'l/i
 
 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 \H^' 
 
 Ml 
 
 /WtuT-
 
 MR. ZANGWTLVS WORKS. 
 
 Six Shillings Each. 
 
 THE CELIBATES' CLUB. 
 
 DREAMERS OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 THE MASTER. 
 
 THE RING OF SCHJVORRERS. 
 
 THE PREMIER AND THE FAINTER. 
 
 Issued by other Publishers :— Ghetto Tragedies. —Merely Mary Ann. 
 — The Big Bozv Mystery.— Without Prejudice.
 
 The Bachelors' Club. 
 
 Daily Chronicle: "With all his fun, he is not a 'funny man'; he is a 
 literary liumorist — in all tlie seriousness of claiming a place in literature. With- 
 out despising tlie occasional aid of the more obvious means to ludicrous effects, 
 he nevers fatls to impress one with the feeling that he uses such means as they 
 would ordinarily be used by a really great genius for comedy, not as main and 
 constant resources, but as incidental materials that could not be neglected with- 
 out the suggestion of unnaturalness and pedantry. His eye ranges freely over 
 the wide scope of human weaknesses and contradictions, ever alert and ever 
 lambent with essential kindliness. Even when he loosens his wit on the most 
 palpable of social absurdities, he uses his victim as though he loved him. Every- 
 where there is the reserve of strength, as well as the profusion of fertility. 
 There is not one of the chapters of ' The Bachelors' Club ' that any reader with 
 the rudiments of a sense of humour in his body will think of skipping." 
 
 Observer : " The author has a delightful vein of humour." 
 
 Spectator : " Mr. Zangwill's humour is genuine, and often fre.sh." 
 
 Morning Post : "The author has a manner of touching on the foibles of the 
 day, full of a )ilayful malice, but quite devoid of bitterness, that is one of the 
 best gifts of the humorist. " 
 
 Vanity Pair: "We may congratulate ourselves upon the acquisition of a 
 new and original humorist. The whimsicality, smartness of idea and phraseology, 
 grotesque touches of character, quaint scraps of reflective wit and wisdom, are 
 fresh, iizarre, and unconventional to the last degree. Mr. Zangwill has plenty of 
 fantastic ideas, and a delightfully funny way of expressing them, and beneath all 
 his humour there is a certain philoaophical vein of thought. He has strength as 
 well as humour." 
 
 Speaker: " It is impossible to read this book without being delighted with 
 it." 
 World : " Both in prose and verse Mr. Zangwill can show a light hand." 
 
 St. James's Gazette : "Some exceedingly clever fooling, and a happy 
 audacity of whimsical invention. Mr. Zangwill shows a good deal of literary 
 feeling and knowledge, and has the fads and fashions of the hour at his fingers' 
 ends." 
 
 Boston Herald: "Mr. Zangwill is certainly a brilliant /arcewr, but he is 
 something more. There is even pathos to be found in some chapters of his book, 
 and there is wealth of epigram and satire. There is, too, an audacity of invention 
 that must distinguish this from the majority of 'funny ' books. ' Hamlet up to 
 Date ' is a short story of marked originality. I am not sure it is not my favourite 
 chapter ; but then I recall ' The Fall of Israfel,' and I cannot decide which I like 
 better. At any rate, here is a humorist of the first rank, not born, as we are 
 wont to suppose humorists must all be, under the Stars and the Stripes." — Louise 
 Chandler Moulton. 
 
 The Old Maids' Club. 
 
 Athenseum : " Most strongly to be recommended to all classes of readers. 
 The book is so rich in wit that to get through too much of it at a sitting would 
 be like making a meal off wedding-cake." 
 
 Daily News: "Told with unflagging humour and occasional touches of 
 pathos. The author plays with his subject, and invests it with delicate whimsical 
 lights and shadows, and keen flashes of wit." 
 
 Richard Le Gallienne in 'The Star': "He is all the greater wit 
 
 because he is greater than his wit." 
 
 National Review: "Mr. Zangwill has a very bright, and a very original 
 humour, and every page of his book is full of point and 'go,' and full, too, of a 
 healthy satire that is really humorously applied common sense." 
 
 New^ York Tribune: "A work of quite ravishing piquancy, which Is 
 creating a furore in New York."
 
 
 fill'.'"'' 
 
 
 I MET HIM IN THE ATLANTIC AND CONGRATULATED HIM. — T. 21"
 
 The 
 
 Celibates' Club 
 
 r / 
 
 Q^ 'Z6-i, ON rn^ ■vJ£BKEfsi'0''^ 
 
 BEING THE UNITED STORIES OF 
 
 The Bachelors' Club 
 
 AND 
 
 The Old Maids' Club 
 
 BY 
 
 I. ZANGWILL 
 
 AUTHOR OK 'the MASTER,' 
 
 "DREAMERS OF THE GHETTO,' 
 
 ETC. ETC. 
 
 I. O N D O N 
 
 WILLIAM HE IN EM ANN 
 
 1898
 
 This Edition enjoys copyright j •f'^AjCK r\(lfi^\ 
 
 in all countries signatory to l fi)^^ >|iO I '■^^'^^ r\ih 
 
 the Bcr„e Treaty, and is not ^ .. -jJU- 1) a/(^ /^^ 
 
 to be imported into the United 
 States of America. J
 
 
 A LAST FOREWORD. 
 
 It was inevitaUe that the Bachelors C/uh and the Old 
 Maids' Club should one day he united, and that the hanns 
 should he published by my publisher in ordinary. They 
 are able to live more cheaply together than apart, which 
 is, perhaps, some excuse for their union. It only remains 
 for me to prono^mce a paternal benediction, to hope that 
 they may contimce hound together, for better or for worse, 
 cancelling each other's faults and enhcmcing each others 
 virtties, doubling the profits, and halving the losses, till 
 death doth them part, or — more probably — consign them 
 to a common oblivion. 
 
 I. Z. 
 
 July 1898. 
 
 <^^
 
 THE BACHELORS' CLUB 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRA TIOXS BY GEORGE HUTCHINSON 
 
 ' A slavery beyond enduring, 
 But that 'tis of their own procuring. 
 As spiders never seek thejiy. 
 But leave him o/hiiiiselft' apply ; 
 So men are by themselves employed. 
 To quit the /reedom they enjoyed. 
 And run their necks into a noose. 
 They 'd break 'em after to break loose.' 
 
 HUDIBRAS. 
 
 .4 man may have a quarrel to marry when he will.' 
 
 bacon's essays.
 
 PEEFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION 
 
 Since this unpretentious book has reached a sixth edition, it is 
 plain that ruy fear lest it should make only one reader laugh and 
 have been written wholly in vain, was unfounded. Among the 
 readers who have laughed — I have been pleased to learn from 
 'unsolicited testimonials' — may be counted leading humorists 
 of the English-speaking world. Either, then, the book must have 
 some merit as an essay in comedy, or the eminent humorists must 
 be — jesters. There are pages in it which I myself find rather 
 forced, and in the Continental edition I have revised away a 
 whole chapter ; but I have not ventured to take such liberties 
 with the text in England, where many people foolishly prefer that 
 chapter to any other, and so I have confined myself to the correc- 
 tion of three or four clerical or printer's errors. In the couple of 
 years that have elapsed since the book was kindly welcomed by 
 the press and the public alike, there has been an amusing reaction 
 among the critics against any humour that is new. As they do 
 not seem to care for the old humour either — the humour of the 
 pun, the pothouse, the police-court, and the pawnshop — one is 
 driven to conclude that humour itself is under a ban. This is 
 very serious. The age was sad enough already. It is hard for 
 Figaro to be deprived of the relief of laughter, and to be com- 
 pelled to weep always. He must needs laugh, if only at the critics, 
 and in the privacies of his sleeve. They are, in sooth, excellent 
 fun — these austere gentlemen — to any writer with a sense of 
 humour, who does not mind being misunderstood, and has no anile 
 sensitiveness about his reputation, and can aff'ord to bide his titne, 
 doing his best as the heart in him pleases, and content to be 
 eliminated if his best is not fit to survive. For my part, I have 
 been grieved to see more than one of my fellow-authors morbidly 
 anxious to cover up their humorous past, in deference to tlu'
 
 xii PREFACE 
 
 conventional opinion that the gravity of the owl is a sign of 
 ■wisdom. Too many writers hasten to assume the statue in their 
 own lifetime, and to compose their public features to a non-human 
 frigidity. But the premature pedestal does not always prove sus- 
 taining, for to be non-human is not to be immortal; it is your 
 Martin Tappers and your University prigs who never descend to 
 a jest, not your Shakespeares and Heines. ' Let us be serious, 
 here comes a fool ! ' exclaimed a divine in danger of being 
 caught disporting himself boyishly. 'Let us be serious, here 
 comes a critic ! ' the modern author is tempted to exclaim. For 
 the stock critic, with that suburban insight of his, cannot under- 
 stand that a serious man may be humorous, still less that a 
 humorous man is always serious. Literature has taught the 
 critic that lesson ad nauseam, but he never acquires the lesson, 
 only the nausea. A high-class paper praises my tragedy and 
 sneers at my comedy. When I was younger and cruder I wrote 
 for that paper pseudonym ously, and it was eager to get my 
 humorous work. Other superior organs have congratulated me 
 on the development of my art and style, as displayed in Ghetto 
 Tragedies ; they have rejoiced to see me evolve from the humor- 
 ous. It seems ungracious after their fine compliments to confess 
 that the bulk of that little book was not only written but pub- 
 lished (under the name of the 'Baroness von S.') years before 
 The Bachelors^ Club was opened by the first reader. It has always 
 been a great consolation to me in the troubles and throes of 
 authorship, and especially in the pessimistic periods of humor- 
 ous composition, to read the newspaper comments on my books 
 and my person ; and it is mainly because I have heartily enjoyed 
 them all, and have never once been goaded into contradicting a 
 critic, not even when he has praised me on wrong grounds, or 
 described me as five feet high, that I venture humbly to claim the 
 title of humorist. 
 
 L ZANGWILL.
 
 CAUTION 
 
 In writing The Bachelors' Club I have not so 
 
 much had in view the public interest as my own. 
 
 While I have carefully endeavoured to free the book 
 
 from anything instructive, I have not shrunk from 
 
 making it amusing, even at the risk of being taken 
 
 seriously; and if I succeed in making only one reader 
 
 laugh, I shall have written wholly in vain. The 
 
 subject of the work is one that is full of interest, 
 
 especially to readers of either sex, and I venture to hope 
 
 that I have treated it as well as it deserves. The book 
 
 is hereby dedicated to the bachelors and maidens of the 
 
 world, in the hope that they will each buy a copy, and 
 
 recommend its purchase to their married friends. It 
 
 may be as well to state that the work does not libel any 
 
 of the existing Bachelors' Clubs in particular, but all 
 
 the others. An index to the jokes is in preparation 
 
 and will be forwarded to all professional humourists on 
 
 application, in writing, to the publishers. Some of these 
 
 jokes have already appeared in Ariel, and I have to 
 
 thank myself for my kind permission to reproduce 
 
 them. I regret there should be some puns amongst 
 
 them, as they will be a difficulty to the Chinese trans-
 
 xiv CAUTION 
 
 lator, but lie may rely on my cordial co-operation. I 
 have also to apologise to my critics for this book not 
 being some other book, though it shall not occur again, 
 as my next book will be. In conclusion, I have to 
 acknowledge my indebtedness to my friend and fellow- 
 Bachelor, Mr. M. D. Eder, for numerous valuable 
 suggestions. Whatever the reader or the critic does 
 
 "OS"- 
 
 not like in this work Mr Eder suggested. 
 
 I. Z.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Prologue : Of the Bachelors, their Beliefs and 
 By-Laws, 
 
 Chap. 
 
 I. The Second Ticket, 
 II. The Feudal Angel, 
 
 III. Hamlet up to date, 
 
 IV, The Bachelor Abroad, 
 V. A General Court, . 
 
 VI. The Fall of Israfel, 
 VII. The Logic of Love, 
 VIII. A Novel Advertisement, . 
 
 IX. A New Matrimonial Relation, 
 X. Marrying for Money, 
 
 XI. The Original Sinner, 
 
 XII. A Bolt from the Blue, 
 
 XIII. Lady-Day, . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 13 
 
 25 
 36 
 83 
 102 
 121 
 158 
 195 
 214 
 233 
 259 
 288 
 322
 
 THE BACHELORS' CLUB 
 
 PEOLOGUE 
 
 OF THE BACHELORS, THEIR BELIEFS AND BY-LAWS 
 
 ■» M'mm^m. Bacheloes' Club 
 
 was a Club in 
 which all the 
 members, with- 
 out exception, 
 were Bachelors. 
 But this was its only eccentri- 
 city. The Committee rightly 
 thought that they had sacrificed 
 enough to oddity in excluding 
 persons who were willing to sub- 
 scribe to the exchequer of the 
 Club, but not to its principles. 
 Tiie principles of the Club may 
 be summed up in its axiom that 
 marriage was a crime against 
 woman for which no punishment, not even exclusion 
 from tlie Club, could be sudlciently severe. The con- 
 ditions of meniberaliip were four. No member must
 
 2 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 follow a profession involving celibacy. No member 
 must have ever had a disappointment in love. No 
 member must be under thirty. No duly- elected mem- 
 ber must use a latch-key. 
 
 It was incumbent upon all candidates to deposit with 
 the Secretary two indej)endent certificates of non- 
 marriage, each signed by a householder (married) who 
 had known the candidate from his cradle ; and, further- 
 more, to make oath tliat they held the marriages of 
 other men, and especially of their fathers, to be failures. 
 The respectable married householder had to fill up a 
 printed blue form, containing the following six ques- 
 tions : — 
 
 1. What is the full name of the candidate ? 
 
 2. What is his age ? 
 
 3. How long have you known him ? 
 
 4. Has there ever been any matrimony, or tendency 
 to matrimony, in his family ? 
 
 5. Has he ever had a disappointment in love ? 
 
 6. Is his celibacy compulsory ? 
 
 No. 3 was rather a trap, as by a simple comparison of 
 the replies to it and to No. 2, the Secretary could ascer- 
 tain whether the certifier had really known the candidate 
 from the cradle. Some babies are so precocious that 
 one cannot be too careful. 
 
 In the early editions of the Celibate Catechism, 
 which were preserved in the annals of the Club, No. 5 
 ran simply, "Has he ever been married?" But the 
 inadequacy of this was early perceived. Though a 
 candidate had never committed matriniuny, he might 
 have committed himself in other ways to the matri- 
 monial heresy. " Has he ever been in love ? " was tried 
 and found even less comprehensive, plausible as it
 
 BELIEFS AND BY-LAWS 3 
 
 looked at first sight. A negative answer, it was per- 
 ceived, by no means excluded the possibility of the 
 candidate having married any number of times and 
 women, whether in Oriental simultaneity or in Occiden- 
 tal sequence. The form finally chosen, " Has he ever 
 had a disappointment in love % " was thought to cover 
 every possible case wdiether of incipient or developed 
 matrimony in the candidate's past. If a man had loved 
 but had not married, the disappointment in love was 
 obvious. ,If he had loved and had married, the dis- 
 appointment in love was more obvious stilL Thus it 
 will be seen that the Bachelors spared no trouble to 
 confine the privileges of the Club to gentlemen who 
 had a clean record, and whose escutcheon was free from 
 the suspicion of their having ever had honourable 
 intentions towards any woman whatsoever. The sixth 
 question furthermore ensured that they were Bachelors 
 out of pure love. Priests, junior bank-clerks, and others 
 are sometimes required to remain single, and in such 
 celibacy there is obviously no virtue. 
 
 As for the provision against the use of latch-keys, 
 every member had to give his word of honour that, in 
 the event of his refusing to go home till morning, he 
 would always on arrival knock or ring, or do both, if so 
 requested by the device on the door-post. The reason 
 for fixintj the age of Bachelorhood, in the esoteric sense, 
 at thirty was based upon the scientific fact that celibacy 
 in earlier years is too common to be the touchstone of 
 an elevated soul. It had been originally determined to 
 frame a condition to exclude those who had ever taken 
 part in the marriage-ceremony, but on reflection it was 
 decided not to keep the best men out of the Club, nor 
 to fail in respect for the Cloth.
 
 4 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Should the various documents, oaths, and assurances 
 be satisfactory, a matter on which the Secretary reported 
 before a General Court of members, the candidate was 
 permitted to be seconded for election. No member was 
 ever " proposed," as the word was held too redolent of 
 evil associations. As soon as a candidate was seconded, 
 he paid his entrance fee and his annual subscription, 
 and became entitled temporarily to the privileges of the 
 Club, including a vote. As the presence of one white 
 ball amid the black was held to constitute sufficient 
 desire on the part of the Club for the new recruit, the 
 candidate was generally elected. 
 
 Connected with the Club was a small Benefit- 
 Society. By paying a trifle extra with their monthly 
 subscription, members could insure their single lives. 
 The treasurer and actuary, Moses Fitz-Williams, whose 
 second cousin had been a senior optime, had drawn up 
 tables showing the average duration of the male single 
 life ; but as the ordinary agamo-biological statistics 
 were considerably modified by the superior single 
 vitality of the members, the sum assured to be paid on 
 marriage was very large in proportion to the instal- 
 ments. Thus the unfortunate wife of a departed 
 bachelor received a very pretty penny in compensation. 
 In practice the scheme did not work well. Just as 
 some heavily insured husbands generously die for the 
 benefit of their widows, so one or two Bachelors quixoti- 
 cally married for the benefit of their wives. It did not 
 happen often, for such generosity is rare; but it was a 
 difficulty. The very first night I visited the Club, Felix 
 O'Roherty had a motion on the paper recommending the 
 invalidation of the policy in cases of wilful matrimony, 
 just as suicide rendered ordinary life-assurance null and
 
 Beliefs and by-laws S 
 
 void. Out of respect for O'Eoherty it was referred to 
 the Executive Committee, and so it passed decently into 
 oblivion. I may as well mention here that the rules 
 regulating the admission of visitors were two, and two 
 only :— 
 
 1. No married gentleman admitted. 
 
 2. No unmarried lady admitted. 
 
 It was plain that if married men were admitted, the 
 virgin purity of the atmosphere and its freedom from 
 the reeks of domesticity would be threatened, while if 
 unmarried ladies were allowed access to the symposia, 
 the single-mindedness of the members might be 
 impugned, and their attentions misconstrued into 
 intentions. Of course the advisability of admitting 
 ladies was never for a moment in question. It was 
 universally felt that to isolate themselves from the 
 society of woman was the surest means of shrouding 
 her in a halo ; just as, on the other hand, free com- 
 munion with her was the safest prophylactic against 
 affection. Nevertheless, in spite of the exclusion of 
 their husbands ladies rarely availed themselves of the 
 opportunity of visiting that unknown animal, the 
 Bachelor, in his native haunts. 
 
 To distinguish the waiters from the members, who 
 many a morning turned up in evening dress, it was 
 insisted upon that they should belong to the lower caste 
 of married men. The head waiter owed his supremacy 
 over the rest of the staff to having served a term of 
 years for bigamy, though; on the other hand, the rest of 
 the staff had the consolation of feeling that Ae was 
 nearer to the bachelor caste than his superior. The 
 steward was a dusky Indian who had married at the 
 age of three.
 
 6 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 The apartments of the Club were situated iu Leicester 
 Square, so that the AUiambra and the Empire music-halls 
 were within easy walk, at least during the early part of 
 the eveninfT. When conversation languished at the 
 Club for scarcity of members, the few faithful Bachelors 
 frequently repaired in a body to these temples of the 
 ballet to save the gas and the fires, only going back to 
 the Club that night if they picked up sufficient members 
 at the temples to make it worth while. In many cases 
 the fortunate waiters (who were expected to sleep on 
 the building, and did so at every opportunity) had the. 
 Club to themselves for hours together — although these 
 hours of idleness were usually small. 
 
 The premises were neither palatial nor inadequate. 
 They consisted of two rooms, communicating with each 
 other by rather loud remarks. The one you entered 
 first, if you had been careful to ascend two flights of 
 stairs instead of one, was the smoking-room ; but tho 
 members always smoked in the other and smaller room, 
 because a pipe was more of a luxury there on account of 
 the placard proclaiming " No smoking allowed." 
 
 As all the Bachelors were members of the Anti-Anti- 
 Tobacco League, and were never without a pipe or cigar 
 in their mouths, except when brushing their teeth of a 
 morning, and as the cosy little room also contained the 
 bar, it came about that the better half of the Club was 
 always deserted by the members — as was perhaps only 
 consistent. 
 
 It was, however, generally occupied by the waiters, 
 who retired there not to be in the way when members 
 were getting their drinks from the bar. This was 
 rather hard upon the poor married fellows on account 
 of the misogamous texts with which the walls of the
 
 BELIEFS AND BY-LAWS 7 
 
 room were hung. Foitunately custom dulls the edge 
 of environment ; else the revised Decalogue, in which 
 " Thou shalt not marry " replaced the more conventional 
 form of the Seventh Commandment, miglit have pro- 
 cured them incessant conscience-ache. In time they 
 bore with equanimity the most hateful aphorisms ; and 
 occasionally dusted them. Tliese dogmas were the 
 work of the secretary, Mandeville Brown. Here are 
 the worst of them : — " There is nothing half so sweet 
 in life as the awakening from Love's young dream." 
 " Marriage is egotism on a sociable ; bachelorhood altruism 
 on a bicycle." "At seventeen a ivoman's heart is affected, 
 at twenty-seven her affection." "Merit makes the man 
 and 'fVorth' the woman." "Man proposes and ivoman 
 poses." " Love is the only excuse for marriage ; and 
 it is not an excuse that will wash or icear well." " You 
 can give your heart to a woman for life, hit who 
 can guarantee that she will not lose it ? " " The truest 
 chivalry to the woman who loves you is to leave her a 
 spinster." "A love-marriage is a contradiction in terms." 
 "Marriage is a sacrament of soids and a profession for 
 women." " Good conduct may lessen the term of other 
 life-sentences, but bad conduct is the only curtailer of 
 marriage." " Marriage is a man-trap." " There are three 
 things which every good wife detests in her secret heart — 
 tobacco, a faithful income-tax return, and her husband." 
 " The only true love is love at first sight ; second sight 
 dispels it!' "Love cannot be bought or sold; traffic 
 requires realities." " Marriages are made in heaven; but 
 this brand is not exported." " Genius should only marry 
 genius; and no woman is a genius." "Marriage is as fatal 
 to the higher life as the higher life is fatal to marriage." 
 By the very conditions of the Higlier Bachelorliood
 
 8 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 few of these articles of faith could have been the le2[iti- 
 mate offspring of experience. Hence the veneration in 
 which they were held by the sect. They were sacred 
 and beyond inquiry : a precious heirloom to be handed 
 down from Bachelor to somebody else's son in holy 
 apostolic succession. Another mural ornament deserves 
 mention. It was a sort of fresco, consisting of a great 
 black-edged oval, on either side of which flew allegorical 
 figures of Diana and Tolstoi', weeping; at the liead was 
 inscribed in sombre letters the words " Here lied, " 
 which surmounted the names of the married and gone 
 apostates. A small proportion of the space was filled ; 
 for the Club had naturally been a little unsettled in 
 its origin. Now, however, that it had steadied itself 
 we felt sure that it would maintain its equilibrium, and 
 that the gaps would be left for ever gaping. 
 
 There were only twelve Bachelors. The Club was 
 foolishly superstitious, and dreaded the fatal presage 
 of matrimony if ever thirteen of tlie members should 
 be present at once. Limiting their number to twelve 
 effectually blocked this possibility. 
 
 I need not say that these twelve men (or eleven, to 
 affect modesty) were considerably above the average in 
 intellect. That is implied in the fact of tiieir member- 
 ship. When I joined the Club (which was on the 31st 
 of December, some six months or so after its formation), 
 it was constituted as follows : — 
 
 Andrew M'Gullicuddy, Founder and President. 
 Moses Fitz-Williams, Treasurer. 
 Mandeville Brown, Hon. Sec. 
 
 These three formed the Committee. The others were — 
 Osmund Bethel, Israfel Mondego, 
 
 Eliot Dickray, Henry Robinson, 
 
 Joseph Fogson, M.D., B.Sc, Felix O'Roherty, 
 Oliver Gkeen, Caleb Twinkletop,
 
 BELIEFS AND B Y-LA IVS 9 
 
 and, last but not least, myself. Of these self- chosen 
 spirits, several had won celebrity, or lost it, in literature, 
 science, or art. Most of those who had done neither 
 were trying to. We were all full of humour — good and 
 bad ; for when the wine was in the wit was out and 
 could not be restrained. Though some of us were poor, 
 and two of us were old, the majority were well-to-do 
 and in their prime to boot. As a rule our hearts were 
 light and our pockets heavy, and we took no -care for 
 the morrow beyond staying up for it. The New Year 
 dawned upon no merrier dozen than that which quaffed 
 the cup of good-fellowship and puffed the pipe of peace, 
 and vowed eternal friendship and celibacy in those dear 
 and expensive old rooms in Leicester Square. 
 
 Strange to say, I owed my chance of election to the 
 duodecimal system which prevailed at the Club, for it 
 indirectly opened the door to the ejection of Willoughby 
 Jones, into whose shoes I stepped. Poor Willoughby ! 
 You may read of his crime in the matrimonial columns 
 of the Daily Wire, ; but what drove him to it has 
 never before picked its way into print. 
 
 Willoughby Jones had got the idea that if twelve 
 good men and true could be packed into a box, a room 
 was quite enough for a Bachelors' dozen. So he seconded 
 a motion that the large room be sublet, and the staff of 
 waiters and the subscription be reduced by one-half. 
 Those who were present have told me, individually 
 and in confidence, that they will never forget the indig- 
 nation with which this secondation was received by the 
 others; though, speaking for themselves, it seemed 
 eminently reasonable. They were not, however, the men 
 to go against the sentiment of the majority, and declared 
 hotly that the dignity of the Club required at least two
 
 10 I'HE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 looms to spread itself over. Besides, as the only way 
 to the inner room lay through the outer, it was felt that, 
 when the tenant moved in, grave complications might 
 ensue, especially if he were domesticated or a musician. 
 Poor Willoughby tried hard to argue that if the tenant 
 were a musician, he would probably be an Italian, so 
 that there would be no necessity for him to practise 
 his revolutionary music at home ; but he had a weak 
 case. As for lowering the subscriptions, the Bachelors 
 unanimously thought the others thought such an idea 
 could only occur to a low-minded fellow, who might be 
 expected to turn recreant some day ; and they did not 
 hesitate to express one another's opinions. The fiery 
 cross-eyed Moses Fitz-Williams openly taxed him with 
 flabby convictions ; whereupon the unfortunate young 
 man lost his head and defied them all, and confessed 
 that he had cherished the grand passion all along, and 
 was looking about in his spare hours for a woman to fit 
 it on to. It was a scene to be remembered, and the 
 atmosphere was tense with emotion, Willoughby 
 Jones stood with his curly head thrown back in the 
 attitude of Ajax defying the telegraph wires ; or an 
 early Christian Father (if you can call a Bachelor a 
 Christian Father) inviting the Lions to breakfast. For 
 a moment the members were paralysed. It was as if a 
 Government bomb-shell had fallen at their feet and 
 then exploded. Being Bachelors, they were not used 
 to being defied and having their sacred emotions 
 trampled upon. They opened their mouths, but nothing 
 issued from their lips, except their pipes, which fell 
 unheeded on the flooi\ At last a member was sent to 
 fetch the President, who was unfortunately absent in 
 the hour of crisis. After a long and fruitless search, it
 
 BELIEFS AND B Y- LA WS 1 1 
 
 Struck the envoy that M'Gullicuddy might be at home ; 
 where indeed he was, and in his beauty sleep. But he 
 rose to the occasion and drove to the Club ; where he 
 at once prescribed marriage or the payment of the 
 arrears of Willoughby's subscription. Willoughby's eye 
 was seen to light up, as though it were a member in the 
 room where smoking was not allowed, but he said 
 nothing except that anything was preferable to being out 
 of debt. When it was too late, the Bachelors remem- 
 bered that he was heavily insured. Later in the day, 
 about 9 A.M. to be precise, a lady was hunted up by the 
 accommodating head-waiter. It was the lady who had 
 denounced him for marrying another lady before lier, 
 and had thus procured him five years of state-supported 
 celibacy. Against her he had long cherished an un- 
 reasonable grudge. Everything comes to him who waits, 
 so the head-waiter was at last rewarded by seeing his 
 widow, by a former marriage, married off to the owner of 
 the unattached grand passion. When the curly locks he 
 had thrown back were entirely a memory, Willoughby 
 pleaded hard to be allowed to rejoin the Club; but 
 the rules were inexorable. He, however, found sal- 
 vation by a side-door; for, the by-laws admitting married 
 men as waiters, Willoughby donned his dress suit and 
 installed himself in the outer chamber, where, as no- 
 body ever interfered with him, and he was never called 
 upon to execute an order, he grew in time to be indis- 
 tinguishable from the other waiters, and the members 
 forgot that he had ever occupied the social position 
 of a Baclielor. He soon got reconciled to seeing his 
 name under the funereal " Here lied, " and as the Club 
 hours were from sunrise to sunset and vice versa, he 
 settled the assurance money upon the head-waiter's first
 
 12 
 
 THE CELIBATES'' CLUB 
 
 widow, and was regular and punctual in tlie discharge 
 of his Chib duties, highly satisfied with retaining a 
 position in the Bachelors' Club and cheerfully con- 
 tinuing to neglect his subscription in lieu of salary. 
 But from that day to this no member of the Bachelors' 
 Club has ever cherished the grand passion, whether for 
 woman in the abstract or ladies in the concrete. 
 Which is a record to be proud of. 
 
 ^^§^fp?2.
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE SECOND TICKET. 
 
 There was always something about me which invited 
 confidence. It was my tongue. When I saw a 
 Bachelor (the capital " B " always denotes the esoteric 
 Bachelor) walking about with a wobegone air, or a new 
 necktie, or taking his drinks irregularly, I made it a 
 point to sympathise with him. It is only thus that 
 I can account for the fact that I was the solitary 
 recipient of the confidences of nearly every member in 
 turn. Osmund Bethel once said that I was the dustbin 
 for the ashes of everybody's past. But then Osmund 
 always affected cheap epigram, and even tliat at other 
 people's expense. But let me not speak ill of him. He 
 is beyond our censure now. 
 
 Little Bethel they called him at the Club ; not 
 because he ever had any Methodism in his madness, 
 but because they did not like to set themselves up 
 against the inevitable. Little Bethel was a tall, hand- 
 some fellow, with a mass of tawny hair and a pair of 
 sunny eyes. He carried his head high, and a Malacca 
 cane, but that was before the days of his prosperity. 
 No happier journalist breathed or lied in England than 
 Little Bethel till the day when Slateroller, the dramatic 
 critic of the Whirlpool, died suddenly at a matinie of 
 a new play, and the editor called Osmund into the 
 
 13
 
 14 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 sanctum, and asked him if he would care for the rever- 
 sion of the post. Osmund's heart gave a great jump, for 
 lie felt that this was a great leap forwards for him. He 
 had hitherto been a mere reporter, whose duties were to 
 attend company meetings and review ethical treatises, 
 but he always knew he was cut out for a dramatic 
 critic, because of his contempt for SlateroUer and his 
 reluctance to struggle for a seat at the pit-door. It was 
 true that on the only occasion he had understudied 
 SlateroUer, he had shown such unstudied antipathy to 
 Slateroller's past record, that the poor man had to spend 
 the next day in writing letters of apology and explana- 
 tion to his friends, and that he, Osmund, was sent 
 ignominiously back to his ethical treatises. But there 
 must have been something in that article — else, why 
 should the editor have sent for him now ? 
 
 Osmund went to his apartment that night in a 
 hansom, and gave his landlady notice. His heart 
 swelled with joyous expectation. He had always loved 
 the drama ; and now his passion for plays was to be 
 requited. He would see three hundred a year at nothing 
 a month. He would be able to bask gratis in the ravs 
 of the sacred Lamp of Burlesque ; and to gaze freely 
 into the eyes of Melpomene. He saw himself one of 
 the critics, ranged neatly in their stalls, who are pointed 
 out, not in scorn, by the finger of the pittite; a first- 
 nighter mingling easily with the rank and beauty and 
 fashion that attend premUrcs for nothing but the love 
 of the drama. He saw obsequious managers asking him 
 for plays, and timorous dramatists inviting him to 
 drink. But this was not all. 
 
 The question of marriage had always troubled Osmund 
 greatly. Life had always been a hard fight to him ; it
 
 THE SECOND TICKET 15 
 
 was as much as he could do to exist on the earnings of 
 a reporter. He led but an insipid, lonely life in his 
 apartment, and in spite of the occasional delights of the 
 Bachelors' Club, it was natural he should sometimes 
 feel a longing to marry. Now, however, he was a com- 
 paratively well-to-do man; his salary had gone up £95 
 a year, and he realised with joy that he was at last in a 
 position not to marry. No ; there would be no necessity 
 for him now to be false to his principles, no temptation 
 for him to be untrue to the Bachelors' Club, for the 
 sake of marrying a woman of means or drawing his 
 assurance money. In the straits of poverty, the 
 sturdiest soul may stumble and fall ; and Little Bethel's 
 soul could not help knowing that it resided in a shapely 
 body. But, Heaven be thanked ! the matrimonial Satan 
 was for ever behind him henceforwards. 
 
 It is plain that Osmund was afflicted with a 
 conscience. When a man suffers from a conscience, 
 you never know where he will end. But for Osmund's 
 conscience his story might have ended here. 
 
 The first ticket he got was a stall for the first night 
 of a Shakespearian production at the Lymarkct, and 
 Osmund felt a proud and happy critic. He was a little 
 damped, however, when his editor told him that he was 
 not to find fault witli anything but the play or the 
 author, as the principal actors were above criticism. 
 " Most young critics start life," said the editor kindly, 
 " by slating tlie first show they have to do. Unfortu- 
 nately for your epigrams the first peojile you are called 
 upon to criticise happen to be public favourites, so I 
 naturally dread your disagreeing with our readers, who 
 won't have .seen the show." "But mustn't I think for 
 myself ? " said Osmund, rather taken aback. " What
 
 i6 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 next ? " replied the editor. " The business of a critic is 
 to think for the public." Osmund took it out by slating 
 the second §ho\v. 
 
 He did not always get tickets for the stalls. The 
 high- class theatres, whose seats were at a premium, 
 generally sent stalls, but the second-rate houses, where 
 the audience was usually thin, except at the top, 
 mostly sent him dress-circles. Perhaps it was policy of 
 this sort that kept them second-rate. Whenever he got 
 dress-circles, he revenged himself by not dressing. 
 
 One fatal day early in January the Frivolity Theatre 
 sent him two dress-circles. As he tore open the 
 envelope, a gleam of triumph shot across his features. 
 " Aha ! " he cried, " they are beginning to read me. 
 They are beginning to find out that I am not a mere 
 phonograph like Slateroller. They see that I have ideas 
 — and that I come by them honestly." The dramatic 
 department of the Whirlpool was agitated that day ; 
 even the editor was drawn into the vortex. 
 
 When the first flush of exhilaration had died away, 
 it was borne in on Osmund's mind that somebody would 
 be able to go with him. Again his heart leaped with 
 pleasure. He was not only conscientious, he was sym- 
 pathetic. He remembered, though it was not easy to 
 recall it, how he had longed for orders for the play in 
 the far-off unhappy days ; how pleased he would have 
 been had some good fairy unexpectedly presented him 
 with a dress-circle. His whole being glowed with 
 generous anticipation. Some mortal, treading some- 
 where the thorny path of duty, dreaming in no wise of 
 things celestial, would have that path illumined by a 
 ray of purple light — the heavens would open and drop 
 a dress-circle at his feet. Nay, more ; the favoured
 
 THE SECOND TICKET \^ 
 
 mortal would sit at his own side, and from that coign 
 of vantage learn who everybody that was anybody 
 was, perhaps even pay for the split sodas of the 
 critics. It only remained to settle who the favoured 
 mortal should be. 
 
 Osmund, let me insist again, had a conscience and 
 reviewed ethical treatises with it. It is not surprising, 
 therefore, if he felt that his first duty was to his rela- 
 tives. Parents he had none. His mother had perished 
 in the accident of his birth, and as his father had died 
 a month before, Osmund had commenced life as an 
 orphan. Now for the first time in his life Osmund 
 missed his parents. He thought how glad his poor 
 consumptive mother would have been to go to the 
 dress-circle and have her narrow horizon illumined by 
 the Sacred Lamp; how it w^ould have delighted the 
 heart of his dear white-haired old father to see the play 
 for nothing. Poor simple folks, few pleasures, indeed, 
 had fallen to their lot ! As he thought of these things, 
 his eyes filled with tears. To picture them lying in the 
 cold, cold ground, when they might have been sitting 
 comfortably in the dress-circle of the Frivolity — oh the 
 pity of it! Would that they were alive again, or at 
 least one of them ! But, alas ! wishes would not recall 
 them to earth. Mastering his emotion, the poor young 
 critic thought of his maiden aunt, Lavinia Lobbleby 
 had brought him up by hand — in such fashion that he 
 had taken to his lieels at the first opportunity. Still he 
 owed her some gratitude ; she had been a raven to him 
 without any suspicion of his being an Elijah in embryo. 
 She lived in Sydenham, and it would take a day to dis- 
 cover her mind on the subject. But the performance 
 was not due for three days yet, so there was plenty of 
 
 B
 
 i§ The CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Lime. He would write to her at once. " At once " did 
 not come on till the evening, for the Whirlpool received 
 a solicitor's letter threatening a libel action because its 
 dramatic critic had said that a certain actor did not 
 know two words of his part ; so Osmund had to discuss 
 the subject with his editor. The latter, as is the way 
 of editors, was for apologising and explaining that the 
 critic meant two words literally, the actor having said, 
 " God bless you," when the text said, " Good-bye, God 
 bless you." But Little Bethel's blood was up, and he 
 said unless the editor of the Whirlioool upheld the 
 dignity of his critic, the drama would go to the dogs. 
 He could prove that the actor was an intimate friend of 
 the author's and considered himself privileged ; and he 
 
 would also put the promp- 
 ter in the box. Thereupon 
 the editor reflected that the 
 actor was impecunious and 
 unlikely to find a solicitor 
 to take up the case on sped 
 so he put the letter in a 
 (I basket where he was in 
 the habit of placing 
 'Xj':] waste-paper. And 
 ~^ in the evening Os- 
 ^^ mund wrote tlie 
 letter to his aunt. 
 
 A day passed 
 without a reply, 
 Osmund was no- 
 ticeably restless 
 and uneasy. His 
 liead drooped a little, and his Malacca cane was swung 
 
 -^
 
 THE SECOND TICKET ig 
 
 a trifle less jauntily. He came into the Club, and 
 talked with feverish gaiety. I understood afterwards 
 how his mind must liave been racked by the thouglit 
 that he might not hear from his aunt, or hear too 
 late . to allow somebody else to make use of tlie 
 ticket. Early hardship had taught him economy, 
 and he could not bear to waste a crumb ; much 
 less so fruitful a potentiality of pleasure as a ticket 
 for the dress-circle. All that night he lay tossing 
 sleeplessly on his bed, waiting for tlie morning post. 
 The long expected rat-tat sent his heart into his mouth, 
 and the unwonted morsel almost took away his appetite 
 for breakfast. The letter ran as follows : — 
 
 " My deak Osmund, — I write you these few lines — 
 ]io]jing you are quite well, as, thank God, it leaves me 
 at present — to say that I am astonished at your insult- 
 ing one who always tried to do lier duty by you, and 
 to forget your ungrateful behaviour ; but I am afraid 
 when young men run off to London they are lost to 
 virtue, and 1 have heard say they think notliing of see- 
 ing Ballet girls Tight on the stage, and am ashamed, 
 and hope you will send me a ticket for the Crystal 
 Palace, which is near me, and where plays may be seen 
 in the open air without going into a theatre, which I 
 have never done, and, please God, never will. Good- 
 bye. — From your affectionate Aunt, Lavinia." 
 
 Osmund was annoyed. lUit he reflected that there 
 was yet a day in which to give the ticket away, and, 
 after all, he would have had to see his aunt back to 
 Sydenham, and to refrain from seeing men between the 
 acts. While he was eating the breakfast, his brain waa
 
 20 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 whirling with all the remaining possibilities. Who was 
 the best person to have that ticket ? 
 
 His relatives all disposed of, he fell back on his 
 antecedents. Several persons had done him good turns 
 iu the past, but he could not get at them in time. He 
 didn't know the addresses of some ; others, he knew, 
 would not be found at their addresses in time. There 
 were his acquaintances of to-day, and his brother 
 Bachelors ; but there seemed to be no reason to hand it 
 over to one rather than to another. His was an 
 eminently philosophic mind, given to weighing pro.s 
 and con.s, and the balance was so equal as nearly to 
 send him off his own. M'Gullicuddy's claim was 
 ethically the highest, but he would feel more pleased if 
 Oliver Green went with the ticket. On the other 
 hand, it would do him more good to stand well with 
 Eliot Dickray. Smith was, perliaps, the most advisable 
 man on the whole, but then Smith's mother-in-law had 
 just died, and he might not care to be tempted to 
 exhibit his joy in public. Eogers lived handy to the 
 theatre, and Osmund could go and have supper with 
 him afterwards ; but then Eogers' wife would be jealous 
 at not having been asked too. He knew several of the 
 other sex, but he could not ask any of the girls to 
 accompany him, for Mrs. Grundy would incontinently 
 publish his engagement to her; the married ladies 
 would hardly venture to incur the suspicions of their 
 consorts ; and the widows were either too fresh or too 
 stale. With an aching brain Little Bethel pushed his 
 breakfast aside, and reeled to the office. 
 
 You may call him a donkey. So he was ; but of the 
 philosophic species, which starves between two bundles 
 of hay. About seven in the evening he came into the
 
 THE SECOND TICKET 21 
 
 Club, breathless, with a wild liglit in his eyes, hysteri- 
 cally brandishing a piuk ticket. He had spent his day 
 in wiring to or hunting up his acquaintances. Nobody 
 could go with him. But one short hour remained 
 before the curtain of the Frivolity rose. 
 
 I took pity on him, and went with him. I hate the 
 theatre, with its draughts and stuffy smells. I have 
 been behind the scenes, and know what a fraud every- 
 thing is. There is no gilt for me on the green-room 
 ginger-bread. I know actors and actresses are only 
 men and women — spoilt. But I went — for this occa- 
 sion only. It was necessary to save Osmund's reason. 
 I felt that, and I sacrificed myself. I shall never forget 
 the wild cry of gratitude with which he fell upon my 
 bosom. His tears moistened my shirt-front, but he 
 assured me it didn't matter. He hadn't dressed, him- 
 self. We were going to the dress-circle. 
 
 Next day the threatened writ came to the Whirljjool 
 office. The actor, for a wonder, had meant what he 
 said. The case duly came up for trial. Osmund stood 
 up in the witness-box for the rights of free criticism ; 
 he bore his cross-examination with truly Christian 
 patience. The jury misunderstood the case, and 
 returned a verdict for the defendants, with costs. The 
 court cheered, the judge threatened to clear it, and the 
 circulation of the Wldrlpool went up ten quires. 
 
 After this the Wldripool's critic got two stalls regu- 
 larly from all except the very paltriest theatres, and 
 Osmund aged rapidly. His brow learnt many a wrinkle 
 one so young should not know. His tawny hair, too, 
 began to be threaded with silver. Every extra ticket 
 meant to him hours of distraction, correspondence, and 
 suspense. Too economical to waste it, too conscientious
 
 22 THE CEIJ RATES' CLUB 
 
 to give it away casually, too honourable to sell it — lie 
 went through agonies of doubt each time. Three 
 agonies of doubt per week soon tell on a man. 
 
 Wliat need to prolong the agony ? The end was 
 near. One wild bitter day, towards the end of January, 
 when the floodgates of heaven were opened, and a 
 cold rain plashed mournfully on the passive pave- 
 ments of the sombre metropolis, I met him walking 
 along. His head was bowed, and the Malacca cane ivas 
 not in his hand! If I live to be a hundred, I shall 
 never forget that strange and melancholy sight. I 
 invited confidences in the manner aforesaid. " I am 
 going to get married," he said abruptly. " Come under 
 my umbrella." I obeyed, for though I always carry a 
 bulging umbrella myself, I cannot bear the trouble of 
 opening it only to fold it up again. " It 's no use, my 
 dear fellow," he went on hurriedly, anticipating my 
 remonstrances, " my mind is made up — if it is not to 
 break down I must get married." 
 
 "Why?" I gasped. 
 
 " Have you noticed what happens when the average 
 young man gets engaged to the average young woman ?" 
 
 " He buys her a ring," I said feebly. 
 
 "Nonsense," he said sternly. "He takes her to the 
 play. Many a man I know has not got engaged, simply 
 because he cannot afford to do this. Young men only 
 marry now-a-days, if they can afford to take the 
 girl to the play, or if she will go to the pit. This she 
 is usually too respectable to do — after she is engaged." 
 The words came out coherently enough, but there was 
 that in his eyes I did not lilce. Poor Little Bethel ! 
 The rain plashed heavily on the umbrella, dribbling 
 more gently on our hats, for it was not a new one, having
 
 THE SECOND TICKET 23 
 
 probably been pawned by Noah after the Dehige. 
 Otherwise the silence was tense and painful. " Don't 
 you follow?" he asked fiercely. " Don't you see that 
 many a struggling man would give his right hand if he 
 were only in my position ; that half the pretty girls in 
 the world would take that right hand to occupy a stall 
 at all the famous first nights?" 
 
 " But surely you will not marry because other men 
 would?" 
 
 " No, of course not," with a strange guttural laugh. 
 " But don't you see that if I bind myself to a girl, she 
 will insist on accompanying me and so spare me this 
 perpetual distraction about the second ticket, which 
 makes my once happy life no longer worth the living?" 
 
 " But your Bachelorship — your vows " 
 
 "Broken— but not on principle. I don't wish to 
 marry the girl : only to be engaged to her, so that she 
 may accompany me. I would willingly remain engaged 
 to her for ever, but the narrow vision of society," he 
 said gloomily, " sees only one issue to engagement — 
 and that is marriage. I will take her regularly to the 
 play. She shall bless or damn at my side. And v/hen 
 she insists upon it, I shall marry her." 
 
 He spoke quietly but sadly. The tears came into 
 my own eyes despite a cynicism I had thought water- 
 proof. Poor Little Bethel! It was useless to reason 
 with him in the state he was in. 
 
 " Tell me at least who she is ? " 
 
 "I do not know. To-day I commence my search. 
 The woman who loves the play most, to whom the 
 theatre is a passion and the drama a perpetual delight 
 —the woman who will never weary in play-going, nor 
 ever refuse to take my orders — she shall be the critic's
 
 24 THE CEFJ BATES' CLUB 
 
 bride." I turned away to hide my emotion. There 
 was another moment of silence, broken only by the 
 plash-plash of the rain. Then a soft syllable quivered 
 on the air. 
 " Paul." 
 
 " Yes, old fellow." I turned towards him, but could 
 not see him. My eyes were blinded with tears and 
 rain. " Promise me one last tiling." 
 " I promise," I breathed huskily. 
 "Promise me," his voice faltered again, "that you 
 will break it to M'Gullicuddy." 
 
 For answer I pressed his hand. My heart was too 
 full to speak. Was this to be the end of all that bright 
 young career ; those roseate promises ? He pressed my 
 hand in return and unclasped it slowly. Suddenly he 
 uttered a loud cry as of one in mortal agony, then I 
 heai'd the rattle of a hansom — and he was <:one. 
 
 So Little Bethel married, and the Bachelors' Club 
 mourned him for ten days, and pilloried him for all 
 time upon the sable fresco. 
 
 ***** 
 
 The Whirlpool's leap upwards was but a spasm. It 
 did not remain a waterspout long. The innumerable 
 penny insurance rag-bags choked its current into slimy 
 stagnation. The acting-managers send it only one 
 ticket now.
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 THE FEUDAL ANGEL. 
 
 Caleb Twinkletop nearly took my breath away one 
 foggy February morning about four o'clock by inviting 
 me to dine with liim later in the day. I saw that the 
 invitation had slipped out inadvertently, and that he 
 immediately began to bite his lips for the careless way 
 in which they had kept guard; and as I was very 
 anxious to solve the mystery of his private life, I 
 hastened to decline, upon which he naturally became so 
 pressing that when I ultimately consented he had no 
 chance of backing out. Yes, there was a mystery in 
 Caleb Twinkletop's life ; nay, two. The second mystery 
 was how there came to be a first. For Caleb was a 
 simple, guileless old fellow, innocent as an unborn 
 lamb ; who found his sole recreation in playing chess 
 and the harmonium. He divided his time between the 
 Bachelors' Club, the City Chess Club, and the prayer- 
 meetings of the Little Bedlamite Brotherhood ; for his 
 income was large enough for all these luxuries. He 
 was understood, too, to be a man of family — which is 
 of course very different from a family man. Like most 
 ardent devotees of chess he was a very bad player ; and 
 the Bachelors used to rally him on being so frequently 
 mated. "We never tired of the obvious joke; nor did 
 Caleb. Both sides were certain of the fixity of Caleb's 
 
 20
 
 26 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 habits, to say nothing of his opinions; and a joke tliat 
 lacks the sting of truth is a compliment. Caleb was 
 the sort of man who would not marry even if he were a 
 marrying man. He moved in a daily rut which it was 
 impossible to conceive him diverging from. He was 
 the tram-car type of man. Whatever change his soul 
 might be planning, his body would always carry him 
 along the ancient grooves. Had he been married, he 
 would have gone on being married day after day, year 
 after year — all in the same automatic way. But ho 
 was not married — we had the word of two passing 
 respectable married householders for that — and so there 
 was not a single man in the world, or a Bachelor in the 
 Club, of whom we felt more sure than of Caleb, or 
 Coelebs, as we called him in our fun. It may be said 
 that, passive as he was, he was the sort of bachelor 
 who would fall an easy prey to the first woman who 
 determined to marry him — even to his own servant, if 
 she should set her cap at him. But the Bachelors knew 
 better. Caleb's mind was too busy with chess problems 
 and gambits to be responsive to solicitations or hints 
 from without, or to be aware of any attention less marked 
 than a proposal. Even in the extreme contingency, 
 his fidelity to the Club might always be counted upon. 
 And yet there were premature furrows upon Caleb's 
 brow, in strange contrast with the candid ingenuous 
 pellicle natural to the forehead of an old bachelor. 
 Even his eyes were those of a married man. Nothing 
 could quite extinguish the cherubic twinkle ; but at 
 times there was a far-off expression in them, as if pos- 
 terity were already troubling him with its teething. It 
 was probably only the chess-nuts he could not crack, 
 for he was the soul of honour, and if he had stumbled
 
 THE FEUDAL AXGEL 27 
 
 into matrimony, would have been the first to see the 
 impossibility of continuing to drink with us. And yet 
 I felt vaguely that there was a mystery, and made no 
 effort to repress my natural sympathy with him. But 
 all I could learn either from himself, or from the 
 numerous persons to whom I manifested my sympathy 
 for him, was that he lived by himself in a flat with an 
 old and faithful housekeeper, who had been left to him 
 as an heirloom. Though abroad he spent his money as 
 freely as any one chose to eat or drink at his expense, 
 he would never join in the meal. He seemed to be 
 always reserving himself for sybaritic luxuries at home. 
 No one had ever been invited to cross the threshold of 
 his lift ; therefore, when Caleb met with the accident of 
 inviting me to dine with him, you may imagine how 
 eagerly I jumped at the chance — though, like a man of 
 the world, I jumped backwards. 
 
 But Caleb had tiie good sense to hide his chagrin, 
 and was all cordiality when I arrived. He did not 
 even bring up the problem of how to force black to 
 mate himself in a hundred and twenty-nine moves — the 
 animated discussion of which had led to my invitation 
 — till after dinner. 
 
 He opened the door himself when I knocked, so that 
 my expectations of seeing tlie faithful attendant were 
 not gratified. I began to fear Twinicletop would with- 
 hold her of malice prepense. The mystery commenced 
 to thicken. I was on pins and needles to know what 
 manner of woman she was, and imparted the desired 
 information as to my state of health as indifferently as 
 if I were speaking of some one else's. My eye wan- 
 dered sympathetically about the room, trying to gather 
 hints of her. Everything was luxurious, not to say
 
 28 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 artistic. There were several handsomely-framed oil- 
 paintings, and a number of humorous pen-and-ink 
 drawings, in ebony frames, representing society dinner- 
 scenes, restaurants, and the crushes at supper buffets in 
 the gilded salons of Belgravia. There were also some 
 pretty water-colours, mainly devoted to the portrayal of 
 picnic parties and filling the room with a suggestion of 
 youth and summer. A lithograph over the mantelpiece 
 was only the well-known ecclesiastical "Gourmand." 
 Struck by the strictly proper tone of these pictures, I 
 examined the canvases, the largest of which represented 
 " The Love Feast of the Bedlamite Brothers." A copy 
 of Paul Veronese's " Wedding Party " also had a promi- 
 nent position, while the smallest of all was a Teniers- 
 like domestic interior, comprising a peasant playing 
 the spinet while his wife lays the table for supper 
 which is seething in the pot on a hearth of the kind on 
 which crickets chirp. Depositing my hat on the revolv- 
 ing book-case, which stood by the harmonium, I glanced 
 at the backs of the neatly-arranged books, catching 
 sight of Oliver Wendell Holmes's prose works ; Soyer's 
 Recipes ; Staunton's Chess Praxis ; Sims's Hoio the Poor 
 Live ; Dyspepsia and How to Cure it ; and Harmony for 
 the Household. I do not subscribe to the current maxim 
 that you can tell a man's character by the books on his 
 shelves, though you may possibly tell it by those he 
 returns. I like to draw my conclusion from his pre- 
 mises as a whole. What I saw rather terrified me. I 
 perceived that Caleb was in the hands of a Guardian 
 An2;el with a duster. When a man is in the hands of a 
 Guardian Angel there is always a danger that he will 
 realise some day what a trouble he is to the Angel ; and 
 should the Angel be clad in petticoats, his pity may
 
 THE FEUDAL ANGEL 29 
 
 pass over into love. I felt tins, and 1 shivered with 
 ominous foreboding. With beating heart, and sympathy 
 grown more acute than ever, I awaited the arrival of 
 Caleb Tvvinkletop's Angel, stifling as best I could the 
 dread that she would be kept in the background. She 
 came at last, and dinner with her. I was glad to see 
 them. I could barely suppress my j.oy as my eyes met 
 hers. She was a creature of delight when first she 
 gleamed upon my sight. I could have sat and looked 
 at her for hours, content to let the world go by and the 
 soup grow cold. She was literally the ugliest woman 
 I had ever seen. Never before had I realised the poten- 
 tialities of ugliness to which old women may attain if 
 they live long enough. Not Meg Merrilies herself, nor 
 the witches in Macbeth, could touch her for hideousness. 
 Hers was not only a perfect ugliness of ensemlle, every 
 feature was perfectly ugly. 
 
 " Don't you like the soup ? " queried my host, a shade 
 anxiously, as I sat in complacent reverie, dreaming of 
 the frightful old crone who had left the room to fetch 
 the second course. 
 
 " Oh yes, it 's very nice," I said mechanically, lifting 
 the first spoonful to ray lips. I hope that unintentional 
 lie will be forgiven rue on the Judgnient Day. 
 
 I tried to disguise the flavour with pepper and salt, 
 but in vain. Caleb seemed to be looking at me out of 
 the corners of his eyes. 
 
 " She 's a good old soul," he said, rather irrelevantly. 
 " She is like a mother to me, and watches over me like 
 a dog." 
 
 I did not point out the animal implications of the 
 two metaphors taken together, but silently passed the 
 pepper.
 
 30 
 
 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " She is quite a romantic cliaracter, you know," he 
 went on, mechanically accepting the pepper-box; "old 
 family retainer, does the whole work of the flat single- 
 handed, madly jealous of anybody else interfering, a 
 sort of feudal relic of the time when my people lived in 
 a moated grange in Lincolnshire, just like Sir Walter 
 Scott, don't you know ?" 
 
 I permitted the dubious statement as to the novelist's 
 residence to pass, and stuck to the sherry (which was 
 
 magnificent.) till the subject of our discourse whisked 
 away the soup-plates and transformed them into meat- 
 plates. She did not appear to allow her master fish. 
 Perhaps it was Lent, and she a devout Catholic. Many 
 faithful servants do not expect their masters to go 
 to heaven. The kidneys Avere passable, but unfortu- 
 nately there was no other guest to pass them to.
 
 THE FEUDAL ANGEL 31 
 
 " She is attached to me with the last drop of her 
 blood," he went on. Personally I shonld have preferred 
 a more solid method of attachment, and at the worst the 
 first drop of blood to the last. But I was silent. To 
 throw all the onus of the conversation upon him was 
 the surest way of making him indiscreet. But he did 
 nothing but recommend his '75 Lafitte (indeed a divine 
 dream) till the joint arrived and the female retainer 
 departed again. 
 
 "The beef is a little overdone, I am afraid," he said 
 solicitously. 
 
 I observed that retainers in their zeal would overdo 
 things sometimes. 
 
 " Yes," he assented, with an undertone of sadness in 
 his chirrupy accents. " But I am glad you like the 
 potatoes. For my part I prefer them cooked in their 
 skins. All the classical works recommend that method, 
 so I sometimes venture to get one in the streets when 
 my appetite can bear the strain. Unfortunately, baked 
 potatoes are not evergreens — they only flourish in the 
 winter. Cookery is a subject on wliich Tabitha dis- 
 agrees with me. And her cookeiy sides with her." He 
 smiled at this way of putting it — a smile pathetic as it 
 was sweet. It needed not this deeply-felt confession to 
 apprise me of the relations of the gentle old chess-and- 
 liarmonium player to his cook. Every look she gave 
 him was charged with solicitude, every movement she 
 made in his service was eloquent witli devotion, every 
 word was tremulous with the tender tyranny of love. 
 
 But the marvellous vintages which danced and 
 bubbled in my glass through this strange uncanny 
 dinner softened everything for me; and by the time 
 1 was smoking Caleb's aromatic cigar in Caleb's
 
 32 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 vokiptuous arm-chair, I had come to the Panglossian 
 conclusion that all was for the best in the best of all 
 possible flats. The dangers I had imagined for my good 
 friend Caleb Twinkletop were imaginary. True, I was 
 hungry and the coffee was impossible, but wliat were 
 these things in comparison with the knowledge tliat 
 Twinkletop's Feudal Angel was a hideous crone and a 
 horrible cook ? 
 
 Good wine may need no bush, but it needs something 
 more to make a good dinner. I would not dine with 
 Twinkletop again. 
 
 A fortnight afterwards I was lounging with a dead 
 cigar in my mouth in the smoking-room of the 
 Bachelors' Club, lazily meditating on the principles of 
 our faith that decorated the walls, when I received a 
 telegram. I tore it open feverishly. My heart beat 
 loudly. As my eye darted over the pink paper, I gave 
 a loud cry of agony which woke up the waiters who 
 were sleeping on the premises as usual. I had not seen 
 Twinkletop for a week and my worst fears were con- 
 firmed. The telegram ran as follows : — " Come at once 
 in Heaven's name. I am marrying. Twinkletop." To 
 dash downstairs three at a time and into a lamp-post 
 was the work of a moment. Eecovering myself, I hailed 
 a hansom and crawled towards my unhappy friend. I 
 found him lying in his arm-chair, smoking and smiling 
 genially. It was the gaiety born of desperation and 
 drink. By his side stood an open champagne-bottle. 
 Still I was disappointed to find him so tranquil and 
 fearless at the approach of marriage. 
 
