"Knocked you, old man, this time, eh?"
"Knocked you, old man, this time, eh?"
"Knocked you, old man, this time, eh?"
"Yes, all to pieces!" snarled Patrick savagely. "I shall never believe in my critical judgment again. I dare not look my notice in the face. When I wroteNaquettewas a masterpiece, I thought at least there would be some merit in it—I didn't bargain for such rot as this."
In this wise things would have gone on—from bad to worse—had Heaven not created Cecilia nineteen years before.
Cecilia was a tall, fair girl, with dreamy eyes and unpronounced opinions, who longed for the ineffable with an unspeakable yearning.
Frank Grey loved her. He always knew he was going to and one day he did it. After that it was impossible to drop the habit. And at last he went so far as to propose. He was a young lawyer, with a fondness for manly sports and a wealth of blonde moustache.
"Cecilia," he said, "I love you. Will you be mine?"
He had a habit of using unconventional phrases.
"No, Frank," she said gently, and there was a world and several satellites of tenderness in her tremulous tones. "It cannot be."
"Ah, do not decide so quickly," he pleaded. "I will not press you for an answer."
"I would press you for an answer, if I could," replied Cecilia, "but I do not love you."
"Why not?" he demanded desperately.
"Because you are not what I should like you to be?"
"And what would you like me to be?" he demanded eagerly.
"If I told you, you would try to become it?"
"I would," he said, enthusiastically. "Be it what it may, I would leave no stone unturned. I would work, strive, study, reform—anything, everything."
"I feared so," she said despondently. "That is why I will not tell you. Don't you understand that your charmto me is your being just yourself—your simple, honest, manly self? I will not have my enjoyment of your individuality spoilt by your transmogrification into some unnatural product of the forcing house. No, Frank, let us be true to ourselves, not to each other. I shall always remain your friend, looking up to you as to something stanch, sturdy, stalwart, coming to consult you (unprofessionally) in all my difficulties. I will tell you all my secrets, Frank, so that you will know more of me than if I married you. Dear friend, let it remain as I say. It is for the best."
So Frank went away broken-hearted, and joined the Mutual Depreciation Society. He did not care what became of him. How they came to let him in was this. He was the one man in the world outside who knew all about them, having been engaged as the Society's legal adviser. It was he who made their publishers and managers sit in an erect position. In applying for a more intimate connection, he stated that he had met with a misfortune, and a little monthly abuse would enliven him. The Society decided that, as he was already half one of themselves, and as he had never written a line in his life, and so could not diminish their takings, nothing but good could ensue from the infusion of new blood. In fact, they wanted it badly. Their mutual recriminations had degenerated into mere platitudes. With a new man to insult and be insulted by, something of the old animation would be restored to their proceedings. The wisdom of the policy was early seen, for the first fruit of it was the English Shakespeare, who for a whole year daily opened out new and exciting perspectives of sensation and amusement to ablaséSociety. Andrew Mackay had written an enthusiastic article in the so-calledNineteenth Centuryon "The Cochin-China Shakespeare," and set all tongues wagging about the new literary phenomenon with whose verses theboatmen of the Irrawady rocked their children to sleep on the cradle of the river, and whose dramas were played in eight hours slices in the strolling-booths of Shanghai. Andrew had already arranged with Anyman to bring out a translation from the original Cochin-Chinese, for there was no language he could not translate from, provided it were sufficiently unknown.
"Cochin-Chinese Shakespeare, indeed!" said Dick Jones, at the next symposium. "Why, judging from the copious extracts you gave from his greatest drama, Baby Bantam, it isthemost tedious drivel. You might have written it yourself. Where is the Shakespearean quality of this, which is, you say, the whole of Act Thirteen?
"'Hang-ho: Out, Fu-sia, does your mother know you are?
"'Fu-sia: I have no mother, but I have a child.'"
"Where is the Shakespearean quality?" repeated Andrew. "Do you not feel the perfect pathos of those two lines, the infiniteness of incisive significance? To me they paint the whole scene in two strokes of matchless simplicity, strophe and anti-strophe. Fu-sia the repentant outcast and Hang-ho whose honest love she rejected, stand out as in a flash of lightning. Nay, Shakespeare himself never wrote an act of such tragic brevity, packed so full of the sense of anagke. Why, so far from it being tedious drivel, a lady in whose opinion I have great confidence and to whom I sent my article, told me afterwards that she couldn't sleep till she had read it."
"She told me she couldn't sleep till she had read it."
"She told me she couldn't sleep till she had read it."
"She told me she couldn't sleep till she had read it."
The Mutual Depreciation Society burst into a roar of laughter and Andrew realized that he had put his foot into it.
"Don't you think it a shame," broke in Frank Grey, "that we English are debarred from having a Shakespeare. There's been one discovered lately in Belgium,and we have already a Dutch Shakespeare, a French Shakespeare, a German Shakespeare, and an American Shakespeare. English is the only language in which we can't get one. It seems cruel that we should be just the one nation in the world to be cut off from having a nineteenth century Shakespeare. Every patriotic Briton must surely desire that we could discover an English Shakespeare to put beside these vaunted foreign phenomena."
"But an English Shakespeare is a bull," said Patrick Boyle, who had a keen eye for such.
"Precisely. A John Bull," replied Frank.
"Peace. I would willingly look out for one," said Andrew Mackay, thoughtfully. "But I cannot venture to insinuate yet that Shakespeare did not write English. The time is scarcely ripe, though it is maturing fast. Otherwise the idea is tempting."
