I can never be more than a kleptomaniac.
I can never be more than a kleptomaniac.
I can never be more than a kleptomaniac.
"'You know I could not prosecute you,' he answered more gently.
"'After your language to me you are capable of anything. Your uncle called you a rogue with his dying breath, and statements made with that are generally veracious. Prosecute me if you will—I have done you out of three thousand pounds and I am glad of it. Only one favor I will ask of you—for the sake of our old relations, give me fair warning!'
"'That you may flee the country?'
"'No, that I may get a new collection of photographs.'
"'You will submit to being taken by the police?'
"'Yes—after I have been taken by the photographer.'
"'But look at the position you will be in?'
"'I shall be in six different positions—one for each of the chief illustrated papers.'
"'Your flippancy is ill-timed, Margaret,' said Richard sternly.
"'Flippant, good heavens! Do you know me so little as to consider me capable of flippancy? Richard, this is the last straw. You have called me a thief, you have threatened to place me in the felon's dock, and I have answered you with soft words, but no man shall call me flippant and continue to be engaged to me!'
"'But, Maggie, darling!' His tone was changing. He saw he had gone too far. 'Consider! It is not only I that am the loser by your—indiscretion, your generous indiscretion——'
"'My indiscreet generosity,' I corrected.
"He accepted my 'indiscreet generosity' and went on. 'Cannot you see that, as my future wife, you will also suffer?'
"'But surely you will come in for something under your uncle's will all the same,' I reminded him.
"'Not a stiver. He never made a will, he never saved any money. He was the most selfish brute that ever breathed. All the money he couldn't spend on himself he gave away in charity so as to get the kudos during his lifetime, pretending that there was no merit in post-mortem philanthropy. And now all the good he might have done by his death you have cancelled.'
"I sat mute, my complexion altered for the worse by pangs of compunction.
"'But I can make amends,' I murmured at last.
"'How?' he asked eagerly.
"'I can tell the truth—at least partially. I can make an affidavit thatThreepenny Bitsbelonged to my fellow-passenger, that he lent it me just before the accident, or that, seeing he was dead, I took it to hand over to his relatives.'
"For a moment his face brightened up, then it grew dark as suddenly as if it had been lit by electricity. 'They will not believe you,' he said. 'Even if you were a stranger, the paper would contest my claim. But considering your relation to me, considering that the money would fall to you as much as to me, no common-sense jury would credit your evidence.'
"'Well, then, we must break off our engagement.'
"'What would be the good of that? They would ferret out our past relations, would suspect their resumption immediately after the verdict.'
"'Well, then, we must break off our engagement,' I repeated decisively. 'I could never marry a prosecutorin posse—a man in whose heart was smouldering a petty sense of pecuniary injury.'
"'If you married me, I should cease to be a prosecutor in posse,' he said soothingly. 'As the law stands, a husband cannot give evidence against his wife in criminal cases.'
"'Oh, well, then you'd become a persecutor in esse,' I retorted. 'You'd always have something to throw in my teeth, and for my part I could never forgive you the wrong I have done you. We could not possibly live together.'
"My demeanor was so chilling, my tone so resolute that Richard was panic-stricken. He vowed, protested, stormed, entreated, but nothing could move me.
"'A kindly accident has shown me your soul,' I answered, 'and the sight is not encouraging. Fortunately I have seen it in time. You remember when you took me to seeThe Doll's House, you said that Norah was quite right in all she did. I daresay it was because the actress was so charming—but let that pass. And yet what are you but another Helmer? Just see how exact is the parallel between our story and Ibsen's. Norah in all innocence forged her husband's name in order to get the money to restore him to health. I, in all innocence, steal a threepenny paper, in order to leave you three thousand pounds by my death. When things turn out wrong, you turn round on me just as Helmer turned round on Norah—forgetting for whose sake the deed was done. If Norah was justified in leaving her husband, how much more justified must I be in leaving my betrothed!'"
"The cases are not quite on all fours," interrupted the President who had pricked up her ears at the mention of the "Woman's Poet." "You must not forget that you did not really sin for his sake but for your brother's."
"That is an irrelevant detail," replied the beautiful ghoul. "He thought I did—which comes to the samething. Besides, my telling him I did only increases the resemblance between me and Norah. She was an awful fibber, if you remember. Richard, of course, disclaimed the likeness to Helmer, though in doing so he was more like him than ever. But I would give him no word of hope. 'We could never be happy together,' I said. 'Our union would never be real. There would always be the three thousand pounds between us.'