 " Thank you for coming, old friend," he said cheer- 
 fully. " When I wired you I was in a nervous mood,
 
 THE FEUDAL ANGEL 33 
 
 due to reaction and fear of what M'Gullicuddy would 
 say. Tabitba had just consented to become my wife 
 after a week's obstinate siege. For seven days I have 
 been imploring her to take pity on me and become 
 Tabitha Twinkletop. It has been an anxious time for 
 her, dear old creature. She has, of course, no blood 
 and was afraid that by marrying me she would tarnish 
 the scutcheon of the Twinkletops. Her love for The 
 Family outweighed her love for Me. But despair lent 
 me eloquence and at length she returned a blushing 
 positive. Then the reaction came. I remembered the 
 Club and wired for you to break it to them, for you are 
 the only man who has ever known my unhappy secret." 
 His voice faltered with emotion. I did not speak. My 
 breath had not yet had time to come back. 
 
 He resumed more cheerfully. " But now I have 
 dared and done. The nightmare is rolled off my life. 
 A year more and it would have been too late. My 
 digestion would have been a memory. Now the years 
 of old age lie before me peaceful and painless." His 
 eyes lit up in ecstatic vision. 
 
 " You have proposed to your housekeeper ? " I 
 gasped. 
 
 " To my flat-keeper," he corrected me ; " to my cook ; 
 to my feudal devotee." Still the same beautiful look 
 of happiness upon his gentle brow. Good old Caleb ! 
 
 " Oh Paul," he went on, " if you only knew what my 
 life has been up till now, ever since the unhappy day 
 when the faithful Tabitha was left to me as an heir- 
 loom under my aunt's will. Her jealous devotion to 
 me, her pride in me and in The Family, and in our 
 descent from the Lairds or what 's-a-names of Lincoln- 
 shire — all this, great Scott ! I could have borne. But 
 
 c
 
 34 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 her cooking!" He put his hand on the fifth button of 
 his waistcoat in tragic silence. The blinds of the room 
 were down as if in anticipation of the marriage, but the 
 bright fire threw flickering shadows on the wainscoted 
 ceiling. One of them fell upon Caleb's face. To me, 
 sitting with unstrung nerves in that weird room, it 
 seemed, despite his bright visions, an omen of his 
 future. 
 
 " How can I tell you what I have suffered ? " he 
 resumed, when he was calmer. " She would not let me 
 dine out — it would have been an imputation on her 
 cookery; and who knew what unhealthy things they 
 might give me ? I could not eat two dinners — my 
 appetite, though fastidious, is poor. For six months I 
 tried getting my meals surreptitiously from a restaurant, 
 and burnt hers or buried them under the floor. Need 
 I say I nearly got arrested for murder ? " 
 
 " But why didn't you get rid of her?" 
 
 "Paul, I am surprised at you. You talk idly. Can 
 a man get rid of even his old pipe or his slippers ? " 
 
 I saw I had talked idly. The idea of Caleb's having 
 strength of mind and initiative enough to break with a 
 servant ! Why, the dear old fellow would have been 
 polite to the old man of the sea, and asked him if he 
 felt quite comfortable on his back. 
 
 "I soon wearied," he continued, "of subterfuge and 
 trickery against the woman whose ideal I was. I tried 
 to live up to her faith in me." His voice broke and he 
 dashed away a tear. " I gave up trying to deceive her 
 and sought consolation in my wine, and my cigars, and 
 my pictures of banquets, and my treatises on cookery, 
 to say nothing of the delights of chess, the Bachelors' 
 Club, and the even higher fellowship with the Little
 
 THE FEUDAL ANGEL 35 
 
 Bedlamite Brothers. I bought The Autocrat of the 
 Breakfast-TaUe, thinking it concerned itself with the 
 pleasures of the matutinal meal. It will come in handy 
 for reading now that my Barmecide banquets of the 
 intellect are to be replaced by the real. But why recall 
 the dead unhappy past ? It is buried at length, more 
 surely than my ancient dinners. Tell the Bachelors I 
 am really mated at last." 
 
 Again that beautiful smile of ineffable peace over- 
 spread Caleb's worn features. His brow began to 
 unfurrow itself, and all the smoothness of cherubic 
 childhood settled again upon his wan features. He rose 
 and opened the harmonium and played some strange 
 celestial chord. "But this is fool's mate," I cried. 
 " You are mad ; you are putting yourself beyond the 
 possibility of ever shaking her off now." 
 
 The seraphic smile lit up the eyes again. The marry- 
 ing musician touched the keys softly, and the haunting 
 notes rose and fell like a prayer. 
 
 " You don't understand," he said. " When she is my 
 wife, she will allow me to get another cook. The 
 dignity of a Bride of the Heir of the House of Twinkle- 
 top will not allow her to do her own cooking." He 
 ceased, and his head fell back in mute ecstasy, and 
 through the silence of the dim room I heard the soaring 
 rhapsodies of the Wedding March rise Heavenwards. 
 • * * » » 
 
 So Caleb Twinkletop married his Feudal Angel, and 
 the Bachelors' Club mourned him sore, and M'Gulli- 
 cuddy maltreated his memory upon the mural monu- 
 ment. 
 
 « « « « • 
 
 I dine with the Twinkletops often now.
 
 CHAPTEE IIL 
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATE. 
 
 Eliot Dickray took the blow of Caleb Twinkletop's 
 marriage most to heart — with the possible exception of 
 Caleb Twinkletop's cook ! He did not re-appear at the 
 Club till the Ides of March, and then his face seemed 
 to have grown some years older. He was always a 
 strange, irresolute being, and his glance round the 
 smoking-room was wild and wandering. His eyes 
 flitted from text to text, he shook his head, he stepped 
 towards the inner sanctum, he retreated, he read the 
 texts again. 
 
 Eliot Dickray was not Eliot Dickray, but his son. The 
 Eliot Dickray was the famous novelist, essayist, drama- 
 tist, and universal provider. Our Eliot Dickray was 
 the least celebrated of his father's works ; and his popu- 
 larity was limited to a select circle of friends and 
 Bachelors. His father's position had of course secured 
 him a certain measure of prestige ; but at best he was 
 merely a sucds d'estime. He was of no use in the world 
 except as a support to the theory that genius is one of 
 the diseases which are not inherited. The colossal 
 mental energy of the father had beggared the family 
 estate ; it is unfortunate for the inheritors of fulfilled 
 renown that there is no power of intellectual entail. 
 The paternal geniality was, however, his in plenty ; and 
 
 36
 
 HAMLET UP TO DA TE 37 
 
 in spite of his occasional fits of taciturnity and depres- 
 sion, his cronies accepted him on account of his amia- 
 bility, and the champagne suppers in his chambers 
 overlooking the Green Park. His generosity was 
 princely ; he had nothing to do with his money or his 
 time but spend them, and he did so right royally. But 
 he paid for his pleasures in ennui. He drifted aimlessly 
 along the stream of existence, giving heavy toll at all 
 the locks, and taking little heed of fog-horns. He was 
 too diffident to steer for anywhere. A low self-estimate 
 may do credit to a man's judgment, but it will not carry 
 him far. Modesty is but a poor virtue, though its 
 ravages are not extensive. I used to shudder to think 
 what would have become of Eliot Dickray had he been 
 born sucking the wooden spoon instead of the silver. 
 He would have swallowed it and choked himself. 
 
 O'Koherty came up to him as he fumbled about 
 with his eyes and legs and asked him if aught ailed 
 him. 
 
 " No ; quite well, quite well," he replied nervously. 
 He shuffled away from his interlocutor. " I can't 
 stop," he said. " Good-bye." 
 
 " Why, you 're going away before you 've come ! " said 
 O'lioherty, uplifting his eyebrows. 
 
 " I have seen all I wanted to. You must really 
 excuse me." 
 
 " You have seen only me. And apparently you dont 
 want to." 
 
 " Oh yes, I do — I mean I don't. I only came to look 
 at these texts again." 
 
 The arch of O'Pioherty's eyebrows widened. ' I 
 thought every self-respecting Bachelor knew them by 
 heart ! "
 
 38 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " Yes, yes ; of course they are engraved upon the 
 book and volume of my brain ; but still " 
 
 " Well, and now you have read them, you are 
 thinking that — " 
 
 Eliot's eyes gleamed with troubled light, — "That," 
 he said hesitatingly, " there are more things in heaven 
 and earth, O'Eoherty, than are dreamed of in our philo- 
 sophy," 
 
 " What do you mean by our philosophy ? " 
 
 " The philosophy of us Bachelors, of course." 
 
 O'Eoherty snorted. Eliot's eyes strayed once more 
 towards the texts. "Do you know," he said, half in 
 reverie, "what strikes me on looking at these texts 
 again with fresh eyes — I — I mean after an interval ? " 
 
 " Do you take me for a thought-reader ? " growled 
 O'Eoherty. 
 
 " Well, it seems to me, " went on Eliot, in the same 
 abstracted way, "that there is a note pf regret about 
 some of them, a smack of sour grapes." 
 
 " Eh, mon ! what 's that ? " cried M'Gullicuddy, appear- 
 ing suddenly from the inner apartment. "Wha's 
 talkin' aboot sour grapes ? " The President's eyes glared 
 suspiciously from beneath his horn spectacles. 
 
 "Dickray says we are dwelling under sour grape 
 vines," said O'Eoherty angrily. 
 
 " No, no, hardly that," said Eliot. " What I say is 
 that these texts have not the true grit, the hearty 
 honest ring of hatred and contempt. That one, for 
 instance, says that 'Love is the only excuse for mar nag e ; 
 and it is not an excuse that will ivash or wear well.' Now 
 the first part of that proposition is a distinct admission 
 to the enemy. It grants that there is one excuse for 
 marriage."
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATE 39 
 
 " Nay, but dinna fash yersel', mon. The second part 
 sweeps it brawly away agen," said M'Gullicuddy, 
 speaking his native Scotch, and taking snuff in his 
 agitation. 
 
 " By no means," persisted Eliot. 
 
 " By a' means," said M'Gullicuddy, growing pale at 
 Dickray's blasphemy. " It 's an awbsolute annihilation 
 of the love-argument." 
 
 " It is very like a wail," said Eliot quietly. 
 
 " Yerra like a wail ? " repeated the President, drop- 
 ping his snuff-box in horror. 
 
 "Certainly. It laments that the excuse is not 
 durable. It says. What an excellent thing a love- 
 marriage would be ! Only, unfortunately, wedded love 
 has no staying-power." 
 
 "Tell that to Mandeville Brown ! " said M'Gullicuddy 
 menacingly, as he mopped his brow with his coloured 
 handkerchief. 
 
 "My dear Dickray," added O'Eoherty witheringly, 
 " if you have made a fool of yourself by falling in love, 
 say so like a sensible man. But don't go and abuse the 
 plaintiffs attorney." 
 
 Eliot smiled with quiet melancholy. " No," he said 
 simply, " I am not in love — nor likely to be." 
 
 "Then why," said M'Gullicuddy, dropping into 
 English, " do you call into question all that we hold 
 unquestionable? I am glad no weaker brother has 
 overheard you ; it might have unsettled his faith." 
 
 " It is for your sakes I call it into question ; your 
 texts tacitly assume that love is the only motive that 
 might induce a Bachelor to marry, and they concentrate 
 themselves upon showing that love, if it be not alto- 
 gether an invention, is at best as fleeting as the snow-
 
 40 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 fall upon the river. But love is far from being the only 
 danger to be guarded against ; it is money, position, 
 convenience, comfort, conscience, social pressure, a thou- 
 sand and one things that induce men to marry. By 
 comparison, love is \me qnantiU n4gli(jeaUe. Not one 
 of your texts admonishes Bachelors against these ; you 
 muster your apophthegms and dash your serried maxims 
 against a shadowy foe ; the real enemy lurks in a million 
 guerilla forms along the route. Kemember how Twinkle- 
 top fell and Little Bethel. These texts are but the 
 lamentations of a disillusioned but romantic spirit ; 
 the jeremiad of a lover who sees the worm at the core 
 of Eve's apple. They are, I say again, very like a wail." 
 He turned away more resolutely and strode to the door, 
 then he took a last glance at the Club, dashed his hand 
 across his eyes, and was gone. 
 
 M'Gullicuddy and O'Koherty looked at each other 
 aghast. What was the matter? What could have 
 happened ? What had produced this mental aberra- 
 tion] Dickray had never spoken so well — nor so 
 lengthily. 
 
 The two men were seriously alarmed. M'Gulli- 
 cuddy 's dignity kept him taciturn and tragic, but 
 O'Eoherty came over to my rooms the next morning 
 and put the case to me. I was chagrined at having 
 missed witnessing the symptoms for myself. Chcrchez 
 la fcmme was my conclusion. O'Koherty agreed with 
 me in fearing the worst. 
 
 Woman had robbed us of two of our members ; was 
 another to be amputated by the same dexterous manipu- 
 lator ? If she could be found in time we might forbid 
 the banns or hinder them. But how to get at her ? Ay, 
 there was the rub. O'Koherty mentioned a detective
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATE 41 
 
 agency ; I am afraid he has no delicacy of feeling. It 
 took me some time to convince him of the meanness of 
 liaving a fellow-memher spied upon, as if he were a 
 criminal or a coming co-respondent. I said that so 
 Ions as I had a footinoj in the Club, no Bachelor should 
 be dogged by an outsider. O'Roherty wriggled his 
 mutton-chops, but my veto was absolute. I said that 
 rather than use such dirty spy-glasses, I would try and 
 ferret out what I could for myself. 
 
 I called upon Dickray in the course of the next day, 
 but his valet reigned in solitary majesty in the luxu- 
 rious apartments. He condescended to inform me that 
 something was worrying his master, who had turned 
 his bedroom into a promenade instead of a sleeping 
 chamber. This was all I could extract from the valet, 
 though I made speech silver for him. I concluded that 
 the yield of information was exhausted, and abandoned 
 the shaft. 
 
 In the evening I went to the Club ; nothing had been 
 heard of him. M'Gullicuddy and O'Eohcrty listened 
 to my want of news with unconcealed anxiety. A 
 sense of coming misfortune hung over us all. If only 
 I could find the woman ! I went out into the streets 
 and wandered aimlessly about, as if expecting to meet 
 her by a miracle. I looked at every passer-by as if he 
 or she might be Eliot Dickray or his evil genius. 
 When the passer-by was two in one, my stare became 
 almost insulting. Near midnight I found myself at the 
 end of Nortliumberland Avenue. The March wind 
 blew cold and keen from the river, but I did not turn 
 back. Was it Fate that led my steps, or Chance ? 
 
 Suddenly I became aware of commotion and bustle 
 at the entrance of a building facing me, and in another
 
 42 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 instant remembered it was the National Liberal Club. 
 What was going on % I crossed over. The hall was 
 filled with an excited conversational throng. A momen- 
 tary curiosity was succeeded by a flash of recollection. 
 They were waiting for the verdict of Sloppleton. 
 
 The member for Sloppleton had died. The tragedy 
 of his death was sore. Years of ambitious lying were 
 crowned by but one anonymous line in the evening 
 posters, — " Death of an M.P." Sloppleton was a sleepy 
 place, the inhabitants of which were amiable and stupid, 
 concerned only about their souls and the local indus- 
 tries. They would not even go to the poll, except when 
 driven by a natty coachman to the sound of brass 
 bands. Naturally, therefore, the eyes of England were 
 turned on the by-election at Sloppleton ; there was 
 fixed the axle of Fortune's wheel ; for a week and 
 a half it was the hub of the universe, the centre of 
 political power. Justice, Religion, Political Economy, 
 Foreign Policy were among the things that were being 
 weighed in the balance — at Sloppleton. Was the flow- 
 ing tide with the Liberals, or were they drifting back 
 with the ebb ? Was the "reat heart of the nation still 
 throbbing for the Tory, or was it aching for the Eadical ? 
 Such were the questions over which heads were broken 
 at Sloppleton — where strong things were said and 
 drunk on both sides impartially. It was an anxious 
 half hour in Fleet Street, where the leader-writers were 
 waiting, manuscript in hand, to know whether the vic- 
 tory they had won was a numerical victory, or merely 
 a moral victory. It was a no less anxious crisis in 
 the hall of the National Liberal Club, where the move- 
 ments of the tape were watched with far from bated 
 breath. Why do people waste so much loquacity in
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATE 43 
 
 speculating on news that will be stale in halt an 
 hour's time ? 
 
 I pushed my way into the Hall. I was never a 
 member of any London Club except the Bachelors'. I 
 like to do one thing at a time. But I find it convenient 
 to turn into one sometimes, especially when I have 
 been there with a member and the waiters know my 
 face. So long as you do not take a mean advantage of 
 the culinary resources of the establishment, nobody is a 
 penny the worse. The National Liberal Club was at 
 this time one of my favourite lounging-placcs. It is 
 such a huge caravanserai, that I have always regarded 
 myself as an honorary life-member, a kind of under- 
 study for the Ex-Uncrowned King who has never shown 
 his face in the place. It frets me to see an honorary 
 life-membership wasted. 
 
 It was Eliot Dickray who had first introduced me 
 to this happy hunting-ground; perhaps I might find 
 him here now. I elbowed my way through the crowd 
 into the smoking-room, which was thickly studded 
 with argumentative groups and heavy with the cloud- 
 wreaths from a hundred cigars. I sauntered along, 
 casting glances to the right and the left and peering 
 into all the cushioned niches. My quarry was nowhere 
 to be seen but I was on the right scent, for I met a 
 man who told me he had seen him in this very room 
 half an hour ago. While we were talking a change 
 came over the scene ; a roar was heard outside ; men 
 pressed towards the entrance ; the news flew from lip to 
 lip and lit up face after face like a flying electric spark ; 
 the Liberals had scored an unexpected victory ; the roof 
 rang with cheers ; the smoke swayed before the waving 
 hats and handkerchiefs ; some one shouted the majority ;
 
 44 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 it was large ; the excitement redoubled ; everybody was 
 shaking hands with somebody else ; the crowd tossed 
 about, huzzahing like a parcel of schoolboys ; somebody 
 — who was a somebody — jumped on a chair ; there was 
 a fresh round of cheers ; fresh contingents of Liberals 
 poured in froirtthe hall and upstairs ; then a deep silence 
 fell upon the members, as they hung upon the great man's 
 exultant rhetoric. I gave one last sweeping glance round 
 the smoking-room, then turned and walked up the noble 
 staircase — in search of Eliot Dickray. I met a dozen 
 or so belated members, accompanied by the waiters, 
 hurrying down from the various rooms towards the 
 oratory ; otherwise the upper storeys of the Club were 
 deserted. The library was my last chance ; but even 
 that had been left alone in its glory. I walked up to 
 the extreme end of it to see if perchance my man might 
 lurk in a corner. In vain. It was obvious I had 
 missed him in the unusual crowd or that he had left 
 the Club. Keenly annoyed, I threw myself dejectedly 
 into an arm-chair. 
 
 As I sat there brooding, a murmur of voices seemed 
 to be wafted to my ear. I started up ; no one was near. 
 What could it be ? A keen gust of wind smote me in 
 the face and answered me. The balcony ! I had for- 
 gotten the balcony. I moved stealtliily towards the 
 glass door of communication. It had been left slightly 
 open ; hence the draught of words and chill air. 
 Scarcely breathing in my excitement I peeped cautiously 
 outside. The night was sombre ; the lights of the river 
 gleamed redly ; the moon shone fitfully through brackish 
 cloud ; the leafless branches in the gardens and on the 
 embankment rustled mournfully. In the furthest 
 corner of the balcony, before a small round table, with
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATE 45 
 
 their faces towards the railway bridge, sat two men — 
 one slim, the other burly. Both wore overcoats and 
 crush hats. One back I did not know ; the other was 
 Eliot Dickray's. 
 
 " Very well, Eliot, you are obstinate, I am firm. 
 There can be no advantage in continuing the conversa- 
 tion, except to our doctors, for the air bites shrewdly. 
 It is very cold and my cigar has gone out. This is 
 the second time you have wasted my time with your 
 insane demands. Let us go in." 
 
 I heard a match strike as he re-lit his cigar. I bit 
 my lips ; I had come at the end of the conversation. 
 But the next words rekindled my hopes and heated my 
 interest to boiling point. 
 
 " Father, will you not understand ? " 
 
 So this was Eliot Dickray, the, Eliot Dickray. I ven- 
 tured a long glance at the great literary lion. I had 
 never seen him before ; he did not keep his son's com- 
 pany. He was a star, far-off, inaccessible. To-night he 
 had fallen as near earth as the Club-balcony. I longed 
 to see the face of the man whose books I had so often 
 borrowed, but his skull was not transparent. It was 
 not the back he wore in my ideal portrait. What that 
 visionary back was I did not know. I only felt it was 
 not the back before me. Still, the face might be more 
 in harmony with my preconceptions. Noiselessly I 
 wheeled a capacious arm-chair towards the window, and 
 obscured myself in its luxurious depths. With ears 
 pricked up, I listened to the dialogue as from a stall, 
 though I and the persons of the drama were back to 
 back. 
 
 "My boy, I understand perfectly — that you are a 
 fool."
 
 46 THE CELIBATES'' CLUB 
 
 " Do you also quite understand what I have resolved 
 to do ? " 
 
 " Certainly — to demonstrate the fact to the world." 
 
 " Father, since our first conversation I have thought 
 over this thing day and night. You have eluded me. 
 Yes, sir, you may smile, but you have eluded me. 
 You were never in when I called." 
 
 " My dear Eliot, my engagements ! " 
 
 " Are not to balk my engagement !" 
 
 "To whom?" 
 
 " You know whom, father." 
 
 " You never told me you had gone so far as to engage 
 yourself to " 
 
 "Yes, father, I am in honour bound. I made the 
 poor old man a definite promise of redress. What 
 otlier course was open to me as an honest man when I 
 learnt the truth ? The sin must be expiated ; cost what 
 it may, justice must be done." 
 
 "My dear Eliot, when you know as much of the 
 world as I do, you will prefer the heavens to fall." 
 
 "Oh yes, I know now how the times are out of 
 joint." 
 
 "You are not the man to set them ridit." 
 
 O 
 
 " But you are, father." 
 
 "Not even I. I tell you ngain you are making a 
 mountain out of a molehill. Such molehills are the 
 natural pimples on the unhealthy face of the world of 
 to-day." 
 
 " Yes, sir, I know. You are quoting " 
 
 " My own book. Quite right." 
 
 " Well, sir, I refuse to accept the sentiment. I had 
 hoped it was not — yours. I still believe in honour — 
 and what it asks of us. Come, father, 1 will not believe
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATh 47 
 
 that you will set your face against the only righteous 
 way out of this unrighteous situation. It is hard — it 
 is a great sacrifice ; but it must be made." 
 
 " For the last time, Eliot, if you have taken leave of 
 your senses, allow me to retain mine." There was the 
 noise of a chair moving violently. The elder man had 
 sprung to his feet in a huff. 
 
 " Then you refuse ?" 
 
 "Absolutely. It will disgrace you no less than 
 myself." 
 
 " Then I must act without your consent." 
 
 "You threaten?" 
 
 "Nothing. No, father, you know I have not the 
 strength for that." 
 
 " And yet " 
 
 "And yet, unless you change, our lives must drift 
 apart never to meet again. I cannot touch a penny of 
 your money, sir, henceforwards." 
 
 " What ! You will throw up your allowance !" 
 
 "Yes, sir; you have always been very good to me; 
 but now, since you and I are of so vitally different a 
 mind on the most important crisis in my life, it is 
 impossible for me to be dependent any longer upon you." 
 
 " Oh, but this is stark, staring lunacy ! Why, Eliot, 
 think a moment. Where does the expiation come in 
 if you have no money ?" 
 
 " I have my youth. I am only thirty-two." 
 
 " But what will you live upon ? Upon your youth ? 
 I have heard that others have lived upon your youth, 
 but you can't do it yourself." 
 
 " I will live upon money earned — honestly." 
 
 " Earned how ? You have not been trained for any- 
 thing "
 
 48 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 "And therefore am ready for everything." 
 
 " My dear boy, you are an absolutely incompetent 
 young man. It seems cruel to say so but it is kindest 
 to remind you of it. You have never succeeded in any- 
 thing you have undertaken ; your will is weak, your 
 execution random, your laziness incorrigible. You are 
 a shiftless, thriftless being, with a bent for metaphysics 
 and champagne. Faults or virtues in a man with an in- 
 come become vices in a man without one ; and as, more- 
 over, you propose to add honesty to all your other vices, 
 it needs no prophet to foresee you swirling among the 
 flotsam and jetsam of humanity within a twelvemonth. 
 No, my boy, you are not well ; you have been going to 
 bed too early in the morning. Pack up your portman- 
 teau and go off to the Riviera for a month, and pitch 
 your fads and your scruples into the Mediterranean." 
 
 " What you say of me, sir, is unfortunately too true. 
 I have been but a well-dressed tramp, a vagabond in 
 broadcloth. But I am not too old to turn over a new 
 leaf." 
 
 " And what do you propose to write on this new leaf?" 
 
 " A story." 
 
 "A story?" 
 
 "Yes, sir, a story !" 
 
 " You write ? Ha ! ha ! ha ! Well, well, so the leaf 
 you turn over will be taken out of my book." 
 
 " No, sir. I hope to write my own books. And yet, 
 in a sense, it will be a leaf out of your book." 
 
 "Tn what sense ?" 
 
 " Does it not strike you, sir — you who have seen so 
 much of novel-writing — what an excellent germ for a 
 story we have here ?" 
 
 " Damn it, sir ! Do you mean to say you are going to 
 
 I
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATE 49 
 
 publish this story — that you are going to foul your own 
 nest and wash your dirty linen in public ?" 
 
 "iSTo, sir. I shall publish the story anonymously. 
 Nobody will ever suspect it has anything to do 
 with me or you. Besides, it would not do to invite 
 comparisons between my work and — the other Eliot 
 Dickray's. I should be damned instanter by all 
 your enemies, whose malice is impotent to damage 
 your own popularity. I am not so prolific at plots as 
 my — my namesake. Why should I trouble to invent 
 when I have a subject made to my hand ? My first 
 tottering steps will be best taken if I lean on the go- 
 cart of reality. 1 shall start my new life and my story 
 to-morrow." 
 
 So long a silence ensued that I thought it would 
 never end ; all I could hear was their heavy breathing, 
 as if they were glaring defiance at each other. Then 
 there came a roar of laughter from the great novelist's 
 lips. 
 
 " Ton my word you are right. It is indeed a plot — 
 for a farce ! You will make your d^but in fiction by 
 telling the truth ! Ha ! ha ! ha ! Excellent. And 
 I'll tell you what: you annoy me dreadfully, Eliot 
 Dickray ; but I 'm hanged if I won't give you an intro- 
 duction to my old chum, the editor of The Ban- 
 hury Magazine, and ask him for my sake to publish 
 your first essay in — truth. Ha! ha! ha!" 
 
 " Father — for the last time I use that word — you will 
 not understand me after all. This is no subject for 
 levity. It is the deepest tragedy of my life. I am 
 much older than I was a month ago. I am old enough 
 to earn my own living now. If your decision is final, 
 so is mine. My life must henceforwards be lived apart 
 
 D
 
 50 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 from yours — not helped by it to the extent of a farthing, 
 or even of a letter of introduction to any one. For- 
 tunately — alas! that I should have to say it — my mother 
 is dead. The tie between us is not a complicated knot, 
 it concerns you and me only. It can be severed at a 
 stroke. When I have written my story, it is not to 
 your friends that I shall go " 
 
 "Then go to the devil!" roared the great novelist, as 
 he burst open the casement door, bumped against my 
 arm-chair, and strode off with another oath. I had 
 barely time to catch a glimpse of a handsome sensuous 
 full-bearded face writhing with vexation. 
 
 Would his son follow him % I waited, not daring to 
 stir a finger. Presently I heard the young man pacing 
 the terrace with restless, unsteady feet. I shifted 
 noiselessly in my seat and peered over the back of the 
 arm-chair. The moon was hidden now by the rack of 
 clouds, and the sough of the wind among the plane- 
 trees by the river was the only sound that mingled with 
 those tragic footsteps. Eliot Dickray paused at last, 
 and leaned his elbows on the parapet, and gazed long 
 and intently towards the sombre water that coiled like 
 a black, red-spotted snake below him. Then I saw his 
 shoulders heave convulsively. He was sobbing like a 
 child. 
 
 Oh the tragedy of it ! " The deepest tragedy of my 
 life ! " What a dark tale of sin and shame was here ; 
 deepened by the cynical worldliness of the father — so 
 false to the fine teaching of his works, — relieved only 
 by the resoluteness of the guilty to make atonement. 
 Eliot, Eliot ! thou whose eccentricities astonished 
 even the Bachelors, how couldst thou have fallen into so 
 conventional a gin ? True, thou hast redeemed thyself
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATE 51 
 
 somewliat as an original by casting off thy father, 
 because he will not have thee marry the woman of thy 
 choice ; but yet, methinks, it were better to have loved 
 and lost. 
 
 » « « » « 
 
 Though the broad outlines of the story were clear to 
 me, I waited with pitying eagerness for the details. 
 Long before my sympathy was appeased, Eliot had 
 written the letter of resignation which I expected daily. 
 Its arrival put the seal upon my hypothesis — if a thing 
 so certain could be called a hypothesis. Our grief for 
 the departed was unusually severe, and, for my own 
 part, I do not know how I should have borne up, if I 
 had not been sustained by the duty of reading, or rather 
 skimming, the fiction of the month. To anticipate a 
 little, I may say at once that during the next few 
 months I sat several hours a day, with wet towels 
 round my head, reading everything that might possibly 
 be the story of Eliot Dickray's secret sin and marriage. 
 My mind became a chaos of incongruous impossibilities ; 
 my brain a blood-sodden pulp ; my skull a seething 
 caldron of inane sentimentalities. But I read on. 
 Till you tiy to keep pace with it, you have no idea what 
 an appalling amount of unnecessary lying is turned 
 out every month. And they are not even new lies, they 
 are such an old pack. After I had hunted the needle, 
 sick and dizzy, for a fortnight, it occurred to me that 
 I was neglecting the American hay. At first I read 
 everything ; in widening my sphere to take in Trans- 
 atlantic lying, I found myself driven to select, and to 
 discard stories whose titles were out of all relation to 
 the plot of which I was in search. That was why, 
 when the story did come along, I tossed it aside ; and
 
 52 THE CELIBATES'' CLUB 
 
 it was only by the merest accident that I came to read 
 the following story, under the queer label of 
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATE. 
 
 One o'clock and a foggy night. No watchman pro. 
 claimed the tidings, for it was modern London over 
 which the fog lay, and the contemporary night-patrol 
 speaks only from the soles of his boots. But the bell of 
 St. Paul's tolled the hour, and the fog needed no telling. 
 " Hell is a city very much like London," as Shelley hath 
 it; but never more so than in February, when the 
 weird street-lamps serve but to render the darkness 
 visible. To-night the fog wrapped the metropolis in its 
 yellow folds so thickly that unfortunate pedestrians 
 despaired of home and even of England and beauty; 
 the very cabmen had, as a rule, preferred their beds 
 to crawling with smarting eyes through the Egyptian 
 darkness. Up till midnight torch-bearers were to be 
 had, but now even these men of light and leading were 
 inaccessible, counting their gains in the doss-houses. 
 
 Harold Koss groped his way along, looking for a 
 hansom. He had retired early from a gay supper-party 
 in one of the Inns of Court, taken a few steps east- 
 wards in search of a remembered cab-rank, then lost his 
 bearings, and was now approaching Fleet Street by way 
 of a slow succession of buildings and objects quite 
 unfamiliar to him. He knew the world's great cerebral 
 nerve as well as most Londoners ; but he knew it by 
 perches and roods. In a fog you have to feel your 
 way by inches. You see your own street as under a 
 microscope and are astonished at the unknown world 
 that opens upon you at every step. But to Harold 
 Eoss the revelation of Fleet Street in all its minutiae of
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATE 
 
 53 
 
 brick wall, iron railing, and quaint portal and alley, was 
 not sufficiently interesting to compensate for the chok- 
 ing in his throat, and the exacerbation of his eyeballs. 
 
 (j^c^Vj^lTijiijsou.^i 
 
 He made up his mind to fight his way back to the 
 supper-party and abandon the hope of reaching his 
 comfortable bed in the neighbourhood of Regent's Park. 
 Naturally, at this point he caught sight of a hansom's
 
 54 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 beacon-fire looming ahead, and making for it, found 
 that it was one of a series smouldering sullenly through 
 the murky atmosphere, but flashing to him the message 
 of hope as the news of the return of Agamemnon was 
 flashed to Argos. He concluded that he had wandered 
 away from Fleet Street and stumbled upon a cab- 
 rank unawares. He hailed the first driver — in more 
 than one sense. The vehicle was engaged. Still light- 
 hearted, he accosted the second. He, too, was engaged. 
 Harold's heart began to sink. Something was going on, 
 and this file of futile hansoms was but a symbol of it. 
 A steady progress down the rank convinced our weary 
 traveller that to him these hansoms were but a mirage, 
 their beacon-fires but wills-o'-the-wisp. What was 
 going on, he discovered, was writing. Half-way down, 
 the resplendent offices of the Daily Wire threw an 
 electric light on the mystery. The myrmidons of the 
 press were busy settling the affairs of the universe. 
 The gods of the modern Olympos were launching their 
 columned lightnings, and measuring out praise and 
 blame ; the smudgy sons of Vulcan were manufacturing 
 their cheap thunderbolts. When the gods and giants 
 had fulfilled their dread functions, they would be driven 
 home to their villas in Camberwell by constant Jehus, 
 who made the usual reduction on taking a quantity. 
 
 Harold Koss passed down the ghostly line tempting 
 the buttoned-up phantoms, and receiving good-natured 
 banter. It did not matter to him what he paid, nor 
 which smart journalist suffered. In great crises like 
 these the best of men are selfish ; and Harold Eoss was 
 far from being the best of men. He was the thriftless 
 son of a famous man of letters— a poor rich creature, 
 fond of chicken and champagne and careless chut; a
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATE 55 
 
 lover of literature and art — but a mere dilettante ; a 
 being without a backbone, a dreamer of dreams, loung- 
 ing lazily through life, the prey of random impulses 
 and flickering ambitions, never putting his hand to the 
 plough without drawing it back ; in brief, one of those 
 men whose lives are literally the " dream of a shadow " 
 of the Greek poet. 
 
 The last hansom had been left deserted by its driver. 
 Harold waited patiently for his return, refusing to 
 extinguish his last hope and half forgetting the lapse 
 of the minutes in one of his customary reveries. His 
 thoughts were sad and compassionate. He asked him- 
 self why these poor men should have been tarrying there 
 in the wretched fog and cold, whilst he, who had never 
 in his life done a stroke of work for his fellows, had 
 been sipping Cbablis and swallowing oysters in a warm 
 and happy atmosphere of good fellowship ? For the 
 thousandth time he wallowed in the luxury of pity and 
 high unselfish thought; conscious all the while he 
 would never move a finger to help anything or any- 
 body in the world. His reflections were ended by a tall, 
 shabby figure lurching up against him. The odour of 
 the fog was momentarily ousted by a waft of whisky. 
 " Pardon, guvnor," was jerked in thick, hoarse tones 
 from the figure, already grown phantasmal half a yard 
 off. " Didn't know you were there. Whoa ! stand still, 
 ray beauty." There was a sound of equine impatience 
 mingled with patting. 
 
 " Are you the driver of this cab ? " 
 
 " Yessir, not at your service." 
 
 " Oh, come now. Don't say that. I '11 give you what 
 you like to take me to Eegent's Park." 
 
 "Wouldn't advise the {hie) canal to-night, sir ; but
 
 56 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 not surprised you 're thinking of suicide. Night like 
 this would recon(/a'c)cile a murderer to the gallows." 
 
 " It '11 be the death of me in any case if I don't get 
 home," said Harold, rather struck by the man's perfect 
 English, marred only by the little Latin expletives in 
 the brackets. " Come, what will you take ? " 
 
 " I should say wliisky neat, sir, if it were a more 
 Christian-like hour, but as the publics are all closed, 
 thank you for nothing ijiic). Unless you '11 take me into 
 a club." And the gaunt driver leered with a ghastly 
 grin through the gloom. 
 
 " Come, come," said Harold impatiently, " I '11 give 
 you a sovereign to drive me to Regent's Park," 
 
 " Sir, I am engaged. My hirer lies yonder." He 
 flicked his whip in the direction of the Daily Wire 
 offices. " Whoa, Bucephalus ! " 
 
 " Two sovereigns." 
 
 " Sir, I am a cab(/ac)man of honour iliic). Still I 
 cannot afford more than a sovereign's worth of such a 
 luxury. Jump in." 
 
 Harold obeyed with alacrity. 
 
 The driver addressed him through the trap-door. 
 " You won't back out of it afterwards for a couple of 
 bob ? What 's fare isn't fair in this weather," he added 
 chuckling. 
 
 " It isn't. The four-mile radius is sponged out of 
 existence. Drive on, my good fellow, and my man 
 shall give you some grog at the end of the journey." 
 He let down the window, boxing himself up from the 
 fog, and relapsed into reverie as the cab crawled 
 cautiously onwards. How long he mused he knew 
 not; but when the cab stopped suddenly with a shock 
 and a tremor, he pushed open the flaps and jumped
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATE 57 
 
 out meclianically, thinking they had arrived. Before he 
 had time to look around, the gaunt driver was at his 
 elbow with a lighted lantern in his hand. 
 
 "Poor brute's injured himself, I fear," he said, more 
 soberly than he had yet spoken. " Not my fault. 
 Walked into a pillar-box. Bruised his scapula. Gee 
 up, my Pegasus. Bear up, Bucephalus." He caught 
 hold of the bridle and tried to lead the animal along. 
 It made a few steps, then paused, breathing heavily. 
 
 Harold groaned. " What 's to be done ? " 
 
 " I am afraid, sir," said the cabman philosophically, 
 after forcing the horse another few paces, " that this is 
 one of the situations in which the only thing to do is to 
 ask what is to be done." 
 
 " How far are we ? " 
 
 "About half-way. Fortunately, if I am not mis- 
 taken, we are only within five minutes of the stable. I 
 will lead Bucephalus there, and forfeit one sovereign 
 and the grog." 
 
 " And what if I refuse to pay ? " said Harold, chok- 
 ing with annoyance and fog. 
 
 " Then, sir, I shall commence to swear. I have the 
 filthiest and most extensive vocabulary in London." 
 
 The unexpected threat so tickled Harold that he 
 burst out laughing. 
 
 " But what is to become of me ? " he said, gasping 
 from defect of breath and excess of fog. 
 
 "I live near the stables, sir, and if my humble 
 hospitality can be of any service to you, it is freely at 
 vour disposal. I can work off the second sovereign that 
 way." 
 
 "You are, indeed, a rare bird," laughed Harold, the 
 Bohemian adventurous instinct taking strong hold of
 
 58 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 him. " I will accept your hospitality as freely as it is 
 offered — that is, at a charge of a sovereign." 
 
 " It is a bargain," said the gaunt cabman. He strode 
 forwards gallantly, holding the bridle of Bucephalus 
 with one hand and his lantern in the other. The horse 
 laboured along no less gallantly, and Harold trudged at 
 the side of the twain silently, but in no morose humour, 
 scenting a new experience as keenly as the war-horse 
 the battle. 
 
 In ten minutes' time he was following his host up 
 the creaking rickety stairs of a slum attic. Streaks of 
 light descended upon them through the chinks of 
 a cracked, blistering door. 
 
 " Why, who 's wasting my paraffin ? " said the cab- 
 man. " Surely Jenny is gone to bed ! " In another 
 moment he threw open the door, disclosing a large but 
 dingy garret with white-washed sloping ceiling, dimly 
 lighted by an oil-lamp standing in the centre of a bare 
 deal table. A pale woman rose as the door opened, 
 with a piece of calico in her hand. 
 
 " Back so soon, father ! " 
 
 " Up so late, Jenny ! " 
 
 "Yes, father. I expected you home by half-past 
 three, and as I had a lot of sewing to finish I thought 
 I might as well sit up and do it, and it 's such a fearful 
 night that I thought you 'd like some hot coffee when 
 you " 
 
 She paused, catching sight of the stranger. 
 
 " Jenny, my love, this is Mr. Fare, a gentleman who 
 cannot find his way home in the fog, so I have offered 
 him the shelter of our lowly roof. Mr. Fare, this is my 
 daughter Jenny. Be careful, sir, or you will bang your 
 head against the lowly roof in question. SuUimiferiam
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATE 59 
 
 sidera vertice. In medio tutissimus ibis, come into 
 the middle of the room and your crown will be 
 safe." 
 
 Harold Eoss bowed to the cabman's daughter and 
 the garret's roof. He walked towards the bright fire, 
 and, having warmed his hands and sloughed his over- 
 coat, he cast a curious glance at the strange couple who 
 stood exchanging whispers. For the first time he saw 
 how hollow-eyed, thin-cheeked, and puny-chested a man 
 his guide and companion was. The lips were full and 
 red, the nose was aquiline and carmine. The brow was 
 high and broad, crowned by masses of tangled grey 
 hair. Dissipation was stamped on his features ; the 
 big D of drink was branded like a curse upon his fore- 
 head. His skeleton was so thinly padded with flesh 
 that it reminded Harold of a scenario. The daughter's 
 look was no less cadaverous, but the refinement of her 
 face, the unflinching earnestness of her sad eyes, spoke 
 rather of poverty and pain than of culpable physical 
 bankruptcy. She might have been any age between 
 thirty and thirty-five. She was slim and tall like her 
 father, but her print dress was as clean and neat as his 
 coat was greasy and crinkled. She put down her sew- 
 ing, and, turning towards Harold, said with exquisite 
 courtesy, " You will let me give you some coffee, Mr. 
 Fare." 
 
 The cabman seemed to chuckle with his eyes as his 
 daughter addressed the visitor by name. 
 
 " Oh, thanks ! " said Harold, " I am freezing." 
 
 The coffee was served in huge clumpy cups, and the 
 specific aroma which the hon vivant visitor loved was 
 absent; still it was hot and not unpleasant to swallow. 
 Jenny spread a coarse table-cloth for the edification of
 
 6o THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 the guest and cut some thin bread and butter, of which 
 Harold did not partake. 
 
 "And now, Jenny, you must go to bed," said the 
 cabman. " To the deuce with your sewing. I am rich 
 to-night. Long live King Fog !" 
 
 "0 father, give it me," pleaded the woman impul- 
 sively, and her eyes told the story not of cupidity nor 
 rapacity but of anxious dread. Then she blushed with 
 infinite delicacy at the betrayal of the family skeleton. 
 " I want you to make me a birthday present," she said, 
 laughing nervously. 
 
 " My dear, the £ of the £. s. d. is in somebody else's 
 pocket just now. There are two of them. But I have 
 no fear as to the transfer. Good-night, Jenny." 
 
 She bent down and kissed him as he sat at the 
 table, then with a "good-night, Mr. Fare; sorry the 
 accommodation is so bad," she flitted noiselessly through 
 a door in the wall and Harold heard the key grating in 
 the lock. 
 
 "My daughter," said the cabman proudly, "has 
 always had her own bedroom. It is the one luxury she 
 has been able to retain." 
 
 " From which remark," said Harold with interest, " I 
 gather that you have seen " 
 
 " Better nights — precisely. Nodes Ambrosiance, sir." 
 He got up and went to a cupboard and had a tussle 
 with the handle, which refused to open the door. 
 " Jenny must have locked it," he said at length, " and 
 the glasses are there. I had intended offering you some 
 whisky." He drew a flask from an inner breast- 
 pocket. 
 
 " Not for me, thank you," said Harold. " Another cup 
 of coffee will do for me. Thank you, I can help myself."
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATE 6l 
 
 " In that case, sir," said his host, " there can be no 
 objection to my sipping at the fountain-head." And he 
 put the bottle to his lips. 
 
 " Can I offer you a cigar ? " said Harold, suddenly 
 bethinldng himself that he would like to smoke. 
 
 " Of course, sir," the cabman said, selecting one from 
 his guest's case, and kindling it over the lamp. " It 's 
 not often now I enjoy another man's cigar by more 
 than the scent of it. But do not let me keep you up ; 
 there is your bed. You will find it clean, if hard. 
 Trust Jenny for that." 
 
 He pointed to the furthermost corner of the gloomy 
 room. For the first time Harold noticed a sort of cur- 
 tained alcove. 
 
 " My good fellow, you are very kind, but I can't take 
 your bed. I can very well smoke by the fire." 
 
 " Just what I was thinking of doing, sir. A cigar 
 like this to my whisky is not to be bartered for a bed 
 of down — much less a shake-down. Confound the 
 lamp," he added, as he noticed the dwindling flame, 
 "the wick wants trimming." He carefully drew off the 
 lamp-glass and operated on the cotton with the scissors 
 which lay on his daughter's calico, apparently careless 
 of the fact that her work would smell of the lamp. 
 "What a nuisance to have no gas!" he said, adding, 
 with a splendid American accent, " Yas, I have struck 
 ile, but it 's tarnation little recommendation in the Old 
 Country, I guess." He laughed bitterly. "Jenny 
 ought to be run after by the British peerage." 
 
 The lamp burnt steadily for a moment, then the 
 flame began to sink. " Curse it all, it 's the oil that 's 
 run out," said the cabman. " I '11 keep the fire up." 
 He threw some coals on it and choked what flame there
 
 62 ' THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 was. " But I haven't got any more paraffin, and I don't 
 suppose you '11 like to sit up in the dark. Come, sir, 
 you needn't be afraid of being robbed and murdered 
 here, though nobody in the world knows of your pre- 
 sence here to-night and the opportunity is excellent. 
 Not that I should have the slightest scruples in killing 
 you, but there 's Jenny to square. Jenny, sir, has old- 
 fashioned notions, and what is worse, she has absolutely 
 no sense of humour. Jenny takes life seriously — I, in a 
 mere spirit of frolicsome irresponsibility ; in that spirit 
 I should take yours." 
 
 The lamp flickered weirdly; the fire smouldered dully ; 
 the room grew dimmer and dimmer; the spasmodic dying 
 lamp-flame threw the strange gaunt form of the host 
 in ghastlier outlines on the frowsy ceiling and the 
 white-washed walls. The end of his cigar was a circlet 
 of fire in the gloom. Harold shivered; decidedly, it 
 would be pleasanter to go to bed like a Christian. He 
 had not the least fear of robbery or assassination ; the 
 vein of queerness in his own composition gave him the 
 instinct to understand the strange being at his side ; he 
 knew he had to do with a harmless Bohemian exiled 
 for his sins from his native land. To sit upon a hard 
 wooden chair in the dark garret might be romantic, but 
 it were nicer to lose consciousness beneath a counter- 
 pane. He went to the window, lifted up a corner of the 
 striped glaze blind, to see if haply the fog had lifted. 
 There was nothing to be seen but an ocean of opaque 
 mist. With a gesture of resignation, he betook himself 
 to the alcove, drawing aside the curtain which slid on 
 a ring overhead. An iron pallet was revealed, over one 
 corner of which were two triangular book-shelves fixed 
 in the angle of the wall.
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATE 63 
 
 Not without curiosity Harold's eye rested upon the 
 books. They seemed familiar. The title of one of 
 them caught his gaze, but ere he could be sure he had 
 read it aright, the light failed and the room was plunged 
 in a dusky fog. 
 
 "You are looking at my books," came in strange 
 sardonic tones from the darkness. 
 
 "Yes," said Harold, "I thought " The jet of 
 
 flame leapt up defiantly and shone steadily for a moment 
 in the face of death. Harold uttered a cry. " How 
 strange!" he said, "why, you have all my father's 
 books!" 
 
 The flame sank, spurted, sank — and rose no more. 
 There was a moment of intense silence. 
 
 " Are you Harold Ross ? " came in strange tones from 
 the depths behind him. 
 
 " Yes, I am the novelist's son. And now you know 
 who I am, pray tell me in return, who are you ? " 
 
 He turned and looked towards where the thin, 
 haggard figure had stood, but there was nothing visible 
 through the gloom except very, very faint white wreaths 
 of smoke curling fantastically round a terrible eye of 
 fire. A strange eerie sensation came over him. His 
 blood ran chill. From the centre of tlie vaporous 
 impalpable Thing there came in sepulchral tones the 
 words, " Harold, I am thy father's ghost." 
 
 Harold's pulse stood still, preparatory to making a 
 spasmodic spurt. Then he turned away nervously from 
 the white film and laughed uneasily. He surmised at 
 once that the man had been an actor in his better nights, 
 and had thus acquired his fund of quotations, and his 
 command of language good and bad. 
 
 " Come," said Harold, " that 's not a l^ir return for
 
 64 
 
 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 my confidences. I told you who I am ; tell me who 
 you are." 
 
 Again the voice came from the centre of the curling 
 rings, " I am your father's ghost."
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATE 65 
 
 Hnrold laughed resignedly. " Well, keep your secrets, 
 t'oitunately my father is alive, but if he were dead I 
 hardly think he would be reduced to driving a hansom 
 in the next world." 
 
 " He drives a handsome bargain in this," sneered the 
 smoke-rincrs. 
 
 " If you mean he only allows the publishers a com- 
 mission " 
 
 " And he drove a publisher's hack hard," continued 
 the smoke. 
 
 Harold's blood recovered its warmth. " What do you 
 know about my father ?" 
 
 " As much as a ghost usually knows about the author 
 of its being, that is all." 
 
 " What do vou mean ?" said Harold, his breath com- 
 ing fast and his chest contracting:. 
 
 "I am your father's ghost, and wrote all his books." 
 
 " The devil ! " 
 
 "Precisely ; that, like the jackal, is another naixe for 
 it." 
 
 Harold rushed at the sardonic smoke-rincrs on chas- 
 
 O 
 
 tisement bent, but barked his thighs against the table, 
 and the room rang with hollow laughter. 
 
 " My dear Harold, facts are facts. From the noise of 
 the collision between yourself and my hospitable board, 
 [ gather that they are also news. T should have thought 
 there would have been no secrets between you and your 
 illustrious father." 
 
 "Good God, man! are you mad?" said Harold 
 huskily. 
 
 "The critics think me a genius," said the mocking 
 Mephistopheles. 
 
 "I know little or nothing of my father's private 
 
 £
 
 66 THE CELIBATES' GLUT 
 
 relations," said Harold vehemently. " But 1 know that 
 you are a liar." 
 
 " That is what I am telling you. My lies have filled 
 your father's volumes and his pockets. All his eulogists 
 say that I am one of the greatest liars of the age." 
 
 " Pah ! you are drunk," said Harold contemptuously. 
 
 " Not now," retorted the cabman. " But if I had not 
 been a disciple of Bacchus neither your father nor my- 
 self would have been found on the rank we now occupy." 
 
 " Good God ! this cannot be true ! My father ! " 
 
 "Do you think," said the smoke indignantly, "that I 
 ■would tell a lie for nothing ? Me, an old pressman, who 
 began life as a penny-a-liar ! " 
 
 The room was not warm, but Harold's agony exuded 
 from his forehead in beads of perspiration. His voice 
 was hoarse with a terrible fear that the liar was telling 
 the truth. The conceptions of a lifetime were tottering. 
 
 "What proof have you of this?" he demanded 
 fiercely. 
 
 " Proof ? A thousand proofs ! " said the smoke-fiend 
 sardonically. " The proofs of all your father's novels. 
 He destroyed the manuscripts (Ross's MSS. will never 
 be sold at Sotheby's) but in his confident carelessness 
 he took no steps to prevent me retaining the proofs. 
 The corrections are all in my handwriting. Of course 
 he could not correct his books himself. They were not 
 his own children. To-morrow you shall see them." 
 
 " No, I must see them now. \ cannot rest with this 
 horrible suspicion on my mind." 
 
 " Have you cat's eyes ? " queried the ghost. 
 
 " No, but poke the fire, man. I shall see by its light." 
 
 The devil stirred up the smouldering coal till it stuck 
 out a mocking tongue of flame and revealed the sub-
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATE 6? 
 
 stance of a grinning phantom, which went to the table- 
 drawer and drew out a heap of printed slips. Harold 
 knelt by the broken fender to examine them. His 
 shadow was an amorphous un-human blotch upon the 
 whitewashed wall. It was a horrible moment. He let 
 the proofs fall from his hand and put it to his eyes. 
 The writing was not his father's. AVhen he spoke 
 again, his voice was tremulous and subdued, and charged 
 with respect and pity. 
 
 "Forgive me for my offensive language," he said. 
 " If this be true, and you cannot expect me to believe 
 it without further and different proofs, you are a much- 
 wronged man." 
 
 " I can give you plenty of proofs of that ! " said the 
 ghost. 
 
 There was a long pause before Harold spoke again. 
 Then he broke the silence suddenly, and there was a 
 note of hope in his voice. 
 
 "My father's new novel was published last week. 
 You could not have written that." 
 
 " No, I did not. When I said I had written all liis 
 books I was speaking loosely. His last three books 
 were by another 'hand' in your father's factory. Is it 
 not a commonplace of criticism that your father is now 
 in his second manner?" 
 
 Harold groaned. It was too true. 
 
 " Tiie second manner," pursued the devil implacably, 
 "in the critic's mouth, implies that the author of the 
 earlier manner is dead. New experience, fresh ideals, 
 have gradually modified his first literary personality 
 till it is completely moulted. So, too, your father 
 gave up the ghost of his lirst period and hired another' 
 The critics say ho has struck a rich new vein of char-
 
 68 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 acter and incident, and a maturer manner, and shaken 
 off the last crudities of adolescent genius for the full 
 ripeness of the autumn grain. The first part is true, 
 but I happen to know that the new ghost is barely out 
 of his teens. They would never recognise my maturity, 
 even if I had been fifty years in bottle." Again 
 the drunkard's hollow laughter reverberated through 
 the room and sent a shudder through the listener's 
 beinfj. Harold could scarce longer battle with the 
 belief that his father was a rogue. His filial instincts 
 bristled defiance ; but his susceptibility to new impres- 
 sions was a powerful ally on the side of conviction. 
 
 " Speak on ; tell me all the story," he muttered. 
 
 " The story of the stories ! Yes, I will tell it you. 
 But get up from your knees and sit down. That's 
 right," he said, as Harold obeyed mechanically. " Have 
 a cigar. I can recommend the brand." Harold took 
 out his cigar-case and his father's ghost selected a 
 cigar for him and lit it with a wisp of paper. 
 
 " Now we are comfortable," said the ghost. " Life is 
 smoke but smoke is life. Ashes to ashes, but ash to 
 ash. A ghostly tale should begin and end in smoke. 
 Tliank you ; yes, I will have another cigar myself. And 
 now, sir, to my story, which shall be brief as gratitude." 
 
 He drained the whisky flask and commenced : — 
 
 "Honest labouring man as I am now, I be^an life as 
 a pressman. I am fallen, fallen, fallen from the Fourth 
 Estate. I began as a brilliant penny-a-liar, and if ever 
 my editor complained, I pointed out that I supplied 
 him with exclusive information, which appeared in no 
 other paper. By stages far from easy, I mounted from 
 penny-a-lying to dictating the policy of Th& TwinUer 
 to an amanuensis. But the intoxication of power was
 
 HAMT.ET UP TO DATE 69 
 
 too much for me, and I fell down the ladder I had 
 climbed so tediously. I was not discouraged, for lajoic 
 de vivre was always strong in me, and I knew a few 
 pressmen, who got me occasional work when I proffered 
 to do it, so that I made enough for bread and cheese 
 and kisses! They would not trust me with regular 
 work, that had to be turned out with punctuality and 
 despatch, but I earned enough to keep body and soul 
 apart whenever desired. I was recognised in quilldom 
 as one of those brilliant Lucifers but for whose providen- 
 tial fall the respectable Gabriels would find no market, 
 and the mellifluous Michaels be compelled to sheathe 
 their quills in their wings once more. Then I met your 
 father. He was a cross between Lucifer and Gabriel — 
 clever, but commonplace and careful. He wrote very 
 sn)art articles and lived decorously and gradually 
 gained a wide reputation as a brilliant but reliable 
 journalist. He made one or two contributions to the 
 heavy magazines and became a recognised man of light 
 and leader-writing. This is the journalist's climacteric 
 — his most dangerous period. It was never more dan- 
 gerous than to-day, when the mass of readers has 
 augmeuted out of all proportion to the number of men 
 they care to give hearing to. Your father was be- 
 sieged with invitations from editors and syndicates. 
 He wrote anonymous dramatic criticisms for eleven 
 papers — London, provincial, or foreign ; picturesque 
 parliamentary reports for twelve ; and occasional leaders 
 and signed articles for about twenty-five. It is so hard 
 to refuse clieques. But it is harder to earn them. The 
 task of writing eleven dramatic criticisms, all different, 
 is not so easy as it looks. When you have said a play 
 is good, bad, and indifferent, you can only go on ringing
 
 70 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 the changes. The Parliamentary reports are not so bad, 
 for the politics of the paper you are writing for is a 
 guide to the shades of colouring. 
 
 " It is when writers attempt too much that they go 
 to the devil. In due course your father came to me. 
 My beginnings were small and my devillings spasmo- 
 dic, but I soon became indispensable. I wrote most of 
 his London Letters for him. He Qot three guineas for 
 each, which he honestly shared with me. I did not 
 grumble, for I was spared the trouble of looking for 
 work, and I hate trouble. I liked writing London 
 Letters and putting on the grand air of haunting the 
 Lobby, being hand and glove with all the lions, and 
 having a private peep-hole in the Cabinet Chamber. 
 They were no trouble, and the only species of work I 
 could be trusted to do regularly. I kept sober to do 
 them. I invented a story in one letter, varied it in a 
 second, commented on the discrepancies in a third, and 
 contradicted it in a fourth. The London evening papers 
 often quoted all the four versions, and I wrote numer- 
 ous leaderettes for your father commenting on them 
 all. This was a happy innocent time in my life. I 
 was more often sober than not, and in short was quite 
 moralised by my devilry." 
 
 " Then my father did not even write his own 
 articles !" 
 
 " Not all of them. How could he ? How can any 
 respectable journalist get through the work he has to 
 do ? Why, I know journalists who write descriptions 
 of ball-dresses who don't know a flounce from a fur- 
 below." 
 
 "And how do they manage ?" inquired Harold sadly. 
 
 "They get the blue devils, of course — the learned
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATE 71 
 
 lady writers, you know. But your father never got 
 entangled in the clothesline — at least not directly." 
 
 " All this is a revelation to me," said Harold. " My 
 father never cared for me to mix in his own circle, and 
 he impressed upon me that I ought to feel grateful 
 lor being able to live without it, in both senses. But 
 surely he wrote his first novel himself — Winifred, Wynn 
 — that made such a sensation ? " 
 
 "Not a line. He has no idea of novel- writing. He 
 is a smart journalist, but he couldn't tell an artistic lie 
 to save his life." 
 
 " But how came he to turn novelist ? " 
 
 " Somebody started a magazine and wanted it written 
 by well-known names. He offered your father ten 
 guineas for a thousand-word tale." 
 
 " But if my father had never won his spurs in fiction 
 — had never even written the smallest story ! " 
 
 " Magazine editors are always on the watch to dis- 
 cover new talent — in old names. If a man explores 
 New Guinea, there is a great demand for his views on 
 the Deceased Wife's Sister's Bill ; if he makes a hit as 
 a comedian in the House of Commons, editors pester 
 him for lyrics ; if he invents a patent safety sausage- 
 machine there is a sure market for his stories of high 
 life ; and if he distinguishes himself by succeeding to a 
 peerage, the 'title' pages of the so-called Nineteenth 
 Century will be thick with his lucubrations." 
 
 " Yes, I have noticed something of the kind," said 
 Harold wearily. 
 
 " Well, then," said his father's ghost, " that was how 
 I took to novel-writing. Your fatlier came to me in 
 great trouble — he was going to be married and wanted 
 money — and told me of the offer. He said that hp
 
 72 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 thought my London Letters gave promise of a novelist, 
 and as he generously offered to share fair and share 
 alike, I consented to try. The result justified the 
 editor's sagacity. The little tale created a little sensa- 
 tion, and I wrote Winifred Wynn. After the success 
 of that my head was turned and I took to drawing my 
 money in advance, mitigating my claims in considera- 
 tion. Somehow, I got very little out of the volumes of 
 belles lettres — novels, essays, poetry, and the dramas — 
 that succeeded — in two senses. The more he made the 
 less I got. But it would not pay me to quarrel with 
 him, and no publisher would touch my work without 
 his name on it. Besides, I knew that if I had not been 
 a literary ghost, I should have been a literal one long 
 ago. Your father used to lock me up in his room for 
 months together when a new book or play was on the 
 stocks, so I was steady perforce. Even then I was 
 very erratic ; and often and often, when your father got 
 letters of remonstrance from the publishers, he used to 
 come iuto my den and indignantly reproach me with 
 the discredit I was bringing upon his character. But 
 he ought not to have reckoned without his ghost." 
 