"But why take the words in their natural meaning?" demanded Tom Brown, the philosopher, in astonishment. "Is it not unapparent that an English Shakespeare would be a great writer more saturated with Anglo-Saxon spirit than Shakespeare, who was cosmic and for all time and for every place? Hamlet, Othello, Lady Macbeth—these are world-types, not English characters. Our English Shakespeare must be more autochthonic, more chauviniste; or more provincial and moreborné, if you like to put it that way. His scenes must be rooted in English life, and his personages must smack of British soil." There was much table-thumping when the philosopher ceased.
"Excellent!" said Andrew. "He must be found. It will be the greatest boom of the century. But whom can we discover?"
"There is John P. Smith," said Tom Brown.
"No, why John P. Smith? He has merit," objected Taffy Owen. "And then he has never been in our set."
"And besides he would not be satisfied," said Patrick Boyle.
"That is true," said Andrew Mackay reflectively. "I know, Owen,youwould like to be the subject of the discovery. But I am afraid it is too late. I have taken your measurements and laid down the chart of your genius too definitely to alter now. You are permanently established in business as the dainty neo-Hellenic Buddhist who has chosen to express himself through farcical comedy. If you were just starting life, I could work you into this English Shakespeardom—I am always happy to put a good thing in the way of a friend—but at your age it is not easy to go into a new line."
"Well, but," put in Harry Robinson, "if none of us is to be the English Shakespeare, why should we give over the appointment to an outsider? Charity begins at home."
"Thatisa difficulty," admitted Andrew, puckering his brow. "It brings us to a standstill. Seductive, therefore, as the idea is, I am afraid it has occurred to us too late."
They sat in thoughtful silence. Then suddenly Frank Grey flashed in with a suggestion that took their breath away for a moment and restored it to them, charged with "Bravos" the moment after.
"But why should he exist at all?"
Why indeed? The more they pondered the matter, the less necessity they saw for it.
"'Pon my word, Grey, you are right," said Andrew. "Right as Talleyrand when he told the thief who insisted that he must live:Mais, monsieur, je n'en vois pas la nécessité."
"It's an inspiration!" said Tom Brown, moved out of his usual apathy. "We all remember how Whateley proved that the Emperor Napoleon never existed—and the plausible way he did it. How few persons actuallysaw the Emperor? How did even these know that what they sawwasthe Emperor? Conversely, it should be as easy as possible for us six to put a non-existent English Shakespeare on the market. You remember what Voltaire said of God—that if there were none it would be necessary to invent Him. In like manner patriotism calls upon us to invent the English Shakespeare."
"Yes, won't it be awful fun?" said Patrick Boyle.
The idea was taken up eagerly—themodus operandiwas discussed, and the members parted, effervescing with enthusiasm and anxious to start the campaign immediately. The English Shakespeare was to be named Fladpick, a cognomen which once seen would hook itself on to the memory.
The very next day a leading article in theDaily Heraldcasually quoted Fladpick's famous line:
"Coffined in English yew, he sleeps in peace."
And throughout the next month, in the most out-of-the-way and unlikely quarters, the word Fladpick lurked and sprang upon the reader. Lines and phrases from Fladpick were quoted. Gradually the thing worked up, gathering momentum on its way, and going more and more of itself, like an ever-swelling snowball which needs but the first push down the mountain-side. Soon a leprosy of Fladpick broke out over the journalism of the day. The very office-boys caught the infection, and in their book reviews they dragged in Fladpick with an air of antediluvian acquaintance. Writers were said not to possess Fladpick's imagination, though they might have more sense of style, or they were said not to possess Fladpick's sense of style, though they might have more imagination. Certain epithets and tricks of manner were described as quite Fladpickian, while others were mentioned as extravagant and as disdained by writers like,say, Fladpick. Young authors were paternally invited to mould themselves on Fladpick, while others were contemptuously dismissed as mere imitators of Fladpick. By this time Fladpick's poetic dramas began to be asked for at the libraries, and the libraries said that they were all out. This increased the demand so much that the libraries told their subscribers they must wait till the new edition, which was being hurried through the press, was published. When things had reached this stage, queries about Fladpick appeared in the literary and professionally inquisitive papers, and answers were given, with reference to the editions of Fladpick's book. It began to leak out that he was a young Englishman who had lived all his life in Tartary, and that his book had been published by a local firm and enjoyed no inconsiderable reputation among the English Tartars there, but that the copies which had found their way to England were extremely scarce and had come into the hands of only a fewcognoscenti, who being such were enabled to create for him the reputation he so thoroughly deserved. The next step was to contradict this, and the press teemed with biographies and counter-biographies.Dazzleralso wired numerous interviews, but an authoritative statement was inserted in theAcadæum, signed by Andrew Mackay, stating that they were unfounded, and paragraphs began to appear detailing how Fladpick spent his life in dodging the interviewers. Anecdotes of Fladpick were highly valued by editors of newspapers, and very plenteous they were, for Fladpick was known to be a cosmopolitan, always sailing from pole to pole and caring little for residence in the country of which he yet bade fair to be the laureate. These anecdotes girdled the globe even more quickly than their hero, and they returned from foreign parts bronzed and almost unrecognizable, to set out immediately on fresh journeys in their new guise.