"'Well, that would be fifteen hundred each,' he answered with ghastly jocularity.
"'This ill-timed flippancy ends all,' I said solemnly. 'Henceforth, Mr. Westbourne, we must be strangers.'
"He sat like one turned to stone. Not till the cab arrived at my brother's house did he speak again.
The Old Maid arrives.
The Old Maid arrives.
The Old Maid arrives.
"Then he said in low tones: 'Maggie, can I never become anything to you but a stranger?'
"'The greatest miracle of all would have to happen then, Richard,' I quoted coldly. Then, rejecting his proffered assistance, I alighted from the vehicle, passed majestically across the threshold and mounted the stairs with stately step, not a sign, not the slightest tremor of a muscle betraying what I felt. Only when I was safe in my own little room, with its lavender-scented sheets and its thousand childish associations did my pent-up emotions overpower me. I threw myself upon my little white bed in a paroxysm of laughter. I had come out of a disagreeable situation agreeably, leaving Dick in the wrong, and I felt sure I could whistle him back as easily as the hansom."
"And what became of Richard?" asked Lillie.
"I left him to settle with the cabman. I have never seen him since."
Lillie gave a little shudder. "You speak as if the cabman had settled with him. But are you sure you are willing to renounce all mankind because you find one man unsatisfactory?"
"All. I was very young when I got engaged. I did not want to be a burden on my brother. But now his firework factory is a brilliant success. He lives in a golden rain. Having only myself to please now, I don't see why I should have to please a husband. The more I think of marriage the less I think of it. I have not kept my eyes open for nothing. I am sure it wouldn't suit me. Husbands are anything but the creatures a young girl's romantic fancy pictures. They have a way of disarranging the most careful toilettes. They ruffle your hair and your temper. They disorder the furniture—and put their feet on the mantelpiece. They scratch the fenders, read books and stretch themselves on the most valuable sofas. If they help in the household they only make more work. The trail of tobacco is over all you prize. All day long the smoke gets into your eyes. Filthy pipes clog your cabinets, your window-curtains reek of stale cigars. You have bartered your liberty for a mess of cigar-ash. There is an odor of bar saloons about the house and boon companions come to welter in whiskey and water. Their talk is of science and art and politics and it makes them guffaw noisily and dig one another in the ribs. There is not a man in the world to whom I would trust my sensitive fragility—they are all coarse, clumsy creatures with a code of morals that they don't profess and a creed of chivalry that they never practise. Falsehood abides permanently in their mouth like artificial teeth and corruption lurks beneath the whited sepulchres of their shirt-fronts. They adore us in secret and deride us when they are together. They feign a contempt for us which we feel for them." These sentiments re-instated Miss Linbridge in the good opinion of the President, conscious heretofore of a jarring chord. She ordered in some refreshments to get an opportunity of whispering to Turple the magnificent that the Honorary Trier might return.
"Oh, by the way," said Miss Linbridge, "I hunted out that copy ofThreepenny Bitsbefore coming out. I've kept it in a drawer as a curiosity. Here it is!"
Lillie took the paper and examined it anxiously.
"What's that?YoureadingThreepenny Bits?" said Silverdale coming in.
"It is only an old number," said Lillie, "whereby hangs a tale. Miss Linbridge was in a railway accident with it."
"Miss Linbridge, Lord Silverdale."
The Honorary Trier bowed.
"Oh what a pity it was an old number," he said. "Miss Linbridge might have had a claim for damages."
"How very ungallant," said Lillie. "Miss Linbridge could have had no claim unless she had been killed."
"Besides," added Miss Linbridge laughing at Lillie's bull, "it wasn't an old number then. The accident happened on New Year's Day."
"Even then it would have been too old," answered Silverdale, "for it is dated December 2d and the assurance policy is only valid during the week of issue."
"What is that?" gasped Miss Linbridge. Her face was passing through a variety of shades.
"Yes," said Lillie. "Here is the condition in print. You don't seem to have noticed it was a back number. But of course I don't wonder at that—there's no topical interest whatever, one week's very much like another. And see! Here is even 'Specimen Copy' marked on the outside sheet. Richard's uncle must have had it given to him in the street."
"The miracle!" exclaimed Miss Linbridge in exultant tones, and repossessing herself of the paper she darted from the Club.
"LA FEMME INCOMPRISE.