 " But how did you fall so low ? " 
 
 " To the driver's perch ? Yes, I suppose it is a fall ; 
 though Carlyle says all work is equally sacred. I did not 
 drop into that at once. Whether because my invention 
 flagged, or because I was too uncertain, I forget, but after 
 twenty years of faithful service your father started 
 giving me less and less to do. He was feeling for his 
 second manner. He found him, and I was discharged 
 — with a caution to hold my tongue." 
 
 " And nothing else ? " 
 
 "Yes, a hundred pounds or so. A hundred pound?
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATE 73 
 
 doesn't go far with me. Earely furtlier than the first 
 holiday place I get to. This went with me to Brighton. 
 I returned alone. That was four years ago. Since then 
 I have tried all sorts of things for a living. I could not 
 go back to journalism or literature, for / hadn't written 
 a line for twenty years, but in my struggle for a living 
 I have drunk in — no, not merely whisky — lots of 
 materials for another novel. I have been a penny 
 steam-boat steward, a bum, a dog-fancier, a mesmerist, 
 and a super. For a year I served in the Salvation 
 Army; but I was saved by getting a situation as M.C. 
 in a dancing saloon ; I lost that and supported myself 
 for six months by Jenny's sewing, after which that 
 goddess out of the (sewing) machine induced me to 
 become a 'bus conductor ; from which the transition to 
 my present position was easy. I sought out an old 
 friend who had risen to nearly the top of the I).T., and 
 the memory of our early struggles together in Fleet 
 Street induced hiin to transfer to me the job of driving 
 him home after his work — on condition that I did it 
 cheaper. This I have done — cheaply and expeditiously 
 — for the last three months; for the night traffic is 
 light and I should not like to see Jenny's eye if I lost 
 this regular job. I have been really like a ghost revisit- 
 ing my old haunts and the pale glimpses of the moon ; 
 but what may ensue from my leaving my old chum 
 stranded in the fog to-night, I cannot say. Allow me 
 to re-liglit my cigar at yours." 
 
 Harold was deeply moved as his cigar met the cab- 
 man's in the masculine substitute for a kiss. The dual 
 glow was a symbol of mutual sympathy henceforwards. 
 
 " But why not publish this novel you have in your 
 head ? "
 
 74 
 
 THE CELinATES' CLUB 
 
 The caliman shook the head containincf the novel. 
 " Who would publish it ? My daughter Jeuuy," he 
 said witli a despairing chuckle, " is the only thing I 
 
 jW^- 
 
 S *' 'fWm^ ^'\ 
 
 have in print now, or am likely to 
 get into it. Allow me to feel your 
 face for the smile, as Lamb says." 
 
 "Don't be afraid. It is not too 
 dark for me to see the joke," said 
 Harold. " But tell me, if your story 
 is true, why do you allow yourself 
 to be treated so scurvily ? Why do 
 you not denounce my father ? " 
 
 " What ! Tell the truth ? Where ? 
 Through what medium ? To whom ? 
 No doubt I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word 
 would harrow up the soul — but the law of libel has 
 to be reckoned with, that lovely invention for the 
 protection of scoundrels and the scourging of honest 
 journalists. Your father could easily put me into a 
 prison or a lunatic asylum. The proofs would be 
 said to be a fabrication ; the accusations malicious or 
 
 «;";3oi;
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATE 75 
 
 maniacal. Might is Eight, now as ever. There are a 
 dozen leading organs in which your father could cham- 
 pion himself and ladle out vilification or badinage to 
 me." 
 
 " Do you mean to say my father is so base that he 
 would descend to write anonymously about himself ? " 
 
 " You forget that his ghost would do it. No ; I am 
 no hot-headed enthusiast to risk exposing him. I am 
 an old man, sobered by half a century of drink. Do 
 you think' I would sacrifice myself on the altar of Truth 
 at my age ? When I was younger I might have done 
 it perhaps. But now when I am not the ghost of 
 his former self ! " 
 
 " Then I will do it," cried Harold, starting up. 
 
 " You ? " 
 
 "Yes; it is monstrous that you should be cheated 
 out of your reputation and your earnings. Oh to think 
 that I am the son of a swindler, who has lived by 
 exploiting the talents of others ! And I — it is your 
 money that has kept me in luxury all my life ! I dare 
 not look you in the face ! " 
 
 " By the time the sun dawns you will have got over 
 it, my dear Harold." 
 
 " Never," groaned Harold. " You have crippled me 
 for life. But this injustice must be righted. In all the 
 catalogues Harold Koss must be replaced by — by " 
 
 "Edward Halby, at your service. You're a fine 
 fellow, Harold, but you don't know your own father. 
 It 's a wise child that does. I am sorry I told you but 
 I really couldn't help it. The situation was so odd. 
 Let us say no more about it. There are only fouv 
 persons in tlie world who know." 
 
 ^' Who is the fourth?"
 
 76 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 "Jenny. It is her only happiness to read the old 
 reviews on your father's books. When she is very 
 angry with me, she turns to some lofty moral passage 
 out of one of the books themselves, and then comes and 
 combs my hair tenderly. She would have married some 
 honest man long ago and deserted me, if I hadn't 
 thrown in those soul-moving sentences. 'Cast thy 
 bread upon the waters,' you see ! " 
 
 " Poor girl ! What a lot should have been hers ! 
 A great man's daughter, respected and admired." The 
 young man bowed his head in grief and abasement. 
 
 " Don't take on so. It 's an everyday matter, as I 've 
 already told you. Most of the famous writers of the 
 age are quite unknown. Have you not noticed that 
 some of the most celebrated names are sometimes 
 affixed to contributions contemptibly weak ? " 
 
 " Oh, of course I have. You mean that they have let 
 ghosts do the work." 
 
 " No ; their ghosts have been laid up, and they have 
 been compelled to understudy themselves. The fact is, 
 that great baby, the Public, is only a judge of the 
 quality of names, not of the quality of the writing ; so 
 that when a man has made a reputation in the literary 
 line, he follows the example of all successful tradesmen 
 nowadays and turns himself (though quietly) into a 
 joint-stock company. Or, if he prefers to retire alto- 
 gether, he sells his name to a syndicate, which pays him 
 the capitalised value of it, partly in money, partly in 
 shares ; calculated according to the number of years his 
 popularity is likely to last. Then he puts his hands, 
 together with this lump sum, into his pockets for the 
 rest of his life, while a score of unknown authors are 
 employed by the directors to turn out books with the
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATE "jf 
 
 special brand on the cover that the Pubh'c raves about, 
 and containing gore, or psychology, or humour, or piety, 
 accordinfT to the nature of the first success. Sometimes 
 they blunder into hiring a very clever hand in the 
 " works," and the author's reputation is bolstered up for 
 an unexpected term of years, to the great advantage of 
 the dividend. Now you understand why the books of 
 present-day writers are so curiously unequal." 
 
 They sat talking till the morning light stole into the 
 garret. The wasted brilliancy of this consumptive- 
 looking creature fascinated him. The cabman's mind 
 was a distorting mirror of paradox, and its reflections 
 were twisted quaintly and not seldom disagreeably ; but 
 the flashing phantasmagoria of images held Harold's 
 attention enchained. He even accepted some breakfast 
 when the deft-fingered and early-risen Jenny proffered 
 it. His father's ghost knew so many shady things that 
 were worth being introduced to. He went away burn- 
 ing with admiration and righteous indignation, and the 
 cabman had to go after him to ask for the two 
 
 sovereigns. 
 
 Harold did not go to bed that morning. He searched, 
 Japhet-like, for his father, but the great novelist was a 
 social eel and was always at home at other people's. 
 A little arithmetical calculation would have shown that 
 he must have written his books in his sleep ; but nobody 
 had all the data. After some days Harold hunted him 
 down. An eminent actor had returned from America, 
 and was re -opening the Lymarket, with Hamlet, 
 Knowim,' of the friendship between his father and the 
 tragedian, Harold purchased a stall. By good fortune 
 it was behind his father's, but the overture had ceased 
 before the lion came in. Harold had just time to greet
 
 78 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 him as the ciu'tain went up. Then a religious silence 
 settled on the house till the entrance of the Danish 
 Prince set it rocking for four minutes by the clock. 
 During those minutes he made several efforts to say to 
 his father what was raging in his soul ; but the great 
 man's nonchalant complacency and air of distinction 
 awed him. The easy affability of the novelist's nod to 
 the celebrities strewn about impressed him. Was it 
 possible this man, whom he had so reverenced, to whom 
 the world looked up, was a mere windbag ? He began 
 to hope again. The smoke-clouds of the garret rolled 
 off him like a nightmare at sun-dawn. Tlie audience 
 ceased their applause at last, and the mediaeval Danish 
 Prince left off grimacing to the nineteenth century. 
 The play proceeded. The fifth scene arrived. 
 
 " Alas, 'poor ghost 1 " said the great tragedian. 
 
 " Fity me, not," replied the ghost, " litt lend thy serious 
 hearing to what I shall unfold." 
 
 " Speak," replied Hamlet, " / am hound to hear." 
 
 The art of the player, the intensity he put into the 
 words, held the audience spell-bound. But to Harold 
 every word struck home, bringhig back the scene and 
 the agony of the night of the fog. 
 
 " So art thou to revenge when thou shall hear." The 
 dread, sonorous tones smote him like the sound of a 
 trumpet. 
 
 " What?" said Hamlet. 
 
 Harold bent forward and hissed in his father's ear, 
 " I am thy father s ghost, Edward Halby ! " 
 
 An electric shock seemed to traverse the novelist's 
 body. His head fell back, his face pale as death. 
 
 "3p ^T ^T 71^ "^ 
 
 For hours that night his son talked witli him, pacing
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATS. 79 
 
 tlie streets of the West End, both unconscious of the 
 flight of time. Harold's demands for perfect justice 
 were insistent. He conjured his father to throw away 
 the worser part of his heart and to acknowledge his 
 guilt to the world. His father argued, stormed, and 
 jested, but never budged an inch. The novelist con- 
 tended that his position was thoroughly justifiable; 
 nay, one that redounded to his credit, if the ledger were 
 fairly balanced. He pointed out how the moral effect 
 of these ' books, which were influencing thousands 
 for good, would be dissipated if they were known 
 to be the work of a drunken Bohemian. The Public 
 abhorred the "devil" and all his works, and stupidly 
 confused the work of art with the artist. He said he 
 could easily have written the works himself, if he had 
 had time, and he had simply acted like the masters in 
 all trades, sub-letting the work according to a con- 
 tract that was perfectly free on the side of the employee. 
 It was a gross breach of confidence and good faith on 
 the part of the workman to reveal the secrets of the 
 craft, even to his master's son. Edward Halby had 
 always been dealt with generously and had all the 
 inner satisfaction of successful authorship, quite as 
 much as Sir Walter Scott. He simply published his 
 books under the pseudonym of Harold Pioss — that was 
 all. What did it matter if, as the schoolboy said, 
 Homer was not written by Homer but by another man 
 of the same name ? It was no concern of the world's. 
 Besides, lie was not the only person involved. Numerous 
 critics and publishers and even friends would become 
 ])ublic laughing-stocks, if he made the indiscreet avowal 
 his son desired. Tliere was that friend and admirer, 
 the French writer, M. Bourtain. who, in the Itcvuc des
 
 ga THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Deux Monctcs, had sliown the inevitableness of Harokl 
 Eoss's writings in the light of his birthplace and his 
 early upbringing, and had cited him as a shining illus- 
 tration of the theory of heredity and of the applica- 
 tion of science to literary criticism ? What had the 
 theory of heredity done to him that he should deal it 
 such a blow ? If he owed something to Edward Halby's 
 reputation, he also owed something to his French 
 friend's. Who should decide which should suffer? 
 Ethical questions were by no means the simple things 
 his feather-headed and unworldly son imagined ! They 
 involved endless conundrums and people; and casuistry 
 had never yet been reduced to principles. 
 
 The son replied hotly that people with principles had 
 never yet been reduced to casuistry. But his cause was 
 hopeless. He could not prevail upon his father to dis- 
 avow even one book, and thus gradually break himself 
 of his reputation. The dawn found the great man still 
 as set against sunset and eclipse. 
 
 It was when the young man began to realise the 
 impotency of his wishes, when he felt himself distracted 
 at the burden of duty set upon his weak shoulders, and 
 liis reason slipping away down the precipice so sud- 
 denly opened at his feet, that a gleam of hope burst 
 upon his brain. It was the idea of vicarious reparation ! 
 To expose his father was beyond his strength ; could he 
 not expiate the sin ? Could he not rise in the scale of 
 being and develop into a scapegoat ? What if he took 
 himself seriously, if he banished his self-mistrust and 
 gave keener ear to the promptings of literary instinct ! 
 What if he made a reputation and paid it over to 
 Edward Halby ! His father was a moral bankrupt ; 
 well then, it behoved the son to discharge his hereditary
 
 HAMLET UP TO DATE 8l 
 
 liabilities in full. But Edward Halby was a dying man ; 
 the sunshine of fame was not for him. One thing alone 
 remained. Edward Halby had a daughter. If he mar- 
 ried her, any reputation he might make would be kept 
 in the family. Edward Halby's blood ran in her 
 veins and the compensation would be as logical as the 
 catastrophes of Greek tragedy. Harold Ross had looked 
 upon himself as a confirmed celibate ; but Fate had 
 thrust a life-task upon him and he must not shuffle it 
 off like a coward. Yes, he would marry Jenny Halby, 
 and take his wife's name. He made a last appeal to 
 his father — perhaps he might yet be saved from the 
 cruel necessity of marrying a worn, middle-aged woman, 
 whom he did not care two straws for. 
 
 But of this he said nothing to his father ; he did not 
 want his father to be swayed by pity for him, but purely 
 by considerations of right and justice. The final scene 
 took place at night upon a terrace overlooking the 
 Thames. It reminded Harold of the battlements of 
 Elsinore. His father told him to go to the devil. He 
 went to his father's. He gave up his tainted allowance. 
 His end was as tragic as Hamlet's. He married Jenny 
 Halby. His reputation is yet to make. 
 
 « « « » « 
 
 So ended the enthralling story, to which I alone had 
 the key. It was rather amateurish in parts, I thouglit, 
 and the title was rather forced; and, being a ghost story, 
 it ought to have come out as a summer Christmas 
 number; but still I followed it with breathless interest. 
 Whether any one without my reasons would find it so 
 exciting I could not tell. Of course with this power- 
 ful clue I easily discovered the real Edward Halby, 
 whose name was Canning, and the real Jenny. The 
 
 F
 
 S2 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 ghost gave up the flesh six months afterwards and 
 within a week of the funeral Eliot Dickray published a 
 novel under the name of E. D, Canning. It was at 
 once hailed as a work of immense power, and so I, 
 alone in the world, knew that the world was mistaken ; 
 that Eliot Dickray senior was a sham, and Eliot 
 Dickray junior the genius. His father had just that 
 measure of talent which so often sires a genius. His 
 father's reputation had always overshadowed the son ; it 
 helped, combined with his natural vacillation and diffi- 
 dence, to keep him a flaneur. But the sudden demands 
 made upon him had drawn out the latent genius and 
 E. D. Canning promises to be one of the glories of con- 
 temporary literature. His identity will soon leak out, 
 however, and he will become one of the stock instances 
 of hereditary genius. 
 
 I believe the strangely assorted couple, whose union 
 was such a blow to the Bachelors' Club, lived happily 
 ever afterwards, for the woman had a noble and cul- 
 tured soul. 
 
 But quite by accident I discovered one day that she 
 was only the cabman's step-daughter.
 
 CHAPTEE lY. 
 
 THE BACHELOR ABROAD. 
 
 By this time the Club was in a reduced condition, not 
 only as to members but as to finances. We were now 
 only nine and the drain on the assurance money was 
 very great. We felt that if any more of us married we 
 should die. 
 
 An extraordinary general meeting was called for 
 the first of April. The extraordinary thing about it 
 was that it answered. The first idea hit upon was 
 Henry .Eobinson's. It was to graft our Insurance 
 System on to a popular penny paper. We immediately 
 went to the Editor of Silly Snippets who lived in the 
 Square and told him that we were willing to become nine 
 annual subscribers and transfer to him our reserve fund 
 in exchange for back numbers, if he would insure us 
 against Matrimony, as he insured his other readers 
 against Death. He pointed out that he did not insure 
 them against death but only against accidental death. 
 He was willing to accept the risks of accidental matri- 
 mony. If any one of us was found married with a copy of 
 Silly Snippets in his pocket, he would plank down the 
 money. But if it could be shown to be a case of mar- 
 riage of malice prepense — well, he kindly offered to see 
 us condemned antecedently. 
 
 He proceeded to complain that his readers were a 
 
 88
 
 84 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 most ungrateful lot, who were hardly worth wasting 
 scissors and paste upon. He said that tliey had a most 
 unpleasant habit of going and getting killed in percent- 
 ages that flew in the face of all statistics. I said that 
 the frequency of cases of sudden death while reading 
 8illy Snippets was quite easy to understand. We then 
 left. We heard afterwards he had looked upon our 
 visit as an attempted All Pools' Day hoax. 
 
 The Editor's refusal to take the risks of deliberate 
 matrimony naturally damped our spirits. His fear 
 that we should marry communicated itself to us and we 
 were sad. Henry liobinson was especially doleful at 
 the failure of his idea. He had a good position in a 
 bank and so was supposed to divide the financial genius 
 of the Club with Moses Fitz- Williams. We returned to 
 Leicester Square and sat smoking and thinking deeply. 
 The extraordinary general meeting was resumed. What 
 made matters worse was that no new applicants now 
 stepped forward to fill up the gaps in our ranks as they 
 used to do in the early days of the Club. We did not 
 wonder at this ; the developed stringency of our con- 
 ditions and the uncertainty of receiving the minimum 
 of wiiite balls naturally disheartened any who might 
 have offered themselves for election. Still their sub- 
 scriptions would have been welcome. 
 
 M'Gullicuddy was the first to stop thinking. "Bide 
 a wee, lads," he said, and his dropping into his verna- 
 cular showed how deeply the simple old Scotsman was 
 agitated by the peril to his Club. "No sae dowie. We 
 will pay oot na mair siller to a departed Bachelor till he 
 has been married twa }ears. We tak ower little trouble 
 to varify the records o' oor members' marriages. We 
 see the registrar's certeeficatej verra true, But we
 
 THE BACHELOR ABROAD 85 
 
 ken riclit weel that clerks will sign marriage certeefi- 
 cates recklessly for half-a-croon. Gentlemen," said 
 M'Gullicuddy, blowing his nose impressively with his 
 picturesque pocket handkerchief, " we maun haud a 
 post-nuptial examination and speir for oorsels before 
 we part wi' the bawbees an' toom the exchequer. I 
 shall be the coroner and you the jury. Gentlemen, if 
 we conduct the inquest by legal methods, we maun do 
 it slowly. (Hear, hear.) We couldna do it under twa 
 years. (Cheers.) Twa years is no ower lang to sit upon a 
 renegade." (Loud cheers, during which the honourable 
 old gentleman resumed his seat, flopping down as 
 vigorously as if the renegade were already ujjon it.) 
 
 It was universally felt that M'Gullicuddy had saved 
 the Club, and we competed eagerly for the honour of 
 supplying him with whisky. In his anxiety to avoid 
 invidious distinctions, the good old Scotsman submitted 
 to taking a " wee drappie " from each of us. He drank 
 Irish. He knew how the other sort was made. 
 
 Thinking it over in calmer moments since, I have 
 got hopelessly nmddled to understand how staving the 
 difficulty off for two years could be of any use. But 
 then Scotsmen always have a talent for finance. In 
 two years anything may happen. To shift the burden 
 off the shoulders of to-day, — is not that the whole prin- 
 ciple of modern business and modern politics ? To- 
 morrow can take care of itself. It will shift the burden 
 on to the shoulders of the day-after-to-morrow. There 
 was a Chancellor of the Exchequer wasted in M'Gulli- 
 cuddy. 
 
 We had hardly concluded the formal passage of the 
 statesmanlike motion seconded by our venerable Pre- 
 sident, when we heard a commotion in the Smoking-
 
 86 
 
 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 room, and, opening the door, we saw a red-faced woman 
 (we knew she was a woman because she wore no 
 gloves) quarrelling with the waiters. 
 
 " How dare you insult a honest woman as earns her 
 bread by washing and doing for gentlemen, you pair of 
 good-for-nothing shirt-fronts ? " 
 
 •' Hey, my sonsie lass, what ails ye ? " said M'Gulli- 
 cuddy in his broadest Scotch. He generally adopted 
 that after copious Irish. 
 
 "Why, I've come with a telegraph for Mr. 'Enery 
 Robinson. It's very important I know, 
 
 'cause I 'v e 
 opened it, know- 
 in' it was very 
 important, and 
 so I took the 
 trouble to bring 
 it myself as I 
 had to go this 
 way. But them 
 tailor,s' dum- 
 mies was both 
 snorin' around 
 when I came, 
 and when I 
 woke 'em up, 
 they up and asked me if I was a married woman. I 
 says, what 's that to them ? and then they says, unless 
 I was married I couldn't come in. As if I wasn't 
 married in Bow Church five years come next Whit- 
 suntide, and my certificate is framed in the parlour- 
 next to the memorial card for my poor sweet William 
 who flourishes in 'Eaven a twelvemonth come next
 
 THE BACHELOR ABROAD 87 
 
 Quarter Day, little knowin' the cowardly aspirations 
 that would be cast on one who " 
 
 " Dry up ! " said Henry Eobinson, blushing violently 
 and pushing his way to the front. 
 
 "Yes, dry up your tears, my good woman," said 
 Joseph Fogson, M.D., B.Sc, who had a soft heart and 
 could not bear to see even a fly weep. 
 
 Eobinson's blushing face turned white as he read that 
 telegram. He put his hand to his heart and the pink 
 paper fluttered slowly downwards. I put out a sympa- 
 thetic hand to arrest its threatened collision with the 
 floor and in doing so could not help reading the 
 message. 
 
 " Come at once Albert Gate. Gold discovered. You 
 must leave England immediately. Eose." 
 
 "Thank you, thank you, Paul," said Eobinson, 
 clutching the telegram feverishly. " Good-night, boys. 
 Important business. Keep my fire up, Mrs. Twittle, I 
 shall want some hot coffee about eleven." And with 
 that he was off. 
 
 We looked at one another blankly. My heart was 
 beating wildly but I said nothing to the Club. Why 
 should I betray the poor young fellow yet ? Shocked 
 as I was beyond measure by the awful revelation 
 latent in that simple telegram, all my sympathy was 
 still with the unhappy Eobinson. After all he might 
 be innocent. Eose might not be his wife after all, but 
 only an accomplice in the robbery. It is so easy to 
 misjudge our fellow-creatures. Not till I had ascer- 
 tained beyond all shadow of a doubt that he was guilty 
 Would I denounce him to the Club. Then, and then 
 only, would I brand him before the eyes of his fellows 
 as a married man.
 
 88 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 I allowed a decent interval of five minutes to elapse. 
 Then T said I had an important appointment to attend. 
 
 I flew to the Albert Gate in an omnibus and walked 
 up and down in the cold for an hour, disguised in a 
 beard which I always kept in my pocket in case I 
 sliould be asked to play in charades at evening parties. 
 Eobinson did not come, though every now and then 
 I saw some one that looked like Eose. At first I 
 waited patiently, because I surmised that Eobinson 
 had taken a cab and would be on presently. But 
 as the minutes wore on without any signs of him, 
 I began to be very uneasy about him. 
 
 Eobinson was a stumpy young man, somewhere be- 
 tween thirty-one and thirty-tliree. The Bank he was 
 in was "Murdoch Brothers," and he was understood 
 to enjoy the confidence of whoever ran the concern, 
 Murdoch Brothers of course were dead, poor fellows ; 
 but all men may be Brothers if they can afford the 
 shares. " Murdoch Brothers " had ceased to be men. 
 They were a "house" and Eobinson was in it. He 
 had a salary of three hundred a year, which would have 
 sufficed for his wants if he had not contracted the 
 incurable habit of trying to get his plays produced. 
 There is no harm in writing plays, but it is expensive 
 trying to get them produced. It is a habit that grows 
 on one. Now at last I knew by what means he had 
 been enabled to indulge it so long. I do not know 
 why Henry Eobinson wrote plays ; the only reason 
 I can divine for it is that his name was Eobinson and 
 he thought Eobinson was as good as Jones. Nobody 
 but myself in the Club knew that Eobinson tried to 
 get plays produced, though the way he spent his money 
 in Strand taverns on supers and disengaged tragedians
 
 THE BACHELOR ABROAD ^9 
 
 might have opened the eyes of the blindest. Nobody 
 but myself knew even the amount of his salary. I am 
 afraid there is very little mutual sympathy even be- 
 tween Bachelors. 
 
 Thus much I had known about Eobinson before ; but 
 now a new and lurid light was shed upon his existence. 
 The confidence he had enjoyed at his bank he had 
 betrayed. True, it was a small matter ; but a scrap 
 of paper shows which way the wind lies. How could 
 I hope that he had been faithful to the higher con- 
 fidence he had enjoyed at his Club ? 
 
 With distracted brain and restless umbrella I 
 tramped up and down, blowing my fingers and 
 peering eagerly into the darkness. If Rose was 
 at the rendezvous, she was as disappointed as I, for 
 Henry Robinson was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps 
 the news of the discovery of the gold had been too 
 much for his weak nerves, shattered by a steady course 
 of trying to get his plays produced. Perhaps he had 
 taken flight for the Continent at once, leaving Rose 
 to shift for lierself. The clocks struck ten. With a 
 heavy heart I shaved off my beard, put it in my pocket, 
 and returned to my chambers. I lit my pipe and 
 settled myself in my rocking-chair before a roaring 
 fire. But I could not rest. My heart was heavy 
 with foreboding and aching with sympathy. The wind 
 began to wail outside like a lost Bachelor. I got up, 
 walivcd up and down, threw myself on the rug, sat 
 down again, deposited my legs on the mantelpiece. 
 All in vain. There was a something tugging at my 
 breast, urging me not to sit supine while Robinson was 
 in danger. It was an indefinable feeling, something 
 like a St. Bernard dog, and it tugged me on in dumb
 
 90 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 piteous insistence — on, on, towards Eobinson's lodgings. 
 It was eleven o'clock. Eobinson would be liavins: that 
 hot coffee. I knew Mrs. Tvvittle's coffee. She was not 
 one of those rare souls who have risen to the secret of 
 coffee. Still, bad as it might be, Eobinson would be 
 up and drinking that coffee now. Why should I not 
 share it, with his other troubles ? Yes, I would no 
 longer hesitate. I dismissed the tug and ran the rest 
 of the way to Eobinson's diggings. Tiie wind was 
 almost cutting now. The stars were still hidden. I 
 should have been quite cold if I had not run. At 
 the door I paused. Suppose his instructions to Mrs. 
 Twittle had been only a blind. Suppose, knowing that 
 she had read the telegram, he had given them only to 
 show he did not intend immediate flight. But no ; the 
 odds were he was at home, packing up his belongings 
 and swallowing the hot coffee before taking the night 
 mail. If so, my visit might not strike him as 
 opportune. However, it was too late to draw back 
 now, and I was about to perform my peculiar rat-tat 
 on the knocker when it struck me I should be surer of 
 a welcome if he fancied it was the neglected Eose come 
 to reprove him. I therefore simulated the knock of an 
 irate but cautious female, allowing as well as I could 
 for the fact that her Christian name was Eose. 
 
 I had not long to wait, though my heart compressed 
 twice as many beats as usual into that short minute. 
 I heard Eobinson's shuffling step in the passage. He 
 lived on the ground floor. As he opened the door, there 
 was a careworn, anxious look upon his face, but the 
 moment he caught sight of me an expression of relief 
 took its place and his eyes lit up in welcome. 
 
 " Come in, Paul, old man," he said warmly.
 
 The bachelor abroad 91 
 
 My dodge had succeeded. He was under the joyous 
 reaction from an anticipated scene with Eose. Con- 
 gratulating myself on my knowledge of human nature, 
 I followed him into his sitting-room. 
 
 "Sit down by the fire, old fellow," he said, "and 
 have a cup of coffee. It 's nice and hot." 
 
 It may have been hot but it wasn't nice, if past 
 brews were to be relied upon. However, I accepted 
 a cup and began to spill it stealthily in the ashes. The 
 room wa^ indeed in a litter. All the signs I had 
 anticipated were present in abundance. A large 
 travelling-case was yawning in the middle of the room, 
 and articles of necessity or virtue lay promiscuously 
 around. A pile of MSS. tottered uneasily in a corner. 
 Robinson himself walked about the room, neither 
 tottering nor uneasily. His unperturbed air, as if 
 there were nothing surprising in being surprised in 
 preparations to fly the country, convinced me that he 
 had mistaken his vocation. It was not that of a play- 
 wright nor a defalcating clerk. Henry Robinson was 
 a born actor. 
 
 " You are the very fellow I wanted to see," he said, 
 with an admirable assumption of candour. " I was 
 thinking of writing for you to-morrow. I shall be too 
 frightfully busy to call on anybody." 
 
 " Oh, indeed," said I, with an equal assumption of 
 ease ; " anything up ? " 
 
 " Rather ! Don't you see what a mess I 'm in ? The 
 fact is, I want you to break it to M'Gullicuddy and 
 say good-bye for me to the fellows." 
 
 Break it to M'Gullicuddy ! As he said those fatal 
 words, which I had heard so often, my hand shook 
 so violently that the cup fell from my liand. It did
 
 gi The Celibates'' cluB 
 
 not break as it would have done in one of Eobinson'a 
 plays, and he picked it up and refilled it to the brim, 
 without noticing the spoilt dramatic effect. As I had 
 spilt at least half of the stuff before this, I could not 
 curse my awkwardness sufficiently, especially as I had 
 to do it all internally. 
 
 " Don't be so cut up about it, old fellow," said 
 Eobinson, as a tear came or was pumped up into his 
 eye. " It 's the best thing that could happen to me." 
 
 " Ah, they all say that ! " I could not help observing. 
 " But I thought you liked the Club too well to give it up." 
 
 " Of course, I shall miss it awfully. Still, there are 
 compensations. You see I can't afford to throw away 
 this chance." I could not quite get the hang of the 
 thing yet, but it was evidently a case of the most 
 flagrant kind. " Money 1 " I inquired curtly. 
 
 " Eight hundred a year." 
 
 I whistled ! A braw tocher, as M'Gullicuddy would 
 have said. Verily, a vile Avorld ! 
 
 " But of course it won't go so very much further 
 than my present income, big as it sounds." 
 
 " That is self-evident, especially as the years roll 
 on and you increase and multiply. But what does 
 
 Eose ?" As her name slipped out, I bit my 
 
 careless lips in vexation. 
 
 " Eose ? " he repeated. I knew he would want to 
 know how I had learnt her Christian name, and it now 
 dawned upon me that in any case I had hardly the 
 right to call her by it. " Eose ? " he went on. " He 
 thinks it 's a splendid thing for me and rightly counts 
 on my eternal gratitude." 
 
 " He counts on your eternal gratitude ! " I gasped. 
 
 " Well, after all, Mr. Eose is the bank-manager.
 
 THE BACHELOR ABROAD 93 
 
 and has all the say. He promised me long ago 
 that if there was a new opening for a branch bank, 
 I should c[0 out and establish it, and it seems he's 
 heard the first news of a new goldfield in South 
 America and there's going to be a big rush there 
 and I 'm to be on the spot to snap up the clicntde first. 
 It'll be no end of fun. Tliat wire I had from hint 
 to-night was about it." He handed the damnable 
 scrap of paper to me. I took it and perused it with 
 a show of interest. It cost me all my strength not to 
 crush it between my fingers, as though it were of wax. 
 
 " I 've just come back from liose's house," he went on 
 unconscious of the tempest that raged witliin my breast. 
 " Awfully swell place in Albert Gate, don't you know 1 
 No. 32. Wish I had his income, by Jove !" 
 
 " Yes, and now you will marry ! " I said bitterly. 
 He laughed a frank, almost boyish laugh. " No fear of 
 that, Paul. My plays are my wife and children ; if 
 they are not my bread and butter. Down among the 
 diggers I shall get lovely new materials ; besides the 
 money to pay for matinees when I return. Ke-assure 
 yourself, old man, there 's as much chance of my turn- 
 ing traitor to our common principles as of a manager 
 putting a play of mine in the evening bills." 
 
 " And you propose to still continue a member of the 
 Bachelors' Club?" 
 
 " I do not propose — to still continue a member of the 
 Bachelors' Club," he replied, making a note of the mot 
 on the summit of the tottering MSS. " Good bit of 
 repartee, that ! Yes, dear boy, you don't get rid of 
 Heniy Robinson as quickly as you can mention his 
 brother Jack's name. To show you how earnest I am, 
 before I leave England (which I have to do by the end
 
 94 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 of the week) I intend to pay two years' subscription in 
 advance. It '11 be at least two years before I can 
 revisit the old country. Cheer up, Paul. Why, 
 there 's not a sounder Bachelor in the Club than Henry 
 Eobinson, always excepting you, my dear misogynist ! " 
 
 " Don't be so sure," I could not help saying. I 
 knew how the stoutest of us may fail suddenly, dis- 
 appearing down one of the trap-doors of that terrible 
 matrimonial bridge in Addison's wonderful allegory of 
 the Vision of Marriage. 
 
 He laughed a bright defiant laugh. 
 
 " You will be very lonely in the New World," I said, 
 " away from all your old companions and comforts, 
 among rough diggers with bowie-knives and six- 
 shooters that you won't care to mix yourself up with. 
 When night falls on the Sierras you will be glum and 
 miserable. There will be no Bachelors' Club to go 
 to ; reason will not feast and soul will not flow. There 
 will be no music-halls and you will not find Nature's 
 stars a sufficient substitute. Your characters would, 
 but you wouldn't yourself. Now frankly, old man, you 
 wouldn't, would you ? " 
 
 Henry hesitated a moment, for, like all the Bachelors 
 (I do not include myself for obvious reasons), he was 
 keenly conscientious. Then he laughed heartily once 
 more, his stumpy figure shaking with merriment. 
 
 " Don't be an ass ! " he gasped. 
 
 " That 's what I 'm afraid you 'II be," I said gloomily. 
 "You'll get dull and depressed and in a low state of 
 health and you '11 go and commit matrimony !" 
 
 He laughed again, but this time there was a nervous 
 tremor in his voice as if he had begun to realise the 
 danger I foresaw so vividly. " But it takes two to
 
 THE BACHELOR ABROAD 95 
 
 make a marriage ! " he said more seriously. " Where 
 is the other party to come from ? Why, there 's no 
 creature on earth so rare at the diggings as a woman. 
 That 's the only place in this wide world where she 's 
 worth her weight in gold. If man is but dust, then 
 woman is gold-dust at the diggings. A petticoat is as 
 rare as a plesiosaurus. As for a baby, it 's so scarce 
 that they use it for a Salvation Army and an Art 
 Department, and it moralises and refines a whole camp 
 of the dregs of humanity." 
 
 I shook my head obstinately. Though I could not 
 meet his arguments, I was not convinced by them. 
 
 " The very rarity of woman will enhance her value 
 in your eyes," I said. " Eead the political economy 
 books. If there is an insufficient supply of woman 
 she will become dearer to you." 
 
 He began to look troubled. 
 
 "And then there is the voyage !" I went on remorse- 
 lessly. " Look what temptations you will be having on 
 that voyage. There is sure to be a beautiful young girl 
 on board with a history, or an Italian grammar, or 
 something of that sort, which she will draw you into 
 conversation about. She will swing in a hammock on 
 the deck, with a straw hat, a muslin dress, and a be- 
 witching smile, and she will look up artlessly into your 
 face as you bend over her and she will wonder, opening 
 her blue eyes to their widest, how you manage to know 
 everything about currents and compasses and other 
 things you are ashamed to confess your ignorance of. 
 And then at night, especially if it is rough, she will 
 tumble about the deck to look at the Southern Cross or 
 the Aurora Borealis or things of that kind and she will 
 catch hold of your shoulder with her dainty hand while
 
 96 
 
 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 you slander the Pleiades and take away the character 
 of the Great Bear. After that the ship will be wrecked 
 — who knows ? — and then you will be saved." 
 
 The thought was too much for me. I broke down, 
 buried my face in my hands and groaned aloud. Ee- 
 covering myse^P I went en : "You will be saved. And 
 
 she. — You 
 about in a 
 where 
 you will 
 out in sun- 
 still look 
 do every- 
 taste. Sea- 
 no power 
 will divide 
 looking in- 
 eyes and 
 the sky 
 seascape 
 lovely ef- 
 y o u are 
 fathoms 
 this means ^"-H"- 
 escape running into a 
 would do if you tried to 
 boat will ultimately 
 the beach of a desert 
 
 two alone. You will be tossed 
 
 small boat in the South Seas 
 
 there will be nothing to eat but 
 
 ^-— -^ have to take it 
 
 tf{^^ sets. She will 
 
 charming and will 
 
 thing in faultless 
 
 sickness will have 
 
 over either. You 
 
 the time between 
 
 to each other's 
 
 admirino- 
 
 and 
 
 the 
 
 and 
 
 the 
 
 fectswhen 
 
 to s 
 
 s e d 
 
 high. 
 
 By 
 
 you 
 
 will 
 
 as 
 
 you 
 
 ^^£^ reef, 
 
 I. steer, and the 
 
 ^ ground upon 
 
 island, where 
 
 you will find one white-hairy inliabitant, an old gentle- 
 man who has been marooned half a century ago by 
 Spanish pirates and who has lived there ever since, 
 forgotten by the world which flattered him in the 
 days of his prosperity, and living on the charity
 
 THE BACHELOR ABROAD 97 
 
 of his relatives, the monkeys. He will have ap- 
 proximated to the ape himself by this time, but 
 the sight of you will bring back some glimmering 
 recollection of his former state. He will remember 
 that he used to be a priest. Simian as he is, you will 
 not dream of doubting his words. You and your fair 
 companion will now feel that you can be married. 
 The thought of living in that isle in divided misery all 
 your lives, the unspoken dread that had hung over you 
 both like a dark cloud, will be dispelled in an instant. 
 You will fall upon each other's necks — for the first 
 time — and weep ! In one of his lucid intervals the 
 priest will marry you ; in one of your insane intervals 
 you will be married by the priest. While the 
 Bachelors' Club is re-echoing with light-hearted merri- 
 ment, little dreaming of the blow in store, down in that 
 distant southern isle a man in whom it so trusted as to 
 be willing to take two years' subscriptions from him in 
 advance, will be trampling upon his pledges, deserting 
 his principles, and exhibiting his unexampled dishonour 
 to the pure round-eyed gaze of a tropical honeymoon." 
 
 I looked up. I saw that Eobinson was as pale as a 
 ghost. I also saw another thing. In my distraction I 
 had forgotten that odious coffee. My cup was too full. 
 I pressed Henry's hand convulsively, seized my 
 umbrella and hurried from the room, as midnight 
 pealed successively from six of the neighbouring 
 steeples. 
 
 Summoned by special telegraphic whip from me, the 
 Bachelors' Club (minus M'Gullicuddy, who was too 
 sacred for every-day use) called in a body on Eobinson 
 the first thing the next morning, to the disgust of Mrs. 
 Twittle. We found him calm and his luggage collected, 
 
 G
 
 98 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 He wasn't going for three days yet, but he said he liked 
 to be " packed up " in good time. He told us that he 
 was glad \ve had come, because he had been thinking 
 over what I had said the night before and he now fully 
 felt the force of it. He had quite underrated the 
 temptation to marry when away from the liealthy con- 
 tagion of the choice spirits (using the phrase in both its 
 senses) of the Bachelors' Club and solitary amid the 
 burning or snow-capped Sierras (he didn't know which 
 was the right adjective). Nor had he hitherto done 
 sufficient justice to the ocean-steamer as a marriage- 
 trap. But the danger had only braced his nerves to 
 sterner resistance. 
 
 My fellows all applauded to the echo and the annoy- 
 ance of Mrs. Twittle. I alone was still sceptical ! 
 
 'AVill you bind yourself by an oath not to get 
 married during the two years you are abroad ? " I 
 asked maliciously. 
 
 " Certainly," he said, without the slightest hesitation. 
 
 "Will you bind yourself not to get married while 
 abroad, even though you remain away longer than you 
 bargain for — five years, ten years, twenty years, for 
 
 " Certainly," he repeated firmly. " For myself I do 
 not need this oath, but if it will make your minds easier 
 1 am ready to take it." 
 
 They all jum})ed at the idea and we bound him by 
 a fearful oath. I still shudder at the remembrance of 
 it. It would almost have turned my beard grey if I 
 had been wearing it at the time. Think of all the oaths 
 which the uninitiated fancy that Freemasons have to 
 take — think of all the most ghastly and gruesome oaths 
 that the morbidity of a Poe or a De Quincey could
 
 THE BACHELOR ABROAD 99 
 
 devise, and you will have some faint idea of the sort of 
 
 oath which liobinson took without flincliing ; though 
 
 the set rigidity of his muscles and the whiteness of his 
 
 clieek showed he was not unconscious of the strength 
 
 of his lan"ua£fe. None of us would doubt Robinson's 
 
 merest word. Even I believed in him since the rosy 
 
 light thrown upon his supposed crime. Had he merely 
 
 affirmed, it would have been enough. And yet there 
 
 was nothing to be lost by being on the safe side. When 
 
 the oath had been administered, a solemn hush fell on 
 
 the room. Its awful sanctity and fearsomeness lay upon 
 
 the untidy chamber like a heavy pall. We feltstitling. 
 
 It was as if a horde of weird and mocking demons we 
 
 had raised from Hell had their hands upon our throats. 
 
 We gave one last look at Eobinson's white face, then 
 
 we turned and fled into the fresh air of the Bloomsbury 
 
 morning. It was indeed a last look. None of us ever 
 
 saw Robinson again. 
 
 « « « « « 
 
 I received a letter ten days or so after this grue- 
 some scene, bearing the postmark of Lisbon. I 
 uttered a cry of joy. The writing was Robinson's. 
 During all the interval I had been in a ferment of sym- 
 pathy about him. He had left his chambers on the 
 mornincj of the oath and had not returned since. All 
 my proffered sympathy at " Murdoch Brothers " was met 
 with chilling agnosticism. I did not know the day he 
 left England. I did not know by what ship he sailed, 
 I was denied the consolation of waving my best hand- 
 kerchief at him as he faded away into the great waters. 
 
 With fluttering heart I tore open the envelope. A 
 piece of cardboard fell out but I did not stop to pick it 
 ap. The letter read as follows : —
 
 loo THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " The Occident, Eight Bells. 
 
 "Dear Paul, — Just a line to inform you that I am 
 married. You were right. The temptations to marry 
 abroad would be too great. Since you put the thought 
 into my head it has never gone out again. Taking 
 that frightful oath made it worse. After it was done, 
 I began to think how dreadful a sacrilege it would be 
 if I were to desecrate it down in those lonely Sierras or 
 bending over that syren in the hammock. To break 
 that oath would not be perjury. Perjury is too mild 
 a word for it. It would be blasphemy beyond the 
 dreams of atheism. The more I thought about the 
 danger of violating my oath, the more intense the 
 danger grew. I cursed myself for having put myself 
 within the possibility of trampling on such an oath. 
 And yet I felt I should do it as inevitably as the 
 moth flies to the chandelier. I was looking down a 
 frightful abyss and I knew I should get giddy and 
 crash down its devilish depths. The thought was too 
 horrible for words. Was there no way of escape ? Yes, 
 one and one only. I had sworn not to get married 
 abroad. If I could find some one to be married to before 
 I left England, the fearful peril and temptation would 
 be lifted from my soul. Time pressed. The vessel 
 sailed in three days. I took out a special licence, pro- 
 posed, was married, and am now sailing with my bride 
 for a honeymoon in the Sierras. 
 
 Ever yours and hers, 
 
 Henry PtOBiNSON. 
 
 " F.S. — Under the circumstances the Club will excuse 
 my not forwarding those two years' subscriptions.
 
 The bachelor abroad iot 
 
 Instead, I shall claim my assurance money at the end 
 of the two years, under the new rules." 
 
 The letter fell from my nerveless grasp. I picked it 
 up, and with it the piece of cardboard. It was a plioto- 
 graph sandwich. I extracted the picture from between 
 the cardboards. It was the portrait of a middle-aged 
 but not unprepossessing lady. Across the foot ran the 
 inscription, Inez Kobinson. Through my tears I recog- 
 nised the face. It was that of Inez Staunton, the well- 
 known editress of Woman's Wrongs, the champion of 
 female independence and the authoress of Mistaken 
 Marriages, the great work in which the evils of all 
 alliances not based on a thorough mutual knowledge 
 
 and esteem are lucidly exhibited and analysed. 
 
 ***** 
 
 So Henry Eobinson married and the Bachelors 
 mourned him and had their hair cut and were not 
 comforted until the even.
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 A GENERAL COUKT. 
 
 We were all so overwhelmed by this new blow that for 
 some days we went about like married men. At last 
 we determined to dine it down and drown the remem- 
 brance of it in a feast of reason and a flow of soul. The 
 Eisht of us assembled at the Hotel Cavour, as the 
 culinary resources of our Indian steward were inade- 
 quate to anything beyond sandwiches from the adjacent 
 restaurant. After dinner we adjourned to the Club^ 
 which was fortunately only a minute off, to hold a 
 General Court and listen to papers. The first paper was 
 by Moses Fitz-Williams, the treasurer and legal luminary 
 of the Club, upon " The Centenary of the High Hat." 
 Moses is such a little spitfire that we had to nudge our- 
 selves to keep awake. When you have an audience of 
 seven it is not hard to fix them with your glittering 
 eyes. Moses had the further advantage of being strabis- 
 mic, so that he could subdivide the work and let each 
 eye stand sentry over three-and-a-half of the audience. 
 But he had to look at his manuscript sometimes ; dur- 
 ing those precious instants we snatched segments of 
 slumber. At least the unobserved three-and-a-half of 
 us did. We knew his essay was going to be published 
 as a leader in The Times, for, like most successful 
 barristers, Moses lived by journalism ; and we thought 
 
 102
 
 A GENERAL COURT 103 
 
 we could just as well read it in print. But that is 
 always the way with lecturers. They expect you to go 
 and hear their lecture before it is published and to read 
 it afterwards. If you don't go they never forgive you, 
 and if you do go you never forgive them. As we com- 
 posed ourselves not to listen to Moses Fitz-Wiiliams's 
 paper, we felt an acute envy of the waiters. 
 
 This was Moses's paper, as reprinted by kind per- 
 mission of the Editor of The, Times : — 
 
 THE CENTENARY OF THE HIGH HAT. 
 
 Every Englishman is so anxious to celebrate centenaries, from 
 the centenary of the cholera bacillus to his own, that I am lost in 
 astonishment at the omission to celebrate the introduction of what 
 is unquestionably at the head of modem civilisation — I mean the 
 high hat. Who, when he first saw this ungainly article of head- 
 gear perched on the human cranium — like Poe's raven on the bust 
 of Pallas — but would have laughed at the prediction, " It will be 
 nil the same a hundred years hence" ? And yet so it is. Science 
 has changed the face of the world ; fashions have come and cut 
 and come again ; dynasties have been o'ertoppled ; faiths and 
 forms have changed. But the chimney-pot hat remains, and still 
 lifts its glossy glories to the wondering heavens. Tiie suns and 
 snows of a century have fallen on it in vain ; it still stands, like 
 some mighty Alp, serene and steadfast in the indomitable pride of 
 its lofty supremacy. High hats perish ; but the high hat remains, 
 immortal, undyeing. Demure in black or frisky in wliite, squat 
 with broad brim or rakish with curly, it is still the unchallenged 
 monarch of the hats of Philistia, before which all other hats remove 
 their wearers in respectful homage. Its surface manner may be 
 beaverish or silky, but its power is felt. For every year of the 
 century has but added to its sovereignty, till now it is become the 
 seal and symbol of respectability, and the hall-rack mark of a 
 gentleman. And yet at first its meaning was quite other. It 
 was a reaction against Benjamin Franklin's simple Quaker's hat, 
 and he who wore it was stamped as a man of progressive views, 
 and of liberalism to the race of hatters. Short people, no doubt,
 
 104 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 jumped at it, for it made them rise in the world by many inches 
 at once. And then tall people were naturally driven to it to assert 
 their superiority, and to restore, or rather to re-dress, the balance. 
 As for the medium-sized people, how could they hope to make 
 headway against a fashion everybody else was adopting? Thus 
 the hat was enthroned in supreme sovereignty above all human 
 crowns ; till the fierce republicans and socialists, for whom nothing 
 is sacred, began to revolt against its brow-beating tyranny. They 
 indulged in high treason and low hats. They said "the high hat 
 must be crushed" ; and even the commercial co-operation of the 
 operatic Gibus could not satisfy their anarchistic aspirations. 
 Englishmen, they cried, could not be slaves ; and so long as this 
 foot of cylinder was on their heads they were but as worms that 
 grovelled. So the lowly hat became what the high hat had started 
 life as — a mark of heterodoxy and progressive views. William 
 Morris walked across Hammersmith Bridge in a billycock, 
 Stepniak sported a sombrero, and John Burns was a man of str.iw. 
 And the disciples clothed their heads in their several ways till the 
 funereal funnel became incompatible with sound views on the 
 doctrine of rent or accurate conceptions of the functions of capital. 
 And then one day there arose a bold revolutionary thinker, who, 
 in the columns of the defunct English Socialist Magazine, To-Day, 
 asked why low hats should be the badge of all their tribe. And 
 the eccentric editor, who himself wore a shockingly good high hat, 
 rejoiced and echoed, "Why indeed 1 " And then there raged " The 
 Battle of the Hats." The high hat has survived To-Day, &ndi it 
 will survive to-morrow. It is ugly and it is heavy and it is sur- 
 charged with prosaic modernity. You cannot imagine Homer in a 
 high hat, nor Shakespeare, nor even Hamlet. But Mr. Grundy 
 will long go on wearing it ; because his wife orders it. And you 
 cannot get a divorce from Mrs. Grundy. 
 
 The silence that followed ritz-Williams's last words 
 roused us from our reverie. We discussed his " High 
 Hat," and crushed it and sat upon it. It was extremely 
 rude of him to make such personal remarks. Did not 
 Oliver Green wear a high hat ; did not O'Roherty ? 
 
 But even worse than this insinuation of respecta-
 
 A GENERAL COURT 105 
 
 bility against his fellow-members was the implicit 
 coupling of their names with Mrs. Grundy ! As 
 if a Bachelor could be linked even metaphorically 
 with a married woman ! Joseph Fogson, M.D., B.Sc, 
 intimated that if the discussion bore out its early pro- 
 mise, there would be no time for him to read his 
 scientific paper. The reminder that we had to face 
 more papers so imnerved us that for a moment we were 
 struck dumb; before that moment was over, Fogson 
 had commenced his paper : — 
 
 THE RED TAPE- WORM. 
 A comatose creature, of the genus bore and constrictor, not to be 
 confounded with its prey the " Serpentine " species, or the worm 
 that turns in Hyde Park. Some varieties— especially the English 
 — attain a monstrous growth. The body is composed of multi- 
 tudinous rings of an official character, each spiral stripe resembling 
 a piece of red tape, whence the name. Its heavy, sluggish breath 
 fascinates all who come near, and reduces them to a state of torpor 
 as deep as its own. Its grip is fatal. Encircling its victim in its 
 horrible folds it crushes the heart out of him and squeezes every 
 drop of blood out of his veins. Living in a Paradise of its own 
 creation, this sluggard snake is, of course, able to speak. Its voice 
 is harsh and sibilant. What it says is circumlocutory and peri- 
 phrastic. Its sentences are as involved as its folds. It covers up 
 truth with a surface of slaver. It makes promises or rather it 
 promises to make promises. It never performs unless under com- 
 pulsion ; and then it is so long about it that the people who yearn 
 to witness the performance are dead and buried before it begins. 
 It is hard of hearing. So languid are its nerve-currents that if you 
 try to set up a sensation at its tail, decades elapse before the 
 message travels to the brain. Its flesh has the gift of persistent 
 vitality. Hack it for months with pointed pens, grind it for years 
 in the Press, lethargic life still lingers in its slimy sinuosities. Cut 
 it up how you will, each fragment assumes independent existence ; 
 witli the luxuriousness that comes of independence. Its maw 
 swallows up millions. It never disgorges. It cannot do wrong 
 and it never does right.
 
 106 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Loud applause greeted the tail of tliis short tape- 
 worm. Life would be so much longer if art and litera- 
 ture were shorter. Fogson mistook the meaning of our 
 applause and announced, amid ominous silence, that 
 at the next meeting he would read a paper on two 
 species of Eing-Worms — the Dramatic Ring-Worm 
 (vermis annulatus theatralis), and the City Eing-Worm 
 (vermis annulatus pecuniar ius). After that Israfel 
 Mondego got up and left. He said he had to sing at a 
 conversazione at Lady Partington's in Piccadilly. We 
 were not sorry, because Israfel had done little else than 
 stroke his beautiful moustache gloomily the whole time, 
 and had contributed nothing to the discussion but his 
 ears. He was always saturnine, sad, and picturesque — 
 especially after dinner — and never said fuimy things like 
 the rest of us. He was the only member of the Club 
 absolutely devoid of a sense of humour. When he was 
 "one, Mandeville Brown observed that he had found out 
 why Israfel Mondego was in so nmch request at conver- 
 saziones — it was because his singing was such a stimulus 
 to conversation. We all laughed. Mandeville expected 
 it. But we all knew in our hearts that it was quite 
 untrue, for no lady would have dropped a pin while 
 Israfel was warbling his erotic nothings. That was 
 why we hated him. The only virtue we could discover 
 in Israfel was that he was a Bachelor. 
 
 O'Koherty took advantage of our good-humour to ask 
 whether any of us had been round the studios, the 
 Spring Art Epidemic being near. Green incautiously 
 replied that he had — when they were not square — but 
 that in some cases, where champagne was on tap, the 
 studios had gone round him. It then transpired that 
 O'Roherty had readv an oration upon " Show Sunday."
 
 J GENERAL COURT 107 
 
 Determining to have a feast of reason is one thing ; 
 but on the top of a heavy dinner you find it rather 
 indigestible. We solaced ourselves by waking up the 
 waiters and demanding lemon-squashes. 
 
 " One never knows," said O'Roherty musingly, as if 
 he had never thought of it before, " what a bore Art is 
 till 
 
 SHOW SUNDAY. 
 
 Spring comes and your artistic friends send you cards to view 
 their pictures. Why they do it can only be explained by their 
 beastly vanity. Imagine an author sending out cards to his 
 friends to come and laugh at his newest old joke, or to attend a 
 reading of his great work on "The Conservation of the Police 
 Force"; or "The Renaissance in Kamtchatka, 1120 a.d." You 
 can always write a friend a gushing letter about poems or a novel, 
 but there is no call on you to read them. Why you should be 
 drawfed on Show Sunday to see what will either be visible at the 
 Academy or won't, is beyond my comprehension. An outsider 
 would imagine that an artist would be disconcerted if his picture 
 were rejected after lie had cackled over it to his friends ! By no 
 means ! Acceptance covers him with glory but rejection puts 
 him at once on tlie level of Turner and other misunderstood 
 gentlemen of the brush, and he feels certain that Providence is 
 raising a Ruskin for him, somewhere, somehow. 
 
 But I must admit that there are advantages in seeing a picture 
 in the artist's presence. I do not refer so much to the excellent 
 exercise it affords in mastering your emotions, as to the fact that 
 you are provided with a ready-made guide to the painter's inten- 
 tions, and that, without having the trouble of consulting a 
 catalogue, you are able to learn whether the picture represents 
 Amsterdam by Moonlight or the Rape of the Sabines. 
 
 Wiien you find that the expression on a cardinal's face is 
 intended for agonised remorse, and when you further learn that 
 the face in question is not a cardinal's but an Egyptian mummy's, 
 you feel a rush of aesthetic rapture in the contemplation of the 
 Lovely and the True, which you couldn't feel when you were under
 
 toS THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 the impression that the luummy was a jolly old church dignitary. 
 There is nothing so troublesome to remember as a classical legend. 
 To this day I don't know whether Ulysses killed ^neas or -^neas 
 killed Ulysses. I only know that one killed the other, or they 
 both committed suicide, or were killed by somebody else, or ought 
 to have been killed, or something of that sort, and that they were 
 called " pious " for doing it. So it 's quite a treat to go and see a 
 fellow's "Atalanta and Pizarro," or his "Minerva's Farewell to 
 Mazzini," and have him there to tell you the exact circumstances 
 of the case. How often in an art gallery have I longed to be 
 Dr. William Smith ! I wonder, though, whether he knows his 
 own classical dictionaries. 
 
 Mandeville Brown hummed applause. " Of course 
 not/' he interposed. " A man who has written a learned 
 book is like a man who has taken a degree in art or 
 medicine, or crammed up for the civil service. Once 
 the book is published, or the examination past, he lets 
 bygones be bygones. But what I have often wanted 
 to know is why the Academy " Private View " is so 
 called ? Because it 's not Private or because it 's not a 
 View ? If it is both, what is Show-up Sunday ? 
 
 "A private private view, of course," observed Fog- 
 sou, M.D., B.Sc, rather querulously, 
 
 " Your private views are just what you must keep to 
 yourself on these occasions," said Mandeville. " But 
 how much people care about art is shown by the news- 
 papers, which give more space to the description of the 
 fashionable ladies at the private views than to the 
 pictures." 
 
 " The fashionable ladies are often the notablest works 
 of art in the galleries," said O'Koherty, " and the best 
 painted." 
 
 " And the most deserving of hanging by the 
 Academy they patronise by not paying the shilling
 
 A GENERAL COURT 109 
 
 of the vulgar," said Mandeville, nettled at O'Eoherty's 
 taking the epigram out of his mouth. One does 
 not lead up to jokes for the sake of one's friends. 
 O'Eoheity, unabashed, continued to recount his artistic 
 experiences. He described the pictures of the Forty, 
 most of whom it appeared were merely flattering them- 
 selves by imitating themselves. He also read us some 
 statistics of the number of pinafores, wooden chairs, 
 rivers, cows, Greek maidens, roses, dogs, buhl cabinets, 
 snuff-boxes, sand-spades, buckets and other common 
 objects of the sea-shore he had seen in his travels, 
 together with an inventory of the wardrobe, and 
 wound up with a breathless description of his visit to 
 an unknown artist. "From the pretentious studios 
 of Belgravia and the palaces of art of St. John's 
 Wood," said he, " I took the 'bus to the Euston Road. 
 Here in an attic I saw a poor struggling artist putting 
 the last touches to a picture on which all his hopes 
 were staked. He had not been trained in the schools 
 — he knew naught of the conventionalities of academic 
 art. His aged father leant over the oils and made 
 them water-colours with his tears. Need I say the 
 picture was atrocious ? So, as I am certain it will 
 be in the Academy, there is no need for me to 
 expatiate on its beauties, as I should have done had 
 there been any. But any one who wants to see 
 pink sea- water and ultramarine cornfields may be 
 recommended to buy it." This unexpected con- 
 clusion restored our good humour. Even M'Gulli- 
 cuddy smiled. But Mandeville's smile was less 
 genial. 
 
 " I will wager a sovereign you are colour-blind, 
 O'Roherty," he said.
 
 no THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 O'Eoherty looked abashed. "Nonsense," he said. 
 " How do you know ? " 
 
 This made us roar and pacified Mandeville. "We 
 felt more convinced than ever that O'Eoherty was 
 an Irishman, though we dared not tell him so. 
 