A parody of one of his plays was inserted in a comic paper, and it was bruited abroad that Andrew Mackay was collaborating with him in preparing one of his dramas for representation at the Independent Theatre. This set the older critics by the ears, and they protested vehemently in their theatrical columns against the infamous ethics propagated by the new writer, quoting largely from the specimens of his work given in Mackay's article in theFortnightly Review. Patrick, who wrote the dramatic criticism for seven papers, led the attack upon the audacious iconoclast. Journalesia was convulsed by the quarrel, and even young ladies asked their partners in the giddy waltz whether they were Fladpickiets or Anti-Fladpickiets. You could never be certain of escaping Fladpick at dinner, for the lady you took down was apt to take you down by her contempt of your ignorance of Fladpick's awfully sweet writings. Any amount of people promised one another introductions to Fladpick, and those who had met him enjoyed quite a reflected reputation in Belgravian circles. As to the Fladpickian parties, which brother geniuses like Dick Jones and Harry Robinson gave to the great writer, it was next to impossible to secure an invitation to them, and comparatively few boasted of the privilege. Fladpick reaped a good deal ofkudosfrom refusing to be lionized and preferring the society of men of letters like himself, during his rare halting moments in England.
Long before this stage Mackay had seen his way to introducing the catch-word of the conspiracy, "The English Shakespeare." He defended vehemently the ethics of the great writer, claiming they were at core essentially at one with those of the great nation from whence he sprang and whose very life-blood had passed into his work. This brought about a reaction, and all over the country the scribblers hastened to do justice to the maligned writer, and an elaborate analysis of his most subtle characters wasannounced as having been undertaken by Mr. Patrick Boyle. And when it was stated that he was to be included in the Contemporary Men of Letters Series, the advance orders for the work were far in advance of the demand for Fladpick's actual writings. "Shakespearean," "The English Shakespeare," was now constantly used in connection with his work, and even the most hard-worked reviewers promised themselves to skim his book in their next summer holidays. About this time, too,Dazzlerunconsciously helped the Society by announcing that Fladpick was dying of consumption in a snow-hut in Greenland, and it was felt that he must either die or go to a warmer climate, if not both. The news of his phthisic weakness put the seal upon his genius, and the great heart of the nation went out to him in his lonely snow-hut, but returned on learning that the report was acanard. Still, the danger he had passed through endeared him to his country, and within a few months Fladpick, the English Shakespeare, was definitely added to the glories of the national literature, founding a whole school of writers in his own country, attracting considerable attention on the Continent, and being universally regarded as the centre of the Victorian Renaissance.
But this was the final stage. A little before it was reached Cecilia came to Frank Grey to pour her latest trouble into his ear, for she had carefully kept her promise of bothering him with her most intimate details, and the love-sick young lawyer had listened to her petty psychology with a patience which would have brought him in considerable fees if invested in the usual way. But this time the worry was genuine.
"Frank," she said, "I am in love."
The young man turned as white as a sheet. The sword of Damocles had fallen at last, sundering them forever.
"With whom?" he gasped.
"With Mr. Fladpick!"
"The English Shakespeare?"
"The same!"
"But you have never seen him!"
"I have seen his soul. I have divined him from his writings. I have studied Andrew Mackay's essays on him. I feel that he and I areen rapport."
"But this is madness!"
"I know it is. I have tried to fight against it. I have applied for admission to the Old Maids' Club, so as to stifle my hopeless passion. Once I have joined Miss Dulcimer's Society, I shall perhaps find peace again."
"Great Heavens! Think; think before you take this terrible step. Are you sure it is love you feel, not admiration?"
"No, it is love. At first I thought it was admiration, and probably it was, for I was not likely to be mistaken in the analysis of my feelings, in which I have had much practice. But gradually I felt it efflorescing and sending forth tender shoots clad in delicate green buds, and a sweet wonder came upon me, and I knew that love was struggling to get itself born in my soul. Then suddenly the news came that he I loved was ill, dying in that lonely snow-hut in grim Greenland, and then in the tempest of grief that shook me I knew that my life was bound up with his. Watered by my hot tears, the love in my heart bourgeoned and blossomed like some strange tropical passion-flower, and when the reassuring message that he was strong and well flashed through the world, I felt that if he lived not for me, the universe were a blank and next year's daisies would grow over my early grave."
"He I loved was dying in Greenland."
"He I loved was dying in Greenland."
"He I loved was dying in Greenland."
She burst into tears. "A great writer has always been the ideal which I would not tell you of. It is the one thing I have kept from you. But oh, Frank, Frank, he can never be mine. He will probably never know of my existenceand the most I can ever hope for is his autograph. To-morrow I shall join the Old Maids' Club, and then all will be over." A paroxysm of hopeless sobs punctuated her remarks.
It was a terrible position. Frank groaned inwardly.
How was he to explain to this fair young thing that she loved nobody and could never hope to marry him? There was no doubt that with her intense nature and her dreamy blue eyes she would pine away and die. Or worse, she would live to be an old maid.
He made an effort to laugh it off.
"Tush!" he said, "all this is mere imagination. I don't believe you really love anybody!"
"Frank!" She drew herself up, stony and rigid, the warm tears on her poor white face frozen to ice. "Have you nothing better than this to say to me, after I have shown you my inmost soul?"
The wretched young lawyer's face returned from white to red. He could have faced a football team in open combat, but these complex psychical positions were beyond the healthy young Philistine.
"For—or—give me," he stammered. "I—I am—I—that is to say, Fladpick—oh how can I explain what I mean?"