Lord Silverdale had gone and there was now no need for Lillie to preserve the factitious cheerfulness with which she had listened to his usual poem, while her thoughts were full of other and even more depressing things. Margaret Linbridge's miracle had almost undermined the President's faith in the steadfastness of her sex; she turned mentally to the yet unaccepted Wee Winnie for consolation, condemning her own half-hearted attitude towards that sturdy soul, and almost persuading herself that salvation lay in spats. At any rate long skirts seemed the last thing in the world to find true women in.
But providence had not exhausted its miracles, and Lillie was not to spend a miserable afternoon. The miracle was speeding along towards her on the top of an omnibus—a miracle of beauty and smartness. On reaching the vicinity of the Old Maid's Club, the miracle, which was of course of the female gender, tapped the driver amicably upon the hat with her parasol and said "Stop please." Thepetitecreature was the spirit of self-help itself and scorned the aid of the gentleman in front of her, preferring to knock off his hat and crush the driver's so long as the independence of womanhood was maintained. But she maintained it charmingly and without malice and gave the conductor a sweet smile in addition to his fare as she tripped away to the Old Maids' Club.
Amicably said, "Stop please."
Amicably said, "Stop please."
Amicably said, "Stop please."
Lillie was fascinated the instant Turple the magnificent announced "Miss Wilkins" in suave tones. The mere advent of a candidate raised her spirits and she found herself chatting freely with her visitor even before she had put her through the catechism. But the catechism came at last.
"Why do I want to join you?" asked the miracle. "Because I am disgusted with my lover—because I am afemme incomprise. Oh, don't stare at me as if I were a medley of megrims and fashionable ailments, I'm the very opposite of that. Mine is a buoyant, breezy, healthy nature, straightforward and simple. That's why I complain of being misunderstood. My lover is a poet—and the misunderstanding I have to endure at his hands is something appalling. Every man is a bit of a poet where woman is concerned, and so every woman is more or less misunderstood, but when you are unfortunate enough to excite the affection of a real whole poet—well, that way madness lies. Your words are twisted into meanings you never intended, your motives are misconstrued, and your simplest actions are distorted. Silverplume, for it is the well-known author of 'Poems of Compassion' that I have had the misfortune to captivate, never calls without laying a sonnet next day; in which remarks, that must be most misleading to those who do not know me, occur with painful frequency. His allowance is two kisses per day—one of salutation, one of farewell. We have only been actually engaged two months, yet I have counted up two hundred and thirty-nine distinct and separate kisses in the voluminous 'Sonnet Series' which he has devoted to our engagement, and, what is worse, he describes himself as depositing them.
"'Where at thy flower-mouth exiguousThe purple passion mantles to the brim.'
"'Where at thy flower-mouth exiguousThe purple passion mantles to the brim.'
It sounds as if I was berouged like a dowager. Purple passion, indeed! I let him kiss me because he appears to like it and because there seems something wrong about it—but as for really caring a pin one way or another, well, you Miss Dulcimer, know how much there is in that! This 'Sonnet Series' promises to be endless, the course of our acquaintanceship is depicted in its most minute phases with the most elaborate inaccuracy—if I smile, if I say: 'How do you do?' if I put my hand to my forehead, if I look into the fire, down go fourteen lines giving a whole world of significance to my meanest actions, and making Himalayas out of the most microscopic molehills. I am credited with thoughts I never dreamed of and sentiments I never felt, till I ask myself whether any other woman was ever so cruelly misunderstood as I? I grow afraid to do or say anything, lest I bring upon my head a new sonnet. But even so I cannot helplookingsomething or the other; and when I come to read the sonnet I find it is always the other. Once I refused to see him for a whole week, but that only resulted in seven 'Sonnets of Absence,' imaginatively depicting what I was saying and doing each day, and containing a detailed analysis of his own sensations, as well as reminiscences of past happy hours together. Most of them I had no recollection of, and the only one I could at all share was that of a morning we spent on the Ramsgate cliffs where Silverplume put his handkerchief over his face and fell asleep. In the last line of the sonnet it came out:
"'There mid the poppies of the planisphere,I swooned for very joy and wearihead.'
"'There mid the poppies of the planisphere,I swooned for very joy and wearihead.'
But I knew it by the poppies. Then, dear Miss Dulcimer, you should just see the things he calls me—'Love's gonfalon and lodestar' and what-not. Very often I can't even find them in the dictionary and it makes me uneasy.Heaven knows what he may be saying about me! When he talks of
"'The rack of unevasive lunar things'
"'The rack of unevasive lunar things'
I do not so much complain, because it's their concern if they are libelled. It is different with incomprehensible remarks flung unmistakably at my own head such as
"'O chariest of Caryatides.'