 At this point M'Gullicuddy reminded us that we 
 had again to face the problem of the falling-off in 
 our membership, and he called upon the secretary to 
 make a statement upon the situation. 
 
 Mandeville Brown arose with a twinkle in his eye, 
 and a bundle of letters in his hand. " I have received 
 a number of applications for membership," said he. 
 We thumped applause and asked why we had not 
 been told before dinner. "Without replying, Mande- 
 ville continued, " For the first time in our history, 
 ladies are asking to join the Bachelors' Club." 
 
 There was a dead silence. Then Moses asked : 
 '•' Married or single ? " 
 
 " Both. The married ladies base their claim upon 
 the fact that they are bachelors of science, art, or music. 
 The single ladies appear to argue that ' bachelor ' 
 embraces ' spinster,' just as ' man ' notoriously era- 
 braces ' woman,' according to Acts of Parliament." 
 
 "Quibbles, quibbles!" I cried excitedly. 
 
 " Order, order, mon," said M'Gullicuddy. " "When 
 your house is on fire, you maun snatch up a petticoat 
 if you canna find your breeks." 
 
 "We were all aghast. Mandeville went on. "The list 
 of applicants comprises (I take them as they come) — 
 
 MR. VANDYKE BROWNE, 
 THE MARCHIONESS OF MUDDLETON.
 
 A GENERAL COURT m 
 
 Here we all drew a long breath, and O'Eolierty a 
 champagne cork. 
 
 * " -
 
 112 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 SIGNOR GAMMONIO, 
 
 ESMERALDA GREE^f, 
 
 MR. BULLYVER BIDDLEBERRT, 
 
 MR. WILLIAM OLDSCORE, 
 
 MISS PENTONVILLE, 
 
 LADY ARAMINTA CHAPELTON, 
 
 — " one of Israfel Monclego's friends," interpolated the 
 Secretary, taking pity on our open-mouthedness. 
 
 MR. OSWALD ODDLER, 
 
 MR. JOSEF SFRINITKOFT, 
 
 MR. TOM TALKEY, 
 
 The pessimistic Secretary resumed his seat, evidently 
 in high spirits. 
 
 " I shall now, in accordance with custom," said the 
 President, " call upon the Secretary to report upon the 
 character of these candidates with a view to their being 
 seconded, if satisfactory." 
 
 The plump little pessimist rose again, amid applause. 
 " Mr. President and gentlemen, I have the honour of 
 laying before you tlie usual packets of condensed 
 essence of life, the result of careful inquiry through 
 Stubbs and respectable married householders, supple- 
 mented by the Peerage, The Gazette, The Review of 
 Reviews, Galton's Genealogies, and the Newgate Calendar. 
 
 "Miss Sophonisba De Wallace. — Married. Degree of 
 Bachelor of Music from a Norwegian University. Latest lessee 
 of the Novelty Theatre. Like Bismarck's decayed tooth, is of 
 German extraction. Talent for the boards hereditary. Mother 
 familiar with the plank-bed from girlhood. Managerial instinct 
 derived from father, who was born with a cast in his eye. Began 
 her stage career by playing Chambermaids and Old Harry. First 
 engagement of importance was to Mr. Seymour Smith, a respect- 
 able solicitor. Marriage a failure. Miss de Wallace went back
 
 A GENERAL COURT iij 
 
 to live with her mother, who had in the meantime been appointed 
 oakum-selector to the queen. Age uncertain. Twenty-first birth- 
 day celebrated last Monday. In figure inclined to embonpomt and 
 want of balance at her banker's. Complexion charming, and her 
 colour comes and goes in a way that betokens the vivacity of hei 
 disposition and the contents of her toilette-table drawer. Plays all 
 the chief parts in the plays she produces and collaborates with the 
 most celebrated dramatic authors in writing them." 
 
 We thought we would not have Miss De Wallace 
 for her mother's sake. We could easily fill up the four 
 vacancies without her. If Henry Eobinson had not 
 left us, we might have voted for her for the sake of 
 his manuscript plays. I determined not to fail to 
 write to him of the chance he had missed by his folly. 
 Mandeville Brown ran his pen through her name and 
 resumed — 
 
 '• Herr Blarnium. — Bachelor. Also a German. Something (not 
 very particular) in the City. Prime mover in the recent corner in 
 corner-men. A black business. Talent in finance inherited from 
 his father, who was one of the earliest discoverers of kleptomania. 
 Of Herculean strength, derived from his mother — an adept at shop- 
 lifting. Speaks German detestably. French as well as his 
 mother-tongue. A gourmand and loves all his accounts well 
 cooked." 
 
 We thought we would not have Herr Blarnium for 
 his father's sake. Mandeville Brown ran his pen 
 through his name and resumed — 
 
 " Mr. Vandyke Browne. — Bachelor. Received his art educa- 
 tion in the atelier of a Paris dentist, where he learnt to draw teeth, 
 customers, and his salary. Afterwards served a term with an oil- 
 man in Camberwell, and completed his education by making the 
 acquaintance of several models in the shady groves of the 
 Evangelist. Greatest as a colourist. His nose, pipe, and state- 
 ments of fact are chefs d'ceuvre. First great picture exhibited in 
 back drawing-room of intended father-in-law's lodgings in Stoke 
 
 H
 
 ii4 THE CELIBATES' CLU& 
 
 Newiiigton. Led to the breaking-off of the engagementi 
 Promise of his early career has been carried out ; so have some of 
 those who have been privileged to view his pictures. Main works 
 on exhibit in his studio — Classic : The Sneeze of the Serpent ; 
 Apollo on Olympus ; Juno on Washing Day : Death of Mother 
 Hubbard. Landscape : Under the Strawberry Trees ; Sunset on 
 Saffron Hill ; Bathing-Machines by Moonlight. Genre : Study 
 of an old Tin Pot ; The Dustman's Daughter ; Whisky and 
 Water (a study of Btill Life)." 
 
 We thought we would not have Mr. Vandyke Browne 
 for the sake of his intended father-in-law. Browne's 
 matrimonial escutcheon had been sullied. The Secre- 
 tary drew his pen through the name and resumed — 
 
 "The Marchioness of Muddleton. — Married. Bachelor of 
 Arts. Diploma from Dublin. Just started millinery and linen 
 drapery establishment. The Marquess strongly objected. Said 
 she spent enough on dress already. Among the features of her 
 bonnets are to be beaks of birds from her husband's bathtes. Will 
 sell everything except underclothing, the sale of which she deems 
 immoral and reprehensible. Gazette has her bankruptcy ready in 
 type. Tall fierce-looking beauty with green spectacles. In con- 
 versation slow and stuttering, but what she does say is beneath 
 contempt. Extremely musical giggle, but a warm human heart 
 beats beneath her dainty lace and occasionally registers 32° 
 Fahrenheit. Fond of Wagner and cough-drops." 
 
 We thought we would not have her ladyship for her 
 husband's sake. We did not want scenes with him. 
 He was too grand for us to kick downstairs if he came 
 inquiring after her with a horse-whip. Mandeville ran 
 his pen through her name and resumed — 
 
 "SignorGammonio. — Bachelor. Baritone. Very poor in early 
 life — weaned at the age of six months. As an infant had a very 
 musical cry, though no one appreciated the music of the future in 
 it. Once took part in an opera in the Isle of Man. In conversation 
 delightfully piquant ; the slang dictionary toils after him in vain.
 
 A GENERAL COTTRT 115 
 
 The Signer's favourite drink is water ; but from a spirit of self- 
 denial he confines himself to whiskj'. Is a man of true artistic 
 bonhomie and will borrow half-crowns even from the Philistines." 
 
 We thoufiht we would not have Simor Gammonio 
 for the sake of his creditors. Maudeville ran his pen 
 through the name and resumed — 
 
 "Miss Esmeralda Green. — Spinster. The popular authoress 
 of Boometh as a Bumble Bee and other unreadable novels. 
 Short stout spinster, with the languid, aristocratic manner 
 of a Persian cat and the moustache of an English guardsman. 
 An instance of precocious genius. Her distaste for grammar 
 apparent even before she could speak plainly ; and when she 
 could, she became an awful liar. Talent from side of father, one 
 of the most inveterate advertisement canvassers that ever drew 
 breath and the long-bow. Never writes except on paper. Her 
 chief work is done at the British Museum, and nothing puts her 
 out so much as the Librarian and his mercenaries at closing time. 
 ' Esmy,' as her friends call lier. is very fond of pastry, and they 
 attribute her success to puffs. Takes little sleep, and even when 
 sleeping protests against it through her nose." 
 
 We thought we would not have Miss Green for the 
 sake of her readers. Maudeville ran his pen through 
 her name and resumed — 
 
 "Mr. Bullyver Biddleherry. — Bachelor. Member of the 
 Flamingo Club. Originally a collier's lad, he worked his Avay up 
 to the top of the mine and ran oflf to London. Here he bought a 
 bad half-crown to commence his career on and sold a publican. Soon 
 after this his unequalled slogging powers were first demonstrated 
 in the great city in a battle-royal with a woman. Talent like this 
 could not go unheeded, and Biddleberry was immediately taken 
 up by that generous patron of all that is elevated — the policeman. 
 From the stone jug he passed to the prize-ring, where his claret- 
 tapping capacities brought him fame, fortune, and a liost of friends 
 in the peerage. Purchased a stable and in his very first year 
 carried off the blue ribbon of the turf by feeding the favourite with 
 corn-plaster. Favourite occupations^figuring in divorce suits and
 
 ii6 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 singing drivellishly dirty comic songs at the Flamingo cham* 
 pagne fights. Eeason for applying — he is member of all the Clubs 
 that will admit him. 
 
 "iV.£. — Since writing his application he has died." 
 
 " Alas ! " said O'Eohevty, " we are but as shadows in 
 the hands of the reaper and even prize-fighters must 
 melt away as gossamers before the breeze. May the 
 earth lie as lightly on him as he lied on it." 
 
 We said " Amen," but thought we would not have 
 Bullyver Biddleberry for the sake of his undertaker. 
 Our Secretary drew his pen through the name and 
 resumed — 
 
 "Mr. William Oldscore. — Composer, Widower, though 
 representing himself as a bachelor " 
 
 " Enough," thundered M'Gullicuddy, turning as red 
 as a turkey-cock in his indignation. 
 
 "Oh, let's hear what further depths of villainy he 
 has sunk to," pleaded Pitz-Williams. 
 
 We did our best to pacify our outraged President, 
 and the Secretary went on — 
 
 "No better example of hereditary musical genius could be 
 adduced, for his mother was a wholesale dealer in organ-grinders' 
 monkeys and his deceased wife's sister was music-mistress at a 
 deaf and dumb home. Is still a young man, having been born in 
 Newington Butts. In person is florid and stumpy, and his upper 
 lip is prematurely bald, but the light of genius that shines in his 
 glass eye atones for all. Tastes naive and simple. He can sit 
 listening to his own music for hours at a stretch." 
 
 & 
 
 We thought we would not have Mr. William Old- 
 score for the sake of his deceased wife's sister. Man- 
 deville drew his pen through the name and resumed — 
 
 " Miss Pentonville. — Spinster. Charming woman, with lovely 
 hair and without a fine Roman nose, which she lost in a street
 
 A GENERAL COURT 
 
 117 
 
 accident fifty-three years ago. An ardent patroness of masked 
 balls. Is now forty-five and considerably in advance of her age. 
 Is possessed of considerable debts in her own right ; has the 
 courage of her opinions, and a good opinion of her courage ; and, 
 having also an atrocious French accent and a fondness for under- 
 done steaks, aspires to represent Cripplegate on the County 
 Council." 
 
 We thoucrht we would not have Miss Pentonville 
 for the sake of her constituents. What a blessing it 
 was that we had so many candidates to select our four 
 from that we could waste them with royal careless- 
 ness and extravagance. Mandeville drew his pen 
 through her name and resumed — 
 
 "Lady Araminta Chapelton. — Spinster. Her 'At Homes' 
 are among the most successful functions of the London season and 
 would be more so if she were out. At these receptions all that is 
 most famous in literary and art circles, all that is most beautiful 
 and noble in London society, is conspicuous by its absence. Lady 
 Araminta is herself a wonderful talker and has a heap of remini- 
 scences at her finger-ends, where those familiar with the language 
 of her afflicted class may read them. Although she is deaf, few 
 things are more musical than her laugh. The scratch of a slate- 
 pencil is, however, one of them. Chiefly employed in attending 
 on an aged pug-dog. In politics has always sided warmly with 
 her brother, the Hon. George Walters, whose premature decease 
 before birth was a heavy blow to his country and the family 
 ' Gamp.' Her ladyship is still on the right side of sixty and her 
 buoyant vitality is only depressed by the dread that she is among 
 those whom the gods love." 
 
 We thought we would rather not have Lady Araminta 
 for the sake of her pug-dog. Mandeville shrugged his 
 shoulders, and, drawing his pen through her name, 
 resumed — 
 
 "Oswald Oddler. — Bachelor. Among the men about town, 
 without whom no premiere is complete, he undoubtedly holds a 
 first stall. He talks entirely in epigrams, of the species which he
 
 ii8 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 lias himself defined as ' pertinent impertinences.' Should you 
 send him a private letter he will publish it in his paper and charge 
 you with a craving for publicity and with the cost of setting it up 
 in type. Is awfully smart because he is often made to by the 
 victims of his epigrams or their authors. Boasts that he writes 
 plays under noms de x)lume and managerial compulsion, but the 
 statement, like the Indian juggler and the loafer's wife, is entirely 
 unsupported. Is famous for championing the undivided skirt for 
 gentlemen and has a sympathetic admiration for the human calf. 
 In spite of his intellectual activity is physically weak, and is only 
 kept going by overdoses of insect-powder. He will soon be quite 
 gone. His death will leave a blank in journalism which it is to 
 be hoped nobody will draw." 
 
 We thought we would rather not have Oswald for 
 the sake of his physicians. Mandeville imperturbably 
 drew his pen through the name and resumed — 
 
 "Josef Sprinitzkoff. — Bachelor. Now living in retirement 
 in a back bedroom in the Old Kent Road, but once regarded as the 
 great European firebrand. Indeed, his impassioned articles in the 
 Magnonominal Review still serve to feed the flames of discontent 
 and the domestic hearth. Has inherited his revolutionary tenden- 
 cies from his mother, who was a famous waltzer. His very first 
 entry into the world was characterised by a wail of discontent, 
 and as his nurse was in the habit of mounting through the attic 
 trap-door to sun herself on the tiles, he cried aloud from his house- 
 top at a very early age. Josef was carefully educated as a con- 
 spirator. Is familiar with all branches of the profession, not 
 excluding the gallows' tree, from which he has had many escapes 
 wanting in breadth. His hair is a fiery red, of the exact hue of 
 the sun seen through a November fog, though, as it was cut off in 
 a fever, its present whereabouts are unknown. Kings call him a 
 bald, bad man. His eyes are twins, and traces of a prehistoric 
 smallpox cast a halo of holeyness over his martyr's countenance. 
 The great disciple of Rousseau loves to return to the bosom of his 
 mother earth and may often be seen rolling in the gutter. On 
 such occasions he is visibly moved by the brutal Force of a priest* 
 ridden plebs. Is only five feet high but dislikes whelks,"
 
 A GENERAL COURT 119 
 
 We thought we would rather not have Josef Sprinit?- 
 koff for the sake of the police. The Secretary silently 
 drew his pen through the name and resumed — 
 
 "Mr. Tom Talket. — Bachelor. For many years director of 
 Ananias's Agency. He originally studied for the law and has 
 taken silk. On the expiration of his sentence for this offence 
 toured the country in a wig and a musical troupe. Is a staunch foe 
 of Temperance and has pleaded the rights of Drink at many a bar. 
 One of his legs is wooden but he has never written for the maga- 
 zines. His. head also is a chip of the old block. Nothing false 
 ever comes from his lips except his teeth at bedtime. Only thing 
 he earned honestly in his life was his father's dying curse, which 
 he invested in railway stock," 
 
 We thought we would rather not have Tom Talkey 
 for our own sakes. Then Mandeville Brown smiled 
 sadly and gat down. 
 
 " Go on ! go on ! " we said encouragingly. We felt 
 kindly towards Mandeville Brown. He had extracted 
 the essence of the candidates' histories very neatly 
 indeed and by his skilful presentation of the facts had 
 saved us the painful distractions of dubiety. We could 
 not be too careful as to whom we admitted into the 
 Bachelors' Club. 
 
 " There are no more," he said. We looked at each 
 other. 
 
 " Nonsense ! why, there must be dozens," we replied 
 incredulously. 
 
 " Look ! " said the little pessimist laconically. He 
 held up his list, a succession of black parallel lines. 
 There was not one candidate in the running : they were 
 all scratched. 
 
 We were intensely annoyed with our stupid Secre- 
 taiy and called him names by which he had not been
 
 I20 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 christened. We inquired why he had not told lis we 
 were being reduced to the extremities of the list, and 
 stated that he had sacrificed Truth to Epigram. "We 
 also called his attention to the fact that the Devil was 
 not so black as he was painted. Mandeville replied 
 that the old gentleman had not presented himself as a 
 candidate, though strictly eligible and a seasoned 
 bachelor. M'Gullicuddy then called for silence and 
 another lemon squash, and suggested that the names of 
 the male candidates whose characters, as bachelors, 
 were purest should be written on slips of paper, put in 
 a High Hat (which, he remarked severely, was highly 
 useful for such contingencies by virtue of its depth), 
 and four should be drawn out by Moses Fitz-Williams. 
 This being done, the following gentlemen were declared 
 duly elected as candidates : — 
 
 MR. OSWALD ODDLER. 
 
 MR. VANDYKE BROWNE. 
 
 SIGNOR GAMMONIO. 
 
 MR. TOM TALKEY. 
 
 The Secretary was forthwith instructed to write to 
 
 them, asking them to forward the usual non-marriage 
 
 certificates, and enclosing a copy of the rules up to 
 
 date. 
 
 It % % % % 
 
 After reading the minutes at the next formal meeting, 
 Mandeville stated that he had received replies from the 
 three first-named gentlemen, withdrawing their appli- 
 cations as they had been misled as to the nature of the 
 assurance system in connection with the Club. As for 
 Tom Talkey, he had in the interim again joined the 
 Junior Convicts' Club at Portland.
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 THE FALL OF ISRAFEL. 
 
 "And the Angel Israfel whose heart-strings are a lute and who has the 
 sweetest voice of all God's creatures." — The Koran. 
 
 The Bachelors' Club was crammed to its utmost 
 capacity. There was a smoking-concert on, and every 
 Bachelor had availed himself of the privilege of bring- 
 ing two bachelors with him. Some had even broken 
 the spirit of the by-law by going outside again to fetch 
 in two more. There was always great curiosity to see 
 us on these occasions, as Joseph Fogson, M.D., B.Sc, 
 settled with the steward and the guests always felt there 
 was a scientific flavour about the whisky he paid for. 
 But this time on account of its being the May concert 
 the crowd was greater than ever, as everybody could 
 mention to his relatives that he was going to a May 
 meeting. 
 
 In not a few instances I suspected that the 
 bachelors introduced for these occasions only were no 
 better than they should be. I did not see the fun of 
 being wedged uncomfortably between two probably 
 married men, or of having the room made unbearably 
 hot by bachelors of questionable hona fides; for so 
 crowded was the Club that smoking was going on even 
 jn the smoking-room. Still it was not my business to 
 
 121
 
 122 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 expose my fellow-members or their guests ; and I make 
 it a rule to mind my own business. It is the only way 
 of making it pay. 
 
 The main attraction of these smoking-concerts was 
 the singing of Israfel Mondego. 
 
 Israfel Mondego was the greatest celebrity of whom 
 the Club could boast. He was one of the most popular 
 gingers of the day. Thousands hung upon his lips and 
 his eyebrows. His voice was nothing to speak of, still 
 less to sing with ; but it was well-trained and many 
 ladies considered him the primo tenore of the world. 
 He also wrote and composed most of his own songs-=- 
 they were always in the minor. He was the most 
 minor poet and musician ever known. The sale of 
 these drawing-room ballads far surpassed that of 
 Beethoven's works, and as he got a royalty on them as 
 well as on those alien compositions he merely sang, 
 Israfel made a good thing out of sweet sad nonsense. 
 Israfel was sweetly pretty; he had dark and rolling eyes, 
 a passionate moustache, and ineffably melancholic hair. 
 Israfel's advent to our ranks was a great accession of 
 strength to us and gave us a good advertisement. For 
 a man who could have thrown his scented handker- 
 chief where he would in the selectest circles of beauty 
 and fashion to dedicate himself to the Higher Bachelor- 
 hood, was indeed a triumph for the cause. We gloried 
 in Israfel's membership, and the only bitter in our cup 
 (as distinct from our glass) was that he would sing at 
 our smokino-concerts. It was not that we could not 
 bear the burden of his song — Love, Love, Love ; on the 
 contrary, we welcomed Israfel Mondego's lyrics as a 
 strong ally in our war against the tender emotion. 
 But Israfel's singing imposed a strain upon our self-
 
 THE FALL OF ISRAFEL 123 
 
 command which marred the ease and abandon that are 
 the essence of smoking-concerts. When he turned up 
 the whites of his eyes to express hopeless yearning, or 
 flew up the gamut on the wings of some screamingly 
 serious emotion, we did not like to laugh and give 
 away his dignity in the presence of our guests. They, 
 too, I soon found, exercised an equal self-control for 
 the sake of the hosts. It was really quite painful for 
 both parties. This was why Mondego's singing was, 
 as I have said, the main attraction of our smoking- 
 concerts. The guests, who were pretty nearly always 
 the same, came to see if the members would laugh 
 first ; the members came to see if their guests would 
 laugh first. It was a highly exciting race; but 
 the result was always a dead silence. The con- 
 clusion of Mondego's songs was always greeted with 
 immense salvoes of applause ; after which, at a decent 
 interval of a minute, the audience always got im- 
 mensely jocular and Homeric bursts of laughter, 
 seemingly independent of one another, resounded 
 throu'di the two rooms. 
 
 To-nifflit Israfel was in fine form. He sat himself 
 down before the hired piano and ran his perfumed 
 hand over the ivory keys by way of prelude. Then he 
 sang his very latest success. None of us had heard 
 it before. None of us had the slightest inkling of 
 what was to come. It is well that fate stretches a 
 veil before the future, well most of all lor thee, 
 M'Gullicuddy ! 
 
 Israfel sang —
 
 124 1'HE, CELIBACIES'' CLUB 
 
 THE ISLAND OF LOVE. 
 
 fly with me where amaranthine blossoms 
 
 Are pale loith jmssion's flame, 
 Where larger moons and lither-limb'd opossums 
 
 Knoio naught of sin and shame. 
 Too long the world's cold teaching hath ojrprest us, 
 
 My sweetest, sweet sweetheart. 
 In vain we schooled our hearts to he asbestos, 
 
 We cannot, may not, part. 
 
 God built an isle where mystic shadoio hovers, 
 
 Across the slumbrous seas, 
 The dim, enchanted isle of love and lovers, 
 
 And drowsy melodies. 
 A dream of restful roses, poppies, lilies, 
 
 And lips that lie on lips. 
 And eyes that burn like ptirple daffodillies^ 
 
 While Time unnoted slips. 
 
 Come, sweet, where day and night are one with twilight, 
 
 And breathing one with bliss. 
 Where sun and moon and stars shall faint in thy light, 
 
 And life be one long kiss 
 
 At this point a dreadful thing happened. As the 
 " long kiss " died away up the ceiling, Israfel's eyes kept 
 on ecstatically examining the chandelier, while his 
 dainty tapering fingers mechanically played the accom- 
 paniment. Suddenly an awful roar shook the air — 
 violent as the rattle of celestial artillery. I shall never 
 forget the horror of the moment. Inextinguishable 
 laughter had seized on the Bachelors' Club. The Club 
 was one chaos of convulsive forms. The Bachelors 
 were laughing, the bachelors were laughing, M'Gulli- 
 cuddy was laughing, the dusky Hindoo steward was 
 laughing, and even the waiters, who had been crowded 
 on to the landing, were laughing. The worst of it was
 
 THE FALL OF ISRAFEL 125 
 
 that the race between the Bachelors and the bachelors 
 had again ended in a dead heat. You couldn't tell 
 which had besfun first. 
 
 Who has not been in a solemn situation in which he 
 wanted to laugh and dared not ? You bite your lips, 
 turn your head away, think of all the sacred or nasty 
 things in the world, and at last almost forget you want to 
 laugh. Then you begin to fear your neighbour has not 
 equal self-control. The very air seems full of Mephisto- 
 phelian gigglings. You hear or divine strange, suspicious 
 gurgles all around you. A tickling electric current 
 seems to run round and connect you with a battery 
 of irreverence ; your sides shake silently till they ache ; 
 you stuff your handkerchief into your mouth ; you turn 
 red and nearly burst your cheeks ; your diaphragm feels 
 contracted and your ribs seem distended. At last your 
 neighbour explodes and you follow suit feeling that you 
 must have your laugh, though you swing for it. Even 
 so was the air of the Bachelors' Club heavily charged 
 with lauohinq "as when Israfel sang. 
 
 Who broke down first will never be known, but as 
 Mondego revelled in the " long kiss," ogling us mean- 
 time as though we were old women, the pent-up 
 laughter of months broke forth, apparently from all 
 points of the compass simultaneously. The Bachelors' 
 Club was doubled up like a collapsible garden chair. 
 
 We were all so surprised at the long expected having 
 happened at last, that it was some seconds before we 
 could realise that it had happened. Then, as we all 
 became simultaneously aware that we were laughing, 
 we felt that we ought to feel ashamed and frozen with 
 horror, but now the thought that we were laughing was 
 so exquisitely funny that we could do nothing but roar
 
 t26 TtlE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 on. So irresistible was the wave of laughter that we 
 were swept helplessly onwards for full five minutes, and 
 even when we were left stranded on the shores of 
 breathlessness, battered and shattered wrecks, rippling 
 eddies and after-waves of merriment caught us in the 
 sides and threatened to drag us back again into the 
 great gulfs and raging torrents of cachinnation. But 
 the force of the tide grew feebler and feebler, gradually 
 the mirth subsided to a spent snigger. Then sadness 
 fell on the scene, and to cover our embarrassment we 
 picked up the broken glass and the pipes with which 
 the floor was strewn ; we looked shamefacedly at each 
 other and realised what we had done ; the charm of the 
 smoking concerts was at an end; never again would 
 we Bachelors and bachelors meet with the common 
 •consciousness and joy of our guilty secret. Even if 
 Israfel remained in the Club after this deadly insult, 
 it was doubtful if he would ever make us smile again. 
 
 But long before this stage Israfel Mondego had picked 
 his way disdainfully through our writhing forms and 
 left tbe Club. As he went through the door he looked 
 back. The expression of his face was peculiar and 
 -extensive. Even I could not interpret it. It was a 
 flue blend of assorted emotions. His face was like a 
 composite photograph taken from persons in various 
 stages of sorrow and scorn. 
 
 When I came to myself that look was haunting me. 
 
 It was, I thought, the look of a man who might go 
 and do something desperate. We had wounded him 
 deeply ; who could say to what length he might carry 
 his retaliation ? Perhaps he would even pay his sub- 
 scription and resign his membership of the Club. I 
 felt that we ought not to have allowed him to go from
 
 THE FALL OF LSRAFEL 12? 
 
 among US thus. Common decency demanded a wotd of 
 apology, an expression of sympathy with him in his 
 righteous indignation ; but it was too late to overtake 
 him now. And yet — the effort should be made. Per- 
 haps he had driven off in a hansom ; if so> I might 
 ascertain the direction he had given ■ perhaps he had 
 walked on towards Piccadilly, in which case I might 
 yet come upon him. Besides, Moses PitE-Williams was 
 just going to recite, and when, in his tragic moments, 
 Moses's eyes crossed over the bridge of his nose, the re- 
 sult was too tragic. I slipped downstairs, and muffling 
 my throat with my false beard (for the night air was 
 chill after the stifling heat of the Club) I looked around. 
 With difficulty I suppressed a cry of astonishment. 
 There, barely two yards from me, leaning against a 
 lamp-post in the soft May niglit, was Israfel Mondego. I 
 drew back into the passage. His arms were folded and 
 the lamp-light falling full on his features disclosed a 
 face working under deep and apparently painful 
 thought. There he stood in tragic dignity, wrapped in 
 his Inverness cape as in a toga, his dark eyebrows drawn 
 together, his beautiful moustache drooping in sombre 
 gloom, his lips twitching. Around him surged the 
 bustling life of Leicester Square : 'Arry and 'Arriet, 
 Henry and Henrietta, the meerschaum and the penny 
 cigar, the clay and the cigarette, the journalist, the 
 music-hall artiste, the policeman, the conspirator, the 
 barber, the organ-grinder off duty, and the mere 
 foreigner ; but he heeded nothing. He stood silent 
 like some better-executed and less grimy London 
 statue. Small boys tendered him sanguinary evening 
 papers ; cripples armed with two boxes of matches 
 invoked the blessing of Providence on his head ; kind
 
 (^o,it^!?'!;^ny 
 
 THERK ITE STOOD IN TRAGIC DIGNITY.
 
 THE FALL OF LSRAFEL 129 
 
 gentlemen with red noses offered to put their hansoms 
 at his disposal; flower-girls pressed to decorate his 
 button-hole ; but he never looked up. 
 
 My bosom thrilled with pity ! I dimly realised the 
 tragedy going on in the breast of the curled darling of 
 the drawing-room ! Sneered at, derided in his own 
 Club, he, before whom every head, I mean woman, 
 bowed in adoration, what a terrible shock it must 
 have been to him ! What a blessing that, in spite of 
 all his cantabile confessions, there was nothing wrong 
 with his heart ! How if he had fallen dead at our 
 foolish feet 1 
 
 I wondered what would be the result of his medita- 
 tions under that street-lamp. Would he call us out 
 one by one and shoot us down like dogs or married 
 men ? Little less seemed proportionate to his dignity 
 and passionate romanticism. He was always so very 
 un-English, even it was believed carrying this weakness 
 30 far as to be born in Brazil, of a family of old 
 hidalgos. Yes, he would invite us to spend a day with 
 him on the Continent — perhaps in the Island of Love 
 where the police organisation did not appear to be very 
 effective — and there he would despatch us with punctu- 
 ality and speed, and waste our return tickets. That 
 was the worst of Mondego. He had no sense of humour. 
 A man with a sense of humour would have been tickled 
 ])y the situation himself; no be wouldn't, he would 
 never have sung that song. Mondego had a sense of hon- 
 our instead — which is an appalling misfortune for a man, 
 especially when it is of the foreign variety. His admirers 
 called him a child of the sun; wiiich appears to mean 
 that he had had a sort of sun-stroke when a child, which 
 left him crying for the moon all the rest of his unnatural 
 
 I
 
 130 THE CELIBATES CLUB 
 
 life. He was understood to be always asking for Love 
 and the Beautiful in Art and Nature, and seeing that he 
 got it. A morbid over-strung hyper-sensitive tem- 
 perament like Israfel's was not the sort to make light 
 of this laughing matter ; oh, if he had only been like 
 me who can see a joke in everything, except the English 
 comic papers ! 
 
 A fracas arising from the unceremonious exit of a 
 gentleman from the Alhambra swept Mondego from his 
 lamp-post and aroused him from his reverie. He looked 
 round vaguely, then instinctively drew out his watch. 
 It was safe ; as he put it back he caught sight of the 
 time. His eyes lit up as if with sudden resolution, he 
 jumped into a passing hansom and acknowledged the 
 polite attentions of the gamin with a charming smile 
 and a sixpence. I could not tell which glittered more, 
 the coin or Israfel's teeth. His smile reflected itself in 
 my face. The cloud was dispelled — the worst was over. 
 Mondeoo liad a little sense of humour after all. He 
 had been piqued and chagrined, but he was not such a 
 silly romantic ass as he looked — this was what I thought 
 in my blindness, as I turned to go back to the smoking- 
 concert. Moses Fitz-Williams's recitation must be over 
 by now. 
 
 "Whitechapel, sir? Yes, sir." The words impinged 
 weirdly on my ear and set my nerves thrilling afresh. 
 Could it be Mondego's driver who had thus spoken ? I 
 looked out again. Yes, there was only one hansom 
 within ear-shot. 
 
 What was Mondego going to do in Whitechapel ? If 
 he had given a ducal address in Belgravia, if he had 
 even mentioned Marlborough House, I should not have 
 been at all alarmed — but Whitechapel !
 
 THE FALL OF LSRAFEL 131 
 
 Obeying a sudden impulse and an instinct superior 
 to reason, I followed the cab. But Mondego could not 
 have told the driver he was in a hurry, for the hansom 
 bowled along rapidly. I was quite breathless by the 
 time I met another disengaged hansom. 
 
 My brain was whirling like the wheels of my vehicle 
 as we pursued the flying tenor at a discreet distance. 
 Whitechapel was alive and gay, and the pavements were 
 crowded with an animated populace and picturesque 
 with costermonGjers' illumiuations, twinkling and fiut- 
 tering like gigantic fireflies in the balmy air. A cheerful 
 hubbub of voices floated towards the starry heavens, 
 and cheap-jacks kept the bawl going merrily. I had 
 never been in Whitechapel before, except under the 
 cover of Besant's novels. I wondered if this was the 
 dark city of joyless savages he had discovered, and de- 
 termined to be my own Stanley in future — your pro- 
 fessional explorer always discovers some one to rescue. 
 And with the thought of Besant came another thouoht 
 that set my lower lip between my teeth. The People's 
 Palace ! Yes, that was it ! Mondego had been per- 
 suaded by a countess or a duchess to sing at the 
 People's Palace ! He was on his way now. He was a 
 philanthropist and I was a fool. 
 
 Composing myself, I pushed up the trap-door with 
 my umbrella and made inquiries of the driver. He 
 informed me we had not yet reached the People's Palace, 
 but that we should strike it (metaphorically speaking) 
 in about six minutes. The six minutes crawled like 
 hours. 
 
 "We reached the popular palatial building at last, but 
 our quarry gave no signs of slowing. "When we were 
 hopelessly past it I gave a great sigh of relief and lit a
 
 132 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 cigarette. Two minutes after, the leading hansom 
 diverged to the left, and we went rattling down a dark 
 stony street, wliich looked rather more like Besant's 
 streets, though quite as like to numerous by-ways 
 in Bayswater. After several intricate windings, I was 
 suddenly jerked forwards by the stoppage of my cab. 
 Mondego had alighted before a patch of brightness 
 fifty yards ahead and was paying his cabman. My 
 heart thumped. I jumped out quickly, threw the 
 driver half a sovereign, and without pausing to answer 
 his inquiries as to what I called the coin, ran towards 
 Israfel, fearing to lose sight of him for a moment. As 
 I approached the patch of light, I was exposed to a 
 cross-fire of strange sounds. From the rear came the 
 quaint curses of the cabman, but they were almost 
 drowned by the roar which burst upon me from in 
 front. A number of masculine voices were intoning, 
 some an octave higlier than the rest, some an octave 
 lower, the following mysterious chant — 
 
 Dontcher do it, old feller, dontcher do it, 
 Dontcher do it, old feller, dontcher do it, 
 Just you bash Hs bloomin' 'at, 
 And then arx 'im who's the flat, 
 For 'e ain't a-goin' to do you, 
 
 No 'e am'i. 
 
 No 'e ain't, 
 For e ain't a-goin' to do you, 
 
 No 'e ain't. 
 
 The last phrase was given with a demoniac yell of 
 conscious supremacy, and culminated in a frenzied 
 burst of hand-clapping, ululation, and foot-stamping. 
 
 My alarm for Israfel was now at fever heat. As I 
 saw him disappear within the public-house whence 
 these rowdy sounds proceeded, I sped forwards so
 
 THE FALL OL' ISRAFEL 133 
 
 quickly that I reached the bar-door ere it had ceased 
 vibrating. I pushed my way through the crowd of 
 frowsy revellers of both sexes, rejoicing that unlike 
 Mondego I was not in evening dress and attracted no 
 special attention. I caught sight of Mondego's swallow- 
 tail mounting a flight of stairs that led up from a room 
 behind the bar. I followed him unhesitatingly. The 
 choruses that descended to meet us convinced me of 
 the nature of our destination. At the top of the stairs 
 a janitor met Israfel with a deferential salutation, and 
 me with a request for twopence. Israfel's entry was 
 the signal for an uproarious burst of cheering, under 
 cover of which I slipped into one of the few empty 
 seats and called for a clay to smoke and a pewter-pot 
 to bury my face in if Israfel should chance to look at 
 me. But I was not very timorous of discovery. I had 
 great faith in my beard, and would have sworn by it 
 like any Turk by Mahomet's. "With extreme astonish- 
 ment I saw the idol of St James's Hall shake hands 
 with several of the seedy-looking men who sat round 
 the central long table, especially with the one-eyed man 
 at the head of it, the hammer in whose hand completed 
 his resemblance to a Cyclops. 
 
 The chairman's right-hand man gave up his distin- 
 guished seat to Mondego, who took it complacently and 
 ordered several tankards of refreshment for himself and 
 his immediate environment. I had never seen him so 
 radiantly happy. He no longer looked like Werther and 
 Lord Byron and the Cid rolled into one ; his face had 
 the beatitudes of Tartarin, Jack ashore, and the brothers 
 Cheeryble. He looked every inch the king of this free- 
 and-easy realm, festive with vulgar mirth, foggy 
 with the vapours of rank tobacco, strident with the roar
 
 FORTY VVJNKS.
 
 THE FALL OF LSRAFEL 135 
 
 of undisciplined melody, and repellent with the glare of 
 coloured sporting prints and the dinginess of discoloured 
 walls. 
 
 The song with the refrain, " Don't you do it," was 
 soon finished, several curious contingencies being de- 
 scribed in it, in which refusal to fall in with your 
 interlocutor's demand was tumultuously advised, supple- 
 mented by a recommendation to destroy his head-gear. 
 Then the Cyclops rose, and stated in slightly ungram- 
 matical language how pleased they were to see their old 
 pal 'Arry Slapup among them once more. He trusted 
 Mr. Slapup would not go without giving the company 
 " Forty Winks." This did not seem to mean that he 
 was to send them to sleep; for Mondego jumped up 
 beaming, and declared that he would do it at once. 
 When the table had ceased to rattle homage, he started — 
 
 Did, you ever observe the diversified ways 
 
 In which omlar winks may be umnk, 
 From the wink that's a lightning-like flash in your gaxe, 
 
 To your long-drawn-out wink when you 're drunk ? 
 
 There 's the wink of the hawk to his partner at whist, 
 
 There 's the lawyer's when clients are gone ; 
 The temperance lecturer's adds to the list, 
 
 And philanthropy carries it on! 
 
 There 's the wink of the journalist writing a par^ 
 
 And the wink of the reverend skunk, 
 But the ivink of the girl at the Frivoli bar 
 
 Is the winkedest wink ever wunk. 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 Forty winks ! Forty winks ! 
 
 Hear me link them, see me blink them ! 
 Rorty winks ! Rorty winks ! 
 
 Winks at drinking, xvinks at clinking ;
 
 136 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Naughty winks, naughty winks, 
 
 Winks when r inking, rhino chinking, 
 
 Winks for prinking, winks at slinking ; 
 Who would think it, you could wink it 
 Forty ways, forty winks ? 
 
 It was an aspect of the question to which I had 
 hitherto devoted no attention, but which was borne in 
 upon me now with convincing comicality. Never have 
 I heard a comic song lending itself so continuously to 
 mimetic and gesticulatory illustration, or so transfigured 
 by it ; never have I seen a comic singer turn his eye to 
 better account. That the species of winks numbered 
 two-score, Mondego proved to me by ocular demonstra- 
 tion. No buffoonery withal, but vis comica of a high 
 order. Every phase of nictitation was reproduced v/ith 
 astonishing realism, while the body and the rest of the 
 face were subtly and instantaneously transformed and 
 charged with amazingly clever suggestions of character. 
 The prating politician, the demagogue, the mock prude, 
 the gay coquette, the swindling attorney, the cringing 
 sycophant, the swaggering swag-bellied company pro- 
 moter, the canting cleric, the rollicking tippler, the 
 amorous dotard, the fuddled masher — all these figures 
 of the eternal human comedy, comprehensible equally to 
 the lettered and the unlettered, were hit off with daring 
 strokes as by some French caricaturist. My umbrella 
 was enthusiastic in his praise, and the king of the com- 
 pany had to rise again and again to give encore verses, 
 expanding in affability each time he sat down. At last 
 his mauvais sujets let him be ; and, after joining jovially 
 in the choruses of " She 's a downy Donna," and " What 
 a bloomin' whopper," he sauntered out, dispensing nods 
 and becks and wreathed smiles to his riotous lieges. I
 
 THE FALL OF ISRAFEL 137 
 
 followed SO close on his heels that I all but galled his 
 kibe. He walked on, looking for a cab. He stopped to 
 purchase some roasted chestnuts, the last of the season, 
 and as he haggled with the vendor I determined to 
 accost him. I unbearded myself and bearded him. 
 That night he bought no chestnuts. He took me to his 
 crowded chambers in Piccadillj^ instead^ and there, 
 surrounded by the choicest nick-nacks, waste-paper 
 baskets crammed with signed photographs of pretty 
 women, book-cases full of beautifully- worked slippers and 
 nightcaps; card-racks crammed with coroneted invita- 
 tions, abj^smal arm-chairs heaped with dedicated music, 
 and frail tables creaking under litters of unopened 
 Hllets doux and books of (feminine) devotion, he 
 told me the story of his life and I promised to 
 respect his confidence. I cannot better show my 
 respect than by publishing it — for it well deserves 
 the honour. 
 
 " I was born in Whitechapel of rich but honest parents 
 named Davis. My father was a tailor in a large way 
 of business, possessing four shops strewn at intervals 
 along the High Road and sprouting out another branch 
 in distant Tottenham Court Eoad. I was an only 
 child, and as I was considered handsome even by 
 other boys' motliers, you may imagine how my own 
 idolised me. She said I was as beautiful as any of the 
 dummies in our shop-windows, and she got me up to 
 match, with stylish suits and long curls, and I believe 
 her only regret was that she could not exhibit me 
 behind the plate-glass of our West-end establishment. 
 But if I could not be a show-child in that sense, I was 
 in every other. 1 was put up to sing and recite at 
 every party, till only my father's sumptuous spreads
 
 138 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 and excellent cigars reconciled his guests to the nuis- 
 ance of having to make a fuss of me. The seeds thus 
 scattered fell upon fertile soil, and my first visit to the 
 pantomime completed my enchantment and sealed my 
 future. At the age of six I had determined to be a 
 clown. I communicated my intentions to my father, 
 who laughed and gave me sixpence. In short, he spoilt 
 me completely and blamed me for the sequel. At the 
 age of sixteen I left the ' middle class ' school at which 
 I had received a ' sound commercial education,' and was 
 set to keep my father's books. By this time I had 
 achieved great reputation as an amateur comedian, 
 having played the leading part in our annual school 
 theatricals. I was also quick with my pen, and my 
 lampoons on the head-master were inferior to no boy's. 
 But my greatest accomplishment was this : I could 
 sing, as you have seen to-night, a really good comic 
 song. I always had the germs of the art in me, but I 
 had learnt a great deal from surreptitious visits to the 
 numerous concert-rooms in and about Whitechapel and 
 Bow of the type we have just left. I was taken to them 
 by an elder boy, who is now breaking stones in Portland. 
 He was a jolly rollicking chap, was Dabchick, but 
 beastly poor. I had plenty of pocket-money, and so 
 between us we managed to have a good deal of fun. 
 We dared not go to the more pretentious music-halls, of 
 which there were one or two, because my sartorial pater 
 sometimes relaxed from his perpetual 'Measure for 
 Measure ' to entertainment of a less classic order, and 
 our meetings would not have been cordial. You may 
 imagine, therefore, that I was not happy in a prosaic 
 tailor's shop. It was the worst misfit my father had 
 ever perpetrated. I spoke to the old man, and pointed
 
 THE FALL OF ISRAFEL 139 
 
 out that the human being did not grow to pattern, and 
 that a ready-made environment would not suit me. I 
 said my soul was not comfortable in a slop-work suit, 
 that I wasn't a mere dummy to show off his handiwork. 
 But he would not listen to reason, so one fine morning 
 he was left childless, to solace himself as best he might 
 with his wax models, and to extract consolation in his 
 old age from this style fourteen-and-six. But I kept 
 in touch with my mother, whose secret missives came 
 to me blistered with tears and swollen with postal 
 orders. My adventures were variegated. I toured the 
 provinces with " Kingsley's Celebrated Comedy Com- 
 pany," which nobody had ever heard of, and which 
 placarded the provinces with notices from the great 
 London newspapers, which any one was at liberty to 
 look for in the files. I took the name of Harry Slapup, 
 which, to my puerile imagination, seemed a fine dash- 
 ing name for a low comedian. It was the name under 
 which I had sung comic songs at the Crown Concert 
 Hall. There were many aspirants at the Crown ; it 
 was a half-way house to professional music-hall singing. 
 It was good practice, and tradition told of two famous 
 comic singers who had matriculated at the Crown. 
 Several lesser lights had undoubtedly first found a 
 hearing in that smoky alcoholic room. Well, under 
 the name of Harry Slapup I saw a good deal of life 
 behind the scenes, and found it was not all beer and 
 skittles, though there was much more of the former 
 than the latter. Happily, I was blessed with a strong 
 sense of humour and a love of change, which reconciled 
 me to the awful smells, the precipitous ladders, the 
 death-trapdoors, and the piggish dressing-dens (when 
 we hadn't to dress in draughty passages) and to the
 
 I40 THE CELIBATES.'' CLUB 
 
 fact that the "liost did not alwavs walk, even when we 
 played Hamlet. But for my mother's letters I should 
 often have lacked decent food and shelter. I did not 
 stay long with the Comedy Company, which burst up 
 suddenly, as though it were a city company. It seemed 
 a hard life at the time, playing three or fonr parts a week 
 (though I was always a quick study), but I regretted it 
 when I joined a company which took a comic opera on 
 tour, and I had to play the same part every night all 
 over Great Britain. It was awfully dull all day with 
 no rehearsals to take up the time, and in some of the 
 sleepy stupid boroughs of merry England on rainy 
 winter days I should have died of ennui, if I had not 
 suddenly remembered my literary gifts and covered 
 reams of foolscap with burlesques and comic songs. I 
 even wrote the music to my words, for I could always 
 evolve an air with tolerable facility, though I had no 
 idea of orchestration. I shall never forget my pride 
 when I was allowed to introduce into a comic opera a 
 humorous song written and composed by myself, the 
 conductor of the orchestra undertaking to vamp up an 
 accompaniment ; and my pride was only slightly damped 
 by its being a frost. I knew it was not my song that 
 had fallen flat, but the orchestra. Later, I studied the 
 pianoforte with zeal whenever I found one in my lodgings- 
 To cut a long story short, I played for seven years in 
 the provinces, never out of an engagement (for I was 
 able to waive the question of screw), and never in a 
 good one. I have played in everything from Hamlet to 
 Carmen. I sang, and danced, and spouted, and once 
 my childhood's dream was fulfilled, and I said ' Here 
 we are again ' for six weeks every night at Chichester. 
 But that was the high-watermark of my success as a
 
 THE FALL OF LSRAFEL 141 
 
 comic mummer. All my other parts were as devoid of 
 ' fat ' as the kine of Pharaoh's first vision. At the end 
 of seven years Harry Slapiip was as obscure a name as 
 it is now. But I still believed I was one of the few 
 men in England who could sing a comic song. I had 
 heard lots of men try to do it and I knew I only wanted 
 my chance to go in and win. Then I got a wire from 
 my mother to come to London. I had seen her once or 
 twice during her annual fortnight at Eamsgate, where 
 my father 'only came down for the week end, but I had 
 never seen the man who thought his progenitorship 
 gave him the right to trim and clip my life with his 
 shears to the pattern admired in Whitechapel. Of 
 course he had disinherited me. He had had a son and 
 heir, he said, and he was not going to lose one and keep 
 the other. This did not worry me. The original Adam 
 was strong in me. I despised clothes. I abhorred the 
 money that came out of the pockets of trousers, 
 ' warranted to wear.* But this telegram altered 
 matters and repaired the breaches. My father had 
 gone bankrupt. How he had managed it with his safe, 
 steady business puzzled me, as I flew homewards by the 
 night express. I could not credit him with the requisite 
 ingenuity. However I soon learnt the cause. He had 
 tried the fatal experiment of applying the hire system 
 to his business, forgetting that in case of default of 
 payment it was an easier matter to strip people's 
 rooms of furniture than their bodies of raiment. The 
 calamity broke my father's heart ; he died penniless, and 
 I lent him the shilling with which to cut me off. I paid 
 his insurance money to our creditors, and thus my mother 
 and I were left alone in the world, with nothing to sup- 
 port us but a comic song that had yet to be sung.
 
 142 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " Well, come what might, I determined to slug it in 
 London. There was neither gold nor glory to be won 
 in the provinces. I had as little chance in London as 
 in the country, so why wander from the centre again ? 
 I looked over my mss., pieced together an entertain- 
 ment and made up my mind to go in for something 
 high class, and not over-crowded. In short, I resolved 
 to become a society clown. You see the child is father 
 to the man after all." 
 
 He smiled a smile of infinite humour, and poked the 
 fire. I opened a bottle of champagne that lay in a 
 cooler and tossed off a glass. I was in a state of nerv- 
 ous excitement, and while Mondego was talking I was 
 all ears, and so could not drink. He went on — 
 
 " It was in these extremities that I stumbled on my 
 old friend, Dabchick, the companion of my schoolboy 
 Bohemianism. I met him in York Eoad, where I 
 had gone to pick up some wrinkles from the artistes 
 who hang round the agents' doors, and to chaffer comic 
 songs, for which I sometimes got a guinea — words and 
 music. Some of the most popular comic songs of the 
 day are from my pen, and I have often been disturbed 
 in the night by hearing my early pot-boilers bellowed 
 from the throats of tipsy revellers. Dabchick was 
 exquisitely dressed and richly jewelled, and told me he 
 was something in a bank. He did not tell me what he 
 was in the bank, though judging from the amount of 
 gold on his person he might have been a drawer in it. 
 He did not cut me even when he found I had no con- 
 nection whatever with banks. Ah, you will find many 
 virtues in Portland ! He told me he belonged to a num- 
 ber of swell clubs, and moved in the highest circles of 
 the four-mile radius j this was rather imaginative, still
 
 THE FALL OF ISRAFEL 143 
 
 it was through his influence that I obtained an appear- 
 ance at a ' ladies' night ' of the Rovers' Club. The 
 concert duly took place. The pretty little hall of the 
 Club was crowded with fair women and gallant men. 
 Joachim brought his fiddle, and Antoinette Sterling her 
 organ, and ' Israfel Mondego ' was the only unknown 
 name on the daintily-printed programme. The name had 
 been chosen after anxious consultations with Dabchick, 
 Both of us felt that Harry Slapup was not a name to 
 climb to fame on, especially as I had now determined 
 to win it in the higher branches of the comic song. In 
 any case it would never do for the Eovers' Club. I 
 must have a high-class name, which might be an im- 
 pulse to me and a safeguard against low foolery, which 
 for the rest would never go down at the Rovers' except 
 in a comedian who had shaken hands with the Prince 
 of Wales. The name must also be striking and eccen- 
 tric, for in spite of Shakespeare there is great virtue in 
 a name. As Solomon says, ' A good name is better 
 than riches ' — especially to a 'professional.' The 'Israfel' 
 was my discovery. I chanced on it in Poe's poems. 
 We both agreed it was bizarre enough to make a reputa- 
 tion. ' Mondego ' was invented by Dabchick, who also 
 lent me a dress-suit, which made me regret my father, 
 it squeezed me so tight. The item on the programme 
 ran thus (it is burnt on my brain in letters of fire) : — 
 
 Ballad . . "A Buried Hope " . Israfel Mondego 
 
 Israfel Mondego. 
 
 " The words of this song you know. You have seen it 
 on every drawing-room table, and heard it played from 
 every barrel-organ."
 
 144 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " Yes," I said, " I could repeat it in my sleep." The 
 words forced themselves half-involuutarily from my 
 lips : — 
 
 A BURIED HOPE. 
 
 TJiough winter winds are chilling, 
 
 The buried blossoms blow, 
 'FJiough Doubt sweet Love is hilling, 
 
 The Fates ordain it so. 
 We parted when the red-breasts 
 
 Sang loud mid roses lush, 
 Yet should our frozen dead-breasts 
 
 Refuse to thaw or gush ? 
 
 Our Sadness is but Sorrow, 
 
 Our Joy is but Delight, 
 And what will be To-morrow 
 
 Can never be To-night. 
 Our truest Selves with screening 
 
 Are hid from friends and foes, 
 And what on Earth we 're meaning 
 
 High Heaven only knoios. 
 
 " Vastly pretty words, indeed," I added slyly. " They 
 would be perfect if they had anything to do with the 
 title." 
 
 " Ah, that was my little secret," said Israfel. " You 
 of course grasp that this was intended as a skit on the 
 ordinary drawing-room ballad. The first element of 
 such a ballad is the complete divorce between the title 
 and verses. But if the title had no meaning for the 
 audience, there was no harm in its having a meaning 
 for me. The ' Buried Hope ' was my hidden trust that 
 the reputation of a society clown lay enshrined in that 
 song. Alas ! it was a hope I soon had to bury in a 
 graver sense."
 
 THE FALL OF LSRAFEL 145 
 
 He paused, overcome with emotion. 
 
 " And yet, looking back on it, after all these years, I 
 can honestly say it deserved a better fate. It was an 
 excellent burlesque of the namby-pamby songs of the 
 day, and the last quatrain with its double meaning is 
 extremely clever. The music I wrote myself. I wrote 
 it in the minor, and I surcharged it with subtle sarcasm. 
 It was full of inarticulate longing, and sadness, and 
 weariness, yet it whispered of some ineffable consola- 
 tion in the far-away whatness of the unintelligible. 
 I played my own accompaniment, which was limited to 
 a few melancholy chords. As I came from behind the 
 screen that hid the artistes' room from the audience 
 my breath came thick and fast. Stage-fright held me 
 in its throes, as though I were a beginner. So much to 
 me and my poor mother depended on that night — my 
 poor mother who had not even an evening dress to be 
 present in. I gave a last touch to my white tie and my 
 black hair, and stepped into the full blaze of two hun- 
 dred pairs of polite eyes. There was a little perfunctory 
 clapping, succeeded by a sudden rustling of ladies' 
 dresses. A dazzling sea of white shirts and bosoms 
 swam before me ; I sank down on the music-stool with 
 gratitude that I had to sit. I had intended to preface 
 my song with the remark, ' Ladies and Gentlemen, — 
 I beg to introduce to your notice a model specimen of 
 the English drawing-room ballad.' I intended to 
 accompany this with a look of dry humour, a sort of 
 refined wink. But my fingers nervously started the 
 prelude before I sat down, and I felt my courage oozing 
 out of their ends. I felt that I could not make that little 
 speech now, much less wink ; besides, would it not be 
 an insult to the intelligence of the audience ? There
 
 146 The CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 was no going back ; the weird, pathetic prelude was at 
 an end and I dashed right away into the song — 
 
 Thongh winter winds are chilling — 
 
 " It happened to be a seething night of early summer, 
 but the inaccuracy of a vocal assertion is no bar to its 
 impressiveness. I put a good deal of shiver and heart- 
 break into that line, to contrast with the hopefulness of 
 the next. It was a most artistic skit, but when I 
 reached the end of the first verse there was a dead 
 silence. Not a single snigger. My heart sank within 
 me. My eyes had been turned up in passionate agony. 
 I now rolled them cautiously towards the audience in 
 search of a smile. No ; every face was blank and stony. 
 There were tears of disappointment in my voice as I 
 sang the second stanza, with its consoling hints of a 
 far-away whatness. The silence throughout was pain- 
 ful. My voice was choking with disappointment as I 
 sang of human effort and asj^iration misinterpreted, 
 misunderstood — 
 
 And what on Earth we 're meaning 
 High Heaven only knows. 
 
 " As the last notes trembled into silence I rose and 
 dashed from the platform. To my amazement a 
 thunderous roar pursued me. The hall seemed to rock 
 with applause. I could hardly believe my ears. Could 
 I have made a hit after all ? And was seriousness 
 merely the fashionable method of expressing amuse- 
 ment ? Somebody pushed me back on the platform ; 
 I bowed as if in a dream, and turned back dazed. But 
 the enthusiasm continued. 'Bravo, Bravissima, Bis, 
 Encore,' resounded in a chorus from all sides, sweet
 
 THE FALL OF ISRAFEL 147 
 
 female voices taking up the treble. My heart was too 
 full to speak. So 1 sang. I sang the last verse again, 
 making it more maudlin than ever by my tears of joy. 
 Then, still pursued by that tempest of enthusiasm, I 
 tottered out of tlie artistes' room into a passage in search 
 of air. In an instant Dabchick was by my side, wring- 
 ing my hand in violent congratulation. As he pumped 
 away, the tears continued to fall from my eyes. 
 
 " ' I say, dear boy, you 've knocked 'em,' he said ; 
 ' you '11 have half-a-dozen offers to-morrow. But I 
 thought you were going to do something comic' 
 
 " I stared at him. 
 
 " ' Don't be funny, old man,' I said. ' I 'm awfully 
 indebted to you, so don't spoil it. But I was afraid it 
 was going to be a frost. They don't laugh up West, do 
 they ? ' 
 
 " ' Oh, don't they ? You try them.' 
 
 " ' But I have tried them. You don't mean to say you 
 didn't know that was a refined comic song.' 
 
 "'A comic song?' he repeated, staring at me as if 
 suspecting I was chaffing him — 'a comic song? Are 
 you serious ? ' 
 
 " ' Never was more serious in my life ! ' 
 
 "'That's what they all thought you were just now. 
 Bai Jove ! this is rich.' And he started laushing 
 convulsively till his cheeks were as wet as mine. I 
 stood there, waiting in much annoyance till his foolish 
 mirth should have spent itself. 
 
 " ' Oh but, dear boy,' he said at last, ' your reputa- 
 tion 's made as a sweet, sad tenor ! I never knew such 
 a furore. Everybody was snivelling into his or her 
 handkerchief ; tlie ladies are all in love with you, and 
 vowing that your singing is just too sweet and lovely
 
 148 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 for anything, and too awfully exquisite; and you're 
 charming and handsome and a darling ! and they are 
 raving about your eyebrows and your moustache ! They 
 were all asking who you were ; and I heard Lady Des- 
 borough inquiring for your address from the secretary, 
 and saying you must sing at her next " At Home," Your 
 fortune is made, old man. You have stumbled into 
 success. Stick to it. Oh, you dare not sing comic 
 songs now. It would spoil everything.' 
 
 " My heart sank. ' Dare not sing comic songs ? ' I 
 faltered. 
 
 "'No,' he answered emphatically; 'think of your 
 poor old mother. You have found out where your real 
 forte lies. Stick to it ! It 's a deuced job to make a 
 hit in London, I can tell you. It's a terrible uphill 
 battle in the throng of geniuses and charlatans. Don't 
 you risk anything else. You '11 only spoil your market. 
 The public won't stand versatility. Sentimentality is 
 your line ; sentimental you must remain till the end of 
 the chapter. Nobody knows you were Harry Slapup. 
 Harry Slapup, the comic singer, is dead and Israfel 
 Mondego, the drawing-room onion and passion-flower, 
 reigns in his stead.' 
 
 " I did not give in without a struggle ; but in the end 
 I saw that Dabchick was wise. My mother's misery 
 was a daily reproachful argument. I buried the hope 
 of winning the laurels of comic singing, and I went forth 
 into the battle of life cloaked in a mantle of hypocrisy. 
 What my career has been I need not recapitulate. I 
 have deluged a Puritan people with an ocean of false 
 sentiment. It is largely through me that they have pre- 
 ferred moonshine to healthy sunlight. Young persons, 
 who could not read Martin Tupper without a blush rising
 
 THE FALL OF ISRAFEL 149 
 
 to their cheeks, gloried in my vohiptuous effusions. My 
 waltzes were a caress and my verses a kiss. Detestable 
 old dowagers, who had sold their daughters to wealthy 
 husbands, and who in real life were as matter-of-fact as 
 pillar-boxes, crowded to my concerts, languishing in the 
 ardours of my poetry and revelling in the aesthetic 
 raptures of my music." 
 