Cecilia sobbed on. Every sob seemed to stick in Frank's own throat. His impotence maddened him. Was he to let the woman he loved fret herself to death for a shadow? And yet to undeceive her were scarcely less fatal. He could have cut out the tongue that first invented Fladpick. Verily, his sin was finding him out.
"Why can you not explain what you mean?" wept Cecilia.
"Because I—oh, hang it all—because I am the cause of your grief."
"You?" she said. A strange, wonderful look came into her eyes. The thought shot from her eyes to his and dazzled them.
Yes! why not? why should he not sacrifice himself to save this delicate creature from a premature tomb? Why should he not become "the English Shakespeare?" True, it was a heavy burden to sustain, but what will a man not dare or suffer for the woman he loves? Moreover, was he not responsible for Fladpick's being, and thus for all the evil done by his Frankenstein? He had employed Fladpick for his own amusement and the Employers' Liability Act was heavy upon him. The path of abnegation, of duty, was clear. He saw it and he went for it then and there—went, like a brave young Englishman, to meet his marriage.
"Yes," he said, "I am glad you love Mr. Fladpick."
"Why?" she murmured breathlessly.
"Because I love you."
"But—I—do—not—love—you," she said slowly.
"You will, when I tell you it is I who have provoked your love."
"Frank, is this true?"
"On my word of honor as an Englishman."
"You are Fladpick?"
"If I am not, he does not exist. There is no such person."
"Oh, Frank, this is no cruel jest?"
"Cecilia, it is the sacred truth. Fladpick is nobody, if he is not Frank Grey."
"But you never lived in Tartary?"
"Of course not. All that about Fladpick is the veriest poetry. But I did not mind it, for nobody suspected me. I'll introduce you to Andrew Mackay himself, and you shall hear from his own lips how the newspapers have lied about Fladpick."
"My noble, modest boy! So this was why you were so embarrassed before! But why not have toldmethat you were Fladpick?"
"Because I wanted you to love me for myself alone."
She fell into his arms.
"Frank—Frank—Fladpick, my own, my English Shakespeare," she sobbed ecstatically.
At the next meeting of the Mutual Depreciation Society, a bombshell in a stamped envelope was handed to Mr. Andrew Mackay. He tore open the envelope and the explosion followed—as follows:
"Gentlemen,"I hereby beg to tender the resignation of my membership in your valued Society, as well as to anticipate your objections to my retaining the post of legal adviser I have the honor to hold. I am about to marry—the cynic will say I am laying the foundation of a Mutual Depreciation Society of my own. But this is not the reason of my retirement. That is to be sought in my having accepted the position of the English Shakespeare which you were good enough to open up for me. It would be a pity to let the pedestal stand empty. From the various excerpts you were kind enough to invent, especially from the copious extracts in Mr. Mackay's articles, I have been able to piece together a considerable body of poetic work, and by carefully collecting every existing fragment, and studying the most authoritative expositions of my aims and methods, I have constructed several dramas, much as Professor Owen re-constructed the mastodon from the bones that were extant. As you know I had never written a line in my life before, but by the copious aid of your excellent and genuinely helpful criticism I was enabled to get along without much difficulty. I find that to write blank verse you have only to invert the order of the words and keepon your guard against rhyme. You may be interested to know that the last line in the last tragedy is:'Coffined in English yew he sleeps in peace.'When written, I got my dramas privately printed with a Tartary trademark, after which I smudged the book and sold the copyright to Makemillion & Co. for ten thousand pounds. Needless to say I shall never write another book. In taking leave of you I cannot help feeling that, if I owe you some gratitude for the lofty pinnacle to which you have raised me, you are also not unindebted to me for finally removing the shadow of apprehension that must have dogged you in your sober moments—I mean the fear of being found out. Mr. Andrew Mackay, in particular, as the most deeply committed, I feel owes me what he can never hope to repay for my gallantry in filling the mantle designed by him, whose emptiness might one day have been exposed, to his immediate downfall."I am, gentlemen,"Your most sincere and humble Depreciator,"The English Shakespeare."
"Gentlemen,
"I hereby beg to tender the resignation of my membership in your valued Society, as well as to anticipate your objections to my retaining the post of legal adviser I have the honor to hold. I am about to marry—the cynic will say I am laying the foundation of a Mutual Depreciation Society of my own. But this is not the reason of my retirement. That is to be sought in my having accepted the position of the English Shakespeare which you were good enough to open up for me. It would be a pity to let the pedestal stand empty. From the various excerpts you were kind enough to invent, especially from the copious extracts in Mr. Mackay's articles, I have been able to piece together a considerable body of poetic work, and by carefully collecting every existing fragment, and studying the most authoritative expositions of my aims and methods, I have constructed several dramas, much as Professor Owen re-constructed the mastodon from the bones that were extant. As you know I had never written a line in my life before, but by the copious aid of your excellent and genuinely helpful criticism I was enabled to get along without much difficulty. I find that to write blank verse you have only to invert the order of the words and keepon your guard against rhyme. You may be interested to know that the last line in the last tragedy is:
'Coffined in English yew he sleeps in peace.'
When written, I got my dramas privately printed with a Tartary trademark, after which I smudged the book and sold the copyright to Makemillion & Co. for ten thousand pounds. Needless to say I shall never write another book. In taking leave of you I cannot help feeling that, if I owe you some gratitude for the lofty pinnacle to which you have raised me, you are also not unindebted to me for finally removing the shadow of apprehension that must have dogged you in your sober moments—I mean the fear of being found out. Mr. Andrew Mackay, in particular, as the most deeply committed, I feel owes me what he can never hope to repay for my gallantry in filling the mantle designed by him, whose emptiness might one day have been exposed, to his immediate downfall.