"'O chariest of Caryatides.'
It sounds like a reproach and I should like to know what I have done to deserve it. And then his general remarks are so monotonously unintelligible. One of his longest poetical epistles, which is burnt into my memory because I had to pay twopence for extra postage, began with this lament:
"'O sweet are roses in the summer timeAnd Indian naiads' weary walrusesAnd yet two-morrow never comes to-day.'
"'O sweet are roses in the summer timeAnd Indian naiads' weary walrusesAnd yet two-morrow never comes to-day.'
I cannot see any way out of it all except by breaking off our engagement. When we were first engaged, I don't deny I rather liked being written about in lovely-sounding lines but it is a sweet one is soon surfeited with, and Silverplume has raved about me to that extent that he has made me look ridiculous in the eyes of all my friends. If he had been moderate, they would have been envious; now they laugh when they read of my wonderful charms, of my lithe snake's mouth, and my face which shames the sun and my Epipsychidiontic eyes (whatever that may be) and my
"'Wee waist that holds the cosmos in its span,'
"'Wee waist that holds the cosmos in its span,'
and say he is poking fun at me. But Silverplume is quite serious—I am sure of that, and it is the worst feature ofthe case. He carries on just the same in conversation, with the most improper allusions to heathen goddesses, and seems really to believe that I am absorbed in the sunset when I am thinking what to wear to-morrow. Just to give you an idea of how he misinterprets my silence let me read to you one of his sonnets called:
"'MOONSHINE.
"'Walking a space betwixt the double Naught,The What Is Bound to Be and What Has Been,How sweet with Thee beneath the moonlit treen,O woman-soul immaculately wrought,To sit and catch a harmony uncaughtWithin a world that mocks with margarine,In chastened silence, mystic, epicene,Exchanging incommunicable thought."'Diana, Death may doom and Time may toss,And sundry other kindred things occur,But Hell itself can never turn to loss,Though Mephistopheles his stumps should stir,That day, when introduced at Charing Cross,I smiled and doffed my silken cylinder.'
"'Walking a space betwixt the double Naught,The What Is Bound to Be and What Has Been,How sweet with Thee beneath the moonlit treen,O woman-soul immaculately wrought,To sit and catch a harmony uncaughtWithin a world that mocks with margarine,In chastened silence, mystic, epicene,Exchanging incommunicable thought.
"'Diana, Death may doom and Time may toss,And sundry other kindred things occur,But Hell itself can never turn to loss,Though Mephistopheles his stumps should stir,That day, when introduced at Charing Cross,I smiled and doffed my silken cylinder.'
"Another distressing feature about Silverplume—indeed, I think about all men—is their continuous capacity for love-making. You know, my dear Miss Dulcimer, with us it is a matter of times and seasons—we are creatures of strange and subtle susceptibilities, sometimes we are in the mood for love and ready to respond to all shades of sentimentality, but at other moments (and these the majority) men's amorous advances jar horribly. Men do not know this. Ever ready to make love themselves they think all moments are the same to us as to them. And of all men, poets are the most prepared to make love at a moment's notice. So that Silverplume himself is almost more trying than his verses."
"But after all you need not read them," observed Lillie. "They please him and they do not hurt you. And you have always the consolation of remembering it is not you he loves but the paragon he has evolved from his inner consciousness. Even taking into account his perennial affectionateness, your reason for refusing him seems scarcely strong enough."
"Ah, wait a moment—You have not heard the worst! I might perhaps have tolerated his metrical misinterpretations—indeed on my sending him a vigorous protest against the inaccuracies of his last collection (they came out so much more glaringly when brought all together from the various scattered publications to which Silverplume originally contributed them) he sent me back a semi-apologetic explanation thus conceived:
"'TO CELIA.'
"(You know of course my name is Diana, but that is his way.)
"''Tis not alone thy sweet eyes' gleamNor sunny glances,For which I weave so oft a dreamOf dainty fancies."''Tis not alone thy witching playOf grace fantasticThat makes me chant so oft a layEncomiastic."'Both editors and thee I see,Thy face, their purses.I offer heart and soul to thee,To them my verses.'
"''Tis not alone thy sweet eyes' gleamNor sunny glances,For which I weave so oft a dreamOf dainty fancies.