 " And your moustache ! " 
 
 He smiled good-humouredly. " I won't deny it," 
 he said. 
 
 *' But how did you manage to write the music ?" 
 
 " Didn't I tell you I had a lot of comic songs in stock 
 from my old touring days ? I took these tunes, 
 transposed them into the minor, and slowed them 
 down." 
 
 " And the orchestration ? " 
 
 " Oh, there are so many starving musicians in London, 
 who have taken degrees and all that. They will write 
 you an accompaniment for a mere song — no pun in- 
 tended. The words needed even less alteration. Later 
 on, in the full tide of my success, I was pressed to accept 
 an appointment at a musical college, and, in the hopes 
 of learning something from my pupils, I took it. I 
 picked up a good many hints from their singing, studied 
 the harmony text-books pari xxf-ssu with them, and com- 
 pleted my education by allowing them to orchestrate 
 my compositions." 
 
 " Well, you 've had the devil's own luck." 
 
 " In truth, the devil's," he repeated gloomily. " When 
 the excitement of the first struggle was over, none could 
 feel that more acutely than I. Paul, up to my London 
 d6but, my conscience was pure. I joyed in my work, 
 and the thorns on the road to honest success only gave
 
 I50 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 me the rapture of the fight. Now I felt my whole life 
 was a sham and a disgrace." 
 
 " No, no ! " I said, " you earned your money 
 honestly." 
 
 " I did not," he said. " My life was a lie ; I, who was 
 brimming over with humour, had to wear the cramping 
 folds of Eomanticism. I wanted to sing ' Forty Winks'; 
 my existence has been one long wink. Everything was 
 sacrificed to my reputation." 
 
 " But suppose somebody had identified you as Harry 
 Slapup ? " 
 
 " Unfortunately that was impossible. How should 
 those who knew the grub recognise the caterpillar ? " 
 
 " Then your secret was safe ? " 
 
 " Alas ! yes. My mother knew of my comic aspira- 
 tions, but the world at large took me quite seriously." 
 
 " What about Dabchick ? " 
 
 " He was not at large. The only man in the world 
 who knew my unhappy secret was confined in Portland 
 for bank defalcations. Imagine then how choked and 
 stifled my true self has been." 
 
 " I do not wonder you dropped into the Crown 
 occasionally," I said. 
 
 " Thank you, thank you, Paul," he said, the tears 
 coming into his eyes. " But for that I should have 
 gone mad. It was the only vent. There I threw off 
 the painful mask and revelled in my real self. They 
 thousht I had an engagement at some London music- 
 hall, and were very proud of me. Often I have gone 
 thither straight from a marchioness's reception and 
 found relief and recreation." 
 
 " But there was consolation in this unreal life — the 
 feminine devotion you have attracted "
 
 THE FALL OF LSRAFEL 151 
 
 " D — n it, Paul," he said brutally, " surely you are 
 not going to throw that up at me, too ? Why do you 
 think I joined the Bachelors' Club last year, if it was 
 not that I was driven into misogyny by this same 
 feminine devotion, by this undisguised admiration of 
 silly young girls and sillier old women, by the shoals of 
 scented notes, the wagon-loads of presents, the marriage 
 proposals, and the dinner and elopement invitations 
 received by the gross ? " 
 
 " Forgive me," I said gently, " I thought you liked 
 it." 
 
 " Liked it ? Why, don't you know that I was so fond 
 of singing at your concerts, only because it was one of 
 the few occasions I could be sure of an audience of 
 men % Can you not feel how wretched it was for me to 
 stand up under the ogling gaze of five hundred women, 
 varied at wide intervals by a solitary man or small boy ? 
 Oh the horror of it for a modest man ! " He buried his 
 face in his hands. 
 
 " Oh, but you had the satisfaction of supporting your 
 aged mother in luxury." 
 
 " It was my sole consolation. And that brings me 
 to the crux of the matter. I had gone on appeasing my 
 conscience with this sop for years, when suddenly, six 
 months ago, the excuse was taken from me. My poor 
 
 old mother " his voice broke, and he wiped away 
 
 a tear. 
 
 " Died ? " 
 
 "No, married. I kept her in such luxury that a 
 young gentleman, of moderate means, mistook her for a 
 rich widow and eloped with her. I have forgiven her ; 
 I hope he has. Anyway she is provided for. The 
 pangs of conscience now became intolerable. Better, I
 
 152 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 thought, an honest crust than a dishonest cream- 
 tart. What was to be done ? To become a comic 
 singer was out of the question. I had gone too far for 
 that. I could not undo the past. The only course left 
 to me was to press on to the higher branches of serious 
 music. I could make the transition gradually and 
 imperceptibly, leaving behind my sentimentality as the 
 nautilus moves from its early chambers. I could rise 
 on stepping-stones of my dead self to higher things ! 
 By this time, what with teaching, what with composing 
 and criticising, I had picked up a very fair knowledge 
 of music. 1 could now harmonise my own airs. I took 
 private lessons from a famous singing-master, and left 
 no stone unturned to cultivate art earnestly and with 
 dignity. One day I introduced some classical items 
 from the great masters into my afternoon programme 
 and I wrote a little cantata. The change had been well 
 advertised ; but, to my disgust, the audience remained 
 unchanged, — an oasis of man in a desert of woman. 
 Everywhere frocks, frocks, frocks, fans, lorgnettes, hand- 
 glasses, scented handkerchiefs. Pah ! it made me sick. 
 My classical items were coldly received. My journal- 
 istic friends were eulogistic enough in the papers they 
 were openly connected with. But how they took it out 
 of me in those for which they wrote in secret. I, with 
 my airs and graces, my lyrics and my female acolytes, 
 had long been the butt of the comic papers, but my 
 efforts to amend only brought down severer satire on 
 my defenceless head ! And how these epigrams stung ! 
 The chief sting lay in the fact that I could have written 
 them myself. I knew, too, how they sneered at me in 
 the Clubs behind my back, and how men said I made 
 them ill, and expressed an amiable desire to kick me.
 
 THE FALL OF ISRAFEL 153 
 
 Paul, if I have seemed to wax fat by charlatanism, 
 Heaven has not let me go unpunished. If I had earned 
 a fortune, I had earned also the contempt of every 
 honest heart, including my own." 
 
 " Don't talk so," I cried ; " I, at least, do not despise 
 you." 
 
 " You do, you do ; you must. This must end. I 
 cannot drag on this life of insincerity. I have read 
 Ibsen, and I know honesty is the only policy. There 
 is only one way to free my life from these clogs and 
 shackles, these sneers and sarcasms — there is only one 
 path to the higher life of art." 
 
 " And that is ? " 
 
 " Marriage." 
 
 Another ! I closed my eyes. A faintness overcame 
 me. Israfel's voice sounded far away. 
 
 "The thought only came to me last Saturday. A 
 casual newspaper sarcasm has illumined my life. This 
 week's Hornet says : — ' Mr. Mondego is the most single- 
 minded devotee of art in the country. And to this 
 siuffle-mindedness he owes all his success. The lesson 
 should be encouraging to musical aspirants.' What a 
 flood of light this threw on my past ! How blind I 
 had been ! Tliat was it, that was the stumbling- 
 block in the path of my progress ! / dared not 
 marry, — that was what the world was thinking. I 
 had no artistic dignity ; I had not even conceit enough 
 to rely on the attractions of my music. I^Iy whole 
 popularity depended on my remaining single, so as to 
 keep alive the hopes of all my female admirers ! Well, 
 they sliould see. These thoughts have been agitating 
 me for days. My reception at to-night's concert 
 clinched my resolution. Even my fellow Bachelors
 
 154 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 refused to take me seriously. Why should I trouble 
 about my allegiance to their principles or let this stand 
 in the way of the higher life ? " 
 
 " And you have resolved finally ? " I breathed. 
 
 "Finally. Marriage will strike the key-note of my 
 future, of my independence, of my artistic seriousness. 
 It will show I am not a mere caterer for amorous ad- 
 mirers ; that I supply music, not flirtation. Marriage 
 will be the transition to the truer life; it alone can 
 resolve the discord in my existence." 
 
 " Or prepare it," I murmured. " And don't you 
 remember the definition of marriage as the common 
 chord of two flats ? " 
 
 " Japes cannot move me now," he replied. " I must 
 lay this libellous imputation on my artistic life. 
 Marriage is the only remedy. After tlie honeymoon 
 I shall sing no more love-songs." 
 
 " That is extremely probable," I muttered. 
 
 " I shall write and sing only classical music ; music 
 to live, not music to live by." 
 
 " And what if you fail ? " 
 
 " Then at least I fail in a good cause. I do not think 
 I shall fail, once I have cut myself adrift from the 
 network of petticoats ; but if the worst come to the 
 worst, I will emigrate to the Antipodes and under a 
 new name try to live a new and honest life as a comic 
 singer in a new land. As a Clown I can always get a 
 living, and the performance of manhood may yet crown 
 the expectation of infancy." 
 
 "And whom will you marry ?" 
 
 "I have thought of that, too. I shall marry the 
 woman who, of all women in the world, has the least 
 soul for music and the worst ear."
 
 THE FALL OF LSRAFEL 155 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "So that if I fail in ray artistic aspirations, or if it is true 
 that I am only accepted because I am a Bachelor, she 
 may not regret it. Besides, one does not care to rehearse 
 one's songs before a trained ear. It must be so painful 
 to it. Then you might both want to occupy the piano 
 at the same time, and the ensuing duet might not be 
 harmonious. The woman who cannot tell ' God Save 
 the Queen' from Schubert's 'Serenade,' except by 
 seeing the people putting on their wraps and overcoats, 
 is the musician's fittest mate. If I have to turn to 
 comic singinjj, she will not think it a fall. Your 
 superior person is so unsuperior to prejudices, and 
 cannot see that in the Kingdom of Art are many 
 mansions, each as perfect in its way as the rest." 
 
 " And have you such a person in your eye ? " 
 
 " I have." 
 
 " I am sorry." 
 
 " Ah, perhaps some day there will be a beam in your 
 Dwn eye." 
 
 " Xever ; but who is the mote in yours ?" 
 
 "One of my pupils ; she is not beautiful, but she is 
 absolutely a clod in music. Unfortunately for herself, 
 her people are rich and have as little ear as herself. 
 So they think she is going to be a great singer, and 
 don't grudge the expense. She has been with me for 
 fifteen terms, and if she knows a B from a bull's foot or 
 an F sharp, it is the extent of her musical acquirements. 
 She cannot sing a phrase of three notes without 
 flattening or sharpening. Other girls equally devoid of 
 ear might develop one later, but hers is tried and 
 untrue." 
 
 " But suppose she refuses you ? "
 
 156 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " Impossible. If she did not admire me she would 
 not have the worst ear for music in the world." 
 
 '•' You are too hard on yourself. Well, good-night. I 
 know the worst. Thanks for your confidence. Poor 
 M'Gullicuddy ! I have a hard task before me." 
 
 " I have confidence in your tact. And you will be 
 secret?" 
 
 " As the cremation urn." 
 
 "Well, good-niglit. Another glass of champagne ?" 
 
 " Thank you. Here 's prosperity to the Society Clown. 
 
 Good-night." 
 
 " Good-night." 
 
 * * t * * 
 
 The Bachelors had hardly recovered from the 
 customary period of mourning when they learnt that 
 Israfel had sailed for the Antipodes — alone. A week 
 after the following paragraph appeared in The Carrion 
 Grow : — 
 
 "Mr. Israfel Mondego, the popular tenor, whose marriage a 
 fortnight ago excited so much heartburning, and who has probably 
 dealt a severe blow to his reputation by his invidious choice, has 
 left England on an Irish honeymoon — by himself. It is whispered 
 that the lady who has led him to the altar was so romantically in love 
 with him that she attended his lessons for fifteen terms — always 
 marking time (not in a musical sense) rather than progress to the 
 point at which she would have had no excuse for retaining the 
 services of her fascinating music-master. Mrs. Israfel Mondego's 
 first musical matinee at St. James's Hall next TImrsday week should 
 attract a large audience, for in addition to the natural interest 
 centring in her, it is understood that she is a most accomplished 
 pianist and vocalist. It is rumoured that Mr. Mondego intends 
 trying the experiment of a series of vocal recitals, of an un- 
 accustomed kind, in Sydney and Melbourne, and that he will as 
 usual accompany himself, his wife having apparently refused to 
 do so. . . . "
 
 THE FALL OF ISRAFEL 157 
 
 I do not understand how this last bit got into print. 
 It is true I mentioned it in confidence when I was 
 writing to my friend, the Editor, but I had no idea he 
 would dare to print it. And why he should insult me 
 by sending me a cheque for a guinea I do not under- 
 stand. Still, one has to pocket so many insults in this 
 world.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE LOGIC OF LOVE. 
 
 .UNE found the 
 
 Club still sufter- 
 
 um from the defection 
 
 of Israfel. There was 
 
 no member whose loss 
 
 could have grieved us 
 
 so much. In him the 
 
 Club lost at once a 
 
 butt and a buttress. 
 
 Take him for all in all, we 
 
 felt we should not look upon 
 
 his like again. 
 
 Joseph Fogson, M.D., B.Sc, 
 had drowned his grief in 
 medicine. He went practis- 
 ing in Betlmal Green, just to 
 oblige an old and overworked 
 hospital chum who was 
 laiocked up — too frequently in the dead of night. 
 Josepli Fogson had no need to practise on help- 
 less invalids for a living, for he had a private fortune. 
 It was left to liim unexpectedly, after he had spent the 
 best years of his youtli in poring over miserable books 
 and cutting up wretched dry-as-dust corpses. He was 
 
 158
 
 THE LOGIC OF LOVE 159 
 
 a terrible toiler, and brilliant to boot, and had won all 
 sorts of medals and scholarships, and had none of the 
 virtues of the medical charlatan, and never dreamed of 
 anything but a lifetime of mitigated poverty. So when 
 the solicitor told him he was worth two thousand a 
 year he was dreadfully annoyed. Eemorse for his 
 squandered youth set in severely. He wasted months 
 in regretting the time he had wasted. Verily, a young 
 man may sow his wild oats, but conscience will not 
 digest the- harvest without aches and agonies manifold. 
 His repentance came too late to avail him ; his youthful 
 excesses of work had impoverished his system. The 
 exuberance necessary to enjoyment was for ever 
 vanished. It was a terrible sermon on the vanity of 
 labour. 
 
 It was no less forcible a homily on the slavery of 
 habit. Our old vices cannot be cast off like our old 
 clothes and exchanged for new. We have inoculated 
 ourselves with them, and they cannot be expelled from 
 the blood. Thus it was that when Joseph Fogson, M.D., 
 B.Sc, went to Bethnal Green as a substitute for his 
 chum he worked shockingly hard, and did a frightful 
 amount of good to the sickly residents of the dreary 
 district. 
 
 And all for notliiug, too; which hardly seemed fair. 
 It was all very well for him to look after my health 
 without fee, but what claim had these Bethnal Green- 
 landers upon him ? I was glad to meet him in the 
 Strand at last, and to divine from his presence theie 
 that his thankless task was over. 
 
 I held out my hand to him warmly, for it was almost 
 a fortnight since I had seen him. 
 
 " How am I ? " I said heartily.
 
 i6o THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 He grasped my hand cordially, and placed his finger 
 upon my wrist. 
 
 " You are seedy, old man," he said instantly. " You 
 are queer." 
 
 I was so alarmed and surprised that my umbrella fell 
 from my other hand, and my head began to ache. 
 Evidently I had felt the loss of Israfel more deeply than 
 I had imagined. Joseph rescued my umbrella from 
 under the feet of a careless chorus girl, who was 
 trampling on it with the haughtiness of a prima donna. 
 Then he said — 
 
 " And how am /, Paul ? " 
 
 " Not quite well, thank you," I said, for his face told 
 a sad tale of late hours and late patients. It was a fine 
 handsome sympathetic face at its best, with a noble 
 forehead, a neat moustache, and dreamy blue-grey eyes. 
 
 " You are right," he said wearily. " I feel quite 
 washed out. Strangehowa week's work floors me. I shall 
 never make old bones, though I may lecture on them." 
 
 His demeanour made me anxious. "And what do 
 you advise me to take ? " I inquired nervously. 
 
 " A holiday," he replied. " Go for a walking-tour." 
 
 " Oh, but it 's only June," I said. " Only clerks 
 leave town in June." 
 
 "You can't put off your seedy-time till a more 
 fashionable month, can you ? " 
 
 " No," I replied sadly. " It 's a great nuisance, because 
 I 'm very fond of walking-tours. But if I go, will you 
 come witli me ? " 
 
 He refused point-blank, but I persuaded him at last. 
 
 "We '11 start to-day," he said resignedly. "June is 
 a lovely month for walking-tours — the sun's not so 
 scorching as later."
 
 THE LOGIC OF LOVE i6i 
 
 " Oh, but I 'm not ready to start," I said. 
 
 "Nonsense. You just pack a satchel or knapsack 
 with a few necessaries. This sort of thing, you know." 
 He half drew out a cloth-bag from his coat-tail pocket, 
 then shoved it back. 
 
 " You impostor ! " I said. " You have trapped me. 
 You were looking out for a companion for your own 
 walking-tour." 
 
 He smiled frankly. 
 
 " I won't go with you," I said laughingly, " I don't 
 see why I should go as companion to a gentleman for 
 nothing." 
 
 " Oh, if that 's all, I '11 pay the exes." 
 
 I refused point-blank, but he persuaded me at last. 
 After all it was a shame to see his money giving en- 
 joyment to no one ; and if I were with him, I might 
 brighten him up a bit. 
 
 " But I prefer a walking-tour by bicycle," I urged. 
 " Walking-tours on foot are so slow. You get over so 
 little country." 
 
 " But I can't ride a bicycle," answered Joseph Fog- 
 son, M.D., B.Sc. 
 
 I could not either. That was why I wanted to, and 
 said so with trutii. 
 
 I grumbled so at having to make this fresh concession 
 to Fogson's convenience, that by the time we started it 
 was understood that I was placing him under a heavy 
 obligation in allowing him to be responsible for my 
 expenses. We made a bee-line, more or less, for Ports- 
 mouth, and, interrupting our walk, we sailed from South- 
 sea across the crisping channel to the " Garden of 
 England." We landed safely upon the right tight little 
 island, secured at every point by a merciless battery
 
 1 62 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 of pier-tolls against all danger of invasion by vagrom 
 Ishmaels. The weather was glorious, the sky glittered 
 like a sapphire, the sea sparkled like champagne, and I 
 felt as if I had swallowed some. EvenFogson was slightly 
 inebriated by the glow and freshness of an unreal Eng- 
 lish summer. As we struck across the flowering 
 odorous isle, inhaling the ozone and watching the many 
 beautifully-painted butterflies fluttering among the 
 poppies, Fogson grew quite jolly and told me the 
 names of everything in Latin. I paid no attention to 
 him, but I remember not one of those butterflies had a 
 plain double-jointed Christian name. Each had been 
 christened as complexly as if it were a peer of the realm. 
 
 We did not follow the usual tourist's route, but 
 explored the interior, which is a maze of loveliness, 
 abounding in tempting perspectives. Every leafy 
 avenue is rich in promise ; such nestling farmhouses, 
 such peeping spires, such quaint red-tiled cottages, such 
 picturesque old-fashioned mullioned windows, such 
 delicious wafts of perfume from the gardens and 
 orchards, such bits of beautiful Old England, as are per- 
 haps nowhere else so profusely scattered ! 
 
 Suddenly Fogson heaved a sigh of content. 
 
 " "What does this remind you of, Paul ? " he said. 
 
 " Of Mandeville Brown," I answered immediately. 
 
 " Of Mandeville Brown ? " he echoed incredulously. 
 
 " Yes," I said. " I keep thinking what a fool he is 
 to say life is not worth living. I wish he was here." 
 
 " I don't," Fogson burst forth. " He would blight the 
 deep peace of nature. He would be like the serpent in 
 Paradise, bringing to it the knowledge of good and 
 evil. Ah, what a fine old allegory was that ! Oh this 
 disease of thought! Thought about things was the primi'
 
 THE LOGIC OF LOVE 163 
 
 tive curse ; but thought about thought is the modern 
 malison." 
 
 I was surprised to find this vein of sentiment 
 in the man of science. But you can learn more 
 of a man by living with him two days than by two 
 years of superficial association spread over ten. 
 
 " But I did not use the word ' remind ' in your sense," 
 he went on, more calmly. " What this scene with 
 its rustic beauty, its idyllic sweetness, its healthy 
 freshness,' reminds me of is the very antithesis of 
 Mandeville Brown." 
 
 " Yes ? " I said encouragingly, for I do not like to see 
 a man hesitate on the edge of a revelation. " It reminds 
 you of " 
 
 "No matter, you don't know her." 
 
 Her ? I grew pale. " Doesn't matter ? " I said. 
 " I should like to. It reminds you of " 
 
 " It reminds me," he said, and his eyes filled with 
 soft dreamy light, — " it reminds me of Barbara." 
 
 A swarm of gorgeous butterflies seemed whirling 
 before my eyes but I walked on, keeping time with the 
 sentimental Doctor of Medicine. Left foot, right foot, 
 left foot, right foot — so we plod on in our dull mechanic 
 tasks, thoufdi the universe lies exanimate at our feet. 
 
 " And who is Barbara ? " I said at length. 
 
 " Barbara is " and again his eyes wore the rapt 
 
 ecstatic look of an anchorite beholding a heavenly vision, 
 of a poet bodying forth the shapes of things unknown. 
 " Barbara is — the incarnation of all that is most fair 
 and pure and exquisite in sweet English girlhood. She 
 is the warmth of the heart and the light of the eyes. 
 Her instincts are pure as the white rose she wears at her 
 bosom. She is healthy without coarseness and chaste
 
 t64 the CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 without consciousness or prudery, and she looks at you 
 candidly with limpid blue eyes. She is joyous and 
 debonair as a May morning. She dresses in spotless 
 white with a simple hat of straw. She speaks no 
 language but her mother-tongue, but oh how the sweet 
 Saxon words ripple from between her pearly teeth in a 
 flowing music of syllables. And when she sings some 
 simple air, the soul of this fair motherland of ours seems 
 to have entered into the song, and it breathes of new- 
 mown hay, and harvest wains, and russet orchards, and 
 snowy hawthorn, and calm lowing kine, and the white 
 moon, and bowls of bubbly milk, rich and creamy, 
 and the soft restfulness of nature, and the gentle ordered 
 life of rustic generations, and the sweet sanctities of 
 old household ways, and old-fashioned fireplaces ruddy 
 with rough crackling logs, and wainscoted chambers, 
 and huge smoking platters, and diamond panes, and 
 jasmine and eglantine " 
 
 He paused suddenly. He had forgotten himself. 
 He remembered me. He stole a sidelong embarrassed 
 look at me. 
 
 " So that is Barbara," I said, mastering my emotion 
 and the thought of M'Gullicuddy. 
 
 " Yes, that is Barbara." 
 
 " Where does she live ? " 
 
 " On a farm in the heart of rural England," he 
 answered readily. " She has never been to London. 
 She does not play the piano. She has not been philis- 
 tinised by a ' refined education.' She cuts bread and 
 makes butter with her own white hands. She milks 
 the cows in the morning." 
 
 " A dairy nuiid," I said. 
 
 " No, no. She is the farmer's daughter."
 
 THE LOGIC OF LOVE 165 
 
 " Js she tall or short ? " 
 
 " Medium. Her figure is lissom ; the curves tremble 
 upon womanhood. She moves as gracefully as a fawn, 
 and her heart is as tender as it is true. She is a girl 
 who will love once and deeply and for ever." 
 
 " How long have you known her ? " 
 
 " Let me see — it was in my first year at the hospital. 
 It must be — let me see, yes — it must be quite ten years 
 now. Ten wasted years," he repeated and his eyes filled 
 with tears and his mobile mouth trembled. "Ten 
 years since then. Ah, how the time flies — and life 
 passes away unemployed, unenjoyed." 
 
 "But surely you ought not to complain. You are 
 
 young yet and wealthy and have only to ask to 
 
 have." 
 
 " My dear Paul," he said, smiling sadly and laying 
 
 a gentle, trembling hand on my shoulder, "I am too 
 
 nmch a spectator of life to seize the happiness that lies 
 
 to my hand. But don't let us speak of this subject any 
 
 more. It recalls too many bitter memories." 
 
 I made no demur; for a week he was mine as the 
 wedding (niest was the Ancient Mariner's. There was 
 no hurry to extort the whole truth. He would return 
 to Barbara of himself soon enough. 
 
 My insight was justified. He returned to her that 
 very night. 
 
 We were located in a curious double-bedded room in 
 a little inland inn. The Doctor of Medicine stood at 
 the narrow casement, looking over the lovely moonlit 
 landscape. The rich meadows stretched away peace- 
 fully and the air was drowsy with sweet country scents. 
 The Doctor took his pipe from his mouth and pointed 
 vaguely towards the horizon.
 
 1 66 THE CELIBATE^ ClMB 
 
 "Yonder," he said, half to me, half in reverie, — • 
 "yonder lives Barbara." 
 
 So this was why he had come to the Isle of Wight. 
 Poor M'Gullicuddy ! fl 
 
 " We shall probably be seeing her to-morrow, then ? " '^| 
 I said, with affected cheerfulness. ■ 
 
 He shook his head. " I am afraid not," he said, 
 turning towards me a full honest face, shadowed by a 
 melancholy smile. He sighed, moved away from the 
 casement, slid it half back, and commenced undressing. 
 I followed suit and in another few minutes we were in 
 our beds, with candles extinguished and the moonlight 
 streaming upon the floor. Only one of us slept. It 
 was Joseph Fogson, M.D., B.Sc, My brain was too 
 busy to rest. In vain I tried to think of nothing. It 
 went clicking away like a tape-machine, turning out 
 thoughts as the machine turns out inches of news. 
 There was a little wind in the trees about midnight and 
 the hour was chimed from some neighbouring steeple 
 at apparently uneven intervals. These were the only 
 sounds that came to vary the monotony of my thoughts 
 till about a quarter past one, when I heard a strange sound 
 of muttering in the room. My pulse stood still. In 
 another moment I was smiling at myself. The noise 
 came from Fogson's bed. He was talking in his sleep. 
 I strained my ears, but could not catch the words. I 
 slipped noiselessly from between the slieets, and glided 
 in my white night-shirt across the strip of moonlight 
 that lay between our beds. I bent over his lips. 
 
 " Barbara ! " he murmured. " Barbara ! " 
 
 This time I felt only pity. My indignation was dead. 
 If Barbara was all he painted her, his sufierings must 
 indeed be poignant. Not to Imve culled this fresh and 
 
 I
 
 THE LOGIC OF LOVE 167 
 
 fair young flower of English girlhood must needs make 
 life bitter to any one who believed in love, — and to 
 my surprise, Fogson was a recreant to the Club in 
 theory if not in practice. I placed my hand gently 
 upon the big forehead. It was burning. Light as 
 my touch was, it awake him. He stared at me wildly. 
 
 " It 's only me — Paul," I said soothingly. 
 
 " Thank Heaven ! " he said. " I took you for a ghost 
 and was afraid " 
 
 " Afraid \ " I I'aughed gently. " You, a material- 
 istic doctor afraid ? " 
 
 "Not of the ghost," he repeated. "I didn't care 
 a jot for that. My fear was that I should have to 
 recast the psychical theories of a lifetime and eat 
 spiritualistic humble-pie. But why are you out of bed ? " 
 
 " You seemed restless and feverish," I said. 
 
 " It is very good of you, Paul," he said gratefully. 
 "Yes, I suppose I was more knocked up than I imagined, 
 and our long walk has overtaxed my strength. I sup- 
 pose I was talking in my sleep." 
 
 "You were," I said, watcliing him narrowly as I 
 probed him with the lancet. " You were talking about 
 Barbara." 
 
 "I do not wonder," he replied without wincing. 
 "Whenever I get among real English scenery like this^ 
 ivy-clad churches and granges and cows and the scent 
 of the honeysuckle, my thoughts will go back to her ; 
 my brain conjures her up of itself. Great is the Law 
 of Association and it will prevail." 
 
 "Well, let it have its way," I said. ''Tell me 
 about her again. It will ease your brain. The nervous 
 currents will discharge themselves, tlien you will 
 sleep quietly."
 
 168 THE CELIBATES'' CLUB 
 
 " Bravo, Paul," said the Doctor. " You have trans- 
 lated the confessional into its physiological equivalents. 
 You deserve to hear my little story. It will entertain 
 you and ease me, as you say. But you are sure you 
 don't want go to sleep ? " 
 
 " I do. I haven't been able to. Perhaps your tale 
 will make me." 
 
 " All right," laughed back the Doctor. " But go back 
 to bed, old fellow, or you'll catch cold, and then 
 ho ! for gruel and physic. Eeady ! Well, here goes. 
 . . . Ten years ago I was a student at Sebastian's 
 Hospital in Glasgow, for I have the honour of being 
 a countryman of our President. I had little money 
 and less expectations. I studied day and night, and 
 eked out my income by winning a few scholarships, 
 which was easy enough, for I had taken unexpectedly 
 to the profession and was considerably older than the 
 average student of my year. I lived quite alone in a 
 cheerless attic, with a skull, a box of bones, and a 
 microscope for sole ornament. The district w^as shabby 
 and gloomy, but it was near the hospital and cheap. 
 The maid-of-all-work was slatternly and the table- 
 linen was dirty. I spent the day listening to lectures, 
 committing to memory dull catalogues of muscles and 
 chemical formulse, and dissecting one wizened old 
 woman. Eight of us were at work upon her, like the 
 dwarfs upon Gulliver — some at the arms, some at the 
 head, some at the feet, till she was whittled out of 
 all recognition. I mention these things to show you 
 that everything combined to make existence a grey 
 fog. I was working for the degree of B.Sc, at the 
 same time as for the M.B., so that I babbled of molecules 
 in my dreams, as I did to-night of Barbara. I had no
 
 THE LOGIC OF LOVE: xOQ 
 
 time nor thouglit but for my books and my specimens. 
 The work was tedious to a degree, much more so to 
 two degrees, though I had determined to master it. 
 The treatises were written in an uncouth jargon, and 
 unenlivened by a gleam of fancy or humour or litera- 
 ture, and I have always been a lover of the human and 
 the living. AVhen I said that my existence was a grey 
 fog I forgot the rifts in it. My sense of humour now 
 and then emitted a feeble radiance, w^hich pierced the 
 leaden vapours that were closing in on my soul. The 
 students were such prigs and fools ; the lines of 
 demarcation between first year's and second year's, 
 and third year's were so childishly rigid ; the fellows 
 had no sense of fun ; Bob Allen and Tom Sawyer 
 had grown staid and decorous ; they cared so little 
 for anything but the pecuniary side of the medical 
 career. The lecturers were rather better, and I got a 
 little amusement out of their idiosyncrasies. One used 
 to throw open the door of the lecture-room punctually 
 at 9 A.M., and ere his hand had relinquished its hold of 
 the door-handle, he would be heard saying, * The 
 Oisophagus, gentlemen,' and before he had reached his 
 desk we knew quite a number of the curiosities of the 
 oesophagus. Another would say, ' If you please, gentle- 
 men, the functions of the medulla oblongata are, etc.,' 
 as if we could alter the constitution of the microcosm 
 at our own sweet will. I was often very tempted to 
 say that I was not pleased with the sentience of the 
 dental nerves, or that I derived no particular satis- 
 faction from the percentage of white corpuscles in the 
 blood, or that I strongly objected to the position of the 
 pancreas, or to muscles being irritated. But I never 
 succumbed to the temptation. Another old fellow, I
 
 170 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 remember, had a trick of prefacing every sentence with 
 the phrase, ' As a matter of fact, gentlemen.' I 
 dubbed him the matter-of-fact professor, though, as a 
 matter of fact, he was a very amusing and anecdotal 
 lecturer, and often illumined his discourse by funny 
 stories, which he admitted to be apocryphal, but which 
 he invariably commenced with, ' As a matter of fact, 
 gentlemen.' 
 
 " But even these humours soon palled and ceased to 
 amuse me. They were not enough to counterbalance 
 the gloom of all my surroundings. After I had got into 
 the groove of the medical work, I began to take up the 
 Logic and the Psychology which were necessary for the 
 B.Sc. I began with the Psychology, as the more novel 
 and diflficult of the two to tackle. I flattered myself I 
 had no lack of Logic. But what Psychology might be I 
 knew not. I had heard vague and awful rumours that it 
 was stiff, though I was not inclined to attach much im- 
 portance to that. My predecessors from early school- 
 boyhood had always called everything stiff. To me the 
 adjective was chiefly associated with glasses of grog. I 
 had no use for it in connection with study. 
 
 " I started one night at ten, and read on fascinated till 
 daylight. A new world had opened before me, of which 
 I had hitherto known nothing. I read on breathlessly, 
 silent as Cortes upon that peak in Darien. But it was 
 a world of gloom and horror, of Dis and the ebon 
 shades, and I explored it with a curiosity that was 
 morbid. From that day to this I have never had a 
 thoroughly healthy thought. For introspection was 
 born in my soul, and introspection is nothing more nor 
 less than a mental affliction. Introspection is the 
 highest and most intellectual form of lunacy. Physical
 
 THE LOGIC OF LOVE 171 
 
 dissection had made me morbid enougli. To see the 
 springs of this vaunted life of ours laid bare, to magnify 
 the grey matter of thought and love two thousand dia- 
 meters under a microscope, to hack and cut the human 
 form bestial till every nerve was tracked to its route, 
 every fibre and filament forced to reveal its function, — 
 all this had made human life seem to me a poor thing 
 and a brutish. Isolated from all human relations as I 
 was, the world became to me but a vast dissecting- 
 room, wher'e seemingly living beings strutted and fretted 
 it by the reflex action of galvanised muscles. My 
 eye undressed the people I met in the street, and 
 stretched them cold and rigid upon deal boards, and 
 turned up their muscles. Tliey were but cunning 
 collocations of cells, informed by an allotropic modifica- 
 tion of electricity, and hastening to dissolution, disin- 
 tegrating at the merest trifle. But over all was the 
 mystery of the human soul ; and now and then in 
 moments of reaction the inadequacy of unconscious 
 atoms to evolve their own analysers was flashed fitfully 
 upon me. 
 
 "When I had hearkened to the message of the Psycho- 
 logists the last vestige of interest in life died away. 
 The last sparkle was taken from the cup of life, leaving 
 a dull, insipid fluid. It was the extreme empirical 
 school into whose hands I had fallen, and they stripped 
 me of all my faculties and left me not a rag wherewith to 
 cover my nakedness. I had lost faith in everything else ; 
 they robbed me of my faith in myself, and left me a 
 battered wreck. I didn't mind knowing how my body 
 worked, but I rebelled against my mind being picked to 
 pieces. Nevertheless, in spite of all my inward revolts, I 
 was carried along on a stream of remorseless logic. I lost
 
 172 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 my Memory, on which I had hitherto prided myself ; it 
 was resolved into a bundle of associations, none of 
 which existed till called for, though they were all wait- 
 ing patiently outside the door of existence, ready to 
 come in when wanted. I thought it was very good 
 of them. Evidently they had been trained in a good 
 school — empirical as it was. I learnt that there was po 
 such thing as Personality (though real estate was un- 
 challenged). I mourned over my lost Personality, till 
 I discovered that I had several Personalities instead. 
 But I was not used to my own society, and I felt 
 rather awkward and shy. I did not like having so 
 many Personalities. I was jealous of their being Me. 
 I wanted a monopoly of myself. I had worked hard to 
 tiain myself from earliest youth, and I didn't see why 
 these other Personalities should romp in at this ad- 
 vanced hour. Kings and editors might express them- 
 selves in the first person plural if they liked, but I 
 wanted the good old first person singular, which I had 
 used from childhood. When I learnt that I hadn't used 
 it from childhood, but had spoken of myself familiarly 
 by the name of ' Joey,' I gave in with a groan. I 
 had started with two Personalities, and I must have 
 grown them like teeth. Perhaps I had thirty-two of 
 them. I lost my Self in the crowd. 
 
 " By this time I was not sorry to discover tliat I did 
 not exist. Life was, indeed, hardly worth having on 
 those terms. It saved endless complications with my 
 selves not to exist. It was rather a nuisance, though, 
 to have to continue to live, all the same, for it was only 
 my / that was put out. By a mistaken kindness I was 
 reprieved and allowed to exist intermittently by a suc- 
 cession of unrelated pulses of consciousness, which
 
 THE LOGIC OF LOVE 173 
 
 mistook themselves for unity. I was reduced to living 
 from liand-to-mouth, so to speak. Since the publica- 
 tion of Professor Ward's article in the EncydoiJoedia 
 Britannica, each student is allowed a transcendental 
 Personality, as well as an empirical Personality — but 
 tliat was before my time. The new generation is treated 
 a good deal better than the old, and has all sorts of 
 luxuries and facilities that were denied to us. But 
 there, there, I mustn't envy the young people ; the 
 world progresses, and I shan't be the man to grudge 
 them the luck of being born later. 
 
 " I had no sooner lost my I than, reading some 
 Philosophy, I discovered that it was the all in all — 
 the be-all and the end-all of existence. Without me 
 (or some of me) nothing could exist. It was only by 
 virtue of their relation to my consciousness that things 
 could have any being. This great universe with its 
 suns and stars and anatomy lectures was depen- 
 dent upon Me for bare existence. It was a sort of 
 poor relation of my consciousness, which flourished 
 when I shed the light of my countenance upon it and 
 withered away to nothingness when I pitiles^jly shut 
 my doors in its face. I was indescribably elated at 
 the discovery, and cracked a bottle of Bass that night 
 to celebrate it. I slept a drunken sleep of fourteen 
 hours, and missed my morning lecture. I could not 
 start for the hospital till eleven in the forenoon, and 
 when I did I was considerably surprised to see nothing 
 on the evenin" bills about ' Destruction of the Universe 
 — full account by our own correspondent.' I felt sure 
 that, with the competition in the newspaper world, they 
 would not have missed such an important event. I 
 had always wished to be alive when tlie world came to
 
 174 THE CELIBATES'' CLUB 
 
 an end as so long predicted by Mother Shipton and 
 other prophets. Not because I desired to be in at the 
 death, but because I had a strong curiosity to see what 
 the newspapers would say the day after, especially to 
 read the indignant letters to the Times and the leader 
 in the Daily Wire. Anyhow, after this failure of my 
 nihilistic attempt, I came to the conclusion that not the 
 Universe but Philosophy was all my I. As for the 
 assertion that out of our minds nothing could be, I 
 decided that it was manifestly untrue, since the Philo- 
 sopliers were all out of theirs. The joke was that even 
 the books themselves relaxed here, and inserted a 
 flippant passage in the desert of dulness. They 
 asked what was Mind, and they said ' No matter.' 
 They asked what was Matter, and said ' Never mind.' 
 On the other hand, when you inquired further what 
 created Mind they said Matter, and when you asked 
 what created Matter they said Mind — as if Matter 
 and Mind were members of a sort of you-scratch-my- 
 back-and-I '11-scratch-yours society. Their arguments 
 were always going round in circles, so that the realm of 
 philosophy appeared to me like an intellectual dancing 
 academy. At last I gave up the attempt to eat my own 
 head — which constitutes philosophy — but not before a 
 universal scepticism had settled on my soul. I saw 
 that we are automata, moved by heredity and hypno- 
 tism and what not — the playthings of blind forces. 
 The idea of our arriving at absolute Truth, with a 
 capital ' T,' savoured to me of grim humour. I be- 
 came not only a Pyrrhonist but a Pessimist into the 
 bargain. Picture to yourself, if you can, my soul starv- 
 ing; among; these arid surroundings, mental and material. 
 Tiiink of me cutting up bodies by day and minds by
 
 THE LOGIC OF LOVE 175 
 
 night ; imagine a being devoid of interest in life, who 
 would go to weddings without joy and to funerals 
 without sorrow, studying sedulously and unremittiugly, 
 because it was more trouble to depart from his rut than 
 to go on in it ; think of all this and you will have a 
 dim idea of what I was in the first year of my student 
 period at Sebastian's Hospitah 
 
 "It was while I was in this state that I first met Barbara." 
 The Doctor of Medicine paused and drew a long 
 breath. . The streak of moonlight had shifted and lit 
 up his pale face like a glory. I gazed towards him in 
 reverent silence. The radiant figure of Barbara seemed 
 to hover in the wan light — the sweet, sunny English 
 girl whom my friend had loved and lost. Outside the 
 wind had risen, the casement clattered, and the yews 
 rustled mournfully, as if in keeping with the tragedy 
 that was being re-enacted in memory. A chill air 
 penetrated through the embrasure. I shivered and 
 drew the blanket closer around my shoulders. The 
 Doctor continued — 
 
 "I had turned to my Logic at last, to find how mis- 
 taken I had been in imagining I had any. Not unlike 
 M. Jourdain I found, after I had been through the mill, 
 that I had been talking Syllogisms all my life without 
 knowing it. Tliis dissection of lieasoning was the last 
 blow. Body and soul had been subjected to the scalpel, 
 now my very thoughts were generalised and done up into 
 neat little packets. It maddened me to think that I 
 could not argue about anything but Aristotle had ticketed 
 the form of reasoning twenty-two centui-ies before 
 I was born. I hated Aristotle with a wild and bitter 
 hatred, which even he could not have syllogised, because 
 it was unreasoning. The outlook was not improved by
 
 176 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 the incessant reminders of human mortality afforded by 
 my logical text-books. They had only one text — " all 
 men are mortal" — and they preached on it in season and 
 out. Whatever they wanted to prove, they proved by 
 means of that lively text. Did they want to show 
 that a certain argumentative process was sound, they 
 started by remarking that all men were mortal, adding 
 that Gains was a man, etc. Did they want to show that 
 the reasoning was unsound, again they trotted out this 
 time-worn text. So far did they carry their homiletic 
 harping that the most famous of all of them — Mill — 
 built up a whole new theory of the Syllogism on the 
 basis of man's mortality. The text-of-all-work did not 
 frighten me off the course of logical study, for death 
 was no bugbear to me. Still it did not contribute to 
 lighten my gloom. Judge then of what a relief it was 
 to me to come across Barbara. Never shall I forget 
 that night. Outside a sooty fog had settled on the town. 
 It was very cold. I crouched over my bleak cindery 
 fire in my comfortless apartment, grinding away at 
 my Logic. Then, in a moment, Barbara came into my 
 life, and all was changed." 
 
 Again he paused and seemed to follow some hoverino- 
 vision with dreamy upturned gaze. I, too, saw Barbara's 
 gracious figure gliding into that lonely garret, where the 
 pale, world-weary, prematurely-aged student bent over 
 the dying fire, the fresh young presence filling the 
 room with sunshine. I saw her stooping ever him with 
 infinite tenderness, and laying her soft white hand upon 
 his rounded shoulder, while from her rosebud mouth 
 there rippled the music of a caressing syllable. I saw 
 an electric thrill traverse his form. He looked up. His 
 worn face met hers radiant with the joy of life. It was
 
 THE LOGIC OF LOVE 177 
 
 !taust and Marguerite over again. Then I saw their 
 
 lips pressed together, as they sailed away for Bohemia 
 
 in a fairy bark over the syren-haunted waters. 
 
 How sad and bad and mad it was, 
 But oh ! how it was sweet ! 
 
 The Doctor's voice broke in on my musings. 
 
 "Suddenly, as I sat there poring over my book, 
 I caught sight of something that made my whole being 
 thrill. The book fell from my hand, and I gave myself 
 over to a delicious reverie. I had seen Barbara." 
 
 " Where ? " I asked, puzzled. 
 
 " In my book." 
 
 "What! In your Logic?'* 
 
 " Yes ; I thought you knew enough of the subject to 
 understand what happened to me, and why Barbara 
 should have been such a reviving influence upon my life." 
 
 " But who is Barbara ? " 
 
 "Barbara is a Mnemonic Form — her figure is the 
 first, and she is the first in it. She owes her life not to 
 the father of logic but to some of his mediaeval dis* 
 ciples. She was created to jog the memory of students. 
 Her form is most symmetrical — she consists of three 
 universal affirmative propositions, each of which is 
 symbolised in logic by A, so that when divested of 
 clothing she reads AAA. The ancient logicians, 
 knowing that memory was treacherous, thought their 
 pupils would forget her after the first meeting, so they 
 dressed her elusive vowels with consonants, as thus : — 
 BArbArA, and they linked her with other forms in 
 a quatrain, 
 
 Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Fenoque, prioris, etc. etc. 
 
 From which you see that she is the only human 
 member of the dreary group." 
 
 M
 
 178 THE CELIBATES'' CLUB 
 
 "What!" I cried in annoyance. "Your vaunted 
 Barbara is only a logical symbol ! The graceful young 
 Figure you pictured is only a Mediaeval Mnemonic — a 
 middle-aged Form ! I thought she was a reality ! " 
 
 " To me she is," he said simply. " But if she had 
 been so to others do you think I could have joined the 
 Bachelors' Club ? " He pointed proudly to the algae 
 which floated in the glass button-hole he wore. He 
 always wore algse or bacteria in his button-hole because 
 they didn't marry. We unscientific members con- 
 tented ourselves with " bachelor's buttons," a species of 
 ranunculus. 
 
 " But you led me to believe that she was alive, that 
 she lived on a farm somewhere about here, and that 
 she wore " 
 
 " Paul," interrupted the Doctor of Medicine 
 reproachfully, " I distinctly told you the moment you 
 inquired about her tliat she was ideal — the incarnation 
 of all that is most fair and pure and exquisite in sweet 
 English girlhood. She is the warmth of the heart and 
 the light of the eyes. Her instincts are pure as the 
 white rose she wears at her bosom. She is healthy 
 without " 
 
 " Yes, yes, you did say so, Joseph," I cried conscience- 
 stricken. " How could I ever have doubted your fidelity 
 to the Club ? Oh, how stupid I am ! " 
 
 " Perhaps it is my fault," he said soothingly. " But 
 the thing was so clear to me that I could not imagine 
 anybody else looking at it in a different light. But 
 now, I hope, you understand what Barbara has been to 
 me from the moment she first lit up the pages of my 
 Logic. She was the first human creature I had met in 
 those stony solitudes. The name was like magic to
 
 THE LOGIC OF LOVE I79 
 
 me — it was an electric spark kindling my romantic 
 imagination into an instant flame that warmed the rest 
 of my student life. The dry tinder I had been accu- 
 mulating served only to add brilliancy to the flame. 
 Coming to me in my pitiful state, those three sweet 
 syllables flashed before me a vision of youth and hope 
 and beauty. My world became transfigured. It was 
 no longer a prison cell of rusted chains and mouldering 
 prisoners, but a paradise full of life and light and love- 
 liness ; green spaces of meadow and water, and red-tiled 
 cottages, and the song of larks, and the smell of haw- 
 thorn, and new-mown hay, and ruddy orchards, and 
 waving leafage; a place of honest love and healthy 
 labour. Barbara, in short, recalled to me the brighter 
 side of existence, obscured by the disillusioning tech- 
 nicalities of knowledge and dulled by the vxltschmerz 
 of youth. If you have never known how a mere word 
 can stir the pulses you will not understand me. It is 
 the secret of all poetry. In youth the name of Barbara 
 had been among those that set me dreaming. She 
 stood in the sun, with her shining face and her white 
 dress, and the corn rustled healthily at her feet. I 
 fancy her idyllic character, her being of the essence of 
 Endish rural life, came from Barbara Allen. There 
 was even a touch about her as of Elia's Quakers, but her 
 demure simplicity only set off her joyous activity the 
 more. Such was the maiden whom Logic brought 
 afresh into my life, to revive my stagnant soul, perish- 
 ing with blight and drought. You may laugh, and, 
 indeed, sometimes I ask myself whether it was not in 
 a moment of madness, induced by overwork, that she 
 made lier impression upon me, whether I am not mad 
 whenever I think of her, which is unfortunately only
 
 l8o THE CELIBATES'' CLUB 
 
 now and again in my purposeless life. It may be so. 
 Indeed, as a medical man, who has studied morbid 
 psychology with curiosity, I believe it is so. But it is a 
 sweet folly, and it were a greater to be wise. The 
 thought that the world holds such beings as Barbara 
 reconciles me to life." 
 
 I had read of la folic lueide. Surely Fogson was right 
 in thinking himself mad. I tried to dispel the un- 
 healthy air of sentiment that settled in the room. 
 
 " Well, if I had met a General Form called Barbara, 
 I should have conjured up a Salvation Lass." 
 
 " She saved me," he said quietly. " I grew tenderer to 
 my people — as I called my subjects — for her sake. If 
 I got an isolated arm I used the scalpel more delicately. 
 Perhaps that arm might be Barbara's. The result was 
 that I carried off the medal for skilfullest surgery." 
 
 "Ah, that was a tangible advantage now," I said. 
 " Did she ever make you jealous ? " 
 
 " Never," he said good-humouredly, for the tenseness 
 of his emotion was relaxing under my raillery. " I got 
 her by heart instantly, and she has never quitted me 
 since." 
 
 " Oh, of course, she could not say ' no,' " I rejoined, 
 "being wholly composed of affirmative propositions. 
 But did you never try to get hold of her in the 
 flesh ? " 
 
 " Never," he replied again. " There are so few girls 
 named Barbara. I have never met one and " 
 
 " But why not advertise in the agony columns ? 
 * Barbara — If any girl so named will call at Sebastian's 
 Hospital, with her certificate of birth, she will hear of 
 somethino- to her advantage.' Or, ' To Barbara — If the 
 girl who visited me in my garret on a foggy night ten
 
 THE LOGIC OF LOVE i8i 
 
 years ago will return, all sliall be forgotten and for- 
 
 given.' " 
 
 " Please, let it drop," pleaded the Doctor of Medicine, 
 taking a turn for tlie worse. " I have never gone out 
 of my way to find a Barbara, because, as I told you this 
 morning, I have never been able to take a single step 
 in search of personal happiness. But if ever Fate 
 threw in my path a girl so called, well-grounded as my 
 principles are, I feel that I should drift into marrying 
 her, and no power on earth could stay me. When I 
 meditate upon this aspect of the case I grow certain that 
 I am not sane upon this one point. My case is one of 
 the myriad curiosities of pathology. We are all mad on 
 something. This is my foible. Therefore I would 
 rather not contemplate the contingency. It fevers me." 
 He ceased and turned upon his other side, and the wind 
 again possessed the ear in undivided mastery. The 
 moonlight still lay in a refulgent track across the floor, 
 
 " Paul," said the Doctor suddenly, " I cannot sleep. 
 Turn out the moonlight." 
 
 I went to the window and pulled down the blind. 
 The village clock struck "Two." 
 
 o 
 
 We had hardly been walking for an hour the next 
 morning, when the prophecy of the wind fulfilled itself. 
 Large banks of clouds massed themselves in the sky 
 and melted into swishing showers — the landscape 
 became a water-colour. Fogson wanted me to put up 
 my umbrella, though he had at first objected to my 
 taking it with me ; l)ut I could not break through my 
 rule. Besides it was very doubtful whether it would 
 open, the wires were so stiff. But he had to acknow- 
 lediie its usefulness later on, when the flood drove us to
 
 1 82 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 take sJielter in a farmhouse and it came in handy to 
 baffle a bull-dog. A dear old creature received us 
 beneath the dripping eaves — one of those old family 
 servants who had ruined Twinkletop — and conducted 
 us from the picturesque porch into an old-fashioned 
 parlour, hung with Scriptural engravings. Here a still 
 dearer and older creature received us with quaint 
 courtesy. She wore a curiously-fashioned cap over her 
 snow-white hair and her face was gentle and guileless 
 and she wore horn spectacles and was evidently got up 
 at all points, cap-iv-pie, to look like pictures of grand- 
 mothers in the Sunday-school magazines. She had a 
 fire lit by which to dry our clothes, though, as she 
 seemed to think her presence necessary to the opera- 
 tion, it was not conducted so thoroughly as we could 
 have wished. But by the time we were accoutred in 
 wonderful coats that had belonged to her deceased 
 husband and supplied with glasses of hot brandy and 
 water, steaming in friendly rivalry with our garments, 
 we began to feel quite friendly towards her. 
 
 " What are you doing in these parts ? " she inquired 
 kindly. 
 
 " Walking," I said. 
 
 " What for ? " said she. 
 
 " Walking," said Fogson. 
 
 " You walk for the sake of walking ? " she quavered 
 in astonishment. 
 
 " We live merely for the sake of living. There is no 
 other reason that will hold water. Why should we not 
 walk for the sake of walking ? " Thus the Doctor of 
 Medicine. 
 
 That is the worst of Fogson, he will never adapt his 
 conversation to the company.
 
 THE LOGIC OF LOVE 183 
 
 '^ Ah, you be a Lunnouer," said she to Fogson. 
 
 " We are," we said. 
 
 "Ah!" said she, and her wrinkled skin lit up. 
 "Then you know my son John — he went away to 
 Lunnon this thirty year come Martinmas." 
 
 We said that we probably knew him but could not 
 recall him for the moment, as we had come across so 
 many people in London, 
 
 " Where does he live ? " we asked. 
 
 " Oh, he's dead this twenty year," she said cheerfully. 
 " He was a gasiitter in Lunnon, but he went away to 
 'Merica after a year or two and died there." 
 
 Our acquaintanceship with John wove a new bond 
 between us and the good old grandame. She pressed 
 us solicitously to stay to dinner, which would be ready 
 at one o'clock, when her son and her daughter would be 
 in, and she would take no refusal, though the unquench- 
 able sun was shining again. She prattled to us with 
 childish faith about Christianity and the parson's 
 sermons, and her comfort in the thought of joining hei 
 husband and John, though her children were very good 
 to her, God bless them ; and in return, we gave her con- 
 siderable information about the crops. Ten minutes be- 
 fore one she allowed us to go upstairs to a bedroom and 
 wash. Apparently because it was the tidiest she let us 
 use a room which had every appearance of femininity. 
 The walls were hung with dresses and Biblical texts. 
 The dressing-table was crowded with unmanly articles, 
 including jewels, which made us regret that we were 
 honest. Everything was dainty and neat, and faintly 
 redolent of lavender. It was a large old room, with 
 oaken beams in the ceiling and queer little windows 
 through which the sun streamed with mote-laden rays.
 
 i84 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Fogson threw open the folding-windows and looked at 
 the landscape. He never loses an opportunity of looking 
 at the landscape. His vision stretched across the farm- 
 yard over a lovely expanse of rural scenery. Tlie rain- 
 drops were glistening like diamonds on the hedgerows. 
 Honeysuckle and jasmine climbed up the wall to meet 
 him. Everything was fresh and charming, 
 
 " This is the spot," he said at last, " in which Barbara 
 Jives." 
 
 He spoke calmly. I shivered. 
 
 "The sort of spot," I said with a forced laugh, 
 " where your virgin in white would live if she existed. 
 I agree with you." 
 
 "Well, do you know," he said, turning from the 
 window and tucking up his shirt-sleeves for the wash, 
 " I have a presentiment that Barbara is near." 
 
 I guffawed noisily. 
 
 As I was washing, I cauglit sight of something 
 green projecting from under one of the laced pillows of 
 the bed. I touched it. It was the edge of a book. 
 Anxious to learn what literature was popular in 
 these parts, and whether Eliot Dickvay was read, or 
 O'Eoherty, I drew it out. It was one of Jane Austen's 
 novels. I was placing it back when I unhappily 
 bethought myself of the fly-leaf. I turned to it. The 
 inscription dazed me. Fogson came and peered over 
 my shoulder. I snapped the cover in haste. Too 
 late. Fogson stuck his thumb in between and opened 
 the book again. He stared at the inscription for a full 
 minute. 
 
 " Barlara Grey." So ran the fatal characters in a 
 neat feminine handwriting. 
 
 The Doctor of Medicine's eyes filled with the old
 
 THE LOGIC OF LOVE 185 
 
 ecstatic light. We looked at each other with a strange 
 foreboding. Tlien a fit of trembling seized the Doctor. 
 He dropped the book and fell back helplessly upon the 
 bed. 
 
 " The old woman's name is Grey, isn't it ? " he 
 whispered, hoarse with emotion. 
 
 " Y-e-es," I faltered. " But on second thoughts, don't 
 you think we 'd better cut the dinner and get on with 
 our walk ? We 've made no progress to-day at all." 
 
 "Her son — and daughter are coming to dinner," he 
 whispered, half to himself. " I stay here. You can go 
 on if you like." 
 
 Considering that I had only left town for his sake, 
 and that he had been constituted Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, I thought his behaviour most inconsiderate. 
 But I bottled up my spleen and prepared for the worst. 
 In the dining-room the dear old creature introduced us 
 to a stalwart and sheepisli young farmer, who she said 
 was her son. I was rejoiced to see no second woman 
 in the room. The Doctor was boiling over with feverish 
 anxiety. 
 
 " Where is your daughter ? " he asked rudely. 
 
 " In the kitchen," quavered the grandame, beaming 
 placidly from behind her horn spectacles. " She is cook- 
 ing the dinner herself. It will give her an appetite." 
 
 Fogson nodded his head in satisfaction — he even saw 
 her making butter. And lo ! to my horror, in due course 
 a gracious apparition tripped into the room, a dish of 
 baked potatoes poised on her plump white arms. She 
 curtseyed silently to the visitors, of whose presence 
 she had evidently been warned, and shot a quick glance 
 of rustic curiosity from under her long eye-lashes. She 
 was a dainty little thing, with a complexion like red
 
 1 86 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 roses smothered in cream, with dancing limpid eyes, 
 and charming features. Her girlisli figure was exquisite 
 in contour. She was dressed in white, and a full-blown 
 white rose heaved with her bosom. The Doctor de- 
 voured her with his eyes, and she spoilt his appetite 
 for any other dish. As for me, the thought of 
 M'Gullicuddy nearly choked me. I ate with the 
 heartiness of despair. The meal passed off without 
 much conversation. I tried to interest the young 
 bucolic in cattle and the chances of the harvest, but he 
 seemed unwilling to learn. I let the taciturn bumpkin 
 be — secretly amused at the clumsy manner in which he 
 plied his knife and fork — and tried to draw Barbara out. 
 
 " Do you think we shall have any more rain, Miss 
 Grey ? " 
 
 " Oh no ! " she replied at once. 
 
 " You are very weather-wise," I said. 
 
 " Oh yes," she said, with a little laugh. " It never 
 rains long unless I have a new hat, and my present hat 
 is old enough to frighten the crows." 
 
 Evidently Barbara was not logical. But it did not 
 seem to distress the Doctor, who smiled with delight. 
 T thought there was rather a cultured ring about 
 Barbara's voice for a farmer's daughter, but the little 
 attentions she paid to the old lady and the adroit 
 manner in which she carried off the very primitive 
 remarks of the dear old creature, left no doubt of the 
 tender relationship between the twain. The gulf 
 between the old generation and the new is often so 
 pathetically great. Fogson spoke little, and hesitatingly ; 
 but embarrassed though he was, he could say nothing 
 without revealing his simple, unselfish nature. Dinner 
 over, the bucolic brother went back to the fields, and
 
 THE LOGIC OF LOVE 187 
 
 after a few polite remarks about the route we were 
 going to take, Barbara naively bade us "good-bye." 
 I thought Fowson would never let her little hand go. 
 After this, there seemed nothing for it but to offer 
 the dear old creature our heartiest thanks and feel our 
 way as to offering her more, and I was hastening to 
 execute this delicate task, when Fogson expressed a 
 reluctance to depart without seeing the kitchen. He 
 said he loved these old-fashioned kitchens, with their 
 immensa grates and chimneys, and their hanging hams, 
 and their rough old comfort. He stated that he made 
 it a point to see the kitchen whenever he went to a 
 farmhouse, and it would cut him to the heart to go 
 away without seeing this one. The guilelessness of 
 the dear old creature was ill-matched against the 
 cunning of the madman, and she showed us downstairs, 
 and there, sure enough ! Barbara, in a great apron, was 
 washing the dishes. She made a pretty grimace when 
 she saw us again. The mad but harmless Doctor of 
 Medicine plucked out his algie aquarium from his 
 button-hole and ground it under his heel. Then he 
 weiit up to Barbara without more ado, and in pity I 
 engaged the dear old creature in conversation at a point 
 at which she could not hear, but I could. I thought 
 the attack of insanity had better spend itself. Inwardly 
 I raged at having been converted into a keeper. 
 