"I am, gentlemen,"Your most sincere and humble Depreciator,"The English Shakespeare."
"I am, gentlemen,"Your most sincere and humble Depreciator,"The English Shakespeare."
THE OLD YOUNG WOMAN AND THE NEW.
"Providence has granted what I dared not hope for," wrote Cecilia to the President.
"If she had hoped for it, Providence would not have granted it," interpolated the Honorary Trier.
"This is hardly the moment for jesting," said Lillie, with marked pique.
"Pardon me. The moment for jesting is surely when you have received a blow. In a happy crisis jesting is a waste of good jokes. The retiring candidate does not statewhatProvidence has granted, does she?"
"No," said Lillie savagely. "She was extremely reticent about her history—reticent almost to the point of indiscretion. But I daresay it's a husband."
"Ah, then it can hardly be Providence that has granted it," said Silverdale.
"Providence is not always kindly," said Lillie laughing. The gibe at Benedicts restored her good-humor and when the millionaire strolled into the Club she did not immediately expel him.
"Well, Lillie," he said, "when are you going to give thesoiréeto celebrate the foundation of the Club? I am staying in town expressly for it."
"As soon as possible, father. I am only waiting for some more members."
"Why, have you any difficulty about getting enough? I seem always to be meeting young ladies on the staircases."
"We are so exclusive."
"So it seems. You exclude even me," grumbled the millionaire. "I can't make out why you are so hard to please. A more desirable lot of young ladies I never wish to see. I should never have believed it possible that such a number of pretty girls would be anxious to remain single merely for the sake of a principle."
"You see!" said Lillie eagerly, "we shall be a standing proof to men of how little they have understood our sex."
"Men do not need any proof of that," remarked Lord Silverdale dryly.
This time it was Lillie whom Turple the magnificent prevented from making the retort which was not on the tip of her tongue.
"A gentleman who gives his name as a lady is waiting in the ante-room," he announced.
They all stared hard at Turple the magnificent, almost tempted to believe he was joking and that the end of the world was at hand.
But the countenance of Turple the magnificent was as stolid and expressionless as a Bath bun. He might have been beaming behind his face, possibly even the Old Maids' Club tickled him vastly, so that his mental midriff was agitated convulsively; but this could not be known by outsiders.
Lillie took the card he tendered her and read aloud: "Nelly Nimrod."
"Nelly Nimrod!" cried the Honorary Trier. "Why, that's the famous girl who travelled from Charing Cross to China-Tartary on an elephant and wrote a book about it under the pen-name of Wee Winnie."
"Shall I show him in?" interposed Turple the magnificent.
"Certainly," said Lillie eagerly. "Father, you must go."
"Oh, no! Not if it's only a gentleman."
"It may be only no lady," murmured Silverdale. Lillie caught the words and turned upon him the dusky splendors of her fulminant eyes.
"Et tu, Brute!" she said. "Do you too hold that false theory that womanliness consists in childishness?"
"No, nor that other false theory that it consists in manliness," retorted the Honorary Trier.
The entry of Nelly Nimrod put an end to the dispute. In the excitement of the moment no one noticed that the millionaire was still leaning against an epigram.
"Good-morning, Miss Dulcimer. I am charmed to make your acquaintance," said Wee Winnie, gripping the President's soft hand with painful cordiality. She was elegantly attired in a white double-breasted waistcoat, a zouave jacket, a check-tweed skirt, gaiters, a three inch collar, a tricorner hat, a pair of tanned gloves and an eyeglass. In her hand she carried an ebony stick. Her hair was parted at the side. Nelly was nothing if not original, so that when the spectator looked down for the divided skirt he was astonished not to find it. Wee Winnie in fact considered it ungraceful andDivide et Imperaa contradiction in terms. She was a tall girl, and looked handsome even under the most masculine conditions.
"I am happy to make yours," returned the President. "Is it to join the Old Maids' Club that you have called?"
"It is. Wherever there is a crusade you will always find me in the van. I don't precisely know your objects yet, but any woman who strikes out anything new commands my warmest sympathies."
"Be seated, Miss Nimrod. Allow me to introduce Lord Silverdale—an old friend of mine."
"And of mine," replied Nelly, bowing with a sweet smile.
"Indeed!" cried Lillie flushing.
"In the spirit, only in the spirit," said Nelly. "His lordship's 'Poems of Passion' formed my sole reading in the deserts of China-Tartary."
"In the letter, you should say then," said the peer. "By the way, you are confusing me with a minor poet, Silverplume, and his book is not called Poems of Passion but Poems of Compassion."
"Ah well, there isn't much difference," said Nelly.
"No, according to the proverb Compassionisakin to Passion," admitted Silverdale.
"Well, Miss Nimrod," put in Lillie, "our object is easily defined. We are an association of young and beautiful girls devoted to celibacy in order to modify the meaning of the term 'Old Maid.'"
Nelly Nimrod started up enthusiastically.
"Bravo, old girl!" she cried, slapping the President on the back. "Put me down for a flag. I catch the conception of the campaign. It is magnificent."
"But it is not war," said Lillie. "Our methods are peaceful, unaggressive. Our platform is merely metaphorical. Our lesson is the self-sufficiency of spinsterhood. We preach it by existing."