"''Tis not alone thy witching playOf grace fantasticThat makes me chant so oft a layEncomiastic.
"'Both editors and thee I see,Thy face, their purses.I offer heart and soul to thee,To them my verses.'
"I was partially mollified by this, for if his poems were not merely complimentary, and he really got paid for them, one might put up with inspiring them. We were reconciledand he took me to a reception at the house of a wealthy friend of his, a fellow-member of the Sonneteers' Society. It was here that I saw a sight that froze my young blood and warned me upon the edge of what a precipice I was standing. When we got into the drawing-room, the first thing we saw was an awful apparition in a corner—a hideous, unkempt, unwashed man in a dressing-gown and slippers, with his eyes rolling wildly and his lips moving rhythmically. It was the host.
"'Don't speak to him,' whispered the hostess. 'He doesn't see us. He has been like that all day. He came down to look to the decorations this morning, when the idea took him and he has been glued to the spot ever since. He has forgotten all about the reception—he doesn't know we're here and I thought it best not to disturb him till he is safely delivered of the sonnet.'
"'You are quite right,' everybody said in sympathetic awestruck tones and left a magic circle round the poet in labor. But I felt a shudder run through my whole being. 'Goodness gracious, Silverplume,' I said, 'is this the way you poets go on?'"
"'No, no, Diana,' he assured me. 'It is all tommyrot (I quote Silverplume's words). The beggar is just bringing out a new volume, and although his wife has always distributed the most lavish hospitality to the critics, he has never been able to get himself taken seriously as a poet. There will be lots of critics here to-night and he is playing his last card. If he is not a genius now, he never will be.'
The poet plays his last card.
The poet plays his last card.
The poet plays his last card.
"'Oh, of course,' I replied sceptically, 'two of a trade.' I made him take me away and that was the end of our engagement. Even as it was, Silverplume's neglect of his appearance had been a constant thorn in my side, and if this was so before marriage, what could I hope for after? It was all very well for him to say his friend was onlyshamming, but even so, how did I know he would not be reduced to that sort of thing himself when his popularity faded and younger rivals came along."
Lillie, who seemed to have somearrière-pensée, entered into an animated defence of the poet, but Miss Wilkins stood her ground and refused to withdraw her candidature.
"I don't want you to withdraw your candidature," said Lillie, frankly. "I shall be charmed to entertain it. I am only arguing upon the general question."
And, indeed, Lillie was enraptured with Miss Wilkins. It was the attraction of opposites. A matter-of-fact woman who could reject a poet's love appealed to her with irresistible piquancy. Miss Wilkins stayed on to tea (by which time she had become Diana) and they gossiped on all sorts of subjects, and Lillie gave her the outlines of the queerest stories of past candidates and in the Old Maids' Club that afternoon all went merry as a marriage bell.
"Well, good-bye, Lillie," said Diana at last.
"Good-bye, Diana," returned Lillie. "NowIunderstand you I hope you won't consider yourself afemme incomprmiseany longer."
"It is only the men I complained of, dear."
"But we must ever remainincomprisesby man," said Lillie. "Femme incomprise—why, it is the badge of all our sex."
"Yes," answered Diana. "A woman letting down her back hair is tragic to a man; to us she only recalls bedroom gossip. Good-bye."
And nodding brightly the brisk little creature sallied into the street and captured a passing 'bus.
THE INAUGURAL SOIREE.
"Oh, Lord Silverdale," cried Lillie exultantly when he made his usual visit the next afternoon. "At last I have an unexceptional candidate. We shall get under weigh at last. I am so pleased because papa keeps bothering about that inauguralsoirée. You know he is staying in town expressly for it. But what is the matter?—You don't seem to be glad at my news."
"I am afraid you will be grieved at mine," he replied gravely. "Look at this in to-day'sMoon."
Sobered by his manner, she took the paper. Then her face grew white. She read, in large capitals:
"The Old Maids' Club."Interview with the President."Sensational Stories of Skittish Spinsters."Wee Winnie and Lillie Dulcimer."
"The Old Maids' Club."Interview with the President."Sensational Stories of Skittish Spinsters."Wee Winnie and Lillie Dulcimer."
"I called at the Old Maids' Club yesterday," writes aMoonwoman, "to get some wrinkles, which ought to be abundant in such a Club, though they are not. Miss Dulcimer, the well-known authoress, is one of the loveliest and jolliest girls of the day. Of course I went as a candidate, with a trumped-up story about my unhappy past, which Miss Dulcimer will, I am sure, forgive me,in view of the fact that it was the only way of making her talk freely for the benefit of my readers."