 " Miss Grey," said the Doctor in low, tremulous tones, 
 " I cannot go away without telling you that I love you." 
 
 Barbara opened her blue eyes to their widest. 
 
 " That I have loved you all my life," 
 
 Barbara laughed low, but without displeasure. 
 
 "Were you born only just before dinner?" she said, 
 with consummate self-possession.
 
 1 88 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 "Do not jest with me," he panted. "Ere seen I 
 loved, and loved thee seen. I know you care nothing for 
 money, but I am not poor, and it is not fortune only, 
 but my whole heart that I would offer you. I will not 
 go back without you. Come with me to the wider life 
 of London. Leave these haunts of innocence, and come 
 and shed fragrance and flavour on the jaded metro- 
 polis. Bring with you from Arcadia the freshness, and 
 the restfulness, and the gentle ordered life, and the pure 
 milk and butter, and the music of the brooks. Come 
 to the London theatres and bring the scent of hay over 
 the sweltering stalls. Beautiful as is your soul, in its 
 statue-like simplicity, let it be mine to wake it to life 
 and passion. Let me be your Pygmalion. Be my wife, 
 and my life shall be devoted to you. Under my 
 culture your soul shall effloresce into a higher beauty, 
 without losing: auglit of its freshness. I will " 
 
 A rinoincr crescendo of laughter filled the old- 
 fashioned kitchen with music. Then the merry little 
 minx had her monologue. 
 
 " Can't you find a less stale way of proposing, Mr. 
 Foi:;son ? I 've read and seen all that on the stage a 
 hundred times. If I got married, it would certainly 
 not be to have any more lessons. I had enough of 
 them at Brussels. And as for the piano, I am sick of it, 
 and am glad to use my fingers for peeling potatoes! Come 
 back to London indeed ! Why do you suppose I am 
 here, except to get a breath of country air after the 
 brick and mortar wilderness of London ? It would 
 be different if I could go out a lot, for I love waltzing 
 and the opera and farcical comedies, but my married 
 sister, with whom I live in London, has got such a large 
 family now that her whole time is taken up with
 
 THE LOGIC OF LOVE 189 
 
 household duties. She is very well off you know. 
 That was her husband you met at dinner. He is down 
 here on a visit with me and his youngest baby, which 
 is in my charge, and my other brother and sister, who 
 live here with mother on the farm, have gone to our 
 London house instead. He is Stanton, the famous im- 
 pressionist artist, who exhibits at the Dudley Gallery 
 and the Salon. He fell in love with my eldest sister 
 ten years ago, when he was down here sketching. And 
 he has been good enough to educate me, too. So now, 
 sir, you know all my history, and why Prince Charming's 
 very kind offer does not tempt me, though it has 
 dropped from the clouds." 
 
 " But you cannot, you must not dismiss me like this. 
 Think of how long I have waited for you, Barbara." 
 
 Even the prosaic shearing away of so many of the 
 attributes of the ideal had not assuaged his distempered 
 longing. 
 
 " Why do you call me Barbara ?" 
 
 " Oh, forgive me. I am mad. I know I have not 
 the right. But I cannot lose you, ]5arbara. I have 
 found you after such weary years of waiting, — can I 
 go forth into the world again as though you were not ? 
 Have pity on me, Barbara, have pity." 
 
 " You are making some mistake," said the girl in a 
 puzzled tone. " I am not Barbara." 
 
 " Not Barbara ? " he echoed. 
 
 " No," she replied. " My name is Annie." 
 
 " But there is a Barbara here," he said desperately. 
 
 " Oh yes," said Annie, " I '11 go and fetch her." 
 
 The poor monomaniac leaned against the kitchen 
 mantel, faint with mortal suspense. It was a tragic 
 moment.
 
 igo THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Annie was back in a moment bearinir a white bundle 
 in lier arms. On being opened, it proved to be a 
 chubby-armed baby about eighteen months old, with a 
 plump undecided face and sparse hair. 
 
 " This," said Annie, with a mischievous sparkle in 
 her eye, — " this is Barbara, my sister Barbara's youngest. 
 The baby I told you of." 
 
 Fogson gazed at Barbara. All the pent-up passion 
 of a lifetime was in that look. 
 
 Not even my conversational resources could keep 
 the dear old creature from her granddaughter's 
 side. 
 
 " Be careful of Barby ! " she croaked. " Don't drop 
 Barby ! Oh my ickle booty ! Come to your grand- 
 mother, come 00 sweet ickle Barbery ! " 
 
 She caught the infant up in her arms and strained it 
 to her bosom. Fogson's eye followed her jealously. 
 
 " There, what do you think of her ? " she went on, 
 dandling the baby in Fogson's face. " Isn't she a little 
 beauty ? Kiss the gentleman from London." 
 
 Barbara turned coyly away and buried her head in 
 her grandmother's bodice. But the Doctor's eager 
 hands, trembling with emotion, were already round 
 Barbara's neck. He pressed his white lips to hers. 
 
 That kiss, the hopeless dream of so many years, had 
 come at last. The sight was too sacred for profane 
 eyes. I turned away, my cheek moist and a lump in 
 my throat, Barbara wept too. 
 
 In his wildest dreams the poor monomaniac could 
 not have expected so easy a conquest. 
 
 " I love you, Barbara," said Fogson passionately. 
 
 " Everybody does," said the dear old creature, glower- 
 ing with delight. "Hush, hush, my Barby."
 
 (^ llo. tjiitjlnsoj C 
 
 AFTER WEAI'.V YEARS.
 
 192 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 "Yes, but I have loved her for years and years," 
 said Fogson. 
 
 " Before she was born, I suppose," said Annie, a whit 
 sharply. " Eeally, Mr. Fogson, you are original after 
 all. Don't look so surprised, granny. The gentleman 
 is only joking. He said the same thing to me." 
 
 " No, no, I was serious ! " cried Fogson earnestly. 
 
 "You love us both," said Annie, her eyes quizzing 
 him merrily. 
 
 " I love Barbara," he urged simply. 
 
 " Barbara is married. She was married to a relative 
 of mine, my brother-in-law the artist, ten years ago." 
 
 Fo2[son smote his forehead. " When I first dreamt 
 of her ! But I will wait for this one." 
 
 " You will not be true to her for so many years." 
 
 " I have, been true to her for so many years." 
 
 " Granny," said Annie sedately, " here is a suitor for 
 Barbara. The gentleman wants to marry her." 
 
 "Annie," said granny severely, "how can you talk 
 so ? You make the gentleman blush." 
 
 " No, mammy. His cheek is unblushing. He loves 
 Barbara because she is a girl whose tastes are simple, 
 who is not extravagant, who wears her clothes long (very 
 long), who is not flighty, who doesn't gad about from 
 ball to party, and who, above all, has an ingenuous 
 heart that has never thought of love till he appeared in 
 his beauty and might to call forth the new and 
 undreamt-of emotion ; who is frail and helpless without 
 him. That is what men look for in girls, isn't it, 
 Barbara ? " 
 
 She flicked the baby's nose with her finger till it 
 smiled. 
 
 " You 're an awfully good match, aren't you, Barbara?
 
 THE LOGIC OF LOVE 193 
 
 You 're a treasure-trove, Barbara ; perfectly good, and 
 innocent, and simple, and helpless, and stupid." A 
 flick emphasised each adjective. "Ah me, Barbara, 
 I am afraid my marrying days are over. Why don't 
 the men ask us when we 're younger ? Oh, what a 
 good girl I was in pinafores ! " 
 
 " Annie ! " said granny. 
 
 " Oh but I was, mammy. Don't take away my char- 
 acter before the gentlemen. Mais si, messieurs : fUais 
 affreusem'ent beie, je vous en assure!' 
 
 And with that Annie snatched Barbara from tlie 
 grandmother's arms and fled unceremoniously from the 
 kitchen. Fogson looked vacantly around, and I took 
 advantage of this lucid interval to drag him away. 
 Outside, our friend the bull-dog was waiting for us. 
 While he was dancing round my umbrella with deep- 
 mouthed bark, Annie ran out and boxed his ears till the 
 thunder dwindled to a growl. It was like a story in 
 the novelettes, only the other way round. I took the 
 opportunity to whisper to her not to mind Fogson. 
 He was a fine fellow, with a brilliant intellect, but he 
 had a delusion that he could marry no one but a girl 
 named Barbara, 
 
 " If I were with him as you are," she whispered 
 rather contemptuously, " I 'd soon cure him of that 
 delusion." 
 
 Fogson caught the whisper. It sent a sanative 
 electric shock through him. 
 
 " Oh, Miss Grey ! If you only could ! I should be 
 eternally indebted to you. I know I am not sane on 
 this point. I am a doctor myself. Couldn't I stay at 
 the farm ? A week's rest in this peaceful spot would 
 cure me for ever." 
 
 N
 
 194 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 She said it was quite impossible. And so he stayed. 
 I knew the rest by letter, for I went home to prepare 
 M'Gullicuddy for the cruel shock. 
 
 " Dearest one," said the Doctor of Medicine, as they 
 walked in the rose-garden amid the shadows and scents 
 of the rich summer niirht. " There is one last boon I 
 would crave. When we are married, will you change 
 your name ? " 
 
 "Certainly," she said, looking up archly into his 
 handsome pleading face. " It is the usual thing." 
 
 "No, no," he said, and drew her fluttering form 
 closer to him. " Not that — I want you to call yourself 
 Barbara." 
 
 " No. I cannot," she said. " It would be infringing 
 my sister's birthright." 
 
 His poor pathetic mouth pleaded on in piteous silence. 
 It came closer to hers. The moon flew behind a cloud. 
 
 " But you may call me Barbara if you like."
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 A NOVEL ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The Pre.^ident had fallen asleep in his offieial arm- 
 chair, and O'lioherty was (saving my presence) alone. 
 The other members had gone up the Square to study 
 the accuracy of the archaeological details of the new 
 classical ballet. O'Pioherty did not know I was in the 
 room, for, as he seemed engrossed in thought, I did not 
 venture to disturb him. M'Gullicuddy snored steadily. 
 
 O'Eoherty was seated in front of the one writing- 
 table of which the Club could boast, though it didn't ; 
 for the table was a plain mahogany tiling, studded 
 with black spots of ink which ought to have been in the 
 usually parched pewter inkstand. The pens were 
 generally cross and spluttering; at other times they 
 were absent. 
 
 I saw at once that O'Roherty had got hold of a bad 
 pen by the way his brow was puckered. At last he 
 scribbled something in large letters. I could tell 
 that by the wide sweep of his pen. I>y this time I was 
 bending over him, but in spite of all my efforts not to 
 disturb him, the intense sympathy I felt for him 
 seemed to subtly communicate itself to him, and to 
 make him aware — by some sacred psychical channel an 
 irreverent world will learn to admit some day — of my 
 proximity. In his delight at my unexpected presence 
 
 195
 
 196 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 he at once abandoned whatever he was doing, and, 
 covering his writing with a Large sheet of blotting- 
 paper, immediately turned his whole attention to me. 
 
 " Thought you were at ' Nero ' ? " he said affably. 
 
 " I thought you were ? " I said amiably. 
 
 " No," he replied, " I have something to think out." 
 
 "While he was talking his hand idly strayed under 
 the blotting-paper, unconsciously drew out the sheet of 
 paper, and mechanically placed it in his pocket. 
 
 " But what keeps you away ? " he went on. 
 
 " I cannot stand ballets," I replied. " They involve 
 too much mental exertion. The effort to invent a plot 
 for them is too trying." 
 
 " Ah, invention of a plot — there is the difficulty. 
 But it is not the worst, not the worst," he sighed. 
 
 " No ; there is the music to listen to," I said. 
 
 " Music be bio wed ! " O'Eoherty replied, as if 
 deciding between wind - instruments and a string 
 band. " I 'ni not talking of ballets, but of my 
 books." 
 
 " Your books ? Oh yes, they are the worst," I 
 admitted cheerfully. 
 
 " Oh, I don't mind your saying that," said O'Eoherty 
 good-humouredly, " because you at least read them." 
 
 I have never seen O'Eoherty in a real live passion. 
 The nearest approach to that state he ever exhibits is 
 when he is taken for an Irishman. He sternly insists 
 that he is not one. He was born, it is true, in County 
 Cork, but as the baby was rocked on the cradle of the deep 
 within a fortnight of its birthday, and the boy lived for 
 ten years in Tripoli before finally settling down in 
 Holborn, the man fails to understand how an Irish 
 infant can be construed into an Irishman. When
 
 A NOVEL ADVERTISEMENT 197 
 
 reminded that the child is the father of the man, he 
 retorts that this only proves that the child, his father, 
 was an Irishman. In spite of all temptations to be 
 logically genealogical, he remains a Cockney, and glories 
 in his country. Nevertheless, every fresh man he meets 
 makes the old mistake. I fancy it is because he speaks 
 without the slightest trace of brogue. AVhen a man is 
 named O'Eoherty he cannot afford to do this. People 
 think he is only posing as a Cockney. 
 
 If he would only learn some broguish words, such as 
 " yez, avick, spalpeen, acushla, omadhaun, and Caed 
 mille failthe," I should myself feel less strange with 
 him. Not that I care two straws whether he was born 
 in Cork or Cincinnati ; only a man owes a certain duty 
 to his neighbours when he is called O'Eoherty. For 
 the rest, O'Eoherty was tall and thin and ruddy- 
 whiskered, and wore spectacles and a high hat. His 
 mutton-chops were so sanguineous that they seemed 
 slightly underdone. His expression was nervous. He 
 always had the air of awaiting tlie next man going to 
 twit him with the secret of his birth. I knew he would 
 not be angry at my chaffing his books so long as I left 
 liis nationality alone. " I object to being classed among 
 brilliant Irisli men of letters," he once informed me 
 pluuiply. The constant irritation added to his con- 
 stitutional melancholy. 
 
 " You at least read my books," said O'Eoherty 
 
 again. 
 
 It was evidently a sore topic. 
 
 " Look here." He drew out a scrap of newspaper, 
 mounted on the well-known brown background of a 
 popular press-cutting agency. " Eead this," he said. 
 
 I read it.
 
 198 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 From The, Dissenters^ World, July 5th. 
 "A Summer Idyll.— Mr. O'Eoherty's practised hand is seen to 
 advantage in this pretty pastoral story of an idle summer. The 
 love-scenes are exquisite in their union of purity and passion, 
 while the descriptions of scenery are charming and recall Euskin 
 in his happiest moments. The tender grace of a holiday that is 
 dead lives again in these felicitous silhouettes. A Sumtiur 
 Idyll may be safely recommended to parents and guardians. 
 Though the author is an Irishman there is no theological bias in 
 this simple idyll, which may be introduced without fear into the 
 most Protestant families." 
 
 O'Eoherty ground his teeth as I returned the critique. 
 I knew why. It was not only the allusion to his race 
 that galled him. 
 
 In saying that I read his books, O'Eoherty did me 
 an injustice. Still, I did skim them, and I had gleaned 
 sufficient of A Summer Idyll to know that it was 
 a terribly ironical title, and that the whole of the 
 sordid tragi-comedy centred round Caraberwell Green. 
 
 " Well, and what do you say to this criticism ? " he 
 said grimly. 
 
 " It is too bad," I replied. 
 
 " Yes," he said despondently. "It will sell some copies. 
 The paper has an immense circulation all over the 
 countryamong families that really buy books — especially 
 those bad books which are called 'good books.'" 
 
 " What an ass the man must be ! " I exclaimed. 
 
 " He is not an ass," he retorted indignantly. " He 
 is my bitterest friend." 
 
 " Friend or no friend, he must be an ass to write 
 like this about one of the most brutally realistic stories 
 of modern times." 
 
 " He is not an ass," he repeated. " He simply didn't 
 read the book."
 
 A NOVEL ADVERTISEMENT 199 
 
 " Oh, then he is certainly not an ass," I admitted, 
 " but an ingenious deducer of contents from title. It 's 
 an economical way of reviewing, but you are bound to 
 go and put your foot in it one day — by a fluke." 
 
 " Yes, but I must say he isn't entirely to blame," 
 said O'Koherty. " It 's my publisher's fault partly." 
 
 " Your publisher ? " 
 
 " Yes ; he will allow the sheets to be bound in such 
 a way that you have to cut the sides to skim the book. 
 Parker — ihat 's his name — doesn't mind running his eye 
 along two pages connected at the top, but, when their 
 union is perpendicular, the thing is impossible." 
 
 " But why doesn't he cut the leaves ? " 
 
 " What ! and spoil the market-value of the book ! 
 Surely you know that reviewing is the least paying form 
 of journalism, and that no man with brains would do it if 
 it were not for the perquisites. But for the sale of the 
 unread books, criticism in this country would become a 
 lost art. No, Parker's intentions were admirable. He 
 saw A Summer Idyll lying about in The Dissenters' 
 World office, and he saw my name on the thing; so, of 
 course, he asked the editor to let him do it." 
 
 " And he has gone and done it ! " I said. " Well, 
 never mind, the parents and guardians who buy your 
 book for their girls will never know of their fearful 
 mistake. The girls will never tell them. They 
 will " 
 
 " Hush ! " interrupted O'Roherty. " What 's that ? " 
 
 We listened to the sudden silence which had caught 
 the novelist's acute ear. It was M'GuUicuddy not 
 snoring. We waited anxiously. The president took 
 up his nasal theme again and we resumed our conversa- 
 tion. O'lioherty did not care for everybody to know
 
 200 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 that he was t)ie celebrated O'Eoherty. He was very 
 sensitive on this point ; and, knowing that people will 
 always peep behind pen-names, he had hit upon the 
 happy idea of effectually concealing himself by writing 
 under his real name. I was the only member of the 
 Club to whom the secret was open. Like most of us 
 O'Eoherty had to live ; if he had not swallowed some 
 of his convictions he would have had nothing to eat. 
 Bitter experience had taught him that the British 
 public will not read novels without a love-interest ; and 
 if there was one thing in this world in which O'Eoherty 
 did not believe (there was nothing in any other world 
 in which he did) it was love. Having to write " true- 
 till-death " moonlight scenes fretted him not only as a 
 man but as a Bachelor. His only consolation was that 
 their pathos afforded him so much amusement. But 
 M'Gullicuddy on his sublime snow-clad mountain-peak 
 of Bachelordom had little sympathy with the frailties 
 of those that groped in the valley ; that was why 
 O'Eoherty was in such trepidation on hearing the presi- 
 dent cease to snore. The steward, who was behind the 
 bar, listening, we never regarded as an obstacle to con- 
 fidential conversation ; he was not a human being like 
 ourselves ; he was a married man. 
 
 " Next to the inaccurate statementas to my nationality, 
 what riles me most in this notice," went on O'Eoherty, 
 " is the eulogium of my descriptions of scenery. As a 
 matter of fact there is not a single description of scenery 
 in the book. Scenery was always my weak point. I 
 can no more paint a landscape tlian a Eoyal Acade- 
 mician. I have sometimes stolen a meadow from 
 Euskin, and I have several skies strongly tinged with 
 Black ; most of my flowers are picked from the lady
 
 A NOVEL ADVERTISEMENT 201 
 
 novelists' back-gardens ; while I get my birds from 
 Richard Jefferies." 
 
 O'Roherty began to get quite doleful in tone. 
 
 " Don't be so down in the mouth about it, old fellow," 
 I said. " Nobody knows." 
 
 " Yes, but what of my own conscience ? Besides, my 
 wholesale depredations are bound to be brought to light 
 some day. Then again there 's my antique furniture. 
 I have always got that at Ouida's. But now the critics 
 are beginning to say that her Louis Quinze boudoirs are 
 a fraud, and her cinque cento medallions (I fancy they 
 are medallions) are coined at the mint of her imagina- 
 tion. It 's a nice thing when your supports give way 
 under you in this fashion, and your antique easy- 
 chair collapses and leaves you on the floor. Then, 
 look what dreadful suspicions it brings into your 
 mind ; suppose your lady novelists' botany is a 
 ghastly imposition — and you are left up a tree! and 
 you don't even know the name of the tree ! How if 
 your chaffinches sing in England or your nightingales 
 perform in London during the season of their foreign 
 or provincial tours ! How if your artichoke blooms in 
 the autumn and your chrysanthemum chortles in the 
 spring ! How if " 
 
 "Good heavens!" I interrupted with a cry of pain. 
 " What is this ? " 
 
 While O'lloherty was speaking I had unconsciously 
 taken up the blotting-paper. There were heavy black 
 marks upon it. Practice has made me able to read 
 writing backwards or upside-down as quickly as forwards 
 or normally. O'Eoherty's face turned the colour of a 
 sheet of note-paper, of the pink variety. 
 
 "What is this?" I repeated sternly, as I pointed
 
 202 THE CELIBATES'' CLUB 
 
 with my finger to those ghastly inciiminating stains 
 upon the pure fluffy surface of the blotting-paper. 
 
 " N — nothing," he stammered. 
 
 " O'Eoherty ! " I said, with a world of reproach in my 
 tremulous tones. "On your honour as an Englishman!"' 
 
 " Draw your own conclusions," he replied, visibly 
 softened. 
 
 " There is no deduction necessary. The conclusion 
 is on the premisses," I observed sadly, reading aloud 
 the infamous inscription — 
 
 "WANTED A WIFE." 
 
 " Yes, I am advertising for a wife," he replied apolo- 
 getically and with a meek pathos that went to my 
 heart. "I can stand the strain no longer. I was just 
 about to draw up the advertisement when you in- 
 terrupted me." 
 
 " But how ? why ? " I inquired wildly. 
 
 "I have told you," he said, snatching the paper 
 from me and rising in excitement. " Birds, beasts, and 
 fishes." 
 
 Was his mind wandering ? Birds, beasts, and fishes ! 
 What old schoolboy chords were struck by the phrase ! 
 
 " Are you making game of marriage ? " I said. 
 
 '■ No, no, I 'm serious. I want birds, beasts, fishes, 
 flowers, trees, furniture, bric-a-brac, and a thousand
 
 J NOVEL ADVERTISEMENT 203 
 
 odds and ends. I must have them. I must have them, 
 I tell you." His voice rose to a maniacal scream. I 
 grew seriously alarmed. Coming on the top of his 
 
 
 (j^ljtTu'c1jii3tO')i^''<> 
 
 wish to marry, language like tliis seemed to clinch the 
 evidence of liis insanity. Was Fogson's monomania 
 epidemic ?
 
 204 THE CELIBATES'' CLUB 
 
 " Hush ! you '11 disturb M'Gullicuddy's snoring ! " I 
 said softly. " Cannot you get all these things as a 
 Bachelor?" 
 
 " Impossible ! Have I not already explained to you 
 how my literary life has been one long fraud ? No, I 
 must have some one to supplement me, to supply all 
 those ingredients of the novel which O'Eoherty lacks : 
 beasts, birds, fishes, flowers " 
 
 " Spare me the catalogue," I cried severely, " I 
 understand." 
 
 "I knew you would," he returned, a slight misap- 
 prehension of my meaning bringing a grateful look 
 into his worried eyes, " You see, to a Cockney like 
 myself Nature is utterly unknown. I lack that rural 
 education without which the modern novelist has no 
 chance. It was all very well for a Dr. Johnson to say, 
 ' Sir, let us take a walk down Fleet Street ! ' In his 
 day Nature had not been invented. There were certain 
 stock adjectives which you had to get up — 'azure sky,' 
 ' russet leaves,' ' pearly cloud,' ' translucent brook.' 
 Once you knew these married couples that went out 
 together as invariably as Homer's Juno with her ' ox- 
 eyed ' cavalier, you were set up as a writer. That long 
 catalogue of a poet's stock-in-trade which convinced 
 Easselas that it was useless for him to apprentice him- 
 self to the muse, was a mere flight of Johnson's imagina- 
 tion, intended to crack up the calling in which he was 
 then an acknowledged master. To-day it is a sober 
 reality, and is even more necessary for the novelist than 
 for the poet, who can always veil himself in the obscur- 
 ities of misty magnificence. Ah, it was a bad day for 
 writers when those ancient couples were divorced; when 
 for the marriages made in the classics were substituted
 
 A NOVEL ADVERTISEMENT 205 
 
 the laxer alliances of individual preference, and for the 
 good old permanence of conjoint relation, the haphazard 
 and transient associations of modern free selection. 
 It is a flux and chaos of conjunctions at best, and in 
 the looser literature of the French decadence it leads 
 to the most extravac;ant matches of substantives and 
 epithets. There is no adjective so degraded that it 
 may not hope to mate with the most proper of nouns ; 
 no noun so common that it may not find itself in at 
 least temporary association with the most aristocratic 
 of adjectives. Nay, so far has this derangement of 
 epithets gone, that I have known unprincipled writers 
 wed words that belong to different castes, and talk of 
 strawberry-coloured symphonies and symphonic straw- 
 berries." 
 
 He paused for want of breath, and I fetched him a 
 pick-me-up. 
 
 " Where was I ? " he asked, when he had gulped it 
 down. 
 
 "Symphonic strawberries," I observed. But he had 
 lost the thread. 
 
 " Well, anyhow, as I was saying, the modern novelist 
 has a hard time of it. He is expected to know all things 
 in heaven and earth and in the waters beneath the earth. 
 The miserable impostors who were first in the field went 
 and corrupted the reading public by showering down 
 omniscience from a cornucopia. Of course it was all 
 faked ; they crammed up as much about hunting, and 
 shooting, and fishing, and burgling, and will-making, 
 and gardening, and painting, and sailing, and climbing, 
 and banking, and bee-keeping ; as much dialect, slang, 
 idiom, proverb, local colour, history, tradition, and super- 
 stition, as was wanted for each book ; and before the
 
 2o6 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 book had gone to press it was all clean wiped off their 
 memories, which had reverted to their original omne- 
 science. (Excuse the neologism, but the language wants 
 the word badly). By this sort of behaviour the beggars 
 have set up a standard which is simply unattainable 
 by an honest man ; not to mention that they have 
 snapped up all the best things of their successors. 
 Analyse the average modern novel. What do you find?" 
 I made no effort to find anything, but he struggled 
 with his waistcoat pocket and produced a scrap of 
 paper, from which he read aloud : — 
 
 Scenery (including botany), . .15 per cent. 
 
 Journeys, foreign phrases, manners and 
 
 customs, .... 
 
 Birds, beasts, and fishes, . 
 Scientific, musical, artistic, historical, and 
 
 literary allusions or quotations, 
 Descriptions of dress. 
 Theology and ethics (new), 
 Plot, ..... 
 
 Ordinary natural dialogue, 
 Grammatical and other blunders, . 
 Portraits of hero and heroine, 
 Character-drawing,. 
 
 Wit and humour, . . , . 
 
 Unanalysable residua, , 
 
 Total, Three Vols., . . .100 per cent. 
 
 I was about to dispute the accuracy of this decom- 
 position, but he went on : — 
 
 " This analysis is at once the cause and excuse 
 of my marriage. Once I had arrived at these 
 results I felt that I was a doomed man. You will per- 
 ceive that nearly half a vol, of a modern novel must be 
 
 11 
 
 per cent. 
 
 10 
 
 per cent. 
 
 10 
 
 per cent. 
 
 10 
 
 per cent. 
 
 10 
 
 per cent. 
 
 10 
 
 per cent. 
 
 8 
 
 per cent. 
 
 6 
 
 per cent. 
 
 4 
 
 per cent. 
 
 2 
 
 per cent. 
 
 0-005 
 
 i per cent. 
 
 3-992 
 
 per cent. 
 
 s
 
 A NOVEL ADVERTISEMENT 207 
 
 composed of scenery. In addition to my being unable 
 to tell an oak from an acorn, or a gentian bush from a 
 gillyflower, or a field of oats from a gorse-clad common, 
 or an elder from Susannah, I am colour-blind. More- 
 over, I have no interest in the sunset, and am never up 
 late enough to witness the sunrise. The sight of the 
 sea is as sickening to me as if I were on it. What 
 people can see to rave over in a magnified wash-hand 
 basin I have never been able to understand. You 
 smile. You remember my much-praised apostrophe to 
 the ocean in Betwixt the Gloaming and the Nether Sea. 
 I have no wish to disguise from you the pricks of con- 
 science. But I must live. I tell my conscience so, 
 and point out that if I were to die it would perish too. 
 To keep my conscience alive, I steal." 
 
 " Steal ? " I echoed, " steal what ? " 
 
 " Haven't I told you ? — trees, flowers, sunsets, 
 birds, beasts — all 's fish that comes to my net," said 
 O'Eoherty. " What can a poor Cockney do ? Take 
 the second item. I recognise a horse, a dog, a sheep, 
 a mackerel, a cow, a cock, an elephant, an earthworm, 
 a sparrow, a donkey, a butterfly, an eel, a baby, and a 
 few other animals. But even with dogs I can't tell a 
 dachshund from a poodle, though I give my old maids 
 poodles and my heroes dachshunds; I know that a 
 Scotch terrier is the same fore and aft, but that is only 
 because of Bright's famous comparison of it to the 
 Fourth Party. Allusions I can manage fairly well 
 with the help of encyclopa3dias. I dip at random into 
 omniscience and garnish my dialogue with whatever 
 comes up. I make pot-sliots at a volume of poems and 
 ornament my cha})ters with the sjioils. As for dress, I 
 am hopelessly lost. These superficial details are
 
 2o8 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 infinitely wearisome to me; in real life my eye goes 
 straight for the psychological essence of a situation, 
 and I have a soul above buttons. Unfortunately the soul 
 of the British public is beneath them. And sometimes 
 I feel that there is something in frocks after all. When 
 I create a nice heroine I don't like the girl to dress 
 dowdily. It spoils her charm. When all is said, she 
 is my own child and I don't want her to look gawky 
 and blame the old man. I am not stingy, I want her 
 to dress as magnificently as possible. But my own 
 ignorance sets up sumptuary laws, and the poor thing 
 comes off but scantily. I don't know what to put on 
 her — muslins, silks, a sealskin jacket, my wardrobe 
 contains little else. In the end I am reduced to stealing 
 from the fashion-plates, and Myra alone knows what a 
 mull I make of it. For you see I can use the descrip- 
 tions but warily, the nomenclature has grown so 
 beastly technical that I am afraid to venture. I can't 
 tell a description of a costume from a dinner menu. 
 What gold galloon, or blue broch^, or jet passementerie, 
 or basques, or toreadore hats, or silk lisse, or moire, or 
 pink chiffon, or filoselle, or bengaline, or festooned skirts, 
 may be, I haven't the faintest idea, but all my heroines 
 wear them and look natty in them. I can only hope 
 that they are not indecent. But I can't expect im- 
 munity for ever. Some day I shall introduce a half- 
 clad virgin to a respectable dinner party and then the 
 book will sell by tens of thousands." 
 
 His tones trembled sadly into silence. I could offer 
 him but cold comfort. He went on : — 
 
 " I must learn these words if I would avoid such popu- 
 larity. There's no such word ^'s, faille in the dictionary of 
 the male novelist. But he has got to admit it. Faille is
 
 A NOVEL ADVERTISEMENT 2O9 
 
 becoming very prevalent. I see it in all the ladies' 
 letters. Are my girls to be out of the fashion ? No, 
 it shall never be. I will do my duty by them. Oh, if I 
 knew more of my girls' inner lives ! They say Dickens 
 detected George Eliot was a woman by the way Hetty 
 Sorrel combed her hair. How am I to know how 
 ladies comb their hair ? The novelist must needs be a 
 Peeping Tom, and if he is he is sent to Coventry. 
 
 " In journeys, etc., I am so and so. My first success, 
 as you know, was due to my infantile recollections of 
 Tripoli, and to the happy title of my first-born three- 
 decker, Trijjoli Trijyiets. You remember Tripoli 
 carried me successfully through my second novel ; and, 
 through my third, in which the relics of my Tripolese 
 recollections were hashed up and located in Patagonia. 
 But my fourth, in which the foreign flavour was replaced 
 by the scent of English hay, and where the heliotrope 
 of the lady novelist was substituted for the palms and 
 pomegranates of Barbary, was only a mild success. And 
 now this last book, A Summer Idyll, in which I left off 
 shamming and fell back upon tlie Cockney scenes and 
 people I really know, is a regular frost, as you might ex- 
 pect of an English summer. The things I am really good 
 iu — plot, character-drawing, real human dialogue " 
 
 "And unanalysable residua," I reminded him. 
 
 "And unanalysable residua, form only twenty- 
 eight per cent, of the compound I have to 
 turn out from my Holborn laboratory. I have tried 
 to do right. I have done my best to learn the differ- 
 ence between maiden-hair fern and mangelwurzeh It's 
 no use going to the country unless you have somebody 
 skilled in plant-lore with you. And there are very few 
 real savants in those branches, I can tell you." 
 

 
 no The celidatMs^ cluB 
 
 " You ought to have gone walking with Fogson be- 
 fore he got engaged." 
 
 "What nonsense ! He onl)' knew the scientific names, 
 not the real names. He knew a vegetable, I gave 
 him one day when he was dining with me, was a 
 Lycopersicum csculcntum, but was surprised to learn 
 it was a tomato. I spent a whole day once in Kew 
 Gardens, where the trees are obliging enough to grow 
 labelled, and I plucked a leaf from every tree and shrub 
 and scratched its name on the back. Leaving the 
 Gardens, I noticed a notice-board which informed me I 
 was liable to prosecution if caught. I was too busy 
 boiling down a classical botanical treatise into an 
 edition for the use of schools to attend to my treasures 
 for some months ; when I did, they were a heap of 
 withered leaves, like the fabled fairy gold. So perished 
 my dream of knowledge. Can you wonder, then, that 1 
 must either marry or give up writing altogether and 
 turn my liand to something " 
 
 " Useful," I concluded. " But where does the neces- 
 sity of marriage come in ? You want a collaborator, 
 not a wife." 
 
 " I want a wife, not a collaborator. I want some one 
 to share the work, not the money or the reputation. 
 Come, help me to draw up the advertisement." 
 
 " Very well," I said resignedly. Poor M'Gullicuddy 
 snored on, in blissful unconsciousness of the coming 
 blow. 
 
 " Wanted — a Wife," wrote O'Eoherty again, in 
 the boldest of letters, as if to give himself courage. 
 
 " Of course," he said pausing, " there are many other 
 reasons why I should marry. You see it is now some six 
 years since I set up in London as a genius. I have failed.
 
 A NOVEL ADVERTISEMENT 211 
 
 It is time I should now settle down into a steady 
 popularity. Perhaps, too, when I have made all the 
 money I want, I may get the reputation of genius after 
 all by neglecting my wife. If I liave none to neglect, 
 this avenue of recognition is necessarily closed to me. 
 Moreover, marriage itself is a considerable fillip to a 
 man's reputation ; you are bound to get pars in the 
 papers. It is an immense advertisement. Besides, 
 your readers like it. They are knit to you by fresli 
 ties on discovering that romance is a reality with you, 
 that you do not believe that the honeymoon is made of 
 green cheese. Many a declining novelist has acquired 
 a fresh lease of popularity by marriage. The wedding 
 bells, which usher his characters into the Nirvana of 
 the Finis, are to the novelist but the joy-bells of 
 palingenesis." 
 
 I fetched him another pick-me-up and he resumed 
 the concoction of his matrimonial advertisement, keep- 
 ing up a commentatorial monologue as he went on. 
 
 Wanted — a Wife. Musical, Literary, Artistic, Scien- 
 tific. The more she knows about sonatas in B flat, and 
 the precise emotion that a soulful heroine must feel 
 under the prelude to Parsifal, tlie better. I have 
 always been in danger of letting my people jjolka 
 to Masses in D minor. She will also save me from 
 mis-regulating the movements of the planets or con- 
 founding Botticelli with a kind of liurdy-gurdy. 3Iuch- 
 travelled in England and the universe generally. That's 
 for the foreign department. I don't know whether 
 a Devonshire lass is blonde or brunette, and 
 there 's nothing like brinrdn" local colour to the clieek 
 of the young person. Folyglot. That's to keep the 
 Italian and tlie French and the German in order.
 
 212 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Tlioroughly familiar ivitlo Drcss-maldng, Tailoring, 
 Kitchen- Gardening, Botany, Mineralogy , Birds, Beasts, and 
 Fishes, Antique and Modern Furniture, Prize-fighting, 
 Manners and Customs of Good and Bad Society, and every 
 other variety of useful or useless imformation.'" 
 
 "Why not put ' an encyclop?edia in a petticoat'? It's 
 shorter." 
 
 " Tlie petticoat may be shorter, but at the cost of 
 lucidity." 
 
 " Well, say a ' Universal Provider and a Genius.' " 
 
 "A Genius not objected to," added O'lioherty. " Thank 
 you. Gt^eat imaginative power a recommendation. 
 There is no harm in her being good at plots and 
 character-drawing while she is about it." 
 
 " Not the least," I assented, 
 
 "Is there anything else?" he asked, re-reading it 
 critically. 
 
 " Cookery ? " 
 
 " Cookery. Thank you." 
 
 " But geniuses can't cook." 
 
 " Theoretical only. Thank you, anything else?" 
 
 " Beautiful ? " 
 
 " Oh, of course ! I can study her attitudes and 
 toilettes without impertinence or cribbing from the lady 
 novelists. She shall sit to me — or to herself — as 
 heroine. Beautiful. Anything else ? " 
 
 We paused and racked our brains for five minutes. 
 M'Gullicuddy snored on. The steward was all 
 ears. 
 
 "Fool !" cried O'Eohertv at last, smacking his brow. 
 And he solemnly added " No Irish need apply" 
 
 Aloud suspicious gurgle burst from the steward's lips. 
 It sounded like a strangled laugh. M'Gullicuddy
 
 A NOVEL ADVERTISEMENT 213 
 
 awoke and yawned. The next moment lie learnt the 
 
 news and all was dark to him again. 
 
 ***** 
 
 O'Koherty did not return from his honeymoon in 
 Tripoli for a year. Then he came back to England 
 and paid the expenses of publication of Godh Doivn 
 as a Gossamer, a three - volume novel by Mrs. 
 O'Eoherty (Pansy Sinclair). He had married a Lady 
 Novelist. He wrote no more himself; he was pumped 
 out, anddiis wife kept whatever knowledge and creative 
 power she possessed for her own works. 
 
 " It was my own fault, Paul," lie said, on the only 
 occasion I met him, for he shunned the abodes of men 
 and Bachelors, " I forgot to put that limitation in the 
 advertisement." 
 
 "But did she really claim to fulfil all the other 
 conditions ? " 
 
 " She did." 
 
 " But does she ?" 
 
 " Ah," said O'Eoherty mysteriously, '' she has a great 
 imagination."
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A NEW MATRIMONIAL RELATION. 
 
 August found the premises of the Bachelors' Club 
 entirely given over to the orgies of the dusky steward, 
 and of Willoughby Jones and the other waiters, for 
 London became too hot to hold us. To escape the heat, 
 Mandeville Browne fled to the Soudan ; Moses !Fitz- 
 Williams went to Switzerland ; M'Gulli cuddy was 
 understood to have pitched his tent somewhere amid 
 his native heather ; while Oliver Green told us that he 
 had to stay at Brighton with his wealthy uncle, who 
 had returned from India only last year. Poor Oliver ! 
 It was by no means the first time that he had been 
 forced to endure the society of his old fogey of a relative. 
 He said his uncle required a deal of looking after. 
 Selfish old curmudgeon ! I hated Oliver's uncle, with 
 his parchment-coloured visage, and his gouty toe, and 
 his disordered liver. You might call me prejudiced, for 
 I had never met the man, but who could help disliking 
 an apoplectic old egotist, who cooped his nephew up in 
 scorching, stony Brighton, just because he had a few 
 miserable lacs of rupees to leave behind him ? If I 
 were Oliver, I thought at first, I would rather die a 
 pauper than live at the beck of a whimsical, capricious 
 autocrat. 
 
 But there is one advantage I found in havincj a rich 
 
 2U
 
 A NE IV MA TRIMONIA L REL A TION 2 1 5 
 
 old uncle ; he saves you the trouble of making up your 
 mind. For nights I lay tossing on my bed, unable to 
 settle where I should go. Even when I determined 
 ■•' Heads " should be the Continent, and " Tails " Great 
 Britain, I always lost the toss, and was dissatisfied. I 
 thought of Oliver's wealthy uncle frequently in my 
 indecision, and at last began to wish he had been mine. 
 Then the inspiration came ! I had only to fancy he 
 was mine, and my doubts were at an end, ray troubles 
 were over. I, too, would go down to Brighton. The 
 burden was lifted from my shoulders ; that night I slept 
 like a top. Steaming down by the luxurious express, I 
 felt happier than I had been for a long time. I should 
 not be alone in Brighton. I should be bound to meet 
 Oliver and his uncle, and then I could tell Oliver what 
 I thought of his subjection to his yellow-gilded 
 relative. Perhaps I might even induce him to enfran- 
 chise himself. I promised myself to put in a good 
 word for him with his neglected relative after he should 
 have shaken off the dust of Briiiliton in dudgeon. One 
 
 o o 
 
 owes these thino[s to one's friends. The task of smooth- 
 ing down another man's outraged uncle might not be 
 agreeable, but I registered a mental vow to attempt it. 
 As soon as I had taken a hurried meal at my hotel I 
 sallied forth in quest of Oliver ; but he was neither on 
 the beach, nor the promenade, nor the pier. I looked into 
 all the bath-chairs, half expecting to find him wheeling 
 his uncle in one. After several wasted hours I returned 
 to my hotel fatigued and dispirited. After several 
 wasted days I returned to London unrefreshed and uneasy. 
 Oliver was not in lirighton. An exhaustive study of all 
 the visitors' lists for the past fortnight had made this 
 well-nigh certain. Where could he be ? Why spread
 
 2i6 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 this false report of his movements ? Could it be that 
 he was rusticating perforce in London, and that false 
 shame had made him cover up his poverty ? Impos- 
 sible ! Oliver had always given proof of ample resources 
 — much more so than myself. It was this that made 
 his subservience to his uncle so annoying. No, there 
 was some more occult reason behind. The mysteries of 
 my brother-Bachelors had hitherto invariably ended in 
 marriage. Is it to be wondered at that I instantly 
 leapt at the truth in this case too ? Alas, that I should 
 have been a true prophet ! 
 
 The discovery of Oliver's whereabouts came in this 
 wise. I was cudgelling my brains to remember if he 
 had ever given any signs of defection of the heart from 
 us. As I pondered over the past I could not help being 
 reminded of the young man's intense truthfulness. On 
 such occasions as I had taken the trouble to test his 
 autobiographical statements, I had always found fifty 
 per cent, of truth in them. The conviction grew upon 
 me that I had wronged him, that he loas at Brighton 
 after all, even if with a nearer relative than his uncle, 
 for perchance he was spending his honeymoon there. 
 I had but skimmel the faces of the bi-sexual couples, 
 seeking only a male pair — an old man and a young. 
 What if I had skipped Mr. and Mrs. Green ? 
 
 I resolved to return to Brighton. I consulted an 
 ABC railway guide. As I gazed, I gave a convulsive 
 stai't. A name caught my eye — New Brighton. My 
 instinct is seldom at fault. I started for Liverpool at 
 once. The same afternoon I saw Oliver Green lying on 
 the beach. A little dark-featured toddler, of about five 
 or six, emptied buckets of sand upon his gently heaving 
 waistcoat. Eecumbent in a half-sitting posture by his
 
 A NEW MATRIMONIAL RELATION 217 
 
 side, was a well-dressed lady, whose face I could not 
 see, for it was shaded by a red parasol, but from the 
 irritating way the little tyrant occasionally tugged 
 with his tiny hands at the parasol I could see it was 
 his mother's. It did not need a second glance to estab- 
 lish the child's relationship to Oliver. The likeness 
 was unmistakable ; I could see Green in his eye, and 
 Oliver in his mouth, and father in the way he allowed 
 the slimy-shoed bantling to dance on his breast. I 
 kept cool with a great effort, for it was a broiling day. 
 I was not so overwhelmed as I should have been six 
 months before; bitter experience had schooled me. 
 Still, this was the worst case of all. For some minutes 
 I looked on in silence at the domestic idyll. I did not 
 intrude upon it. I stole away, my breast in a tumult. 
 This, then, was the meaning of Oliver's periodical visits 
 to his uncle ! He was such an inveterate evader of a 
 lie that he might even have referred to the raising of 
 money for surreptitious household expenses. 
 
 The next morning I met Oliver in the Atlantic. I 
 swam up to him, and in a jocund tone gave him good- 
 
 morning. 
 
 He was so startled that he imbibed a mouthful of 
 sea-water, retired for a moment, and came up gurgling 
 and spluttering. 
 
 In answer to his spasmodic syllables, I replied that 
 my coming was fortuitous. I then wished him joy of 
 his marriage, and remarked clieerfully that his name 
 would be handed down to eternal execration. 
 
 He stared at me with a fishy eye from between the 
 billows, then threw up his arms and sank. On his 
 return he replied that he had been laughing like a sub- 
 marine telephone. He was not married at all.
 
 2i8 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 It was now my turn to feel for the bottom of the 
 Atlantic. As I rose I felt that Oliver did not deserve 
 to live. Oh the poor trusting woman with the red 
 parasol! Oh the pocket-edition of Oliver with the 
 spade and the sand-bucket ! 
 
 We met outside our machines, but I turned away in 
 disgust. Oliver was about to speak, when his little 
 boy ran up, pursued by a fat, panting ayah. Oliver 
 caught the little lad up in his arms and kissed him, and 
 remarked " Oopsi-daisey," and dandled him over his 
 head, after which he surrendered him to the lady with 
 the red parasol, who had by this time toiled up. 
 
 " How did you like your bath, Oliver ? " she asked, 
 with a loving glance. 
 
 " Glorious ! " he said ; " I wish I could persuade you 
 to try a dip." 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "But to-morrow the little man must " 
 
 j^gain she shook her head. Her face was still half 
 obscured by a veil, but nothing less opaque than cor- 
 duroy could hide its harshness and irregularity. It was 
 bronzed and bearded like a trooper's. Her figure was 
 less uncomely, being plump and passable. Her age was 
 certain ; it was over half a century. I wondered at 
 Oliver's taste. Still, she might have been beautiful in 
 the far-off happy days. 
 
 He turned to me, as I stood glued to the spot. 
 
 "Paul," said he, "let me introduce you to Julia —I 
 mean Miss Blossom." 
 
 I blushed for him, as he effected the introduction. 
 
 "You haven't introduced me to this little chap," I 
 said genially, caressing the child's curls. 
 
 I was glad to see Oliver blush in his turn. His
 
 A NEW MATRIMONIAL RELATION 219 
 
 emljarrassment was most painful. Ho hummed and 
 hawed and stammered. 
 
 "This— this— is little Oliver." 
 
 I let a moment of severe silence pass by, then I 
 said smiling, " And little Oliver is your " 
 
 " Uncle ! " he said desperately, — " precisely." 
 
 If I had not been resting on a stick I should have sat 
 down on the sand. Miss Blossom did so instead, and 
 took ont some crochet, while Oliver's nncle went 
 trapezing'about the beach, pursued by the ayah. 
 
 " Your uncle from India ? " I managed to ejaculate 
 at last. 
 
 " The same ! Be quiet, Oliver ! " he snapped, as his 
 uncle ran between his legs and nearly upset him. 
 " Yes, that is he. He is an orphan, and was brought 
 over last year by his aunt. Miss Blossom. I am his 
 guardian and trustee under my grand fa tlier's will, and 
 I feel it my duty to go and see the little beggar three 
 or four times a year. As I told you before, he requires 
 a lot of looking after. But please don't tell anybody. 
 It 's such an abnormal case. It makes me look so 
 awfully ridiculous, and I try to keep the real fact dark. 
 You know if there is one thing in the world I hate it 's 
 being made ridiculous; especially when I 'in not a whit 
 to blame." 
 
 " Oh, you may rely on me," I said, gripping his hand 
 sympathetically. " But is it possible that a mite of a 
 lad like that should be your uncle ? " 
 
 " I wish it wasn't," he said gloomily. " But it ciphers 
 outvery simply, extraordinary and unique as it all is. My 
 grandfather married my grandmother out in India when 
 she was fourteen. It 's the climate, vou know. She had 
 a daughter at fifteen, who was my niotlicr. This daughter
 
 220 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 also mavried young — at fifteen, and I was born before 
 she was sixteen. Her mother — my grandmother — had 
 gone on bearing children, and her latest success was won 
 at the abnormal age of forty-eight, which is almost the 
 extreme possible limit. But she died in the attempt, 
 leaving little Oliver motherless. That was six years 
 ago, and his father — my grandfather — dying last year, 
 the orphan lad was bequeathed to the care of Miss 
 Blossom (his aunt) and myself." 
 
 " I understand," I said mendaciously ; " but would 
 you mind putting it down on paper ? " 
 
 Between us we got down the figures. While I was 
 studying them a sudden thought flashed upon me that 
 almost stopped my pulse. 
 
 •'Why, Oliver!" I thundered, " this makes you only 
 twenty-three ! " 
 
 He turned sea-green, and his knees shook. His sin 
 had found him out. 
 
 " Paul ! " he said, " don't betray me. I know I 
 have made and procured false declarations of age. But 
 what does it matter ? My Indian descent ripened me 
 early. I had a thick beard at seventeen, almost as thick 
 as I have now. There was curry in my blood, remem- 
 ber that, Paul. I may be twenty-three in the letter, 
 but in the flesh and spirit I am thirty. Ah ! let me be 
 thirty-one still to Mandeville Brown and M'Gullicuddy. 
 Is it not a sufficient counterweight that my mature 
 appearance makes my avuncular relation all the more 
 ridiculous ? Ah, Paul, you will keep that secret too — 
 at least till the child grows up % " 
 
 " Till death," I replied solemnly. 
 
 Oliver thanked me with a look, then ran to disengage 
 his uncle from the irate clutches of a little girl whom
 
 A NEW MATRIMONIAL RELATION 
 
 221 
 
 lie had playfully prodded in the nose with his spade. 
 He carried his strufrnlincr and kicking relative back to 
 
 where I stood. Then he shook his uncle from India, and 
 slapped his hands, and said, " Naughty, naughty."
 
 222 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 His uncle from India yelled like a Cherokee on the 
 war-path. 
 
 " And is he so rich ? " I asked. 
 
 " Beastly rich," he said. 
 
 He seated his wealthy uncle from India on his 
 shoulder, and tried to pacify him, but in vain. The 
 avuncular yoke sat by no means lightly upon his shoul- 
 ders. Aunt Julia had to get up and entreat the demon 
 to leave off. 
 
 "Tan't leave off till you give me a penny," said the 
 poor young uncle, sobbing hysterically. 
 
 " Where 's the penny I gave you last night ? " said 
 Oliver. 
 
 " I spent it on seed-cake," said his wealthy uncle from 
 India. 
 
 The nephew shook his head at his reprobate, profli- 
 gate, prodigal young uncle. 
 
 " Well, well," he said sternly, " here you are, but not 
 another penny do you get from me to-day." 
 
 The uncle received his nephew^'s bounties without 
 gratitude. He rrrabbed the coin and climbed down 
 from Oliver's shoulders. The next minute he was 
 twenty yards up the beach dissipating his nephew's 
 hoardings in the society of an apple-woman. woman! 
 woman ! 
 
 " It 's no small responsibility to be a nephew," sighed 
 Oliver, " when one is saddled with a scapegrace young 
 uncle. Paul, I cannot describe how acutely I feel 
 the absurdity of this relationship, and I hope you will 
 not either." 
 
 Ajrain I crushed his finc^ers between mine. 
 
 But he might just as well not have exacted a promise 
 from me, for the whole story was in the Porcupine, a
 
 A NEIV MATRIMONIAL RELATION ii% 
 
 Liverpool satirical paper, before the week was out. The 
 port roared ; and busy Liverpudlians went down to 
 their watering-place, just to see the uncle and the 
 nephew. The particulars were stated in the big Liver- 
 pool dailies, and the paragraphs were copied by the 
 general press, and even formed the staple of an article 
 in the Daily Wire, which considered the freak of genea- 
 logy in the light of the Bhagavad Gita, the folklore 
 of Japan, the CEdipus of Sophocles, the careers of 
 Charlemagne, Octavius Csesar, Hamlet and Heinrich 
 Heine, the habits of the Ornithorhynchus, Mr. Glad- 
 stone, and various other associated topics. That 
 settled poor Oliver. After he had read the jokes in the 
 local comic paper he never smiled again. But wlien 
 the Daily Wire leader, with its elephantine humour, 
 came within his ken, he was a ruined man. Within a 
 week the banns were up in New Brighton for the mar- 
 riage of Oliver Green and Henrietta Blossom. 
 
 I went to Oliver to point out the error of his ways. 
 
 " Go away, sir," he shouted, " you have made me the 
 laughing-stock of the country." 
 
 " I ? " I exclaimed indignantly. 
 
 " Yes, you. Who else sent tlie facts to the PorcupincV 
 
 " I don't know," I said hotly, for I was exceedingly 
 annoyed at having lost the opportunity. Since some 
 one was to reap the reward of indiscretion, why not I 
 as well as another ? 
 
 " You are too modest," he sneered. 
 
 " Wring my withers as you will," I answered, remem- 
 bering my higli mission, " I have come to save you." 
 
 " Bray save yourself — the trouble," he said ; " 1 know 
 what I am about." 
 
 "I doubt it," 1 retorted.
 
 224 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " Do you insinuate that I am mad ? ' 
 
 " No ; only headstrong." 
 
 "A euphemism for weak-headed, I suppose. How- 
 ever, you shall hear. Then you will judge me more 
 leniently. Do you know why I am marrying Miss 
 Blossom ? " 
 
 " Assuming you are sane — no." 
 
 " Miss Blossom is little Oliver's aunt." 
 
 He paused impressively, as if he had revealed the 
 secret of the universe. My doubts of his sanity 
 vanished. Tliey were changed into certainties. 
 
 " You don't seem to take it in." 
 
 " No wonder," I said, " I knew the fact long ago." 
 
 "Yes, but put two and two together, man. As 
 Oliver's nephew I am the scoff and byword of the king- 
 dom. By marrying his aunt I become his uncle. As 
 his uncle I shall regain the respect which I have for- 
 feited by your blabbing." 
 
 I allowed the libel to pass unchallenged. I could 
 hardly utter a syllable for sheer blank astonishment. 
 The floodgates of speech were checked by a dam. 
 
 " Swear away ! " said Oliver. " Add insult to injury. 
 Don't put yourself in my place. Don't remember how 
 thin my skin is, and how it quivers under the lash of 
 ridicule. Tell me that I ought to bear the flail, as if I 
 were a rhinoceros. Oh, to drag on a wretched existence, 
 the butt of all the witlings, pointed out by the digit of 
 derisive Demos, — anything rather than that ! anything 
 rather than that !" 
 
 "Wretch! Coward!" I cried sternly. "And for 
 mere petty personal considerations you would eclipse 
 the gaiety of nations !" 
 
 " I would. I never set up as an altruist. There are
 
 A NEW MATRIMONIAL RELATION 225 
 
 only two exits from this frightful situation. In only 
 two ways can I cease to be my uncle's nephew. One is 
 by murder. I can take him out bathing and lose him. 
 But in this Philistine country that is not, I fear, a prac- 
 ticable exit. The other is marriage. Only by becoming 
 my ward's uncle and making him his guardian's nephew 
 can the normal roles be restored. Then I shall be able 
 to hold up my head again in the world. I shall be able 
 to present my young ward without blushing. A new 
 matrimonial relation will spring up between me and 
 him. He will be the nephew and 1 shall be the 
 uncle." 
 
 Murder or suicide ! It was indeed a horny dilemma ! 
 
 " But what does Miss Blossom say 1 " I asked, 
 
 " She is willing to sacrifice herself on the altar of my 
 salvation," he said, in moved tones. 
 
 A world of unspoken emotion surged in my chest as 
 I turned away. 
 
 Next day a gleam of hope visited me. In return I 
 visited Miss Blossom in her private room. She lived 
 on the Parade, locally known as the Hamanegg 
 Terrace. I went straight to the point. I said, " I have 
 come to warn you. Mr. Green cannot marry you." 
 
 She put her hand to her bosom. 
 
 " Why not ? " she breathed. 
 
 " Because there is a secret in his life — something that 
 you do not know." 
 
 " Oh my heart," she gasped, " I feared so ; he is " 
 
 "A Bachelor," I said unrelentingly, yet a tremor of 
 sympathy in my voice. 
 
 She briefly informed me of the position of the door. 
 I was prepared for discourtesy, so was not put out by 
 it. I appealed to her to have some regard for Oliver's 
 
 P
 
 226 
 
 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 relatives. She curled her moustache haughtily and 
 aslied what I meant. 
 
 " See here," I said ; " if Oliver is Oliver's uncle, and 
 Oliver is Oliver's nephew, then if Oliver marries you, 
 
 who are Oliver's aunt, Oliver will become Oliver's 
 nephew, and Oliver will become Oliver's uncle, 
 therefore Oliver becomes his own great-uucle, and 
 
 Oliver " 
 
 "Hold on," she said. "Which Oliver is Oliver's 
 niicle, and which Oliver is Oliver's nephew ? "
 
 A NEW MATRIMONIAL RELATION 227 
 
 " Both are either, and each is the other," I said. " It's 
 as plain as a pikestaff. If Oliver " 
 
 " Which Oliver ? " she said desperately. 
 
 In deference to her inferior intellect, I went out of 
 my way to make it as childish as A, B, C. 
 
 " Well, let 's call old Oliver, Oliver the First, and little 
 Oliver, Oliver the Second." 
 
 " Yes, yes," she said eagerly. 
 
 " Well, then, if Oliver the First, who is the nephew of 
 Oliver the Second, becomes Oliver the Second's uncle 
 by marrying Oliver the Second's aunt, then Oliver the 
 First becomes his own mother's uncle, as well as his own 
 great-uncle and great-nephew to himself ; and as his 
 mother is his niece, he is his grandmother's brother, 
 and as he is both his uncle's uncle and his nephew's 
 uncle, his uncle is plainly his nephew's brother, and this 
 uncle is therefore the son of his own sister (which is 
 rank incest), while his mother becomes his grand- 
 mother, and as " 
 
 " For Heaven's sake, stop a moment ! " Miss Blossom 
 cried. 
 
 I did so, and she sprinkled her forehead with eau-de- 
 Cologne. 
 
 Why she could not have waited to do so till she was 
 in her own boudoir, I could not understand, but ladies 
 will be ladies. 
 
 " Where was I ? " I said, a little nettled, for it is so 
 easy to lose the thread of the most babyish argument 
 when you are dealing with the weaker-headed sex. 
 
 " Never mind, go on to Oliver the Second," Miss 
 Blossom murmured. 
 
 I smiled in triumph. Her spirit was crushed, her 
 conscience weakened. The enormity of what she had
 
 228 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 been about to do in pure ligbtheavtedness was coming 
 home to her. 
 
 " Well, it 's worse with Oliver the Second," I said. 
 " Because if Oliver the First becomes his uncle, and he 
 is already the uncle of Oliver the First, then he becomes 
 the son of his own great-grandfather at a bound, thus 
 annihilating two generations — his grandfather and his 
 father, for whose disappearance you are responsible in 
 justice if not in law ; and, further, by suppressing his 
 father you make him illegitimate at one stroke, by 
 which shameful act you not only make a pariah of him 
 for life, but exclude him from the succession to the 
 Somerville estate, which thus escheats to the Crown ; 
 furthermore, as Oliver the First " 
 
 Miss Blossom uttered a groan and swayed helplessly 
 forward. I caught her in my arms. Somebody knocked 
 at the door, and came in without waiting for an answer. 
 It was Oliver Green. We looked at each other. 
 
