the reply.

"Lover happened to be here. Came up in lift as I was waiting to go down."

Still intensely piqued by curiosity and vexation, Lillie telegraphed.

"Which?"

"Leave you to guess," answered the electric current.

THE GRAMMAR OF LOVE.

TheMoon-man's name was Wilkins, and he did nine-tenths of the interviews in that model of the new journalism. Wilkins was the man to catch the weasel asleep, hit off his features with a kodak, and badger him the moment he awoke as to why he popped. Wilkins lived in a flat in Chancery Lane, and had his whiskey and his feet on the table when Silverdale turned the handle of the door in the gloaming.

"What do you want?" said Wilkins gruffly.

"I have come to ask you a few questions," said Silverdale politely.

"But I don't know you, sir," said Wilkins stiffly. "Don't you see I'm busy?"

"It is true I am a stranger, but remember, sir, I shall not be so when I leave. I just want to interview you about that paragraph in theMoon, stating——"

"Look here!" roared Wilkins, letting his feet slide from the table with a crash. "Let me tell you, sir, I have no time to listen to your impertinence. My leisure is scant and valuable. I am a hard-worked man. I can't be pestered with questions from inquisitive busybodies. What next, sir? What I write in theMoonis my business and nobody else's. Damn it all, sir, is there to be nothing private? Are you going to poke and pry into the concerns of the very journalist? No, sir, you have wasted your time as well as mine. We never allow the public to go behind what appears in our paper."

"But this is a mere private curiosity—what you tell me shall never be published."

"If it could be, I wouldn't tell it you. I never waste copy."

"Tell me—I am willing to pay for the information—who wrote the paragraph about Clorinda Bell and the Old Maids' Club."

"Go to the devil!" roared Wilkins.

"I thought you would know more than he," said Silverdale, and left. Wilkins came downstairs on his heels, in a huff, and walked towards Ludgate Hill. Silverdale thought he would have another shot, and followed him unseen. The two men jumped into a train, and after an endless-seeming journey arrived at the Crystal Palace. A monster balloon was going off from the grounds. Herr Nickeldorf, the great aeronaut, was making in solitude an experimental night excursion to Calais, as if anxious to meet his fate by moonlight alone. Wilkins rushed up to Nickeldorf, who was standing among the ropes giving directions.

"Go avay!" said Nickeldorf, when he saw him. "I hafe nodings to say to you. You makes meschwitzen." He jumped into the car and bade the men let go.

Ordinarily Wilkins would have been satisfied with this ample material for half a column, but he was still in a bad temper, and, as the car was sailing slowly upwards, he jumped in, and the aeronaut gave himself up for pumped. In an instant, moved by an irresistible impulse, Silverdale gave a great leap and stood by theMoon-man's side. The balloon shot up and the roar of the crowd became a faint murmur as the planet flew from beneath their feet.

"Good-evening, Mr. Wilkins," said Lord Silverdale. "I should just like to interview you about——"

"You jackanapes!" cried theMoon-man, pale with anger, "If you don't go away at once, I'll kick you down stairs."

Go away, or I'll kick you Down Stairs.

"My dear Mr. Wilkins," suavely replied Lord Silverdale, "I will willingly go down, provided you accompany me. I am sure Herr Nickeldorf is anxious to drop both of us."

"Wirklich," replied the aeronaut

"Well, lend us a parachute," said Silverdale.

"No, danks. Beobles never return barachutes."

"Well, we won't go without one. I forgot to bring mine with me. I didn't know I was going to have such a high old time."

"By what right, sir," said Mr. Wilkins, who had been struggling with an attack of speechlessness, "do you persecute me like this?Youare not a member of the Fourth Estate."

"No, I belong merely to the Second."

"Eh? What? A Peer!"

"I am Lord Silverdale."

"No, indeed! Lord Silverdale!"

"Lord Silverdale!" echoed the aeronaut, letting two sand-bags fall into the clouds. Most people lose their ballast in the presence of the aristocracy.

"Oh, I am so glad! I have long been anxious to meet your lordship," said theMoon-man, taking out his notebook. "What is your lordship's opinion of the best fifty books for the working man's library?"

"I have not yet written fifty books."

"Ah!" said theMoon-man, carefully noting down the reply. "And when is your lordship's next book coming out?"

"I cannot say."

"Thank you," said theMoon-man, writing it down. "Will it be poetry or prose?"

"That is as the critics shall decide."

"Is it true that your lordship has been converted to Catholicism?"

"I believe not."

"Then how does your lordship account for the rumor?"

"I have an indirect connection with a sort of new nunnery, which it is proposed to found—the Old Maids' Club."

"Oh, yes, the one that Clorinda Bell is going to join."

"Nonsense! who told you she was going to join?"

TheMoon-man winced perceptibly at the question, as he replied indignantly: "Herself!"

"Thank you. That's what I wanted to know. You may contradict it on the authority of the president. She only said so to get an advertisement."

"Then why give her two by contradicting it?"

"That is the woman's cleverness. Let her have the advertisement, rather than that her name should be connected with Miss Dulcimer's."

"Very well. Tell me something, please, about the Club."

"It is not organized yet. It is to consist of young and beautiful women, vowed to celibacy to remove the reproach of the term 'Old Maid.'"

"It is a noble idea!" said theMoon-man, enthusiastically. "Oh, what a humanitarian time we are having!"

"Lord Silverdale," said Herr Nickeldorf, who had been listening with all his ears, "I hafe to you give de hospitality of my balloon. Vill you, in return, takemein frauinto de Old Maids' Club?"

"As a visitor? With pleasure, as she is a married woman."

"Nein, nein.I mean as an old maid.Ich habe sic nicht nöthig.I do not require her any longer."