Lillie's eye glanced rapidly down the collection of distortions. Then she dropped theMoon.
"This is outrageous," she said. "I can never forgive her."
"Why, is this the candidate you were telling me about?" asked Silverdale in deeper concern.
"I am afraid it is!" said Lillie, almost weeping. "I took to her so, we talked ever so long. Even Wee Winnie did not possess the material for all these inaccuracies."
"What is this woman's name?"
"Wilkins—I already called her Diana."
"Diana?" cried Silverdale. "Wilkins? Great heavens, can it be?"
"What is the matter?"
"It must be. Wilkins has married his Diana. It was Mrs. Diana Wilkins who called upon you—not Miss at all."
"Whatareyou talking about? Who are these people?"
"Don't you remember Wilkins, theMoon-man that I was up in a balloon with? He was in a frightful quandary then about his approaching marriage. He did not know what to do. It tortured him to hear anyone ask a question because he was always interviewing people and he got to hate the very sound of an interrogation.—I told you about it at the time, don't you remember?—and he knew that marriage would bring into his life a person who would be sure to ask him questions after business hours. I was very sorry for the man and tried to think of a way out, but in vain, and I even promised him to bring the Old Maids' Club under the notice of his Diana. Now it seems he has hit on the brilliant solution of making her into a Lady Interviewer, so that her nerves, too, shall be hypersensitive to interrogatives, and husband and wifeshall sit at home in a balsamic restfulness permeated by none but categorical propositions. Ah me! well, I envy them!"
"You envy them?" said Lillie.
"Why not? They are well matched."
"But you are as happy as Wilkins, surely."
"Query. It takes two to find happiness."
"What nonsense!" said Lillie.
She had been already so upset by the treachery and loss of the misunderstood Diana, that she felt ready to break down and shed hot tears over these heretical sentiments of Silverdale's. He had been so good, so patient. Why should he show the cloven hoof just to-day?
"Miss Dolly Vane," announced Turple the magnificent.
A strange apparition presented itself—an ancient lady quaintly attired. Her dress fell in voluminous folds—the curious full skirt was bordered with velvet, and there were huge lace frills on the elbow-sleeves. Her hair was smoothed over her ears and she wore a Leghorn hat. There were the remains of beauty on her withered face but her eyes were wild and wandering. She curtseyed to the couple with old-fashioned grace, and took the chair which Lord Silverdale handed her.
Lillie looked at her inquiringly.
"Have I the pleasure of speaking to Miss Dulcimer?" said the old lady. Her tones were cracked and quavering.
"I am Miss Dulcimer," replied Lillie. "What can I do for you?"
"Ah, yes, I have been reading about you in theMoonto-day. Wee Winnie and Lillie Dulcimer! Wee Winnie! It reminds me of myself. They call me Little Dolly, you know." She simpered in a ghastly manner.
Lillie's face was growing pale. She could not speak.
"Yes, yes of course," said Silverdale smiling. "They call you Little Dolly."
"Little Dolly!" she repeated to herself, mumbling and chuckling. "Little Dolly."
"So you have been reading about Miss Dulcimer!" said Silverdale pleasantly.
"Yes, yes," said the old lady, looking up with a start. "Little Lillie Dulcimer. Foundress of the Old Maids' Club. That's the thing for me, I thought to myself. That'll punish Philip. That'll punish him for being away so long. When he comes home and finds Little Dolly is an old maid, won't he be sorry, poor Philip? But I can't help it. I said I would punish him and I will."
All the blood had left Lillie's cheek—she trembled and caught hold of Lord Silverdale's arm.
"I shan't have you now, Philip," the creaking tones of the old lady continued after a pause. "The rules will not allow it, will they, Miss Dulcimer? It is not enough that I am young and beautiful, I must reject somebody—and I have nobody else to reject but you, Philip. You are the only man I have ever loved. Oh my Philip! My poor Philip!"
She began to wring her hands. Lillie pressed closer to Lord Silverdale and her grasp on his arm tightened.
"Very well, we will put your name on the books at once," said the Honorary Trier, in bluff, hearty tones.
Little Dolly looked up smiling. "Then I'm an old maid!" she cried ecstatically. "Already! Little Dolly an old maid! Already! Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!"