 " She has fainted," I said. The information gave 
 him no concern. He made no effort to relieve me of 
 the burden, 
 
 " How came you here ? " he said. " And what have 
 you been doing to her ? " 
 
 " Through the door," I said curtly. " And telling her 
 she mustn't marry you." 
 
 " Why not % " 
 
 " Because you are a Bachelor. Also because the 
 marriage would be so mixed. She got a little mixed 
 herself in following my line of thought." 
 
 " What do you mean by a mixed marriage % " 
 
 He glared at me as if ready to pounce upon me. I 
 glared back at him across the lady from India. I held 
 her to my breast like a shield. With her head pillowed 
 
 &
 
 A NEW MATRIMONIAL RELATION 229 
 
 on my shoulder I felt a sweet sense of security from 
 
 all pugilistic ills. 
 
 woman, in our hours of ease, 
 Uncertain, coy, and hard to please ; 
 When anger threats to wring the nose, 
 Thou guardest us from bullies' blows. 
 
 Oliver and I had split many a soda together in effusive 
 amity, little dreaming of the day when a woman would 
 come between us. 
 
 " What do you mean by mixed % " Oliver repeated 
 with stern white lips. 
 
 I was about to relate afresh the catalogue of family 
 complications. Suddenly a new solution made my 
 heart thump like a steam-hammer cracking a nut. 
 
 " You cannot marry your uncle's aunt," I said. 
 " You 're collaterally consanguineous." 
 
 Oliver staggered back. His jaw fell. 
 
 " It 's a lie ! " cried Miss Blossom, extricating herself 
 from my arms. 
 
 " It 's the truth," I said, shifting my position to the 
 other side of the table. " If you, Miss Blossom, are 
 Oliver the Second's aunt, then you cannot avoid being 
 related to Oliver the Second's nephew in the line of 
 direct descent. It's a collateral anti-connubial con- 
 sanguinity of the third degree, and unless it 's of the 
 fourtli degree according to Eoman law, you and Oliver 
 the First cannot marry. By Oliver the First, I mean 
 you," I explained to Green. 
 
 " I don't care," Oliver the First answered. " We 
 shall see what the authorities will say." 
 
 " Archbishop Parker's Tabic of Kindred and Affinity, 
 according to Leviticus, and the Constitutions and 
 Canons Ecclesiastical of 1603, distinctly say "
 
 230 THE CELIBATES'' CLUB 
 
 "And I distinctly say that there's the door." 
 " But vill you imperil your position thus, Miss 
 Blossom % " I pleaded. " Will you risk your marriage 
 beincf null and voidi" 
 
 Having said this, I picked myself up from the 
 Hamanegg Terrace, bought some arnica, and lodged a 
 protest with the officiating clergyman, stating that the 
 bride was the bridegroom's great-aunt. Yet, two days 
 after, Oliver the First married his uncle's aunt, and his 
 uncle was the worst boy at the wedding. Oliver the 
 Second actually made faces at the pew-opener. I 
 wondered his nephew — I mean his uncle — did not give 
 him away. I was in church, for my sympathy was 
 not entirely extinguished by the careless manner in 
 which I had been treated. Julia Blossom did not live 
 up to her name even on her wedding-day, despite the 
 tulle and the jasmine. She remained a prosaic cauli- 
 flower to the last. India was chosen for the honey- 
 moon. The wedding-party drove straight to the station. 
 It consisted of Oliver Green, Julia Green, their little 
 nephew, and the native nurse. I was anxious to see 
 the last of the detestable quartette, and was on the 
 platform. To my surprise, the ayah and Oliver the 
 Second were transferred to the care of an unknown 
 lady. In a flash I saw through the whole idea. Oliver 
 the First was determined to carry the comedy through 
 to the bitter end. From the unknown lady — after the 
 train was gone — I learnt that Julia Blossom was one of 
 the greatest heiresses of Bombay. It was clear that 
 nothing less would satisfy my poor friend than to 
 return from India not only an uncle, but a wealthy 
 uncle. Thus, and only thus, would the reversal be 
 complete, and the sting of ridicule be entirely extracted.
 
 J NEW MATRIMONIAL RELATION 231 
 
 I went the next day to tlie clergyman to inquire why 
 lie had gone on with this forbidden marriage. What he 
 told me quite compensated for the annoyance I had 
 experienced. 
 
 " Almost on your heels," he said, " the late Miss 
 Blossom called to see me. She said there was an idea 
 about that she was related to her intended husband, 
 but that this report was premature. Her husband, 
 whom she called Oliver the First, believed that she 
 was the. aunt of his uncle, whom she entitled Oliver 
 the Second. ' But this,' said she, and proved it by 
 documents, ' is a very natural false impression. / am 
 not Oliver the Second's aunt at all. I am related to him, 
 but in a relationship not yet recognised in law. The fact 
 is, Oliver the Second's father, before he became Oliver 
 the Second's mother's husband, asked me to be his 
 wife. I said I could never think of him in that way 
 but I would be a sister to him. So it was settled ; I 
 became his sister by refusal of marriage, and thus in 
 due course I became Oliver the Second's aunt by 
 refusal of marriage. So you see, my relationship 
 to Oliver the First's parental stock was a purely 
 moral and never a legal one. I often stayed at the 
 house of my sister-in-law by refusal of marriage, and 
 when she died she commended Oliver the Second 
 to my care with her dying breath, her husband 
 doing ditto last year with his,' The explanation was 
 quite satisfactory, and as the poor lady seemed quite 
 distracted by the idea of the marriage being delayed 
 even by a day, I made no unnecessary difficulties." 
 
 Thus the clergyman to my sardonic satisfaction. 
 
 I saw it all now. The infatuated woman had traded 
 upon her supposed relationship to Oliver the Second to
 
 232 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 bring Oliver the First to her feet. It was she who had 
 put the matrimonial idea into his head, and goaded him 
 on by sending that paragraph to the Porcupine. My 
 collateral consanguineous discovery had threatened to 
 upset her amorous structure, and the woman who had 
 become morally related to Oliver the Second by refusal 
 of marriage, bade fair to be debarred from legal rela- 
 tionship by the same cause. But she had out- 
 manoeuvred me. 
 
 I hugged the revenge which had fallen into my 
 hands to my bosom, and kept it warm. 
 
 When Oliver Green, turned yellow, came back from 
 India, I was on the landing-stage to meet him, and I 
 had the satisfaction of informing him that he had 
 wasted a liver complaint, and that the little seven-year- 
 old fellow who climbed up his white flannel trousers to 
 kiss him was his uncle still.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 MARRYING FOR MONEY. 
 
 Halfway up Mont Blanc two amateur mountaineers 
 nearly came to blows with their alpenstocks. The 
 guides' conception of the essential insanity of the 
 English nature was strengthened. The necessity of 
 attending to the ascent interfered at points with the 
 amenities of the dialogue, but they set in severely and 
 steadily during the halt at the next chalet. It was not 
 the condition of Europe or of the mountain that made 
 the travellers' angry passions rise ; they were not con- 
 tradicting each other on the rate at which they observed 
 the glaciers moving, nor were they arguing whether it 
 was the duty of the Canton Council to pave the 
 crevasses. The point in dispute was financial ; and 
 Moses Fitz-Williams, as Treasurer of the Bachelors' Club, 
 or Solicitor to the Treasury (as some of us facetiously 
 styled the briefless barrister), evidently considered that 
 his word was law. His disputant had even more self- 
 respect. Tompas was neither a Bachelor nor a bachelor, 
 but of the common or domestic variety of man. He 
 had a wife and a villa at Camberwell, and four children 
 called him papa. He was one of the myriad metropo- 
 litan taxpayers who are " something in the City," but 
 nothing anywhere else. His life was as moral as a 
 copybook. In politics the Standard agreed with him, 
 
 233
 
 234 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 and in religion he belonged to the Sunday-school — the 
 great sect which keeps its six days sacred to business. 
 Once a year Tompas's wife and family went to the 
 seaside ; Tompas went with them or to the Continent 
 alternately. Such men as Tompas are Britannia's 
 Bulwarks. Their heads are the real wooden walls of Old 
 England. As a confirmed family-man, Tompas looked 
 down on single men, deeming their views on any subject 
 beneath discussion. Bachelors had not imbedded them- 
 selves in the great framework of society, and their con- 
 clusions were vitiated by their aloofness from reality. 
 Tompas spoke as if marriage were a furnisher or fur- 
 bisher of intellect, and as if King Solomon had purchased 
 his pre-eminence in wisdom by taking a quantity of it. 
 The financial question between him and Moses Fitz- 
 Williaras having reference to matters domestic, Tompas's 
 conversation naturally confined itself mainly to the 
 reduplicated form of "Pooh"; while Moses bleated 
 " Bah," like a cynical ram. Tompas told Moses quite 
 frankly that the Treasurer of the Bachelors' Club was 
 an ass ; and the lawyer spoke his mind quite freely in 
 reply, not even charging six and eightpence for the 
 information that Tompas was a nincompoop. Through- 
 out Tompas endeavoured to shrivel up Fitz-Williams 
 with the lightning of his glance, himself exposed the 
 while to a cross fire from Moses's inharmonious eyes. 
 
 All the pother arose from the Barrister's official 
 position in the Bachelors' Club. As Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, Moses was preparing a paper for the 
 next General Court upon "The Financial Aspects of 
 Marriage." In this paper he intended to show how 
 much money was annually wasted by people getting 
 married. He had calculated the sums dissipated by
 
 MARR YING FOR MONE Y 235 
 
 the inhabitants of the United Kingdom, and was ready 
 to prove that if they had not entered it, they would 
 have amassed sufficient to pay off the National Debt 
 and unshackle the country. The minimum on which a 
 man could marry was laid down by Fitz- Williams at 
 five hundred a year; and he had investigated the whole 
 literature of this evergreen subject in proof of his con- 
 tention. There were to be other statistics in the 
 Treasurer's paper, which, he did not conceal, bade fair 
 to be a classical contribution to the economics of 
 marriaoie. Not even from a casual co-climber like 
 Tompas did his singularly candid nature make any 
 effort to conceal this probability. But Tompas had a 
 cantankerous carping disposition. Even though they 
 were passing a nasty hole when Moses broached the 
 subject, Tompas did not fall in with him, but made 
 careless and violent gestures of disapproval of his 
 estimates. It was sad that these two travellers could 
 not learn from the Peace of Nature to be kind to each 
 other. Overhead the sky shimmered lazily, as if it 
 were painted on canvas, and had no work to do ; above 
 tliem was pillowed tranquilly the farrowed forehead of 
 the mountain with its big bald head unpecked even by 
 the eagle ; at their feet the crevasses yawned sleepily. 
 Alas ! that man alone should mar the gneiss prospect ! 
 Tompas maintained obstinately that three hundred 
 pounds a year was an ample income for a family man 
 while five hundred pounds — Moses's matrimonial mini- 
 mum — was enough to enable him, arithmetically not 
 morally speaking, to support two wives and families. 
 When the speculative financiers arrived at the top of 
 Mont Blanc they quite forgot to look at the view. The 
 wrangle continued down hill. Tompas was going on to
 
 236 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Rome and Moses to Rouen, but they altered their 
 routes now so as to enjoy each other's society. Tompas 
 wanted badly to go to Rome, and Moses had set his 
 heart on Rouen ; but, as neither could sacrifice his own 
 convenience to his companion's, they agreed to travel 
 together to Berlin so as to thresh out this thing 
 thoroughly. At an early stage of the duel Tompas had 
 called in a second. He took it from his pocket-book. 
 It was a slip of crumbling newspaper. This he unfolded 
 lovingly and tenderly as one unwraps the face of an 
 ancestral mummy, and, holding it firmly in his hand, 
 he bade Fitz-Williams gaze upon it. 
 
 It was an old newspaper-cutting containing a table 
 showing how a man with four children could live on 
 two hundred and fifty pounds a year. The table was 
 stated to be an extract from a recent book on How to Live, 
 on Anything a Year. In a short review of this book, 
 the newspaper said that it was one of the ablest 
 financial achievements of the year ; that starting from 
 nothing a year it gradually worked its way up to a 
 ducal income^ like a self-made millionaire. The titles 
 of the chapters were — " How to Live on Nothing a 
 Year," " How to Live on a Sovereign a Year," " How to 
 Live on Ten Pounds a Year," and so on in an ascending 
 scale. The tables were spread with equal hospitality 
 for the rich and the poor. But the two hundred and 
 fifty pounder had been selected for quotation by the 
 critic as the most generally interesting to its readers. 
 
 " That table, sir," said Tompas, " was my salvation." 
 He had been cravenly sniffing about the suburbs of 
 matrimony, disengaged to the sweetest girl God ever 
 made, when he came across it. 
 
 " It was a wonderful piece of constructive finance, sir,"
 
 ON THE EDGE 0? THK ABYSS.
 
 238 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 said Tompas, "broad and sweeping in conception, 
 minute and detailed in execution. It was like an 
 elephant's trunk, sir, which, as you may be aware, 
 uproots an oak or picks up a pin. The computer had 
 put down that pin ; nor had he forgotten the oak in 
 his furniture. The moment I clapped my eyes on this 
 paper I was a married man. For, understand, the man 
 of this table had only two hundred and fifty a year. 
 / had three hundred ! If he was so happy with his 
 two-fifty, what joys would not be mine with three 
 hundred, which was fifty to the good ! " 
 
 " To the bad, sir, to the bad," asseverated Moses 
 solemnly, looking earnestly to the right and the left 
 simultaneously. " Your logic is out. Even if a man 
 with two-fifty can marry, it is quite impossible for a 
 man with three hundred to do so. For the bachelor 
 with the smaller sum is ex-hypothesi accustomed to grub 
 along, and so it does not matter whether he is married 
 or single ; but the man with the higher income being 
 more exigent towards life is unable to sacrifice himself 
 to the interests of posterity." 
 
 " You are joking," Tompas said. 
 
 " That is news to me," said Moses politely. " You 
 are so dull that you fancy you see a joke when you are 
 bowled over. It is tlie last resource of little minds. 
 No, sir, it is no joke, but a serious fact that the poor 
 marry most nowadays. The higher a man's income, the 
 less he can afford to marry on it. This is a main posi- 
 tion of my forthcoming paper. Your reasoning, sir, as 
 to the two-fifty and the three hundred, involves a fallacy 
 of simple inspection. It is on a par with the argu- 
 mentation of the schoolboy who demonstrates, by crude 
 rule of three, that if one man can do a piece of work in
 
 MARRYING FOR MONEY 239 
 
 two days, two men can do it in one day. As a matter 
 of fact, the two men will gossip or play nap, and the 
 work will last four days." 
 
 " And with this silly wire-drawing you hope to 
 impose on my common-sense." 
 
 " I have no such hope ! " 
 
 " But confound it, sir, you must have, or you wouldn't 
 talk such paradoxical drivel. It is an insult to my 
 common-sense." 
 
 " I hope not, sir," said Moses with concern. " I never 
 abuse the absent. How can any man of common-sense 
 suppose that marriage could be undertaken on two-fifty 
 or three hundred a year ? " 
 
 " But d n it, man," roared Tompas, " I did 
 
 imdertake it." 
 
 " Quite so. That is just my point, sir. If you had 
 been a man of common-sense you would never have 
 supposed it could be done." 
 
 " But my supposition was proved sound, sir," shrieked 
 Tompas. " Have I not a wife and a family and fifty 
 pounds to spare ; all on two-fifty a year ? For I 
 regulate my expenses strictly according to this table, 
 sir," he said, rapping it reverently. " We live in clover 
 on two-fifty a year. We have not a single want 
 ungratified — such was the genius of our unknown bene- 
 factor whom my little ones daily remember in their 
 prayers. We are happy as the day is long. With the 
 extra fifty we are enabled to purchase all those luxuries 
 which are necessary to persons in our station — includ- 
 ing a summer's holiday." Tompas ceased, but kept his 
 look of conscious rectitude. He belonged to that class 
 of persons who make a virtue out of the most unpro- 
 mising materials.
 
 240 THE CELT BATES' CLUB 
 
 "And so you and that sweet girl inarried on the 
 strength of this computation ? " said Moses huskily. 
 
 "Yes," replied Tompas, " though I was just a day late 
 in getting the original sweet girl I mentioned before. 
 If that book had only been reviewed a day earlier I 
 should have been a different husband. She got engaged 
 an hour before the notice appeared. But being then 
 wrought up to marrying point, I asked another. And 
 let me tell you, sir, I have never regretted it. I have 
 lived in comfort, and brought up my children to be 
 creditable citizens in the twentieth century, and all on 
 an income which you, with your unpractical theories, 
 declare to be utterly inadequate. Now, sir, what have 
 you to say to that ? " 
 
 " I say that what you have done is impossible, and 
 I will prove it. You say you have gone exactly by that 
 table. Now that table is the most ridiculous collocation 
 of haphazard figures ever jumbled together!" 
 
 "But, sir, I have thriven by it. I have tested it. 
 That 's trumps." 
 
 Moses calmly swept off the trick. 
 
 '•' I drew it up." 
 
 " You ? Nonsense ! " said Tompas. 
 
 " You agree with me already," observed Moses 
 sweetly. " Yes ; I started life as a bookmaker you 
 know, for I only ate my dinners in the Inner Temple to 
 get into journalism. I had nothing to live upon. I 
 had to answer the problem ' How to get on in life ? ' 
 I wrote a book informing other people ' How to get on 
 in life.' It did not succeed, and I had to try another 
 way. There was a temporary rage for household 
 accounts. I fell in with a publisher who gave me ten 
 pounds to write the encheiridion that has guided your
 
 MARRYING FOR MONEY 241 
 
 life, I was a young unattached scapegrace, living iu 
 taverns and restaurants. My ideas of expense were as 
 iiazy as an heiress's, I had never lived much at home^ 
 amdso bad rarely been ipreseut at the domestic squabbles 
 over expenses ; as for babies, I had but scant recollec- 
 tion of the expenses of my own equipment in life. 
 Imagine, therefore, the hash these calculations must 
 have been. And how, if you had really taken a leaf out 
 of my book, could you have managed to escape ruin ? 
 Marriage must, indeed, be a failure, financially speaking, 
 when run on the basis I recommended in my inept 
 handbook. No ; model your etiquette on my ' Guide by 
 a Member of the Aristocracy ' if you will ; ride the higli 
 horse on my ' Principles of Equitation ' if you like ; and 
 prognosticate your future life by my ' Vaticination for 
 the Household, or the Inoculation of Truth by Dreams/ 
 if such be your humour ; but .do not, oh do not attempt 
 to pilot the vessel of matrimony by the chart I drew up 
 in my youth and turpitude." 
 
 " Out of the mouth of fools and sucklings cometh 
 forth Wisdom," said Tompas sententiously. " You are 
 wiser than you calculate. If you really are the inven- 
 tor of these invaluable calculations, I long to be better 
 versed in them. I only know the table I married on." 
 
 " Do you mean to say that you never bought the 
 book ? " 
 
 "How could II I married immediately, and the 
 •expense of purchasing it was not allowed for in the 
 estimate. So I have always felt an unappeased curiosity 
 ■to know ' how to live on nothing a year.' " 
 
 " You will learn that secret from Thackeray and his 
 Becky Sharp. A shorter way is to write the honest 
 truth about any public man."
 
 242 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " How do you mean ? " 
 
 "You will be sent to prison for inditing a false and 
 malicious libel. If you play your cards well you will 
 be a first-class misdemeanant. I have taken a first-class 
 in journalism myself. It was the making of me." 
 
 Tompas looked suspicious. 
 
 " And how can you live on a sovereign a year ? " 
 
 " By marrying her daughter." 
 
 " Oh, don't be so absurd ! " cried Tompas pettishly. 
 
 " Eeassure yourself. I have no such intention. But 
 don't you go away with the idea that you have achieved 
 the impossible. You have read Balzac's Physiologic du 
 mariage of course V 
 
 " No, sir," said Tompas hotly. " I never read French 
 books." 
 
 "Oh, I forgot. There is no translation. I beg your 
 pardon. Well, anyhow, in this book you will find that 
 Balzac excludes the greater portion of womankind from 
 the connotation of the term Femme. He sifts the fine 
 flour from the bran, and finds that for the purposes of 
 romantic love only one woman in fifteen is a woman." 
 
 " Don't talk to me of love, sir. I am a married man." 
 
 " Have patience. I was leaving love and coming to 
 marriage. In the same way as Balzac refused to call 
 most women women, I refuse to call most marriages 
 marriages. Certainly yours was no marriage." 
 
 " Sir ! " 
 
 " Only in a platonic sense, of course, it was no 
 marriage. A union in which beggarly economies are 
 the order of the day is no marriage. It is but book- 
 keeping by double entry. The wedded spirit, sir, must 
 expatiate at large in. the atmosphere of art and luxury. 
 To make both ends meet is a tawdry occupation for
 
 MARRYING FOR MONEY 243 
 
 immortal souls. I account no marriage such in the 
 liigher sense, which is contracted on less than five 
 hundred. Your defence of half that amount, sir, is a 
 disgraceful retrogression to lower ideals. Why, sir, a 
 hundred and fifty years ago some anonymous philan- 
 thropist, an ancestor in the spirit to M'GuUicuddy " 
 (the speaker bared his head reverently as he spoke the 
 President's name) " published a broadsheet entitled Forc- 
 VMrnd, Fore-arm d; or the Bcdclidors Monitor : Being a 
 Modest Fstimate of the Fxpcnscs attending the Married 
 Life. And even in those primitive times, when luxury 
 had not attained a tithe of its present stature, a decent 
 marriage was valued as an annual charge of £594. So 
 well was this acknowledged, alike by friends and foes 
 of the holy estate, that even the Counterblast to it, 
 which appeared in the same year under the name of 
 The Ladies' Advocate ; or an Apology for Matrimony, 
 did not attempt to eschew this liability, but only essayed 
 to prove that whereas the first author had appraised the 
 'expenses' of the Bachelor life at £87, they would 
 really be £238, so that the additional cost of matri- 
 mony would only be £356. A sum, mark you, sir, in 
 excess of yowr entire allowance. Nay more !" 
 
 Moses paused impressively, and drew out a note-book 
 in which he had jotted down miscellaneous materials 
 for his great effort, and continued : — 
 
 " The author of the monition to Bachelors says that his 
 estimate ' sii})poses that the marry 'd man actually 
 receives £2000 with his first wife ; and has, in the Com- 
 pass of Fifteen Years Eight Children, Four of which die, 
 and Four only are alive at one time.' £2000, sir, to 
 start on, besides a moderate allowance of children, and 
 then £594 a year ! I wish I had the allegorical tableau
 
 244 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 here, sir, which accompanied tliis profound calculation, 
 and demonstrated the cheapness of celibacy through the 
 medium of figures, with or without clothes or wings, I 
 wish I could show you the feeble pictorial reply in which 
 Cupids with hymeneal torches vainly endeavoured to 
 confute the orioinal figures." 
 
 "If there be such a pamphlet it is transparently 
 absurd. One hundred and fifty years ago the purchas- 
 ing power of £594 was much greater than now ; and 
 besides, as you rightly observe, there were not so many 
 solicitations to expenditure. Who can take up the 
 colossal catalogue of any self-respecting Store without 
 feeling that our facilities for spending money have kept 
 pace with our improved methods of making it ? " 
 
 " Which strengthens my argument. If £591 was 
 the minimum for elegant living in 1741, this should be 
 double as much now. In fixing it at £500 I have yielded 
 unduly to the contentions of the superficial. The 
 Bachelor minimum I take to be £200. Even the 
 Ladies Advocate could not make it more than £238, 
 though he made his Bachelor a paragon of extravagance, 
 and made him spend no less than £5 a year upon 
 Brushes, Brooms, Mops, and Turners' and Chandlers' 
 Articles. But, sir, judge of the weakness of the case of 
 the Ladies Advocate, when he cants to the jury of 
 marriage as ' the Law of Heaven and the Land, the 
 Purpose of Life, the End of Nature, a Debt to the 
 Commonwealth and to Posterity, and a JnstiJicatio7i of 
 Ones Own Parents 1 ' The Batchelors Monitor keeps a 
 far higher level of debate, never descending to ethical 
 considerations. He falls short of the mark rather than 
 overshoots it, for he assumes far too much moderation 
 in the expenditure of the household. Imagine that
 
 MARRVTNG FOR MONEY 245 
 
 Essences, Powder, Hungary and Lavender water. Elder 
 Flowers, Pomatums, Washes, Snuff, etc., only come to 
 £3 a year ! Or that the Christmas Donations of Pater- 
 familias are only £3 heavier than those of the Bachelor! 
 And what do you say to the generosity of a Contro- 
 versialist who expressly leaves out of account the fol- 
 lowing ' Probable Expenses' (probable, save the mark !) ? 
 ' Country House or Lodgings ; perhaps journeys to Bath, 
 Tuubridge, Scarborough; Chaise and Pair, or one Horse ; 
 possibly Saddle -Horse for little Excursions, Riding 
 Habits, etc. ; Card - playing, an amusement that has 
 banished the Needle and many useful Employments out 
 of the Modern Education for Ladies; Presents as Watch 
 and Equipage, Jewels, Ptings, etc. Perhaps Lap-Dogs, 
 Parrots, Canary Birds, etc. ! ' To-day wives don't tell 
 their husbands to go to Bath, they want them to go 
 much further. Our half-hearted Monitor also admittedly 
 says ' nothing of the Chance of Extravagance and other 
 too common Incidents which we forbear to mention out 
 of Tenderness to the Ladies?' Tenderness to the ladies, 
 forsooth ! What has a scientific economist to do with 
 Tenderness — or even with Ladies ? " 
 
 " He is dry as dust enough by now," observed Tompas 
 with satisfaction. " The ignorant incompetent idiot ! 
 If he said a man couldn't marry on less than £594 a 
 year, he was either a liar or an ignoramus." 
 
 " He knew more about domestic economy than you. 
 Can you tell me what your babies cost you a year ? " 
 
 " Do you think I post up my babies separately ? " 
 
 " Of course not," said IMoses contemptuously. " You 
 must go to a Bachelor to know the cost of a baby. 
 Lookers-on always see most of the game. Our glorious 
 Pioneer, the warning beacon-fire that saved so many
 
 246 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 lives from social wreckage, was a specialist in babies, 
 perhaps the most technical and mysterious branch of 
 domestic economy. He compiled the immortal 'Bahy 
 Catalogue for Eight children of a year old or under, 
 often recruited, and Numbers of most of the Particulars.' 
 Do you know, sir, what a baby involves? In 1741, 
 sir (and it probably involves twice as much now), it 
 involved * Child-bed basket, and Pin-cushion, and Pins, 
 and Chimney -line ; fine Satten Mantle and Sleeves for 
 the Christening, Cradle and its Furniture, Biggins, Head- 
 bands, Caps, Short-Stays, Long-Stays, Shirts, Wastecoats, 
 Clouts, Beds, Blankets, Ptollers, Mantles, Sleeves, Neck- 
 cloths, Shoes, Stockens, Coats, Stays, Frocks, Bibs, 
 Quarter-Caps laced, Coral, Ptibbands, Cap and Feather, 
 Cloak, First Coat and Second, Dozens for the Nurse, 
 Anodyne Necklace, etc' And how much, Mr. Tompas, 
 do you think this cost a year ? " 
 
 " A hundred pounds ! " replied Tompas faintly. 
 
 " Ten guineas ! Did I not say he handicapped him- 
 self too much ? And yet he won hands down." 
 
 Tompas was overwhelmed by this voice from the 
 dead — this cry from the cradle of an earlier civilisation. 
 Though a father himself, his heart was not petrified, 
 and as his eye conjured up that ancient baby-face 
 swathed in biggins, he turned away and blew his nose. 
 That day they wrangled no more. 
 
 Magnum fuit to tell the tale of their internecine 
 campaign, or to chronicle their bickerings. On the 
 way to Berlin Moses had occupied himself in carpen- 
 tering a series of financial tables, which were to be 
 henceforth indispensable additions to household furni- 
 ture. They were intended to supersede his former 
 jejune attempts. This time he laid down the chart of
 
 MARRYING FOR MONEY 347 
 
 expense on the basis of observation and from practical 
 experience of the reefs and shoals, instead of evolving 
 it from his inner unconsciousness. Tompas was the 
 first to have sight of The New Finance, for the initial 
 expenses in the necessarily interminable series were 
 made manifest to him in Berlin, in a beer- garden. He 
 perused Fitz-Williams's formulae with gathering bewil- 
 derment, but with the air of superiority which he would 
 have preserved even in the presence of Fluxions. 
 
 Tompas would have sat on the Canonical Forms them- 
 selves, if they had been fashioned by a friend of his. 
 The New Finance ran as follows :— -
 
 248 
 
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 33
 
 MARRYING FOR MONEY 249 
 
 "Well, what do you think of them?" said Moses 
 jauntily, as Tonipas silently let the paper droop. " Will 
 they do ? " 
 
 " Instead of the certificate of two doctors. Sir, you are 
 stark, staring mad," 
 
 " Hurrah ! " shouted Moses, " now I know I have 
 made a great discovery." He ordered some more lager 
 in his exultation. "Drink," said he, "to the New 
 Napier and the New Finance. What are logarithms to 
 my batch of budgets ! " 
 
 " Budgets ? They are simply numbers scattered from 
 a lotto-bag." 
 
 " Aha ! I thought you did not understand the inner 
 and interconnected beauties of this architectonic 
 arithmetical achievement. There is nothing attenu- 
 ated, naught set down in malice. Every number 
 bristles with significance, every line is pregnant with 
 meaning. It is not only a triumph of inductive reason- 
 ing and a lesson in finance, it is full of sermons on the 
 text of numbers. If you knew how to pull the strings 
 the figures would work out ; the sweepings of the lotto- 
 bag would become kaleidoscopic figures if your eye 
 brought the needed symmetry. The " 
 
 The lager beer arrived, and as Tonipas was fond of 
 lager beer, he drank to the New Napier, and, a little 
 mollified thereby, asked for an explanation. 
 
 "As well ask for an explanation of the Universe. 
 Tell me one item you do not understand." 
 
 "How can a man spend £222, 17s. lid. when he has 
 only an income of £80, and " 
 
 "My table is empirical. It is a real table — a real 
 live table — none of your moonshiny, airy, unpractical a 
 priori theories, such as you have lived by all these years."
 
 350 THE CELIBATES:' CLUB 
 
 " But effect a saving ? " 
 
 " Empiricism again. Isn't it obvious that if a man 
 spends ,-£222, 17s. lid., and lias only £80, he must save 
 £142, 17s. lid.? If he had had it, wouldn't he have 
 spent it ? You admit that. Very well, then. But he 
 didn't spend it. Therefore he saved it. That is the 
 value of ray system. It teaches the JiTieconomical to 
 save. The ordinary tables address themselves to the 
 frugal and the thrifty, who don't require teaching. 
 Anything else?" 
 
 " But how can your £200 man spend nothing ?" 
 
 "How can you say that when he pays £200 damages 
 annually? He is a collector, and like all collectors 
 spends his entire fortune on his pet fad. He has the 
 greatest collection oifiancies in the kingdom. True, he 
 abstains from meat, rent, flutes, tooth-powder, and 
 other more conventional luxuries, but that is because 
 he is a vegetarian, a care-taker, a teetotaller, and, since 
 he lives opposite a cigar-shop, an anti-tobacconist." 
 
 " But has he left off clothes, too ? " 
 
 "Yes, he has left-off clothes given him." 
 
 " But what — what does he spend that farthing on ? 
 Mouse-traps ? " 
 
 " He does not spend it. He drops it down a hole. 
 The law of averages requires that every man shall lose 
 at least a farthing once a year. Your ordinary Utopian 
 table coolly passes over this item." 
 
 " Well, perhaps you will explain the vagaries of your 
 £250 man. Why should he spend £300 on furniture ? " 
 
 " Blind ! blind ! " muttered Moses pityingly. " Do 
 you not see that he has ceased to purchase actresses' 
 portraits, that he spends £10 on flowers and court- 
 plaster, that he is extravagant in dress, that he wastesi
 
 MARRYING FOR MONEY 251 
 
 £8 in writing letters, and purchases inordinate 
 chocolates. Man, man, were you not yourself engaged 
 once ? On my system a man may betroth himself at 
 250, as is plainly written in the tables, though he may 
 not marry before 500." 
 
 " Rather old, isn't it ? " queried Tompas, with a sickly 
 smile. But he was not to be crushed so easily. 
 
 "But why should the £300 man spend £37 on 
 liquorice ? That at least is inexplicable." 
 
 " You forget," replied Moses, with a sweet smile, 
 " that he is a sweet-stuff dealer." 
 
 " But you can't mix that up with his domestic 
 expenses." 
 
 " Why blame me ? He deceives his wife that way. 
 It is not for the scientific observer to praise or blame 
 him ; it is his duty simply to record the facts." 
 
 "Hum! But if I understand your symbols, the 
 hundred-pounder saves £80 a year by paying his rent 
 and taxes. A pretty paradox, forsooth ! " 
 
 " A sober fact ! The rent of chambers in the central 
 district is so extortionate that he is compelled to rent 
 a whole house in tlie district. He pays £100 for the 
 house, lets himself extensive chambers for £120, and 
 the rest of the house for £60, and thus effects a sheer 
 saving of £80 per annum." 
 
 Tompas was so obfuscated that he flew to the other 
 extreme to cover his confusion. 
 
 " But what of the man who, blessed with a thousand 
 a year, allows his wife a scurvy £1, 17s. 6d. ?" 
 
 " Eeally, Tompas, one would think you were born 
 yesterday. As if a man with a thousand a year would 
 marry a wife without an income of her own ! The 
 more man has the more he wants. That £1, 17s. 6d. is
 
 252 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 simply tlie two-guinea present he gives his wife on her 
 birthday — trade price." 
 
 " But do you mean to say such a man spends nothing 
 on whisky ? " 
 
 "Yes, he has only fine wines." 
 
 " But you don't mention wines ? " 
 
 " They 're included in the Miscellanea." 
 
 " And he gives dinners without cheese ? " 
 
 " That 's in the Mouse-traps." 
 
 " And without cigars ? I see so much — that he is 
 all show. But surely he must give his friends 
 cicjars," 
 
 " He does — out of the boxes they have given him. A 
 man blessed with a thousand a year and a number of 
 poor friends never need buy cigars." 
 
 " But surely he would not spend £250 on rent and 
 taxes?" 
 
 "He spends only £100 in rent. The rest goes in 
 taxes — especially Income Tax. The assessors happen 
 to be friends of his, so, as you have acutely noticed, he 
 has to make a good show. No man likes to be under- 
 rated — by his friends." 
 
 " Well, there is something in that," replied Torapas, 
 with more respect for the table than he had yet shown. 
 '•' And your eighty-pounder seems to me to act very 
 naturally." 
 
 "Ah," said Moses with satisfaction, "you are begin- 
 ning to enter into the spirit of the calculation." 
 
 "But why does he spend £15 on correspondence?" 
 
 " How else could a man save £142, 17s. lid. a year ? 
 He has so many promises to pay to write to his creditors, 
 so many appeals for loans to make to his friends and 
 relatives."
 
 MARRYING FOR MONEY 253 
 
 " But the moment a man gets £500 a year he ceases 
 to write letters ? " 
 
 " You are hopeless. He writes them from his Club." 
 
 Tompas began to look dead-beat. " But your third 
 column ! Nothing on tailors, £15 on chocolate, £50 on 
 actresses' portraits ! The creature is utterly unreason- 
 able." 
 
 " Of course. It is a woman." 
 
 "A woman?" 
 
 " Yes,'why should you imagine it was a man? The 
 usual masculine assumption that the earth is man's and 
 the tables thereof. Why, everything points to the sex." 
 
 " But she must dress ? " 
 
 " Of course she must, but she goes to a dressmaker, 
 not a tailor. I should have thought tlie outlay of £25 
 on Mouse-traps, etc., would have opened the eyes of the 
 blindest. And who but the most myopic could miss 
 the point of the ^d. breach of promise damages ? What 
 man ever gets let off with a farthing ? " 
 
 "Granted. But how can a half-calf edition of the 
 Epic of Hades be got for Id. ? " 
 
 " Good heavens, Tompas ! you don't mean to say 
 you don't understand that ! She has a guinea subscrip- 
 tion at Mudie's, and the penny represents the propor- 
 tional cost of reading this book. Xo one buys books in 
 England now, except the two-fifty pounder, who pur- 
 chases the poem as a present to his sweetheart. Don't 
 you see that he has also got to spend lots on the theatre, 
 while all the others can afford to wait till the * gigantic 
 successes' come along, and the orders are flowing 
 freely ? " 
 
 " All the others — when No. 3 spends £5000 on 
 theatres ! "
 
 254 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " Oil, that is another story. She spends it partly as 
 lessee, partly on her salary as tragedienne at leading 
 theatres." 
 
 "But how in the d 1 can it be done on £150 a 
 
 vear?" 
 
 "Gently, sir!" said Moses reproachfully. "Eemem- 
 ber you are speaking of a lady." 
 
 Tompas apologised instantly, but still ventured to 
 point out that an actress would be the last person in 
 the world to waste £50 a year on actresses' portraits. 
 
 "Most moderate, sir," Moses rejoined suavely. 
 " Many actresses spend much more than that on their 
 portraits. Think of the infinite poses, postures, dresses, 
 and faces an actress hns to be taken in. The £102 
 for court plaster and flowers are of course to cover 
 the cost of the bouquets thrown on the stage. All I 
 have told you, sir, is not a tithe of the manifold 
 meanings and beauties of this table. Alps rise beyond 
 Alps in a perspective of boundless glory. The pickaxes 
 of science would be years mining in their bowels. 
 The ordinary calculations are so elaborately useless. 
 They go v/rong with such logical precision. Eeal life 
 laughs them to scorn. Your table allows you, say, a 
 sovereign for a dog, and seven and six for his licence; it 
 does not warn you that that dog will go bitino- the legs 
 of the legal-minded. Beware of that dog ! Your table 
 permits you to spend five pounds on a midsummer 
 holiday at the seaside, and works it out to a farthing, 
 but it meanly omits to state that you Avill want sand 
 shoes, that your hat will be blown over the pier, that 
 you will lose the return-half of your ticket, and that a 
 female cousin will be staying down there who will 
 expect to be seasick at your expense. So, more lager, 
 
 O'
 
 MARRYING FOR MONEY 255 
 
 Waiter ; let us drink again to The New Finance and the 
 New Napier." 
 
 They drank so often to them that they almost came to 
 blows. They were still brawling and squabbling on the 
 Channel steamer, and they had no sooner set foot in 
 London than tliey called upon me and told me the 
 whole story and asked me to arbitrate. Tompas argued 
 that a man could marry on two-fifty, much more on 
 three hundred, and proved it by his life. Fitz-Williams 
 argued that a man could not marry even on the higher 
 amount, and proved it by his tables. After abysmally 
 deep reflection I said there was only one way for me to 
 decide between them. If I consented to put up for a 
 week at Tompas's villa in Camberwell, and to watch 
 his expenditure carefully, I could settle this thing once 
 for all. Any week taken at random would do. Ex 
 'pede Ilerculem. From that I could gauge whether he was 
 really living on three hundred pounds or not. Tompas 
 was so cocksure of himself that he assented eagerly, 
 and after some reluctance I agreed to put up with the 
 old bore for the ensuing week. It was an ideal week for 
 me, for I learned a great deal, and though Mrs. Tompas 
 received me affably and boarded me well, the language I 
 overheard her use to her husband about me in their bed- 
 room was libellous, and the names she called him bordered 
 on scurrility. At the end of the week the three of 
 us assembled in the Bachelors' Club and I gave my 
 decision. It was in favour of Moses Fitz-Williams. 
 Tompas swore — that I was prejudiced. But I proved 
 conclusively that the household expenses for the week 
 argued an annual outlay of nearly four hundred. I 
 said that he consumed a frightful amount of gas, and 
 kept a table far in advance of his income. The wine
 
 256 THE CELIBATES" CLUB 
 
 alone which he had supplied to me at dinner would run 
 away with eighty a year. Tompas bridled up, and said 
 you could not treat a visitor like your own family, and 
 besides my expenses must be deducted from the calcu- 
 lation. This I could not allow, and Moses explained 
 violently that this was just one of the contingencies 
 which the stock tables did not foresee, and which real 
 life was fond of springing upon a man. If a man with 
 three hundred a year had to entertain another man for 
 a week, just to show that he only spent three hundred 
 a year, he must provide for this expense out of his 
 three hundred. Tompas shrieked "No!" I said it was a 
 difficult casuistical question, but that all the best Jesuits 
 and Talmudists were dead, and it would probably never 
 be settled now. M'Gullicuddy had to interfere to disen- 
 tangle the disputants. 
 
 Next day Moses wired for me. I went to his rooms. 
 They were luxurious. There were flowers in vases, and 
 court-plaster on his face. " More than I allowed for ! " 
 he said, groaning. 
 
 "Paul," he said, when I had lit one of his cigars, 
 *•' there is only one way out of this." 
 
 " Yes ? " I said, my heart beating ominously. " What 
 is it ? " 
 
 " You must marry." 
 
 My heart stood still. " I ? " I gasped. 
 
 "Yes, you. I want to show that a man cannot marry 
 on three hundred a year. A man in whose integrity 
 both parties can rely must be the object of the experi- 
 ment. Now you have more than that, I believe ; but 
 if you just sequestrate three hundred for this purpose, 
 and come a cropper in the Bankruptcy Court, my thesis 
 will be demonstrated to an unbelieving Tompas."
 
 MARK YING FOR MONE V 257 
 
 " But why should I many to support yoitV 
 
 " Paul, I know it is a great sacrifice I am asking, 
 and but for the depth of our friendship I would never 
 dare to ask it. But we are speaking now soul to soul. 
 You are the only friend I have in the world. I cannot 
 marry because I am an honorary official of the Bachelors' 
 Club. Yoic are only a private member ; the blow would 
 fall gentlier on M'Gullicuddy. It is for his sake I ask 
 it, my dear old Paul. You worship him no less than L 
 Besides,! have only the bare sum — ^^just the three hundred 
 a year. / cannot risk matrimony. True, I might be 
 mistaken. The income might be adequate. But what 
 if my marriage were a success ? What if Tompas were 
 refuted? I should be ruined. And I am certain that 
 my marriage will not be a failure, and that I shall be 
 ruined. Come, do not deny me this favour. Kemember 
 you agreed to arbitrate." 
 
 " Moses," I said sternly, " this is the one thing in 
 the world no man has a right to ask of another. Ask 
 him to sacrifice fame, fortune, limb — nay, life! but not 
 his celibacy, Moses, not his celibacy ! If I am arbitrator, 
 I say it is yott who should marry, not I." 
 
 " Well, if yoit think so, as arbitrator," said Moses 
 readily, " I suppose I must. Do you know any one 
 who would be suitable ? " 
 
 " For the purposes of the experiment she must be an 
 average woman," I said; "not too extravagant, and not 
 too parsimonious. For the rest you must please 
 yourself." 
 
 So Moses Fitz-Williams married, with the consent of 
 Tompas and the curse of M'Gullicuddy. And he 
 furnished his house on the hire system, so that the 
 expense might be distributed evenly over a term of 
 
 a
 
 •258 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 years. And he gave his wife whatever she asked of 
 him, without stint, but without overplus. And at the 
 end of the first year, one sweet September evening, I 
 audited the accounts and drew up the balance-sheet, 
 and gave my decision. 
 
 It was in favour of Tompas. 
 
 Moses swore — that I was prejudiced. He observed 
 violently that the amount on the debit side must be 
 colossal, that his wife and he had wallowed in luxury. 
 It soon transpired that she was an heiress, who, wishing to 
 be wooed for herself alone, had concealed the fact, and 
 was paying three-quarters of the bills out of her privy 
 purse. Poor creature ! She will carry to the grave 
 with her the delusion that Moses had married her for 
 love. Wild horses will not tear it from her, nor is 
 there any likelihood of their trying. 
 
 Tompas, with his Philistine mind, once hinted to me 
 that Moses had known she was an heiress all along, 
 but I knew that Moses's motives were as pure as the 
 new-fallen snow, that he married merely for the ex- 
 periment, and would have done nothing consciously to 
 vitiate it. He fell a victim to his love of figures, and 
 drew his assurance money with regret. 
 
 But fate was against a settlement, and he still argues 
 the point with Tompas, and there is no M'Gullicuddy 
 to disentangle them.
 
 CHAPTEE XL 
 
 THE ORIGINAL SINNER. 
 
 Time hung heavy on my hands now that the Bachelors' 
 Club had almost melted away. I could not steel ray- 
 self to sit for any length of time within those walls 
 which had so often echoed with single-hearted laughter. 
 Every sight brought back old memories. I could 
 hardly look the steward in the face ; nor rid myself of 
 the feeling that Willoughby Jones spent his day in 
 gloating. Determined as the remaining three of us 
 were to run the Club, and remain single till death did 
 us part, we yet rather shrank from meeting one another 
 there. We liad given up the hope of hlling up the 
 vacancies left by the miscreants whose names adorned 
 the funereal fresco ; the vacancies in men's crania needed 
 filling up first. The only person who benefited by our 
 losses was jolly little Mandeville Brown, for they so 
 upset his mind that he published a volume of verse at 
 his own expense. It was called Poems of Pessimism. 
 I was never more surprised in my life than to find the 
 sale spreading like wildfire. I suppose the title was so 
 happy. Not being able to write poetry, I took to watch- 
 ing M'Gullicuddy from an unreasonable and insulting 
 but irrepressible fear that he might go and get married 
 next. One fine October evening as we were walking 
 together down Pimlico way in Indian file, he suddenly 
 
 259
 
 26o THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 turned upon me and suggested in broad Doric that I 
 should start a paper. I jumped at the sudden sug- 
 gestion. He said that such talents as Heaven had 
 blessed me with ought not to be wasted. In a moment 
 I saw the idea. The new journalism had invented 
 interviewing; but interviews were always so short — 
 on paper. A " new " journal which interviewed the 
 man of the week in each number, and in all the 
 number, would hit the public between wind and 
 water. No sooner conceived than begun. I regis- 
 tered the title of At Home Every Monday, and 
 called upon Maudeville Brown, thanking the stars 
 that had made an old friend famous just in time to 
 be useful. I was determined to look after Number 
 One well. 
 
 The Pessimist was practising a step-dance when I 
 arrived, but he graciously desisted and flung himself 
 upon an ottoman. A faint smell of attar of roses per- 
 vaded his artistic apartments, decorated with plaques, 
 colour symphonies, busts of Schopenhauer and Leo- 
 pardi, French comic papers, pendent guitars and violas, 
 flowers, photographs from the nude, old porcelain, 
 proof etchings, and favourable reviews of Poems of 
 Pessimism. 
 
 " Then you wish to interview me about my Poems of 
 Pessimism^' he said, lighting an aromatic Turkish 
 cigarette, and leaving me to help myself. 
 
 " I do ; I want to know what they mean." 
 
 " Have you not read them ? " 
 
 " Yes ; that is why I want to know. I do not speak 
 for myself alone. They have made such a sensation, 
 and sold so tremendously, that the public wants to know 
 what they mean."
 
 THE ORIGINAL SINNEk 261 
 
 " My dear Paul, I cannot tell you. I have written 
 the poems. It is for the commentators to provide a 
 meanino for them." 
 
 " Well, at any rate the public wants to know what 
 you mean." 
 
 " Ah ! that is different. Here is your interview with 
 me. Kindly let me see a proof." 
 
 He took out of his drawer a very bulky manuscript 
 neatly typographed, and handed it to me. 
 
 I looked at him inquiringly. 
 
 " Don't you understand ? " he said. " I have no time 
 to be interviewed now that I am famous. While I was 
 unknown I could have afforded numerous facilities to 
 interviewers. They did not seize those opportunities. 
 Foreseeing that my time would be valuable the moment 
 fame came to me, I devoted some of my numerous 
 hours of obscure leisure to interviewing myself. I never 
 put off till to-morrow what I can do to-day, and I con- 
 gratulate myself on the saving of time thus effected. The 
 interview is divided into three parts. The first part is 
 taken up with your impressions, the third with mine. In 
 the second you will find full particulars of my ancestors, 
 birth, training, early genius, rise and progress, trousers 
 and times of writing, manners and income-tax, and my 
 list of the best Imndred books, pictures, and musical 
 compositions. This part is extremely interesting. I 
 cannot imagine anything more so, though you are at 
 liberty to do so if you please. You have carte blanche 
 to do with me as you will — make a new man of me, if 
 you can. There is really no more reason for my taking 
 up your time. You will find my remarks a good deal 
 more artistically unpolished than if I had to formulate 
 my ideas about everything, etc., impromptu. Good-bye,
 
 262 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Paul. "Wish you luck — and don't forget to send me a 
 proof." 
 
 As soon as I was outside, I turned into a restaurant 
 and feverishly opened the manuscript. I was extremely 
 curious to know how he had impressed me. The 
 manuscript was headed in capital letters 
 
 THE PRINCE OF PESSIMISTS. 
 Mandeville Brown Interviewed. 
 
 I was glad to see that my impressions were completely 
 creditable. My observations betokened a ready eye 
 and a pungent pen. But as I feel some modesty in 
 obtruding my own impressions upon the reader, I shall 
 omit this portion of the interview, and reproduce only 
 Part III. 
 
 7^ ^ TP T(t Tp 
 
 " You have always been known as a Pessimist ? " 
 " Yes ; that is the worst of it. I can never enjoy 
 myself without being called upon to explain that it is 
 not that I am inconsistent, but that the inquirer is a 
 fool" 
 
 " What is the formula of Pessimism ? " 
 " That this is the best of all possible worlds." 
 " But that is the formula of Optimism ! " 
 " I cannot help it. I do not believe that any better 
 world than this is possible. That is the awful pity and 
 pathos of it. Nothing is possible but what is!' 
 " And what, then, is the formula of Optimism ? " 
 " The badge of Optimism is the mourning-band ; and 
 its supreme expression pity for the dead." 
 
 " Your poems have a good deal to say about Fate." 
 
 " Pate willed it so." 
 
 " You don't believe in Free Will then ? "
 
 THE ORIGIiVAL SINNER 263 
 
 " No ; we can do as we like, of course, but we can't 
 like as we like. Free Will is refuted by figures. Kis- 
 met has been translated into mathematical curves. 
 Life is an hereditary disease. It is transmitted from 
 father to son. The persistent immigration of pauper 
 infants must be checked, or one day there will be an 
 epidemic of parenticide. At present every well-regu- 
 lated homicidal mind shrinks from it. In China, when 
 a man signalises himself they ennoble his ancestors ; 
 on the same principle, when a man commits a crime, 
 we ought to punish his parents. That would put the 
 brake on parentage. Every one can help being a parent : 
 no one can help being a child." 
 
 " Then the criminal is " 
 
 " The criminal's parent. If we studied the criminal 
 instead of his comfort we should know this. The 
 criminal is the legacy-duty we have to pay on the 
 civilisation bequeathed to us. Crime is as hereditary 
 as gout, insanity, or a seat in the House of Lords." 
 
 " Then you don't think ' life is serious after aU/ as 
 a popular dramatist hath it. You think it is a mis- 
 take." 
 
 " I combine both views. Life is a serious mistake." 
 
 " Is that why you are a Socialist ? " 
 
 " Yes ; why should we not divide the evil ? But I am 
 none the less an Individualist. I am as self-contradic- 
 tory as Existence itself. It is intolerable that the fittest 
 should survive ; it is equally intolerable that we should 
 have to be looked after by our neighbours." 
 
 " Then how would you describe yourself politically ? " 
 
 " Like all reasonable men I am a Democrat with a 
 profound distrust of the People. Politics is a see-saw. 
 Conservatism creates Radicals by irritating the ill-to-
 
 264 THE CELIBATES'' CLUB 
 
 do ; Eadicalism creates Conservatives by contenting 
 them." 
 
 " Then Progress is a fiction ? " 
 
 " Fortunately — yes. We never progress ; we ' mark 
 time/ and, because we have left the past behind us, 
 think we are in advance of it. The Brotherhood of Man 
 is a confidence trick. If War is to be killed, it will be 
 only by the Gospel of Smokeless Powder d hoc genus 
 omnc. When the scarlet fever can no longer be cured 
 by blood-letting, because we can't get at the enemy, the 
 race will pride itself on its civilisation. No ; Progress 
 is fortunately impossible." 
 
 " But why fortunately ? Why should you rejoice if 
 the coming of justice on earth is impossible ? " 
 
 "Because it would be so unjust. Wliy should some 
 future generation be beastly comfortable, merely through 
 coming late ? It is a most disgusting ideal." 
 
 " It is the ideal of all Social Eeformers,of all religions." 
 
 " If they realised what their ideal meant they would 
 abandon it. Ideals are the result of weak visualisation. 
 It is only by not defining your ideal that you get the 
 strength to pursue it." 
 
 " But idealists are the salt of the earth, the saving 
 remnant." 
 
 " Idealists are too heavenly for earth, and too earthly 
 for heaven. They are like Mahomet's cofl&n — out of 
 touch with either sphere. The one thing these unselfish 
 dreamers will never understand is that unselfishness is a 
 physical impossibility, that all human action must be in 
 the middle voice of the Greeks — with reference to self. 
 No more surely do we see the world through I-glasses 
 than we do everything to please ourselves. Oh, if the 
 idealists would only realise this, they would be at once
 
 THE ORIGINAL SINNER 265 
 
 better philanthropists and worse men. It is idealists 
 who are responsible for the current panacea of Culture. 
 The race will educate itself away. Self-culture is an 
 unhealthy hothouse experiment, but it is not so mis- 
 chievous as universal gardening. Oh, what terrible 
 riddles the Modern Sphinx sets us, — none of the 
 childish conundrums which (Edipus plumed himself 
 on answering." 
 
 " But surely you would not return to the days 
 when the vulgar could not read or write, and there 
 was no Free Press to represent and mould their as- 
 pirations ! " 
 
 " ' Free Press ! ' shade of JMilton ! Gagged by 
 Mrs. Grundy and supported by advertisers. Your pill- 
 vendor or soap-boiler regards himself as the patron saint 
 of journalism. the advertiser ! He is the true king of 
 our century. At every turn he sternly commands us 
 to wash with his soap, smoke his tobacco, or intoxicate 
 ourselves with his brandy. He would willingly pur- 
 chase the sunset to paint on the clouds the name of his 
 nostrum. He would have liked to contract for the 
 writing on the wall that mystified Belshazzar. Letters 
 of fire on the firmament would no longer terrify us ; we 
 should divine a connection with hair-dye or tooth- 
 powder. Ah, the ' Free Press ' is in a parlous state 
 when it has to be kept alive by patent medicines ! For 
 the rest, the less freely we ' examine the works ' of the 
 Free Press the better. Your average journalist has his 
 bread buttered literally on both sides ; and it is a mere 
 fluke which opinions he is paid to denounce. As for 
 the People he caters for, its chief reading is scraps, and 
 it prefers life-insurance to literature. When it reads that 
 if 2,368,759 post-cards were piled one on top of another,
 
 266 THE CELIBATES'' CLUB 
 
 you could only read the last one; or that 830,251 A's 
 were dropped in Seven Dials last Monday, it is happy. 
 Lotteryture rules the roast, and letters are smothered 
 beneath prize packets. The genius who divined what 
 the age wanted deserved the fortune he made. The age 
 of folios is past. The dear old folios, without which 
 Charles Ijamb found even heaven incomplete, are left 
 to the book-worms — philological or entomological. 
 Parasitic literature — books about books, reviews of 
 reviews — is the only thing that pays. Intellectual lazi- 
 ness and the hurry of the age have produced a craving 
 for literary ' nips.' The torpid brain requires but a 
 lively fillip ; it has grown too weak for sustained 
 thought. Brevity must be the soul of everything ; the 
 wit can take care of itself. Even novels and plays 
 must be short and not to the point. The book-worm 
 has developed into the butterfly. The other great 
 journalistic acliievements of the age are The, Evening 
 Eavesdropper, The /Society Scandalmonger, and The Finan- 
 cial Filibuster." 
 
 " How one-sided you are ! The number of persons 
 interested in literature has been immensely raised in 
 the last half century." 
 
 " True ; there never was an age in which so many 
 people were able to write badly. And to think there is 
 a man who wants to turn out writers like chartered 
 accountants, and to grant poetical licences at a training- 
 school for authors. Oh this modern eruption of black 
 spots on white paper ! The age needs to be taught to 
 read, not to write. And it needs most of all to be 
 taught not to write, especially not to write Eecollections. 
 Everybody sets about writing his Recollections, though 
 nobody will recollect his writings. The sense of Art,
 
 THE ORTGINAL SINNER 267 
 
 too, is dying. -Novel-writing has become a branch of 
 pamphleteering. The characters make talk in lieu of 
 love or scenes. We have lady-writers more theological 
 than logical, and romances which provoke rejoinders. 
 Imagine a rejoinder to Vanity Fair, the overture to 
 Lohengrin, or Millet's ' Angelus.' No, we are not an 
 artistic people, the free glory of art is not for us. Not 
 one man in a thousand understands technique in music 
 or painting, or has a soul responsive to beauty, though 
 all are willing to criticise freely in that exchange of 
 ideas which between equals alone is no robbery. We 
 English are always striving to reduce art to a science ; 
 it is the foible of all Philistine peoples. You have only 
 to look at our dresses, our streets, our houses, our public 
 buildings and statues, to see that as a people we have 
 not a breath of artistic impulse. If that does not con- 
 vince you, look at our art galleries.' 
 
 " Still, at any rate, the stage is advancing." 
 " It is ' getting on.' So much so that it has been 
 taken up by the Church — always a sign of material 
 prosperity. But it is not advancing. Art is sunk in 
 the artist or the tradesman. Actors are measured for 
 their parts, even when they are not mere dummies. The 
 'star' system and the milky ways of burlesque are the 
 most prominent objects in the dramatic heavens. 
 Beauty, as Eossetti said, is genius — on the stage. The 
 modern Marguerite is an actress, the jewels she craves 
 are newspaper notices. ' Faust up to Date ' is the man 
 who can write or buy them for her. Alas for the Mar- 
 guerite who lacks beauty ! Not for her the furores of 
 the footlights. Of her, thougli gold be showered like 
 water, the princeliest Faust can but make a fashionable 
 beauty."
 
 268 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " But look at the amount of good poetry written 
 every year ! " 
 
 " Granted. The poets are still with us. But they 
 read one another. Poetry has always been a drug in 
 the market." 
 
 " What ! when Tennyson is worth a guinea a box — 
 I mean a word ! " 
 
 " A drug ! a drug still ! But liaving the Government 
 stamp it sells like a patent medicine. Still, England 
 must awake to art soon, for art will be the religion of 
 the future, as religion was the art of the past." 
 
 " Art to be religion ! When the Salvation Army is 
 the biggest boom of the epoch ! " 
 
 " The singing of comic psalms by the army will 
 develop a sense of humour that will gradually kill it. 
 The profits of the Salvation Stores will fall off, and the 
 business will be turned into a joint-stock company. 
 The Millennium will then be put on the market in one 
 pound shares, and if it only promises to return a good 
 percentage, it will be laid on quicker than by the com- 
 bined efforts of all the preachers since Abraham. To 
 be serious, the Church of the future will be Catholic — 
 not that Catholicism which has yet to learn that open 
 confession is bad for the soul (which comes to take it as 
 expiation), but the Universal Church which teaches 
 people not to save their souls but to use them." 
 
 " Ah, then, you hope for such a Church ? " 
 
 "A little before the next glacial epoch. Human 
 nature has so much to unlearn, and is cursed with such 
 a good memory ! Man has come to be a parasite on his 
 own machinery. He is the slave of the ecclesiastical 
 and political mechanism he has himself constructed. 
 He cannot shake off the fetters of his past."
 
 THE ORIGINAL SINNER 269 
 
 " That is nonsense. There are always great men who 
 rise superior to machinery." 
 
