"well, have you seen this fanny radowski?" said lord silverdale, when he returned the manuscript to the president of the old maids' club.
"of course. didn't i tell you i had the story from her own mouth, though i have put it into mendoza's?"
"ah, yes, i remember now. it certainly is funny, her refusing a good catholic on the ground that he was a bad jew. but then according to the story she doesn't know he's a catholic?"
"no, it was i who divined the joke of the situation. lookers-on always see more of the game. i saw at once that if mendoza were really a jew, he would never have been such an ass as to make the slip he did; and so from this and several other things she told me about her lover, i constructed deductively the history you have read. she says she first met him at a mourning service in memory of her father, and that it is a custom among her people when they have not enough men to form a religious quorum (the number is the mystical ten) to invite any brother jew who may be passing to step in, whether he is an acquaintance or not."
"i gathered that from the narrative," said lord silverdale. "and so she wishes to be an object lesson in female celibacy, does she?"
"she is most anxious to enlist in the cause."
"is she really beautiful, et cetera?"
"she is magnificent."
"then i should say the very member we are looking for. a jewess will be an extremely valuable element of the club, for her race exalts marriage even above happiness, and an old maid is even more despised than among us. the lovely miss radowski will be an eloquent protest against the prejudices of her people."
lillie dulcimer shook her head quietly. "the racial accident which makes her seem a desirable member to you, makes me regard her as impossible."
"how so?" cried silverdale in amazement. "you surely are not going to degrade your club by anti-semitism."
"heaven forefend! but a jewess can never be a whole old maid."
"i don't understand."
"look at it mathematically a moment."
silverdale made a grimace.
"consider! a jewess, orthodox like miss radowski, can only be an old maid fractionally. an old maid must make 'the grand refusal!'—she must refuse mankind at large. now miss radowski, being cut off by her creed from marrying into any but an insignificant percentage of mankind, is proportionately less valuable as an object-lesson; she is unfitted for the functions of old maidenhood in their full potentiality. already by her religion she is condemned to almost total celibacy. she cannot renounce what she never possessed. there are in the world, roughly speaking, eight million jews among a population of a thousand millions. the force of the example, in other words, her value as an old maid, may therefore be represented by .008."
"i am glad you express her as a decimal rather than a vulgar fraction," said lord silverdale laughing. "but i must own your reckoning seems correct. as a mathematical wrangler you are terrible. so i shall not need to try miss radowski?"
"no; we cannot entertain her application," said lillie peremptorily, the thunder-cloud no bigger than a man's hand gathering on her brow at the suspicion that silverdale did not take her mathematics seriously. considering that in keeping him at arm's length her motive were merely mathematical (though lord silverdale was not aware of this) she was peculiarly sensitive on the point. she changed the subject quickly by asking what poem he had brought her.
"do not call them poems," he answered.
"it is only between ourselves. there are no critics about."
"thank you so much. i have brought one suggested by the strange farrago of religions that figured in your last human document. it is a pæan on the growing hospitality of the people towards the gods of other nations. there was a time when free trade in divinities was tabu, each nation protecting, and protected by, its own. now foreign gods are all the rage."
"the end of the century" catholic credo.
i'm a christo-jewish quaker,
moslem, atheist and shaker,
auld licht church of england fakir,
antinomian baptist, deist,
gnostic, neo-pagan theist,
presbyterianish papist,
comtist, mormon, darwin-apist,
trappist, high church unitarian,
sandemanian sabbatarian,
plymouth brother, walworth jumper,
southcote south-place bible-thumper,
christadelphian, platonic,
old moravian, masonic,
corybantic christi-antic,
ethic-culture-transatlantic,
anabaptist, neo-buddhist,
zoroastrian talmudist,
laotsean, theosophic,
table-rapping, philosophic,
mediæval, monkish, mystic,
modern, mephistophelistic,
hellenistic, calvinistic,
brahministic, cabbalistic,
humanistic, tolstoistic,
rather robert elsmeristic,
altruistic, hedonistic
and agnostic manichæan,
worshipping the galilean.
for with equal zeal i follow
sivah, allah, zeus, apollo,
mumbo jumbo, dagon, brahma,
buddha alias gautama,
jahvé, juggernaut and juno—
plus some gods that but the few know.
though i reverence the mishna,
i can bend the knee to vishna;
i obey the latest mode in
recognizing thor and odin,
just as freely as the virgin;
for the pope and mr. spurgeon,
moses, paul and zoroaster,
each to me is seer and master.
i consider heine, hegel,
schopenhauer, shelley, schlegel,
diderot, savonarola,
dante, rousseau, goethe, zola,
whitman, renan (priest of paris),
transcendental prophet harris,
ibsen, carlyle, huxley, pater
each than all the others greater.
and i read the zend-avesta,
koran, bible, roman gesta,
ind's upanischads and spencer
with affection e'er intenser.
for these many appellations
of the gods of different nations,
i believe—from baal to sun-god—
all at bottom cover one god.
him i worship—dropping gammon—
and his mighty name is mammon.
"you are very hard upon the century—or rather upon the end of it," said lillie.
"the century is dying unshriven," said the satirist solemnly. "its conscience must be stirred. truly, was there ever an age which had so much light and so little sweetness? in the reckless fight for gold society has become a mutual swindling association. cupidity has ousted cupid, and everything is bought and sold."