She went off into a burst of uncanny laughter. Lord Silverdale felt Lillie shuddering violently. He disengaged himself from her grasp and placed her on the sofa. Then offering his arm to Miss Dolly Vane, who accepted it with a charming smile, and a curtsey to Miss Dulcimer, he led her from the apartment. When he returned Lillie was weeping half-hysterically on the sofa.
"My darling!" he whispered. "Calm yourself." Helaid his hand tenderly on her hair. Presently the sobs ceased.
"Oh, Lord Silverdale!" she said in a shaken voice. "How good you are! Poor old lady! Poor old lady!"
"Do not distress yourself. I have taken care she shall get home safely."
"Little Dolly! how tragic it was!" whispered Lillie.
"Yes, it was tragic. Probably it is not now so sad to her as it is to us, but it is tragic enough, heaven knows. Lillie,"—he trembled as he addressed her thus for the first time—"I am not sorry this has happened. The time has come to put an end to all this make-believe. This Old Maids' Club of yours is a hollow mockery. You are playing round the fringes of tragedy—it is like warming your hands at a house on fire, wherein wretched beings are shrieking for help. You are young and rich and beautiful—Heaven pity the women who have none of these charms. Life is a cruel tragedy for many—never crueller than when its remorseless laws condemn gentle loving women to a crabbed and solitary old age. To some all the smiles of fortune, the homage of all mankind—to others all the frowns of fate and universal neglect, aggravated by contumely. You have felt this, I know, and it is as a protest that you conceived your club. Still can it ever be a serious success? I love you, Lillie, and you have known it all along. If I have entered into the joke, believe me, I have sometimes taken it as seriously as you. Come! Say you love me, too, and let us end the tragi-comedy."
Lillie was obstinately silent for a moment, then she dried her eyes, and with a wan little smile said, in tones which she vainly strove to render those of the usual formula: "What poem have you brought me to-day?"
"To-day I have brought no poem, but I have lived one," said Lord Silverdale, taking her soft unresistinghand. "But, like Lady Clara Vere de Vere, you put strange memories in my head, and I will tell you some verses I made in the country in my callow youth, when the world was new.
"PASTORAL.
"A rich-toned landscape, touched with darkling goldOf misty, throbbing corn-fields, and with hazeOf softly-tinted hills and dreaming wold,Lies warm with raiment of soft summer rays,And in the magic air there lives a freeAnd subtle feeling of the distant sea."The perfect day slips softly to its end,The sunset paints the tender evening sky,The shadows shroud the hills with gray, and lendA softened touch of ancient mystery,And ere the silent change of heaven's lightI feel the coming glory of the night."O for the sweet and sacred earnest gazeOf eyes divine with strange and yearning tearsTo feel with me the beauty of our days,The glorious sadness of our mortal yearsThe noble misery of the spirit's strife,The joy and splendour of the body's life."
"A rich-toned landscape, touched with darkling goldOf misty, throbbing corn-fields, and with hazeOf softly-tinted hills and dreaming wold,Lies warm with raiment of soft summer rays,And in the magic air there lives a freeAnd subtle feeling of the distant sea.
"The perfect day slips softly to its end,The sunset paints the tender evening sky,The shadows shroud the hills with gray, and lendA softened touch of ancient mystery,And ere the silent change of heaven's lightI feel the coming glory of the night.
"O for the sweet and sacred earnest gazeOf eyes divine with strange and yearning tearsTo feel with me the beauty of our days,The glorious sadness of our mortal yearsThe noble misery of the spirit's strife,The joy and splendour of the body's life."
Lillie's hand pressed her lover's with involuntary tenderness, but she had turned her face away. Presently she murmured:
"But think what you are asking me to do? How can I, the President of the Old Maid's Club, be the first recreant?"
"But you are also the last to leave the ship," he replied, smiling. "Besides, you are not legally elected. You never came before the Honorary Trier. You were never a member at all, so have nothing to undo. If youhad stood your trial fairly, I should have plucked you, my Lillie, plucked you and worn you nearest my heart. It is I who have a position to resign—the Honorary Triership—and I resign it instanter. A nice trying time I have had, to be sure!"
"Now, now! I set my face against punning!" said Lillie, showing it now, for the smiles had come to hide the tears.
"Pardon, Rainbow," he answered.
"Why do you call me Rainbow?"
"Because you look it," he said. "Because your face is made of sunshine and tears. Go and look in the glass. Also because—well, wait and I will fashion my other reason into rhyme and send it you on our wedding morn."