"Not exist by preaching it," added Silverdale. "This is not one of the cliques of the shrieking sisterhood?"
"What do you mean by the term shrieking sisterhood," said Nelly. "I use it to denote the mice-fearing classes."
"Hear, hear," said Lillie. "It is true, Miss Nimrod, that our members are required not to exhibit in public, but only because that is a part of the old unhappy signification of 'Old Maid.'"
"I quite understand. You would not call a book a public exhibition of oneself, I suppose."
"Certainly not—if it is an autobiography," said Silverdale.
"That's all right then. My bookisautobiographical."
"I knew a celebrity once," said Silverdale, "a dreadfully shy person. All his life he lived retired from the world, and even after his death he concealed himself behind an autobiography."
Lillie frowned at these ironical insinuations, though Miss Nimrod appeared impervious to them.
"I have not concealed myself," she said simply. "All I thought and did is written in my book."
"I liked that part about the fleas," murmured the millionaire.
"What's that? Didn't catch that," said Nelly, looking round in the direction of the voice.
"Good gracious, father, haven't you gone?" cried Lillie, no less startled. "It's too bad. You are spoiling one of my best epigrams. Couldn't you lean against something else?"
Before the millionaire could be got rid of, Turple the magnificent reappeared.
"A lady who gives the name of a gentleman," he said.
The assemblage pricked up its ears.
"What name?" asked Lillie.
"Miss Jack, she said."
"That's her surname," said Lillie, in a disappointed tone.
Turple the magnificent stood reproved a moment, then he went out to fetch the lady. The gathering was already so large that Lillie thought there was nothing to be gained by keeping her waiting.
Miss Jack proved to be an extremely eligible candidateso far as appearances went. She bowed stiffly on being introduced to Miss Nimrod.
"May I ask if that is to be the uniform of the Old Maids' Club?" she inquired of the President. "Because if so I am afraid I have made a mistaken journey. It is as a protest against unconventional females that I designed to join you."
"Is that the uniform of the Old Maids' Club?"
"Is that the uniform of the Old Maids' Club?"
"Is that the uniform of the Old Maids' Club?"
"Is it to me you are referring as an unconventional female?" asked Miss Nimrod, bridling up.
"Certainly," replied Miss Jack, with exquisite politeness. "I lay stress upon your sex, merely because it is not obvious."
"Well, Iaman unconventional female, and I glory in it," said Nelly Nimrod, seating herself astride the sofa. "I did not expect to hear the provincial suburban note struck within these walls. I claim the right of every woman to lead her own life in her own toilettes."
"And a pretty life you have led!"
"I have, indeed!" cried Miss Nimrod, goaded almost to oratory by Miss Jack's taunts. "Not the ugly, unlovely life of the average woman. I have exhausted all the sensations which are the common guerdon of youth and health and high spirits, and which have for the most part been selfishly monopolized by man. The splendid audacity of youth has burnt in my veins and fired me to burst my swaddling clothes and strike for the emancipation of my sex. I have not merely played cricket in a white shirt and lawn tennis in a blue serge skirt, I have not only skated in low-heeled boots and fenced in corduroy knickerbockers, but I have sailed the seas in an oil-skin jacket and a sou'-wester and swum them in nothing and walked beneath them in the diver's mail. I have waded after salmon in long boots and caught trout in tweed knickerbockers and spats. Nay, more! I have proclaimed the dignity of womanhood upon the moors, and have shotgrouse in brown leather gaiters and a sweet Norfolk jacket with half-inch tucks. But this is not the climax, I have——"
Wee Winnie on her Travels.
Wee Winnie on her Travels.
Wee Winnie on her Travels.
"Yes, I know. You are Wee Winnie. You travelled alone from Charing Cross to China-Tartary. I have not read your book, but I have heard of it."
"And what have you heard of it?"
"That it is in bad taste."
"Your remark is in worse," interposed Lillie severely.
"Ladies, ladies!" murmured Silverdale. "This is the first time we have had two of them in the room together," he thought. "I suppose when the thing is once started we shall change the name to the Kilkenny Cats' Club."
"In bad taste, is it?" said Miss Nimrod, promptly whipping a book out of her skirt pocket. "Well, here is the book. If you can find one passage in bad taste I'll—I'll delete it in the next edition. There!"
She pushed the book into the hands of Miss Jack, who took it rather reluctantly.
"What's this?" asked Miss Jack, pointing to a weird illustration.
"That's a picture of me on my elephant, sketched by myself. Do you mean to say there's any bad taste about that?"
"Oh, no; I merely asked for information. I didn't know what animal it was."
"You astonish me," said the artist. "Have you never been to a circus? Yes, this is Mumbo Jumbo himself."
"Surely, Miss Jack," said Lord Silverdale gravely. "You must have heard, if you have not read, how Miss Nimrod chartered an elephant, packed up her Kodak and a few bonnet-boxes and rode him on the curb through Central Asia. But may I ask, Miss Nimrod, why you did not enrich the book with more sketches? There is only this one. All the rest are Kodaks."
"Well, you see, Lord Silverdale, it's simpler to photograph."
"Perhaps, but your readers miss the artistic quality that pervades this sketch. I am glad you made an exception in its favor."
"Oh, only because one can't Kodak oneself. Everything else I caught as I flew past."
"Did you catch any Tartars?"
"Hundreds. I destroyed most of them."
"By the way, you did not come across Mr. Fladpick in Tartary?"