"except your poems, lord silverdale," laughed lillie.
it was tit for the tat of his raillery of her mathematics.
before his lordship had time to make the clever retort the thought of next day, turple the magnificent brought in a card.
"miss winifred woodpecker?" said lillie queryingly. "i suppose it's another candidate. show her in."
miss woodpecker was a tall stately girl, of the kind that pass for lilies in the flowery language of the novelists.
"have i the pleasure of speaking to miss dulcimer?"
"yes, i am miss dulcimer," said lillie.
"and where is the old maids' club?" further inquired miss woodpecker, looking around curiously.
"here," replied lillie, indicating the epigrammatic antimacassars with a sweeping gesture. "no, don't go, lord silverdale. miss woodpecker, this is my friend lord silverdale. he knows all about the club, so you needn't mind speaking before him."
"well, you know, i read the leader in the hurrygraph about your club this morning."
"oh, is there a leader?" said lillie feverishly. "have you seen it, lord silverdale?"
"i am not sure. at first i fancied it referred to the club, but there was such a lot about ptolemy, rosa bonheur's animals and the suez canal that i can hardly venture to say what the leader itself was about. and so, miss woodpecker, you have thought about joining our institution for elevating female celibacy into a fine art?"
"i wish to join at once. is there any entrance fee?"
"there is—experience. have you had a desirable proposal of marriage?"
"eminently desirable."
"and still you do not intend to marry?"
"not while i live."
"ah, that is all the guarantee we want," said lord silverdale smiling. "afterwards—in heaven—there is no marrying, nor giving in marriage."
"that is what makes it heaven," added lillie. "but tell us your story."
"it was in this way. i was staying at a boarding-house in brighton with a female cousin, and a handsome young man in the house fell in love with me and we were engaged. then my mother came down. immediately afterwards my lover disappeared. he left a note for me containing nothing but the following verses."
she handed a double tear-stained sheet of letter-paper to the president, who read aloud as follows:
a vision of the future.
"well is it for man that he knoweth not what the future will bring forth."
she had a sweetly spiritual face,
touched with a noble, stately grace,
poetic heritage of race.
her form was graceful, slim and sweet,
her frock was exquisitely neat,
with airy tread she paced the street.
she seemed some fantasy of dream,
a flash of loveliness supreme,
a poet's visionary gleam.
and yet she was of mortal birth,
a lovely child of lovely earth,
for kisses made and joy and mirth.
sweet whirling thoughts my bosom throng,
to link her life with mine i long,
and shrine her in immortal song.
i steal another glance—and lo!
dread shudders through my being flow,
my veins are filled with liquid snow.
another form beside her walks,
of servants and expenses talks,
her nose is not unlike a hawk's.
her face is plump, her figure fat,
she's prose embodied, stout gone flat,—
a comfortable persian cat.
her life is full of petty fuss,
she wobbles like an omnibus,
and yet it was not always thus.
alas for perishable grace!
how unmistakably i trace
the daughter's in the mother's face.
beneath the beak i see the nose,
the poetry beneath the prose,
the figure 'neath the adipose.
and so i sadly turn away:
how can i love a clod of clay,
doomed to grow earthlier day by day?
vain, vain the hope from fate to flee,
what special providence for me?
i know that what hath been will be.
the present and the future.
lillie and silverdale looked at each other.
"well, but," said lillie at last, "according to this he refused you, not you him. our rules——"
"you mistake me," interrupted winifred woodpecker. "when the first fit of anguish was over, i saw my frank was right, and i have refused all the offers i have had since—five in all. it would not be fair to a lover to chain him to a beauty so transient. in ten or twenty years from now i shall go the way of all flesh. under such circumstances is not marriage a contract entered into under false pretences? there is no chance of the law of this country allowing a time-limit to be placed in the contract; celibacy is the only honest policy for a woman."
involuntarily lillie's hand seized the candidate's and gripped it sympathetically. she divined a sister soul.
"you teach me a new point of view," she said, "a finer shade of ethical feeling."
silverdale groaned inwardly; he saw a new weapon going into the anti-hymeneal armory, and the old maids' club on the point of being strengthened by the accession of its first member.
"the law will have to accommodate itself to these finer shades," pursued lillie energetically. "it is a rusty machine out of harmony with the age. science has discovered that the entire physical organism is renewed every seven years, and yet the law calmly goes on assuming that the new man and the new woman are still bound by the contract of their predecessors and still possess the good-will of the original partnership. it seems to me if the short lease principle demanded by physiology is not to be conceded, there should at any rate be provincial and american rights in marriage as well as london rights. in the metropolis the matrimonial contract should hold good with a, in the country with b, neither party infringing the other's privileges, in accordance with theatrical analogy."
"that is a literal latitudinarianism in morals you will never get the world to agree to," laughed lord silverdale. "at least not in theory; we cannot formally sanction theatrical practice."
"do not laugh," said lillie. "law must be brought more in touch with life."
"isn't it rather vice versâ? life must be brought more in touch with law. however, if miss woodpecker feels these fine ethical shades, won't she be ineligible?"
"how so?" said the president in indignant surprise.
"by our second rule every candidate must be beautiful and undertake to continue so."
poor little lillie drooped her head.
and now it befalls to reveal to the world the jealously-guarded secret of the english shakespeare, for how else can the tale be told of how the old maids' club was within an ace of robbing him of his bride?