"Poetry made while you wait," said Lillie, laughing. The laugh froze suddenly on her lips, and a look of horror overswept her face.
"What is it, dearest?" cried her lover, in alarm.
"Wee Winnie! How can we face Wee Winnie?"
"There is no need to break the truth to her—we can simply get rid of her by telling her she has never been elected, and never will be."
"Why," said Lillie, with a comicmoue, "that would be harder to tell her than the truth. But we must first of all tell father. I am afraid he will be dreadfully disappointed at missing that inauguralsoiréeafter all. You know he has been staying in town expressly for it. We have some bad quarters of an hour before us."
They sought the millionaire in his sanctum but found him not. They inquired of Turple the magnificent, and learned that he was in the garden. As they turned away, the lovers both simultaneously remarked something peculiar about the face of Turple the magnificent. Moved by a common impulse, they turned back and gazed at it.For some seconds they could not at all grasp the change that had come over it—but at last, and almost at the same instant, they realized what was the matter.
Turple the magnificent was smiling.
Filled with strange apprehensions, Silverdale and Lillie hurried into the garden, where their vague alarm was exchanged for definite consternation. The millionaire was pacing the gravel-paths in the society of a strange and beautiful lady. On closer inspection, the lady turned out to be only too familiar.
"Why it's Wee Winnie masquerading as a woman!" exclaimed Lord Silverdale.
And so it proved—Nelly Nimrod in all the flush of her womanly beauty, her mannish attire discarded.
"Why, what is this, father?" murmured Lillie.
"My child," said the millionaire solemnly. "Asyouhave resolved to be an Old Maid, I—I—well I thought it onlymyduty to marry. Even the poorest millionaire cannot shirk the responsibilities of wealth."
"But father!" said Lillie in dismay. "I have changed my mind. I am going to marry Lord Silverdale."
"Bless ye, my children!" said the millionaire. "You are a woman, Lillie, and it is a woman's privilege to change her mind. But I am a man and have no such privilege. I must marry all the same."
"But Miss Nimrod has changed her mind, too," said Lillie, quite losing her temper. "Andsheis not a woman."
"Gently, gently," said the millionaire. "Respect your stepmother to be, if you have no respect for my future wife."
"Lillie," said Miss Nimrod appealingly, "do not misjudge me. I havenotchanged my mind."
"But you said you could never marry, on the ground that while you would only marry an unconventional man, an unconventional man wouldn't want to marry you."
"Well? Your father is the man I sought. Hedidn'twant to marry me," she explained frankly.
"Oh," said Lillie, taken utterly aback, and regarding her father commiseratingly.
"It is true," he said, laughing uneasily. "I fell in love with Wee Winnie, but now Nelly says she wants to settle down."
"You ought to be grateful to me, Lillie," added Nelly, "for it was solely in the interest of the Old Maid's Club that I consented to marry your father. He was always a danger to the Club; at any moment he might have put forth autocratic authority and wound it up. So I thought that by marrying him I should be able to influence him in its favor."
"No doubt youwillmake him see the desirability of women remaining old maids," retorted Lillie unappeased.
"Come, come, Lillie, be sensible!" said the millionaire. "Nelly shall give Lillie a good dinner at the Junior Widows, one of those charming dinners you and I have had there, and Lillie please send out the cards for the inauguralsoirée. I am not going to be done out of that and nothing can now be gained by delay."
"But, sir, how can we inaugurate a Club which has never had any members?" asked Silverdale.
"But what does that matter? Aren't there plenty of candidates without them? Besides, nobody'll know. Each of the candidates will think the others are the members. Tell you what, boy, they shall all dance at Lillie's wedding, and we'll make that the inauguralsoirée."
"But that would be to publish my failure to the world," remonstrated Lillie.
"Nonsense, dear. It'll be published without that. Trust theMoon. Isn't it better to take the bull by the horns?"
"Well, yes, perhaps you're right," said Lillie hesitating."But I hope the world will understand that it is only desperation at the collapse of the Old Maids' Club that has driven me to commit matrimony."
She went back to the Club to write out the cards.
"What do you think of my stepmother?" she inquired pathetically of the ex-Honorary Trier.
"What do I think?" said Lord Silverdale seriously. "I think she is the punishment of Providence for your interference with its designs."
The explanatory poem duly came to hand on Lillie's wedding morn. It was written on vellum in the bridegroom's best hand and ran—
RAINBOW.