"The English Shakespeare? Oh, yes! I lunched with him. He is charm——"
"Ah, here are the fleas!" interrupted Miss Jack.
The millionaire started as if he had been stung.
"I won't have them taken apart from the context, I warn you. That wouldn't be fair," said Miss Nimrod.
"Very well, I will read the whole passage," said Miss Jack.
"'Mumbo Jumbo bucked violently (see illustration) but I settled myself tightly on the saddle and gave myself up to meditations on the vanity of Life-guardsmen. Mumbo Jumbo seemed, however, determined to have his fling, and bounded about with the agility of an india-rubber ball.At last his convulsions became so terrific that I grew quite nervous about my fragile bonnet-boxes. They might easily dash one another to bits. I determined to have leather hat-boxes the next time I travelled in untrodden paths. "Steady, my beauty, steady!" I cried. Recognizing my familiar accents, my pet easied a little. To pacify him entirely I whistled 'Ba, ba, ba, boodle-dee,' to him, but his contortions recommenced and became quite grotesque. First he lifted one paw high in the air, then he twirled his trunk round the corner, then the first paw came down with a thud that shook the desert, while the other three paws flew up towards the sky. It suddenly occurred to me that he was dancing to the air of 'Ba, ba, ba, boodle-dee,' and I laughed so loud and long, that any stray Mahatma who happened to be smoking at the door of his cave in the cool of the evening must have thought me mad. But while I was laughing, Mumbo Jumbo continued to stand upon his tail, so that I saw it could not be 'Ba, ba, ba, boodle-dee' he was suffering from. I wondered whether perhaps he could be teething—or should I say, tusking? I do not know whether elephants get a second set, or whether they cut their wisdom tusks, but, as they are so sagacious, I suppose they do. Suddenly the consciousness of what was really the matter with him flashed sharply upon my brain. I looked down upon my hand, and there, poised lightly yet firmly, like a butterfly on a lily, was a giant flea. Instantly, without uttering a single cry or reeling in my saddle, I grasped the situation; and coolly seizing the noxious insect with my other hand, I choked the life out of him, while Mumbo Jumbo cantered along in restored calm. The sensitive beast had evidently been suffering untold agonies.'"
"Now, Lord Silverdale," said Miss Nimrod, "I appeal to you. Is there anything in that passage in the leastcalculated to bring a blush to the cheek of the young person?"
"No, there is not," said his lordship emphatically. "Only I wish you had caught that flea with your Kodak."
"Why?" said Miss Nimrod.
"Because I have always longed to see him. A flea that could penetrate the pachydermatous hide of an elephant must have been, indeed, a monster. In England we only see that sort under microscopes. They seem to thrive nowhere else. Yours must have been one that had escaped from under the lens. He was magnified three thousand diameters and he never recovered from it. You probably took him over in your trunk."
"Oh, no, I'm sure I didn't," protested Miss Nimrod.
"Well, then, Mumbo Jumbo did in his."
"Excuse me," interposed Miss Jack. "We are getting off the point. I did not say the passage was calculated to raise a blush, I said it was a grave error of taste."
"It is a mere flea-bite," broke in the millionaire, impatiently. "I liked it when I first read it, and I like it now I hear it again. It is a touch of nature that brings the Tartary traveller home to every fireside."
"Besides," added Lord Silverdale. "The introduction of the butterfly and the lily makes it quite poetical."
"Ladies and gentlemen," interposed the President, at last, "we are not here to discuss entomology or æsthetics. You stated, Miss Jack, that you thought of joining us as a protest against female unconventionally."
"I said unconventional females," persisted Miss Jack.
"Even so, I do not follow you," said Lillie.
"It is extremely simple. I am unable to marry because I have a frank nature, not given to feigning or fawning. I cannot bring a husband what he expects nowadays in a wife."
"What is that?" inquired Lillie curiously.
"A chum," answered Miss Jack. "Formerly a man wanted a wife, now he wants a woman to sympathize with his intellectual interests, to talk with him intelligently about his business, discuss politics with him—nay, almost to smoke with him. Tobacco for two is destined to be the ideal of the immediate future. The girls he favors are those who flatter him by imitating him. It is women like Wee Winnie who have depraved his taste. There is nothing the natural man craves less for than a clever, learned wife. Only he has been talked over into believing that he needs intellectual companionship, and now he won't be happy till he gets it. I have escaped politics and affairs all my life, and I am determined not to marry into them."
"What a humiliating confession!" sneered Miss Nimrod. "It is a pity you don't wear doll's-clothes."
"I claim for every woman the right to live her own life in her own toilettes," retorted Miss Jack. "The sneers about dolls are threadbare. I have watched these intellectual camaraderies, and I say they are a worse injustice to woman than any you decry."
"That sounds a promising paradox," muttered Lord Silverdale.
"The man expects the woman to talk politics—but he refuses to take a reciprocal interest in the woman's sphere of work. He will not talk nursery or servants. He will preach economy, but he will not talk it."
"That is true," said Lillie impressed. "What reply would you make to that, Miss Nimrod?"
"There is no possible reply," said Miss Jack hurriedly. "So much for the mock equality which is the cant of the new husbandry. How stands the account with the new young womanhood? The young ladies who are clamoring for equality with men want to eat their cake and to have it too. They want to wear masculine hats, yet tokeep them on in the presence of gentlemen; to compete with men in the market-place, yet to take their seats inside omnibuses on wet days and outside them on sunny; to be 'pals' with men in theatres and restaurants and shirk their share of the expenses. I once knew a girl named Miss Friscoe who cultivated Platonic relations with young men, but never once did she pay her half of the hansom."