"Ah, then, I am afraid we can't. You see sheisn'tan old maid!"

"But she haf been."

"Ah, yes, but we do not recognize past services."

"Oh,warumwasn't the Club founded before I married?" groaned the old German. "Himmel, vat a terrible mistake! It is to her I owe it that I am de most celebrated aeronaut inder ganzeu welt. It is the only profession in wich I escape hergewiss. She haf dekopftoo veak to rise mit me. Ah, when I come oop here, it isHimmel."

"Rather taking an unfair rise out of your partner, isn't it?" queried theMoon-man with a sickly smile.

"And vat vould you haf done in—was sagt man—in my shoes?"

TheMoon-man winced.

"Not put them on."

"You are not yourself married?"

TheMoon-man winced.

"No, I'm only engaged."

"Mein herr," said the old German solemnly, "I haf nodings but drouble from you. You make to me mein life von burden. But I cannot see you going to de altar widout putting out de hand to safe you. It was stupid to yourself engage at all—but, now dat you haf committed de mistake, shtick to it!"

"How do you mean?"

"Keep yourself engaged. Do not change your gondition any more."

"What do you say, Lord Silverdale?" said theMoon-man, anxiously.

"I am hardly an authority. You see I have so rarely been married. It depends on the character of your betrothed. Does she long to be of service in the world?"

TheMoon-man winced.

"Yes, that's why she fell in love with me. Thought aMoon-man must be all noble sentiment like theMoonitself!"

"She is, then, young," said Silverdale, musingly. "Is she also beautiful?"

TheMoon-man winced.

"Bewitching. Why does your lordship ask?"

"Because her services might be valuable as an Old Maid."

"Oh, if you could only get Diana to see it in that light!"

"You seem anxious to be rid of her."

"I do. I confess it. It has been growing on me for some time. You see hers is a soul perpetually seeking more light. She is always asking questions. This thirst for information would be made only more raging by marriage. You know what Stevenson says:—'To marry is to domesticate the Recording Angel.' At present my occupations keep me away from her—but she answers my letters with as many queries as a 'Constant Reader.' She wants to know all I say, do, or feel, and I never see her without having to submit to a string of inquiries. It's like having to fill up a census paper once a week. If I don't see her for a fortnight she wants to know how I am the moment we meet. If this is so before marriage, what will it be after, when her opportunities of buttonholing me will be necessarily more frequent?"

"But I see nothing to complain of in that!" said Lord Silverdale. "Tender solicitude for one's betrothed is the usual thing with those really in love. You wouldn't like her to be indifferent to what you were doing, saying, feeling?"

TheMoon-man winced.

"No, that's just the dilemma of it, Lord Silverdale. I am afraid your lordship does not catch my drift. You see, with another man, it wouldn't matter; as your lordship says, he would be glad of it. But to me all that sort of thing's 'shop.' And I hate 'shop.' It's hard enough to be out interviewing all day, without being reminded of its when you get home and want to put your slippers on the fender and your feet inside them and be happy. No,if there's one thing in this world I can't put up with, it's 'shop' after business hours. I want to forget that I get my gold in exchange for notes of interrogation. I shudder to be reminded that there are such things in the world as questions—I tremble if I hear a person invert the subject and predicate of a sentence. I can hardly bear to read poetry because the frequent inversions make the lines look as if they were going to be inquisitive. Now you understand why I was so discourteous to your lordship, and I trust that you will pardon the curt expression of my hyper-sensitive feelings. Now, too, you understand why I shrink from the prospect of marriage, to the brink of which I once bounded so heedlessly. No, it is evident a life of solitude must be my portion. If I am ever to steep my wearied spirit in forgetfulness of my daily grind, if my nervous system is to be preserved from premature break-down, I must have no one about me who has a right of interrogation, and my housekeeper must prepare my meals without even the preliminary 'Chop or Steak, sir?' My home-life must be restful, peaceful, balsamic—it must exhale a papaverous aroma of categorical proposition."

"But is there no way of getting a wife with a gift of categorical conversation?"

"Please say, 'There is no way, etc.,' for unless you yourself speak categorically, the sentences grate upon my ear. I can ask questions myself, without experiencing the slightest inconvenience, but the moment I am myself interrogated, every nerve in me quivers with torture. No, I am afraid it is impossible to find a woman who will eschew the interrogative form of proposition, and limit herself to the affirmative and negative varieties; who will, for mere love of me, invariably place the verb after the noun, and unalterably give the subject the precedence over the predicate. Often and often, when my Diana, in all her dazzling charms, looks up pleadingly into my face,I feel towards her as Ahasuerus felt towards the suppliant Queen Esther, and I yearn to stretch out my reporter's pencil towards her, and to say: 'Ask me what you will—even if it be half my income—so long as you do not ask me a question.'"

"But isn't there—I mean there is—such a thing obtainable as a dumb wife?"

"Mutes are for funerals, and not for marriages. Besides, then, everybody would be asking me why I married her. No, the more I think of it, the more I see the futility of my dream of matrimonial felicity. Why, a question lies at the very threshold of marriage—'Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife?'—and to put up the banns is to loose upon yourself an interviewer in a white-tie! No, leave me to my unhappy destiny. I must dree my weird. And anything your lordship can do in the way of enabling me to dree it by soliciting my Diana into the Old Maids' Club, shall be received with the warmest thanksgiving and will allow me to remain your lordship's most grateful and obedient servant, Daniel Wilkins."

"Enough!" said Lord Silverdale, deeply moved, "I will send her a circular. But do you really think you would be happy if you lost her?"

"If," said theMoon-man moodily. "It would require a great many 'ifs' to make me happy. As I once wrote:

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