"Pardon me," interrupted Wee Winnie. "My whole life gives the lie to your superficial sarcasm. In my anxiety to escape these obvious objurgations I have even, I admit it, gone to the opposite extreme. I have made it a point to do unto men as they would have done unto me, if I had not anticipated them. I always defray the bill at the restaurants, buy the stalls at the box-office and receive the curses of the cabman. If I see a young gentleman to the train, I always get his ticket for him and help him into the carriage. If I convey him to a ball, I bring him a button-hole, compliment him upon his costume and say soft nothings about his moustache, while if I go to a dance alone I stroll in about one in the morning, survey mankind through my eyeglass, loll a few minutes in the doorway, then go downstairs to interview the supper, and having sated myself with chicken, champagne and trifle return to my club."
"To your club!" exclaimed the millionaire.
"Yes—do you think the Old Maids' is the only one in London? Mine is the Lady Travellers'—do you know it, Miss Dulcimer?"
"No—o," said Lillie shamefacedly. "I only know the Writers'."
"Why, are you a member of that? I'm a member, too. It's getting a great club now, what with Ellaline Rand (Andrew Dibdin, you know) and Frank Maddox and Lillie Dulcimer. I wonder we haven't met there."
"I'm so taken up with my own club," explained Lillie.
"Naturally. But you must come and dine with me some evening at the Lady Travellers'—snug little club—much cosier than the Junior Widows', and they give you a better bottle of wine, and then the decorations are so sweetly pretty. The only advantage the Junior Widows' has over the Lady Travellers' is the lovely smoking-room lined with mirrors, which makes it much nicer when you have men to dinner. I always ask them there."
"Why, are you allowed to have men?" asked Miss Jack.
"Certainly—in the dining and smoking rooms. Then of course there are special gentlemen's nights. We get down a lot of music-hall talent just to let them have a peep into Bohemia."
"But how can you be a member of the Junior Widows'?" asked the millionaire.
"Oh, I'm not an original member. But when they were in want of funds they let a lot of married women and girls in, without asking questions."
"I suppose, though, they all look forward to becoming widows in time," observed Silverdale cheerfully.
"Oh no," replied Miss Nimrod emphatically. "I don't say that if they hadn't let me in, the lovely smoking-room lined with mirrors mightn't have tempted me to marry so as to qualify myself. But as it is, thank Heaven, I'm an Old Maid for life. Why should I give up my freedom and the comforts of my club and saddle myself with a husband who would want to monopolize my society and who would be jealous of my bachelor friends and want me to cut them, who would hanker to read my letters, who would watch my comings and goings, and open my parcels of cosmetics marked confectionery? Doubtless in the bad old times which Miss Jack has the inaptitude to regret, marriage was the key to comparative freedom, but in these days when woman has at last emancipated herself from thethraldom of mothers, it would be the height of folly to replace them by husbands. Will you tell me, Miss Jack, what marriage has to offer to a woman like me?"
"Nothing," replied Miss Jack.
"Aha! You admit it!" cried Miss Nimrod triumphantly. "Why should I embrace a profession to which I feel no call? Marriage has practically nothing to offer any independent woman except a trousseau, wedding presents, and the jealousy of her female friends. But what are these weighed against the cramping of her individuality? Perhaps even children come to fetter her life still more and she has daughters who grow up to be younger than herself. No, the future lies with the Old Maid; the woman who will retain her youth and her individuality till death; who dies, but does not surrender. The ebbing tide is with you, Miss Jack; the flowing tide is with us. The Old Maids' Club will be the keystone of the arch of the civilization of to-morrow, and Miss Dulcimer's name will go down to posterity linked with——"
"Lord Silverdale's," said the millionaire.
"Father! What are you saying?" murmured Lillie, abashed before her visitors.
"I was reminding Miss Nimrod of the part his lordship has played in the movement. It is not fair posterity should give you all the credit."
"I have done nothing for the club—nothing," said the peer modestly.
"And I will do the same," said Miss Jack. "I came here under the delusion that I was going to associate myself with a protest against the defeminization of my sex, with a band of noble women who were resolved never to marry till the good old times were restored and marriages became true marriages once more. But instead of that I find—Wee Winnie."
"You are, indeed, fortunate beyond your deserts," repliedthat lady. "You may even hope to encounter a suitable husband some day."
"I do hope," said Miss Jack frankly. "But I will never marry till I meet a thoroughly conventional man."
"There I have the advantage of you," said Miss Nimrod. "I shall never marry till I meet a thoroughlyunconventional man."
"A thoroughly unconventional man would never want to marry at all," said Lillie.
"Of course not. That is the beauty of the situation. That is the paradox which guarantees my spinsterhood. Well, I've had a charming afternoon, Miss Dulcimer, but I must really run away now. I hate keeping men waiting, and I have an appointment with a couple of friends at the Junior Widows'. Such fun! While riding in the park before lunch, I met Guy Fledgely out for a constitutional with his father, the baronet. I asked Guy if he would have a chop with me at the club this evening, and what do you think? The baronet coughed and looked at Guy meaningly, and Guy blushed and hemmed and hawed and looked sheepish and at last gave me to understand he never went out to dine with a lady unless accompanied by his father. So I had to ask the old man, too. Isn't it awful? By the way, Miss Jack, I should be awfully delighted if you would join our party!"