 " And construct new. But do you still share the 
 belief in ' The Great Man Myth ' ? The world is really 
 old enough by now to know better. Some men may be 
 born great, and some may achieve greatness, but most 
 people thrust greatness on other people. The 'great 
 men ' themselves know better than to join the ranks of 
 their admirers ; if they don't, they are little men. 
 While the hero-worshippers never think of the object 
 of their adoration except in his great aspects, the mind 
 of the hero is chiefly occupied with the consciousness 
 of his little weaknesses. If he is proud at all, it is 
 usually but self-conceit ; for the object of his pride is 
 some ability which he does not possess. The great 
 painter is puffed up with the thought that he smokes 
 the most judiciously chosen tobacco ; the great musician 
 fancies that he can skate very ornamentally ; the great 
 statesman imagines he can guess the plot of a senscii 
 tional novel by reading the last page. The thing the 
 gi-eat man can do consummately is of little concern to 
 him ; it is the air he breathes, and awakens no admira- 
 tion in his own mind. The blind man wonders how 
 any one can see ; the street urchin sees, and does not 
 marvel. The hero - worshipper stands outside and 
 admires ; the hero stands inside himself, and is in- 
 different or disgusted. 
 
 " One day, through some sudden loophole, the wor- 
 shipper, too, gets a glimpse into the interior, and turns 
 away to pick up some mud. To the ex-worshipper he 
 is a monster ; to himself he is the same man that he 
 always was. He finds it hard to understand the change. 
 What makes it harder in some instances is that by this
 
 270 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 time the fumes of the censers may have got into his 
 brain, and persuaded him into the popular belief that 
 he is not a mere man, with human passions and absurdi- 
 ties, but the peer of the gods. Unshaken by centuries 
 of exposure, the great man myth still flourishes, and 
 the educators of the public nourish the delusion which 
 they may themselves profit by some day. There are 
 men with great qualities ; there are no great men." 
 
 " For all that I still believe in you." 
 
 "That is, you don't believe in what I say." 
 
 " Carlyle believed in great men." 
 
 " Because he believed in himself. He showed the 
 air is always full of dust ; dust of putrefying creeds 
 and prejudices and decaying forms, and dust which a 
 million hirelings throw daily into the eyes of Truth, 
 and he taught that the universe is swept clean by a 
 succession of scavengers, one or two a century ; which 
 is about the saddest theory of life ever formed. No, 
 there are no great men ; there are only famous men. 
 And my Lady Fame is a Titania. The men at the top 
 are too often Bottoms." 
 
 " Frankly, Mr. Brown, this is all the craziest paradox, 
 and you contradict yourself consumedly." 
 
 "Paradox is platitude in the making; and self- 
 contradiction is the essence of candour." 
 
 " Then your jaundiced vision sees nothing to praise, 
 no nascent movement to encourage ?" 
 
 " None ; too many others see the rose-colour ; for me, 
 the yellow side of the shield ! " 
 
 " Then you think there is use, as well as abuse, in 
 the cynic?" 
 
 " Understand me. The cynic does not disbelieve in 
 genuine things, only in the genuineness of things. He
 
 THE ORIGINAL SINNER 
 
 271 
 
 is the acid that corrodes things foul and of good report. 
 As such he is indispensable." 
 
 " The world were happier without him." 
 
 the world does not listen to 
 is a Eealist, but fortunately 
 are Eomanticists." 
 there no hope for humanity f 
 unless it purchases my 
 
 " Happily 
 him. Nature 
 her children 
 
 " And is 
 
 "None, 
 books tell- 
 ing it so'." 
 
 "Thank 
 you for your 
 courtesy. I 
 understand 
 imperfectly. 
 I am sorry to find you 
 have such a poor opinion 
 of the Universe. For my 
 part, I fancy it is all right 
 when you know it, but 
 you've got to know it 
 first. Good-bye, and may 
 you be happy." 
 
 " Thank you," said my 
 victim, with emotion, " I 
 shall be when you 're 
 gone." 
 
 * * * 
 
 Two weeks after that *^' 
 I met Mandeville in the(^,»K<c^o?oij, 
 street. He was laughing 
 heartily over a Punch and Judy show. When Punch 
 whacked Judy the Pessimist's plump sides quivered, 
 
 /t:
 
 272 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 and tears of delight trickled down his cheeks. He 
 greeted me effusively, and asked me to come up 
 the river with him. The clerk of the weather had 
 imported an Indian summer, and October was as 
 pleasant as July had failed to be. "We took the train 
 to Kew and rowed up to Eichmond, I pulling stroke 
 and he bow, and vice versd too frequently to be 
 enjoyable. I had never seen him quite so boyish 
 before ; the success of his Poems of Pessimism had 
 made a new boy of him; half a dozen times he 
 insisted on changing seats in mid-stream. He was 
 so light-hearted that I felt sure we should be cap- 
 sized. He asked how my At Home Every Monday 
 was going; I told him I had dropped it after the 
 second number. 
 
 " But I 'm sure everybody I saw had a copy of the 
 first number," he replied in astonishment. 
 
 " I don't doubt you saw everybody had a copy," I 
 replied ; " but it is not because the thing wouldn't 
 pay that I relinquished it; it was because I felt myself 
 unable to grapple with the correspondence it involved. 
 I was besieged with applications from all parts of the 
 country from strangers who assured me they were 
 celebrities. Every post brought me a furlong of inter- 
 views. What 's the matter ? " 
 
 Mandeville had dropped his oar in the river and 
 fallen back mortally pale. 
 
 " Wh — a — a — t ! " he stammered, " other people also 
 had ready-made interviews ! " 
 
 " Hundreds of people," I replied. 
 
 Mandeville groaned. " Another illusion gone ! " He 
 sat up slowly. 
 
 " What do you mean ? "
 
 THE ORIGINAL SINNER 273 
 
 " I thought I was original," lie said iii a low tone, his 
 eyes seeking the planks of the boat. 
 
 " Well, what matters ? " I said, as I rowed vigorously 
 towards the drifting oar, and captured it, 
 
 " What matters ! " he repeated, " when I have been 
 all my life in quest of the original ! " 
 
 " That 's not an original attitude," I replied. 
 
 " No," he said sadly. " The chase is not original, but 
 the capture — ah ! " he sighed deeply. " Take both the 
 oars, old' man. I will do all the work. I will entertain 
 you by laying myself bare to you." 
 
 " What ! going to have a swim ? Well, be careful 
 how you jump off." 
 
 " Don't be an ass ! I refer to my psychical nudity. 
 I need not say that I did not strip for my interview. 
 But now I will be naked and not ashamed. Know then 
 that every instant of time I can spare from the duties 
 and pleasures of life is spent in i'retting at the unelastic 
 boundaries of existence. I hate this web of conven- 
 tionality with which I am enmeshed. To be born, to 
 suckle at the breast, to get the measles and the whoop- 
 ing cough, to become a boy, to develop a moustache and 
 adolescent emotions, to grow from a youth into a man, 
 and from a man to an old man — to have one's whole 
 life marked out for you from the start without your 
 leave or consent, — ugh ! it is so conventional ! My 
 soul sickens at it. And then every day is a life in little. 
 To get up and wash and dress and feed at intervals and 
 go to sleep again — to have one's soul fettered and 
 chained within the same narrow boundaries, to move in 
 the same rigid rut as everybody else — it is abominable. 
 Oh the horror of the natural conventional ! The 
 artificial conventional can be broken through, whatever 
 
 s
 
 274 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 the cost ; but the natural conventional ! It holds us 
 remorselessly in its deadening grip, it squeezes us in 
 its all-embracing folds, from the initial conventionality 
 of our birth to the supreme conventionality — Death. 
 We are all fashioned alike in our beginning, and we are 
 run into the same mould at the end. My life has been 
 one long effort to leave the path chalked out for me by 
 the protoplasmic atoms. It has also been one long 
 failure. To-day you have trampled upon another liope 
 of originality; my patent interview has been done 
 before." 
 
 He took out his note-book. " One more must be 
 added to the list of burst bubbles," he said. " The figure 
 runs into hundreds. One day I strung some of them 
 into verse. Would you like to hear it ? " 
 
 I replied that nothing would give me greater satisfac- 
 tion, unless he could combine the recitation with a little 
 attention to the tiller. Pulling the ropes lazily around 
 him, the poet commenced : — 
 
 DONE BEFORE. 
 
 Sick of commonplace mortality, I have sought originality 
 
 By all ways I thought untrodden of a predecessor's feet ; 
 I have always left the highway for the undiscovered by-way, 
 
 Haunted only by the terror lest ajootprint I shotdd meet. 
 When a boy I used to utter mild requests for bread and butler. 
 
 Although jam and cake ivere present in a freely -offered store; 
 And myself on this I flattered, till my first fond dream was shattered 
 
 When I read in Siinday- school books it had oft been done before, 
 
 I've been rich without frugality, J 've been poor without formality, 
 I've been oft at home to bore and dun, and out to love and friend, 
 
 I have travelled in the first-class with a ticket for the worst class, 
 And the difference have tendered at the journey's other end.
 
 THE ORIGINAL SINNER 275 
 
 / 've assured a deputation I deserved its gratidation, 
 I 've accompanied De Reszke or La Diva with a snore ; 
 
 I have stayed the year in London, in my search for something undone, 
 Quite forgetting those odd million folks by whom 'twas done before. 
 
 I have practised immorality to the verge of illegality, 
 
 Yet have never been a member of a Puritanic league ; 
 I have walked down Piccadilly, a perambulating lily. 
 
 Without boring my companion with my network of intrigue. 
 To its mx)ther smiling smugly I have called a baby ugly ; 
 
 I 've admitted being sick before the vessel reached the Nore, 
 Though exact Returns of Income will at last to seem a siii come. 
 
 When you find that e'en the Revenue has not been " done " before. 
 
 Then with what I tliought finality I have bid for immortality. 
 
 By revieunng learned books without the hope they 'd be revised. 
 And poetical collections without setting my affections 
 
 On the things therefrom omitted, over those therein comprised. 
 I've exj)ressed my satisfaction, nor discovered lack of action, 
 
 In a drama by an author known in letters from of yore ; 
 But although I 've sent back proxies for a row of stalls and boxes. 
 
 Honest criticism even had been sometimes done before. 
 
 I have given hospitality with severe impartiality 
 
 To ideas congruous only in their being all my own ; 
 I have tried to write down motherhood and to found a White Rose 
 Brotherhood 
 
 ( With the object of replacing the stray Stuarts on the throne). 
 Plus ten ultra-modem isms and two neo- Paganisms, 
 
 And in analytic diary to strip me to the core ; 
 But what use my feigned brutality— all my j)seudo-bestialily, 
 
 Since mendacious self -exposure had been often done before ? 
 
 I have painted Unreality, and composed without tonality, 
 I have lectured on the Beautiful in trousers, rugs, and hair,
 
 276 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 And my Individuality I 've developed by rascality, 
 
 And I 've never lacked a genius (unknown) by whom to swear. 
 
 But in vain my comicality flashed in mad conviviality. 
 
 When against the bourgeois virtues I led off the tables^ roar ; 
 
 Anli-Decalogicality, both in jest and actuality, 
 
 Had with vigorous vitality been too often done before. 
 
 Thus I 've chased originality, though as if by some fatality. 
 
 With unfailing 2^unctiiaUty the thing has been a frost. 
 Did I sink to criminality, did I rise to high morality, 
 
 My ^ ^ Love' s Labour " always turned out most monotonously "Lost.' 
 I could not escape banality though I shifted my locality 
 
 And made search from Pole to centre for a yet untrodden shore. 
 Should I boil my spirit-kettle up on Popocatepetl, 
 
 I shoiddfind within a week the spot had oft been " done " before. 
 
 The Pessimist's candid confession shocked me greatly, 
 for I was so enthralled by it that I allowed the boat to 
 bump into another. Fortunately both sides came off 
 with nothing beyond the first syllable of damage. We 
 moored our vessel below the Star and Garter, and the 
 Pessimist ate a hearty lunch. My rowing had given 
 him an appetite ; and he enjoyed his Porterhouse 
 steak none the less because it had been underdone 
 before. After he had swallowed three-parts of the 
 Porterhouse, he grew even more expansive, and showed 
 me some sheets of his forthcoming book ; his latest snap 
 at the tantalising Fata Morgana of originality, 
 
 " The year is drawing to its end," he said. " Fur the 
 new year I am preparing a work called The Cyjiids 
 Calendar. Here is the proof for January." He dis- 
 played it ou the tablecloth, reading it aloud : —
 
 THE ORIGINAL SINNER 
 
 277 
 
 THE CYNIC'S CALENDAR. 
 Being the Calendar for January 1891, with Mottoes for Piotts Reflection. 
 
 Th. 
 
 15 
 
 F. 
 
 a. 
 
 M. 
 
 Tu. 
 
 W. 
 
 8 
 9 
 
 10 
 11 
 
 12 
 13 
 
 I-- 
 14 
 
 Th. 
 
 S. 
 
 M. 
 
 Tu. 
 
 W. 
 
 Th. 
 
 16 
 
 F. 
 
 New Year resolutions commence to 
 be broken. 
 Vouth is the season for enjoyment ; old 
 
 age for remorse that we did not enjoy 
 
 ourselves more. 
 
 Jan. 1st resolutions finally aban- 
 doned. 
 Jan. Znd thoughts are best. 
 
 Gretna Green marriages abolished, 
 1857. 
 
 Marriage is the primitive mutual ad- 
 miration society. 
 
 Lord Tomnoddy born, 1803. 
 It is better to be healthy and wealthy than 
 wise; but if you cunuot be any of the 
 three, the next best thing is to be an 
 English peer. 
 
 Execution of Fagin. 
 Honesty is the best policy for a man with 
 a bad reputation. 
 
 Dividend on Consols due. 
 An honest man is good cmnpany, but tio- 
 body would take shares in him. He 
 wouldn't pay— because he would. 
 
 St. Distaff. 
 Spinsterliood is an honourable estate, till 
 the proprietress commences to rail at 
 wedlock. 
 
 Galileo died, 1642. 
 The udsest man is happy sometimes. 
 
 Napoleon iii. died, 1873. 
 For success in life two qualities are re- 
 quired— a strtmg will (ittd a weak con- 
 science. 
 
 Penny Postage established, 1840. 
 // truth did not live at the bottom of a 
 well, all social communion would be 
 impossible. 
 
 Cagliostro bom. 
 The youth's bashfulness ai-ises from his 
 km/wlejhje of his own iynoratice: tlui 
 man's assitrance from his knowledge of 
 other people's. 
 
 Hilary Term begins. 
 Law and journalism are the masculine 
 
 substitutes for prostitution. 
 
 Dinas colliery explosion, 1879. 
 A sympathetic heart is tlie most terrMe 
 of congenital misfortunes. 
 
 Oxford Lent Term begins. 
 Let us all cultivate ourselves, as Die vrise 
 Goethe teaches. And first of all tlie 
 dung for manure! 
 
 British Museum opened, 1759. 
 Every questvtn is like a sheet of paper— 
 much may he said on both sides. But 
 for journalistic purposes it may otily 
 be said mi one side. 
 
 Saturn sets. 
 Procrastination is the thief of time, and 
 steals many an idle hour for us. Put 
 off death or duty till to-morrow. 
 
 17 
 
 S. 
 
 18 
 
 & 
 
 19 
 
 M. 
 
 20 
 
 Tu. 
 
 21 
 
 W. 
 
 22 
 
 Th. 
 
 23 
 
 F. 
 
 24 
 
 S. 
 
 25 
 
 s>. 
 
 20 
 
 M. 
 
 27 
 
 Tu. 
 
 28 
 
 W. 
 
 29 
 
 Th. 
 
 30 
 
 F. 
 
 31 
 
 S. 
 
 Beujamin Franklin born, 1706. 
 Poor Richard says, " The worst of having 
 your bread buttered on both sidex is, 
 that if you drop it, it is sure to fall on 
 the buttered side." 
 
 Second Sunday after Epiphany. 
 There is a chamber in the heart to uhich 
 even one's nearest and dearest are not 
 admitted. It is the unholy of unholies. 
 
 John Willves expelled House of Com- 
 mons, 1704. 
 
 No man has the right to bring into the 
 world propositions which he is unable 
 to maintain. 
 
 David Garrick died, 1779. 
 Fools follow rules ; wise m£n precede them. 
 
 Cleopatra's Needle ariived, 1878. 
 Beauty is but skin-deep ; but, as humanity 
 doesn't sit in its bones, that is no draw- 
 back. 
 
 Annual Dinner of the Society for 
 Promoting Charity Advertise- 
 ments. 
 
 lietter a nominal sumin charity than an 
 anonymous million. 
 
 William Pitt died, 1806. 
 We all love virtue ; hut few of us hope to 
 possess her. We forgive ourselves for 
 erring, for that is human : and for for- 
 giving ourselves,for that is divine. 
 
 Dynamite outrage in London, ISS.'j. 
 Ihjpocriay is the last infirmity of a 
 scoundrel. 
 
 Burns born, 1759. 
 Tlie Poet is bom. Who ever maintained 
 that lie ivas a made man } 
 
 Great Famine in China, 1878. 
 A good dinner is the best joy of the hour 
 that is; a good digestion of the hour 
 that will be. 
 
 Emperor of Germany born, 1859. 
 Self-contempt is the one quality that 
 raises man above tlie angels. 
 
 Paris capitulated, 1871. 
 
 Few mfire have courage enough to be cow- 
 ard*. 
 
 George m. died, 1820. 
 The idol that had only feet of clay teas 
 indeed divine. 
 
 Charles 1. beheaded, 1649. 
 Let him whom the cap Jits wear some- 
 body else's. 
 
 Hilary Law Term ends. 
 Make the best of a bad bargain, 
 be bad for the other party. 
 
 Let it I
 
 278 
 
 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 "Underneath each page," he continued, "will be 
 meteorological prophecies, with the proviso ' Wind and 
 weather permitting.' " 
 
 " But this has been done before ! " I exclaimed. 
 
 " Where ? " gasped the Pessimist. 
 
 " In one of the comic papers," I replied. 
 
 " And I thought it was a funny idea ! " he groaned, 
 throwing the sheet into the fireplace, whence I extracted 
 it for future use. 
 
 On the way back to Kew, whom should we meet but 
 a trio of pretty girls, rowed by a tall young man, whom 
 
 I afterwards discovered to be unfortunate enough to be 
 their brother. To my alarm the girls hailed Mande- 
 ville Brown laughingly, and he roused himself from his 
 brooding, and responded with stentorian joviality. The 
 tall young man and I kept the boats side by side, while
 
 THE ORIGINAL SINNER 279 
 
 the introductions were going on. The way Mandeville 
 flirted across the strait with those three girls at the same 
 time could only be compared to the achievement of a 
 juggler who keeps three balls going at once. My alarm 
 was soon, however, replaced by joy. I reflected that 
 Mandeville was for ever debarred from marrying by the 
 fact that it had been done before his birth. Besides, 
 there was safety in numbers. No, the Bachelors' Club 
 had crumbled, but the last three atoms were of 
 adamant. 
 
 Our course was lively, for the girls chattered like 
 magpies, while their brother broke in every now and 
 again with some satirical remark at their expense. They 
 were very affectionate though, for they went out of their 
 way to call him a nice brother every time. Mandeville, 
 too, was not silent ; he has no talent in that direction ; 
 but effervesced with quips and cranks and wreathed 
 smiles. I bore my share of the conversation patiently, 
 and in silence ; for Mandeville was never the man to 
 spare a friend and save a joke. 
 
 Before we parted with the boat-load of fair maidens, 
 Mandeville and I had promised to drop in the same 
 evening for an " informal dance " in their house at Bays- 
 water. He did not want us to go ; but I intimated to 
 him that I would not let my personal feelings be an 
 obstacle. Informality, we found, meant an awning out- 
 side and a motley package of long-invited guests 
 inside. I kept an eye on Mandeville, secure as I felt. 
 He danced with a whole bouquet of wall-flowers ; the 
 bevies of beauty he left to others. To the guests this 
 seemed generosity ; to me his motive was as plain as his 
 partners. For myself, having nothing to fear, I danced 
 freely with youth and beauty, especially with the
 
 28o THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 nymphs of the river. Their names were Alice, Maud, 
 and Kitty, but I christened them for short The Three 
 Graces. Presumably they were not triplets, but I could 
 not tell the eldest from the youngest. I told one of 
 them so, thinking how fortunate it was that truth and 
 compliment should coincide. She tossed her head 
 pertly, and I saw that she was the youngest. But I was 
 not discomfited. I told her that I meant judging from 
 their knowledge of the world, and was rewarded by a 
 sunny smile. Most girls tell you they are not pretty, 
 and etiquette demands you should call them liars. 
 Kitty was not like that. She was a vivacious little 
 thing, sprightly as a jackdaw, and innocent as a dove. 
 She had violet eyes and pale gold hair, and a lovely 
 blonde complexion, and danced with enthusiasm, tem- 
 pered by science. She floated round among the 
 congested human teetotums like a gossamer in petti- 
 coats. Almost for the first time I thrilled with the 
 secret of dancing, and felt in my blood the voluptuous 
 ecstasy of rliythmic movement. I took her down to 
 supper out of gratitude. She did not seem hungry. She 
 supped entirely off Mandeville Brown, washed down by 
 claret cup. I saw that she was in love with the little 
 man. It made me heartsick with annoyance. Brown 
 was lost. 
 
 The dance became gayer after supper, the stiffness 
 relaxing as the collars became limper. I took another 
 Grace after the meal, and heard further praises of 
 Mandeville, and learnt that he had presented each of 
 the Graces with a volume of the Focms of Pessimism 
 bound in morocco. I blushed for Mandeville, tarnish- 
 ing these blithe and bonny specimens of English girl- 
 hood with his nauseous winnings, and defiling their air
 
 THE ORIGINAL SINNER 281 
 
 with his sickly unsentimentality. Why should they 
 be told that existence was a curse, when they were 
 living in such happy ignorance of the fact ? I asked 
 my partner, who was Maud, what they thought of his 
 poems, and she replied that they all considered them 
 awfully sweet and quite too lovely. I gained further 
 fuel for suspicion from Alice's lips. I trembled like an 
 aspen. Brown would marry Kitty, so as to prove to 
 her that existence was a curse. Some men would rather 
 abandon a tooth than a theory, and Brown was one of 
 them. I went to the house of the Graces often to watch 
 him. Most frequently he was not there, and I was 
 relieved. Brown could be staunch after all. But, alas 
 for human anticipation ! Before the month was over 
 Mandeville Brown, the Secretary to the Bachelors' 
 Club, the forger of the weapons of our arsenal, the con- 
 temner of woman and man, the Poet of Pessimism, had 
 been united in the bonds of unholy wedlock! He 
 spent his wedding night at the Bachelors' Club, 
 chatting with M'Gullicuddy and myself about its 
 prospects. When morning dawned, he informed us he 
 had been married the day before. 
 
 Horror congealed our blood. I was the first to 
 speak. 
 
 " You old sinner ! " 1 cried. 
 
 " Yes, but an original sinner, eh?" he said, with a 
 happy smile. 
 
 " Who is she ? " I breathed huskily. 
 
 " Oh, some emancipated young woman or other, n^e 
 Matilda Crock I believe. But don't take this from me 
 — I only met her the other day." 
 
 I turned away to hide my emotion. Tlie President 
 took up the cue.
 
 282 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " And whar is she, mon ? " he said, in low ominous 
 tones. 
 
 " Am I my wife's keeper ? " demanded the Secretary 
 in amaze. 
 
 " She needs one if she married you," I said liotly. 
 " Where have you left her ] " 
 
 " At the Eegistrar's door of course. Where else 
 should a man leave his wife 1 She only married me to 
 achieve independence. Why it should be more respect- 
 able for her to trollop about alone now than before I 
 do not understand. However, that is Society's business, 
 not mine." 
 
 M'Gullicuddy was too angry to speak. He shook 
 his snuff-box, and his jaws quivered, but no sound came 
 from them. I continued the conversation. 
 
 " You have told us why she married you. Why did 
 you marry her ? " 
 
 " Why 1 " 
 
 " Yes, why ? Why this divorce from your past ? " 
 
 Mandeville's plump sides trembled like a jelly. 
 
 " Ho ! Ho ! " he roared. " Did you really expect a 
 cynic to believe his own maxims ?" 
 
 " And so precipitately too ! " I murmured, abashed 
 at my own simplicity. " There was not even an engage- 
 ment." 
 
 " Of course not. That is part of the originality ; 
 though not in itself quite uncopyrighted. I hate engage- 
 ments. They are a failure. Oh the green-sickness of the 
 betrothed! The sheep-eyed male, the trimanous female! 
 I was married straight off the reel." 
 
 " But wharfor, mon, wharfor ? " shrieked M'Gulli- 
 cuddy, getting his breath at last. 
 
 " Cannot you guess ? "
 
 I have married 
 
 THE ORIGINAL SINNER 283 
 
 "No, you had nothing to gain. I can see no reason 
 in the world," I said. 
 
 " Thank heaven ! " said Mandeville fervently, " then 
 I have done it at last !" 
 
 "Done what ?" we said in a duet. 
 
 " Broken the bonds of predestination, 
 for no reason in the world. 
 All the philosophers will 
 tell you that man cannot 
 act without a motive. It 
 is a lie. I made up my 
 mind to cheat the fates that 
 have from the moment of 
 my birth stifled me in the 
 swaddling clothes of cause 
 and effect. I determined 
 at some great crisis to 
 act without any reason 
 whatever. There are, as 
 O'Eoherty once put it, only 
 three great crises in a 
 man's life — birth, marriage, 
 and death. My birth had happened — it was too late 
 to influence that now. To commit suicide without 
 reason would meet the case ; but then I should not 
 have the satisfaction of conscious success. One last 
 opportunity remained — marriage. I took it." 
 
 M'Gullicuddy fixed him with a mocking eye. " There 
 are evidently more reasons in heaven and earth than 
 are dreamed of in your philosophy, Mandeville. You 
 married so as to take some great step without a reason 
 — is that so ? " 
 
 " That is so." 
 
 THE TRIMANOCS FEMALE.
 
 284 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " Well, wasna that a reason V 
 
 Willonghhy Jones rushed forwards and caught the 
 fainting Secretary in his arms. But Brown battled 
 bravely with the dizziness that overcame him and freed 
 himself from the clasp of his brother in misfortune. 
 
 " At least it is the best of all reasons/' he said, with 
 a pathetic smile. " And if my marriage was a failure 
 after all, at any rate I can recall my wife now. I have 
 her address. She will be able to visit us here, too. 
 She is a married woman, you know. Strictly accord- 
 ing to by-law, you see." 
 
 " Visit lis ? " The President's snuff-box dropped to 
 the floor. 
 
 " Yes, of course I shall continue a member." 
 
 " Continue a member, nion, when you are married ! " 
 shrieked the President. 
 
 " Yes," shrieked back the Secretary, as an exultant 
 gleam shot across his cherubic features. " / shall he 
 original after all." 
 
 " But we shall expel you !" I thundered. 
 
 " Indeed !" thundered back the Secretary. "You for- 
 get the by-laws I drew up. It takes three to make a 
 quorum." 
 
 Willoughby Jones rushed forwards and caught the 
 fainting President in his arms. But M'Gullicuddy 
 battled bravely with the dizziness that overcame him 
 and freed himself from the polluting touch of the lower 
 caste. 
 
 "There is yet one argument left, mon," said M'GulH 
 cuddy, drawing himself up to his full height. 
 
 " Indeed ?" said the little Pessimist mockingly. 
 
 The President of the Bachelors' Club took the 
 Secretary by the scruff of the neck, carried him into the
 
 THE ORIGINAL SINNER " 285 
 
 room adorned by his own texts, dropped him down the 
 six stairs on to the landing, and locked the door. 
 
 A minute after the Pessimist beat clamorously at it. 
 " No admission," I said tauntingly. 
 " I am not going to make any," yelled the Secretary 
 outside ; or, to use the conventional phrase, the ex- 
 secretary. "Bar your doors to me henceforward, as 
 you will, have not I, a married man, spent a whole night 
 as a member of the Bachelors' Club ? " 
 " You have," I said feebly. 
 " Then I am original after all !" 
 " No !" thundered the President. " The thing has 
 been done before." 
 
 " Done before ? " I echoed. 
 
 "Done before?" came feebly from behind the panel- 
 ling. 
 
 " Yes," said the President, taking triumphant snuff. 
 " A shameless being has preceded you in this." 
 
 His voice sank and trembled at the recollection of 
 the blasphemy. " Nay, more, he had the audacity to 
 hecome a member although married, and for some time 
 no one suspected him. I alone knew it, and I have 
 hitlierto covered up the scandal in my own aching 
 bosom. He was a member before your time, Paul, and 
 even to you the real truth was never known, Mande- 
 vill — ain ! " he concluded suddenly with a burst of 
 righteous indignation. 
 
 " Will you swear it ?" came in a hoarse despairing 
 whisper through the keyhole. 
 
 "I swear it," said the President solemnly. "By my 
 immortal soul, I swear it. He was a gey clever knave, 
 the member by whom the Club has been done before." 
 A strange muffled rumble penetrated the woodwork
 
 «86 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Terrified, I turned the key and opened the door. 
 Mandeville Brown had rolled down the six stairs in a 
 fit. 
 
 ***** 
 
 He lives peacefully at Bedlam now, and indites 
 epigrams for the magazines and poems for the Mande- 
 ville Brown Societies. The poems are not so obscure as 
 before ; the epigrams he turns out automatically with 
 the old topsy-turvy trick, only occasionally blunder- 
 ing into sense. Here are a dozen assorted specimens, 
 which were printed in a leading monthly with stars 
 twinkling between them. For price per gross apply to 
 the maker. 
 
 " The English are the most un-English of peoples." 
 "For illiberalism you must go to the Liberals." 
 "Criticisms of works of imagination are the only 
 realities." "The best memory is that which soonest 
 forgets." " Science is systematised ignorance, and the 
 naturalist is the man who knows nature least." 
 " Charity is a cloak that disguises many sins." " None 
 so blind as those who will see." " Goodness is the talent 
 of fools ; spell Duty with a big, big D." " No man waits 
 for time or tide." " The villain lives in a villa." " Your 
 thief is the only honest man ; the rest of the population 
 are dissemblers." " The worse the artist, the better the 
 work of art." 
 
 He had one lucid interval, though unfortunately he 
 did not write in it. It occurred in the train that was 
 bearing him to his new home. 
 
 " Where are you taking me ?" he asked. 
 
 " To Bedlam," replied his companions. 
 
 " It 's no use calling me lamb, for I 'm not going to 
 bed," he said decisively.
 
 THE ORIGINAL SINNER 287 
 
 They explained his real destination. 
 
 " But why there ? " he queried querulously. 
 
 " Because you have lost your reason," they answered 
 indiscreetly. 
 
 Mandeville Brown rose in spite of all their efforts 
 and danced a jig on the foot-warmer. 
 
 "Heaven be thanked!" he cried. "The fates are 
 foiled at last. / am going to Bedlam luithout reason."
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A BOLT FEOM THE BLUE, 
 
 It was a miserable evening about the middle of 
 November. All day the sun had been shining brightly, 
 and had been doing so since the beginning of the 
 month. This wretched perversity in the weather had 
 unsettled everybody. People were afraid to go out at 
 night for fear of losing their way in the coming fog. 
 But the sky remained beautifully blue and starry. 
 
 Since the unreasonable behaviour of Mandeville 
 Brown, M'Gullicuddy and myself had been constant in 
 our attendance at the Bachelors' Club. Tliere was a 
 considerable sum of money in the exchequer, owing to 
 the working of the New Insurance System, and it had 
 been swollen recently by one or two anonymous sub- 
 scriptions from married ladies who lamented that their 
 husbands had not had the benefit of a similar institu- 
 tion while they were yet celibates. If only the idea 
 that we were a charitable organisation should spread 
 abroad among the uninquiring, the reversion of the 
 treasuryship would be worth having. Mandeville 
 Brown had uncomplainingly added the post to his 
 secretariat when Moses Fitz-Williams departed this 
 life of ours ; but now that Brown, too, had gone over to 
 the majority, it became a serious question which of the 
 remaining members should assume the weighty respon- 
 
 2S8
 
 A BOLT FROM THE BLUE 289 
 
 sibility. It spoke well for the tenacity of purpose still 
 inherent in the Bachelors' Club, that each and all of the; 
 members were anxious for the burden. We were 
 ranged in two parties, — one in favour of the candida- 
 ture of the President, the other of mine. There seemed 
 no chance of settling the thing, for each side was 
 unwavering in its unity. That was why, in spite of 
 the attractions of the house of the Graces to which I 
 was frequently invited, I went to the Club regularly, 
 for fear M'Gullicuddy should pass illegal measures in 
 my absence. M'Gullicuddy almost lived at the Club 
 for a similar reason. The nuisance was that, thouoh 
 we were always together, we could get " no forrarder " ;; 
 for not only were both parties evenly balanced, and so 
 perfectly generalled that they moved as one man, but it^ 
 was impossible for us to muster sufficient members to. 
 form a quorum. We compromised it at last by agree- 
 ing to divide the duties and other things, and to clieck 
 each other's accounts and expenditure. Then the white 
 wings of peace hovered once more over the Bachelors' 
 Club, and all was bliss and brotherhood. 
 
 It was wliile doing our best to supply Nature's 
 deficiencies in the way of November fog, by creating one 
 in the inner sanctum of the Bachelors' Club, that the 
 President and I heard a strange feminine voice in the 
 smoking-room. 
 
 M'Gullicuddy's glass fell, like a barometer before a 
 storm. I, too, was agitated by the novelty of a visitor. 
 
 "You must go out again," we heard the faithful 
 Willoughby remark. : 
 
 "We'll see about that," came the reply, in slow 
 acidulated drops of sound. " Stand aside, or I '11 send 
 for a policeman." 
 
 T
 
 290 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 At the mention of a policeman M'Gullicuddy started 
 to his feet as if shot up by a spring. A policeman 
 in the Bachelors' Club ! The indignity was beyond 
 forbearance. 
 
 " Only married ladies are admitted," said Willoughby 
 in deprecatory tones. 
 
 " Aha ! " hissed the lady, " then look at my marriage 
 certificate." 
 
 From this " open sesame " there was no appeal. 
 
 " Very well, Mrs O'Flanagan," Willoughby was heard 
 to say respectfully, " who is it you wish to see ? " 
 
 " Mr. Andrew M'Gullicuddy," came the answer in 
 clear vibrant accents. 
 
 " No ! no ! " gasped the President. He rushed to the 
 door of communication and barricaded it with his back. 
 I looked at my co-secretary in surprise. His face was 
 ashen as his cigar-tip. 
 
 Willoughby Jones rattled the door, surprised at its 
 unwonted refusal to comply with his wishes. " Mr. 
 M'Gullicuddy," he called out, " here 's a lady to see 
 you — married, — Mrs. Patrick O'Flanagan." 
 
 " Say I 'm not here," the President whispered to 
 me. 
 
 Eeally, the calm way in which people ask you to 
 imperil your immortal soul by telling lies for them is 
 quite wonderful. Besides, I did not wish my friend to 
 be found out by this woman, whoever she was ; so I 
 whispered to him that it was useless, for Willoughby 
 liad admitted that he was in by admitting the visitor. 
 
 " Say I 'm not in," gestured the President to the 
 dusky steward. 
 
 He was evidently bent on self-denial ; but I do not 
 believe in any form of tlmfc virtue.
 
 A BOLT FA' 0.^/ 7 HE BLUR 2gi 
 
 " M'Gullicuddy," I said, "can you show any cause 
 of just impediment to this lady's entry by by-law ?" 
 
 "She is not married," M'Gullicuddy whispered 
 hoarsely. 
 
 " How do you know ? " 
 
 M'Gullicuddy was silent. 
 
 "Canna ye believe me, mon?" he said. "I ken her 
 history." 
 
 I could see how excited he was by his dropping 
 into his native Scotch. I sympathised with him 
 deeply. 
 
 " Paul," he went on, " ye are a braw good fellow ; 
 tak' the lass away." 
 
 The shaking of the door continued. 
 
 "Open the door, M'Gullicuddy," said the lady in 
 withering tones. " You won't slip through ray fingers 
 any more, I warrant." 
 
 At the word warrant the President trembled like a 
 pet spaniel Obeying an agonised sign from him I 
 placed my back against the door. M'Gullicuddy then 
 ran to the window, lifted the sash, and threw his left leg 
 over the sill. I feared he meant suicide. The thought 
 of the nocturnal fall of the President of the Bachelors' 
 Club upon the pavement of Leicester Square filled me 
 with horror. I rushed forward and caught him by the 
 remaining lecf, before I remembered the few inches of 
 balcony on which he had meditated taking refuge. The 
 door flew open behind me. The lady rushed in. I let 
 20 the President's writhin»4 limb which hastened out 
 upon the ledge; then I slammed the window down 
 violently and turned round. Mrs. Patrick O'Flanagan 
 and I were face to face. 
 
 " Stand aside, sir," said the tall, plump lady, waving
 
 292 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 her marriage certificate. " I saw the calf. I recognised 
 it. I would know it among a herd of calves." 
 
 " What calf ? " I said ingenuously. 
 
 " Oh, you are all leagued together ! " she cried. 
 " Stand aside, sir. I saw the leg." 
 
 " What leg ? " I repeated. 
 
 " My leg," she answered. " Mine, if there is law in 
 England." 
 
 " Excuse me, madam," said I, suspecting I had to do 
 with a mad woman, " so far as I can see, you appear 
 to me to have the usual quantity already." 
 
 " How dare you insult me, sir ? " said the lady, flash- 
 ing a small lightning-storm from her eyes, and drawing 
 her skirts closer around her. " How dare you stand 
 between husband and wife ? " 
 
 " Husband and wife ! " I said. " My dear lady, 
 you have come to the wrong shop. This is a 
 Bachelors' Club — we keep no husbands on these 
 premises." 
 
 " No, indeed," she said, " they are off. Look there." 
 I turned in the direction of her finger. The President's 
 white face was pressed in agony against the glass ; his 
 head was hoary with snow, which had suddenly com- 
 menced to fall. I remembered that the ledge was short 
 and narrow, and that it was dangerous to move hand 
 or foot out there. Without assistance the President 
 could not even get in again. 
 
 " That," I said, " is Mr. Andrew M'Gullicuddy." 
 
 "That," said she, "is Mr. Patrick O'Elanagan, my 
 husband." 
 
 " It 's a dom'd lee," shrieked the President, his voice 
 coming dim and faint through the panes. "As I hope 
 for salvation, I am not this woman's husband."
 
 A BOLT FROM THE BLUE 293 
 
 •' You wretch ! " shrieked the lady. " Whose portrait 
 is this, then ? " 
 
 I turned to look at the photo, and banged my head 
 against several other heads. They were the waiters' 
 and the stewards' all bending down eagerly at the same 
 instant. All the relics of the Bachelors' Club were 
 gathered to watch this fateful scene. Things had, 
 indeed, come to a pretty pass when the waiters were 
 all awake together. I felt quite sore over it, and, with 
 as much dignity as I could command, ordered them to 
 withdraw. I was left in the room with the alleged 
 wife of the President. I was determined that our under- 
 lings should not witness this crowning humiliation 
 except through the keyhole. 
 
 The photo was not a bit like M'Gullicuddy, and under- 
 neath were the words, "Ever thine, Patrick OTlanagan." 
 
 This was enough. The photo was evidently the work 
 of an artistic photographer, and the handwriting was 
 plainly M'Gullicuddy's, sloped to the left. Some men 
 have such poverty of resources. 
 
 I opened the window indignantly and assisted his 
 wife in haling him into the room. 
 
 " Paul, I am innocent," shrieked M'Gullicuddy in his 
 broadest Scotch, as we deposited him on the writing 
 table, where the blotting-paper thirstily drank up his 
 coat of snow. 
 
 " Ah, you are a gentleman," Mrs. OTlanagan said to 
 me with fine discernment. " You, sir, shall judge be- 
 tween us. About eighteen months ago this man came 
 down to Long Stanton, in Cambridgeshire, where I 
 dwelt in my youth and innocence, and wooed and won 
 my trusting heart." 
 
 She wiped away a tear with the marriage certificate
 
 294 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 whicli slie still held in her hand. There was something 
 confiding and candid about the very name of the 
 
 fe^j-i^^'a-f- 
 
 place which added to the heinousness of M'Gullicuddy's 
 
 offence. Long Stanton in Cambridgeshire !
 
 A BOLT FROM THE BLUE 295 
 
 " It 's a dom'd lee," repeated the ungentlemanly person 
 on the dripping writing-table. 
 
 "It's gospel truth," said Mrs. O'Flanagan. "My 
 heart went out to the breezy Irishman with his bright 
 spirits and his lovable brogue. Up till that date, sir, I 
 had been a confirmed opponent of marriage. I had a 
 younger sister who had married three times within four 
 years ; her husbands all dying within a year of marriage. 
 I was afraid it might run in the family, and so I 
 scrupulously refrained from being asked in marriage, 
 for the sake of my husbands. But when Patrick 
 O'Flanagan came through the door, my scruples flew 
 out of the window. On a fair summer morning, no 
 brighter than my heart, I placed my hand within his, 
 and we were wed before the Registrar, for he would 
 not go to church." 
 
 " It 's a dom'd lee," said the President. 
 
 " Sit down," I said to the poor victim, as I wheeled 
 her an arm-chair. " Go on." 
 
 " On leaving the Registrar's office, we took the train to 
 Harwich en route for Holland, where we had located 
 our honeymoon. On the way we chatted freely, for 
 the train was crowded. All at once, as I was talking, 
 Patrick turned pale. I asked what was the matter. 
 He said he felt a little sick, the carriage was so stuffy. 
 Shortly afterwards we arrived at a junction. The train 
 stopped for five minutes for refreshment. Patrick got 
 out to get a drop of brandy to put him riglit. The five 
 minutes passed, the bell rang ; I rushed to the window 
 in case my husband had forgotten the carriage. I looked 
 wildly up and down. Men were jumping in all along 
 the station. ' Stand away there ! ' shouted the guard. 
 He waved his flag, the station slid backwards, and
 
 296 THE CELIBATES'' CLUB 
 
 we were off. Anxiety gnawing at my bosom, I com- 
 forted myself with the thought that he had just had 
 time to pop into another carriage. But soon I learned 
 the bitter truth. That junction was the parting of our 
 lives. Like a true Irishman my husband preferred to 
 spend his honeymoon alone. I never set eyes on him 
 from that day to this. But my search has been suc- 
 cessful at last, thanks to my having means and spending 
 them freely in the search. By the aid of a private 
 detective agency I learned that my husband passed 
 under the name of M'Gullicuddy, and that this Club 
 was his favourite resort." She turned to the President 
 who still lay huddled together on the writing-table, his 
 face as white as the driven snow outside. 
 
 "Now, Patrick," she said, "will you come away 
 quietly with me to Holland for our honeymoon ? " 
 
 The question made him sit up. But he did nothing 
 but stare at her. 
 
 " Come, Patrick," she said, " come away, and all 
 shall be forgotten and forgiven. Drink that glass 
 of brandy and rejoin me in the train." She drew a 
 gold watch from her bodice. " It leaves Liverpool St. 
 Station for Harwich in eighty-five minutes. At 9 A.M. 
 to-morrow we shall be in Kotterdam." 
 
 " How do you know ? " gasped M'Gullicuddy. 
 
 " How do I know ? " said Mrs. OTlanagan, her voice 
 breaking with infinite pathos and tenderness. " Have 
 I not waited weary months for this hour ? Have I not 
 had ample leisure to study my Bradshaw ? It has been 
 the one relaxation in my misery. What has buoyed 
 me up and kept me well and strong ? Only the thought 
 that some day, somewhere, you and I would meet 
 again, Patrick ; that some day, somewhere, again you
 
 A BOLT FROM THE BLUE 297 
 
 would place your hand in mine, love ; tliat some 
 day, somewhere, you and I would walk to the book- 
 ing-office together, and again I would take the tickets 
 for Holland ; that some day, dear, whether vid Don- 
 caster or Eugby, vid Bradford or Glasgow, we should 
 arrive at Parkeston Quay together, and together board 
 the 9.50 Dutch boat, as if our honeymoon had never 
 been interrupted, and the interim were an evil dream. 
 When my search was weariest, and my courage lowest, 
 and the horizon darkest, I turned to my Bradshaw and 
 read for the thousandth time the message of hope and 
 peace, and found therein comfort and courage. The 
 pages are bedewed with my tears ; but they are the 
 tears of hope — not of despair." 
 
 My own eyes were wet as I listened. Oh the sublime 
 patience and fortitude of woman ! 
 
 " Come, darling," said Mrs. O'Flanagan. " The Har- 
 wich express starts in one hour twenty-one minutes." 
 
 " It 's a dom'd lee," said M'Gullicuddy automatically. 
 
 " Come, darling," repeated the poor, wronged lady, 
 and every syllable was a caress and a pardon. 
 
 " Go away ! " shouted M'Gullicuddy. 
 
 "Yes, that's just what I mean, — go away," she said, 
 " by the 8 p.m." 
 
 M'Gullicuddy got off the table and stood facing us. 
 
 " Paul," he said pleadingly, " tak the creature awa' ! 
 See her into the 8 p.m. express." 
 
 "My dear fellow," I said, "that is expressly your 
 duty." 
 
 " Wliat ! " he cried in anguish. " Surely yoii, don't 
 believe I am this woman's husband." 
 
 " I do." 
 
 "But, Paul, my dear old friend, on my word of
 
 298 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 honour as President of the Bachelors' Chib, she is no 
 wife of mine. Don't you believe me ? Yes, surely you 
 believe me, Paul ? " 
 
 I was silent. I remembered his vanisliing leg. I 
 remembered the photo. Decidedly appearances were 
 against him. 
 
 " I cannot believe you," I said, groaning. 
 
 M'Gullicuddy echoed the groan and covered his 
 spectacles with his hands. Mrs. OTlanagan laid her 
 hand tenderly on his head. He shook it off (the hand) 
 and faced us again. A light, as of truth, gleamed from 
 his eyes. 
 
 " Some day, Paul," he said, " you will recognise the 
 injustice you are doing me. I am not this woman's 
 husband. I swear it by all that I hold dear." 
 
 This was an awful oath ; for there were few things 
 which the economical Scotsman did not hold dear. 
 
 " Will you come by the 8 p.m. ? " said Mrs. 
 O'Flanagan imperturbably. "Come. By 9 a.m. we 
 shall be in Potter " 
 
 The President finished the sentence, and continued 
 resolutely: "Even if I am your husband I am not 
 bound to live with you. That has been settled by 
 law." 
 
 "Pardon me," said Mrs. OTlanagan, "the decision 
 to which you refer merely frees the v/ife from conjugal 
 bonds. The husband has no such freedom." 
 
 " Then the sooner a Men's Eights Party is formed the 
 better," said the President. 
 
 " The sooner men do what is right the better," retorted 
 the lady. "Patrick OTlanagan, I remind you once 
 again that you have taken upon yourself the solemn 
 oblio-ation to be loved, honoured, and obeyed by me.
 
 A BOLT FROM THE BLUE 299 
 
 Isabella Fallowsmith, till death us do part. Come, 
 Patrick, let us catch the 9.50 Dutch boat." 
 
 " Paul," said the poor President, " you believe this 
 strange woman rather than your own colleague •? What 
 if I could prove her mistaken ? " 
 
 " Then you may send for a strait waistcoat for me," 
 said the lady impulsively. 
 
 "Will you go away, as my friend asks you, if he 
 proves you are not his wife ? " I said. 
 
 " I will. If he is not my husband, I will obey his 
 wishes." 
 
 " Good," said M'Gullicuddy. " Look at me. Miss Fal- 
 lowsmith ; do you recognise me as Patrick OTlanagau ? " 
 
 " I do," she answered in a clear steady voice. 
 
 " You would identify me anywhere ? " 
 
 " Anywhere." 
 
 M'Gullicuddy passed his hand over his face like a 
 conjurer. 
 
 "iVbw do you recognise me as Patrick O'Flanagan ? " 
 
 A cry of surprise burst from our four lips. The 
 President had put quite a new face and complexion on 
 the matter. His spectacles lay on tlie floor and woe- 
 begone wisps of beard and wig were fluttering towards 
 them. The President had stripped his face to the skin. 
 I no longer knew him, Joy overcame my astonishment. 
 I turned triumphantly towards Mrs. O'Flanagan. The 
 honour of the Club was safe. 
 
 "Now do you recognise him," I repeated sternly, 
 " as Patrick O'Flanagan ? " 
 
 "Ah, Patrick! Patrick!" sobbed Mrs. O'FJauagan, 
 throwing herself passionately on the President's bosom. 
 " Now at last I recognise you. Oh, why did you hide 
 yourself so long from your poor Isabella ? "
 
 300 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 With one hand she encompassed his neck, with the 
 other she tendered me the photo afresh. I scanned it 
 again. Yes, it had not been taken by an artist after 
 all. M'Gullicuddy had not counted on that photo when 
 he played his little game of brag with the woman who 
 had circumvented him at it. The expression on his 
 new countenance alone belied the smirking photo. 
 
 " I felt sure it was you, dear," sobbed his wife, " by 
 your getting out of the window for refreshments when 
 I came along. I did not recognise you in the least but 
 I had faith in you, and went on appealing to the old 
 memories, thinking that if you were you I should find 
 a soft spot in your heart at last." 
 
 She had found a soft spot — only it was in his head. 
 I was disgusted with his stupidity. To have been 
 double-faced to so little purpose ! 
 
 M'Gullicuddy disentangled himself from Mrs. O'Flau- 
 
 agan. 
 
 "Well, now you recognise me, Miss Fallowsmith," 
 he said, " I had best tell the truth ; but not unless you 
 swear to keep what I say secret." 
 
 We swore. "Good," said M'Gullicuddy. "Now I 
 can speak." 
 
 At this Ibsenite commencement I prepared for the 
 worst. 
 
 " Kemember," he said. " You have promised me the 
 privilege of the confessional ! I am speaking not to 
 phonographs but to priests." 
 
 We were awed by his manner. I stole to the 
 door, threw it open suddenly, and allowed Willoughby 
 Jones to fall forward into the inner room, the other 
 married men coming tumbling after. Eavesdroppers 
 never hear any good of others — nor want to. I
 
 A BOLT FROM THE BLUE 301 
 
 spurned the squirming heap with my foot, and swept it 
 outside. I then gave it a holiday for half an hour, and 
 it scampered down-stairs. I locked the outer portal of 
 the Bachelors' Club, and the apartments were converted 
 into a sanctuary. I returned to the inner chamber. 
 
 " Now," said I, " we are alone. Now let us have the 
 promised truth." 
 
 "I will do my best," he replied modestly. "The 
 truth about me is very simple. I am not Mr. OTlana- 
 gan, and I am not the husband of this lady." 
 
 " But if that 's the truth, you 've told us it before ! " I 
 cried, a wild hope resurgent in my breast. 
 
 "Yes, I could not help it," he said deprecatingly. 
 " Please don't interrupt me, Paul. I cannot be this lady's 
 husband because I married another lady a year before 
 she claims my hand. Don't interrupt me. Miss Fallow- 
 smith. You see, Paul, you wouldn't have confidence in 
 my innocence under this cruel charge," he said plain- 
 tively. " Such is friendship. My name is not O'Flana- 
 gan at all. It is Parker — Peter Parker. My marriage 
 took place at Macclesfield. The circumstances of the 
 wedding were rather out of the way. I regret I was not 
 one of them at the time. But a mocking Fate overrules 
 our destinies. 
 
 " All my misfortunes in life have arisen from the un- 
 fortunate age at which ray father died. If he had died a 
 little later I should never have been married ; if he had 
 died a little earlier, I should never have been born. 
 Not having had time to discover his vices, my mother 
 cherished the memory of his virtues. She thought him 
 a paragon among men, and believed even in his epitaph. 
 She wore black for him all the days of her life. Her 
 mournin" habit became a second nature to her. She 
 
 'o
 
 302 THE CELIBATES- CLUB 
 
 was beautiful, as you may judge, and was often pressed 
 to many again. But her constancy was proof against 
 all solicitations. She told her suitors that she had vowed 
 to wear widow's weeds for her first husband while life 
 
 lasted ; and so they 
 went their ways. But 
 at last a young Scots- 
 man from St. An- 
 drews University 
 came along and fell 
 in love with her, and 
 wrote sonnets on hex 
 eyebrow and other 
 inconvenient places. 
 He asked her hand 
 and she pointed to 
 her bonnet. He re- 
 flected that it would be very economical to have a wife 
 who always dressed in black, and so they were married. 
 The bride went to church in a mourning coach, and 
 wore a long crape veil and a black silk gown, trimmed 
 with sprays of yew, for she was not one who took her 
 grief in lightening shades. My step-father did not effect 
 the saving he had reckoned, for his wife indulged in all 
 the luxuries of woe, and dealt only at the most artistic 
 establishments. People used to call him the widower 
 till my dear mother died ; then in self-defence, they were 
 forced to call him the Bachelor. My motlier's death 
 affected me deeply — it seemed as if the light and joy 
 of the house had departed when her sable robes ceased 
 to trail and rustle about the rooms. From earliest 
 childhood those funereal garments had been part of 
 my consciousness. All my infant associations were
 
 A BOLT FROM THE BLUE 303 
 
 entwined round those widow's weeds. My heart's 
 tendrils wound themselves about her crape-wreathed 
 bonnets. Her touching devotion to my father, while life 
 pulsed in her veins, consecrated our home life with a 
 halo of purity and poetry, to which even my step-father 
 was not insensible. I felt I was not as other children. 
 That high example of steadfast pursuit of an ideal amid 
 all the sordid pettinesses of existence made life a 
 deeper and a nobler thing for me than for my playmates, 
 and I always selected black marbles and tops, and 
 manifested an early preference for blackberries. My 
 mother was the only woman I ever cared for. Please 
 don't interrupt. Miss Fallowsmith. Her death left me 
 heart-broken. The only consolation was her wardrobe. 
 I wandered amid the black hangings with which all 
 the cupboards were thickly lined, as some pensive poet 
 wanders in the sombre glades of a pine-forest. But I 
 had reckoned without my step- father. He promptly 
 sold off my mother's leavings, and it was only with 
 difticulty that 1 could secure the wedding-robes and 
 the other appurtenances of a widow's outfit. The care 
 of these henceforth became the solemn charge of my 
 life. I wrestled with the moths and did battle with the 
 rust. As from her grave my gentle mother's influence 
 was still upon me ; I owed to her still an ennobling 
 ideal and a sanctifying mission. Her weeds saved me 
 from suicide. They kept me straight in the tangles of 
 temptation. My step-father married again. Unmoved 
 by that high example of fidelity to the dead afforded 
 him by my mother, he took another wife to his 
 bosom. To see my step-step-mother flaunting in white 
 jarred upon a vision habituated to sable of the deepest 
 dye. My deepest emotions were outraged. I left the
 
 304 
 
 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 
 1.,<J 
 
 liouse almost immediately after the wedding breakfast. 
 Bearing with me only my mother's drapings and trap- 
 pings of woe in a Gladstone bag, and leaving behind me 
 
 nothing but a 
 curse, I shook 
 the rice of the 
 threshold off my 
 patent leather 
 shoes and went 
 forth into the 
 wide, wide world. 
 Not that I had 
 not been in the 
 world before — I 
 only mean I went to the Con- 
 tinent. Henceforward the ab- 
 sorbing thought of my life 
 absorbed me deeper still. Due 
 honour and respect must be 
 paid to my mother's widow's 
 weeds. They should not grow 
 rank upon her grave. Her 
 clothes should not moulder 
 away like her dear self. But 
 who was worthy to wear those 
 relics ? To whom would those 
 supreme honours most appro- 
 priately accrue ? Whom would 
 those garments fit ? 
 " There was only one possible answer. My mother's 
 mourning could only be worn by her son's widow. 
 Those hallowed relics and heirlooms could enshroud no 
 woman less sacred. None but her sou's widow could
 
 A BOLT FROM THE BLUE 
 
 305 
 
 step into her shoes. They must be kept in the family. 
 Hitherto I had been a confirmed bachelor. I had 
 wished no woman's face to come between me and my 
 mother's. But now it was borne in on me that it was 
 my sacred duty to marry. It behoved me to take a 
 wife. How otherwise could I create a widow to be a 
 background to those dresses ? The model widow for 
 those weeds must be my own. I obeyed the voice of 
 conscience ; I looked out for a widow. Often I thought 
 I had found a fitting wearer for those precious gar- 
 ments ; often I was on the point of proposing to 
 lovely virgins, on whom they would have looked 
 beautiful; often when I sat 
 with some fair jrentle maiden 
 in the green gloom of con- 
 servatories, or sauntered with 
 her beneath the fretted vault 
 of heaven or glided beside 
 her on the quiet 
 moonlit lake, or 
 watched with her 
 to see the sun set 
 in serene splen- ' ' 
 dour behind the 
 everlasting hills 
 — often have I 
 measured her 
 waist with my 
 circumambient 
 arm to see if she were the fitting bride for me. In 
 five cases the dimensions were suitable. I measured 
 again and again till tlierc could be no possibility 
 of mistake. Only three maidens stood this more 
 
 u 
 
 llii':
 
 3o6 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 searching test. These I was within an ace of select- 
 ing. Flushed witli the emotions of the moment, 
 enraptured by the perfection of the measurements, 
 overwhelmed by the glories of sunset or moonlight, 
 I have three times been on the point of asking 
 some lovely damsel to be my widow ; to link her 
 life with my death ; to be mine in the heart's beat, 
 mine in the breath, and follow me to the world's end 
 in the next carriage to mine. But I always restrained 
 myself. In the supreme crisis one thought always 
 arrived with a respite. How did I know that tliis 
 beautiful girl, whom I was on the point of rashly 
 asking to be my widow, would outlive me ? Suppose 
 I took her to my hearth and home, and then she died 
 before me, leaving me with my mother's mourning on 
 my hands again ! No, I must be prudent. True, each 
 of these beautiful girls was radiant with life and 
 happiness, overflowing with buoyancy and freshness 
 like a spring morning. But we have it on authority 
 that all flesh is grass, and we are cut down in a moment 
 as by a reaper's sickle. 
 
 "No, marriage is at best a lottery. What if I found 
 myself saddled with a woman who would not be able to 
 fulfil the functions of widowhood? I should be unable 
 to get the marriage set aside, for the stupid law had not 
 provided for the contingency. No, I would not take a 
 leap in the dark. If I married, I must choose my widow 
 wisely and well. My marriage must not be a failure. 
 
 " Now you understand why I sought the hand of Mrs. 
 Carcanet. After months of misery at Paris and 
 Monaco, I returned to England. Fate took me to 
 Macclesfield and introduced me to Mrs. Carcanet. 
 — Please, be silent, Miss Fallowsmith.
 
 A BOLT FROM THE BLUE 307 
 
 "Mrs. Carcanet was at that time the talk of the town. 
 She was a professional widow — not a raw and in- 
 experienced widow like my mother, for she had been 
 bereaved three times. There was nothing particularly- 
 attractive about her, yet she changed her name as 
 frequently as a stage-adventuress. Nor was there the 
 slightest breath of scandal against her, for though her 
 three husbands had perished, they had done so under 
 circumstances beyond her control. One had been 
 attacked with cramp while swimming, another had 
 succumbed to measles, and the third had won a 
 thousand pounds in a railway accident. 
 
 " The curious part of it was that all three had died 
 within a year of marriage. Yes, yes, sit down. Miss, 
 I know exactly what you 're thinking about. When I 
 have finished, you shall speak. The third man was 
 warned by all his relatives, and the local insurance 
 branch wanted a higher annual premium, but he 
 laughed at their superstitions. When the crash came 
 and his dead body was identified in the mortuary, few 
 had sympathy witli the blasphemer. His death was 
 felt to be a judgment, as his living over the twelve- 
 month would have been considered a want of it on 
 the part of the higher powers. 
 
 " I felt at once this was the woman for my matrimony. 
 She at least would make a true widow for me. I 
 thought of her as more literally 'The Mourning 
 Bride ' than Congreve's heroine ; she was always just 
 wed or just widowed. Her life was like the first 
 column of The Tmes— nothing but Births, Marriages, 
 and Deaths. If I married her, I should die within a 
 twelvemonth, and my marriage would be consummated. 
 The claims of filial piety would be satisfied, for I was
 
 3o8 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 confident that with the opportunity of quietly tallcing 
 things over, afforded by the honeymoon, I should be able 
 to induce my wife to mourn for me in the same sacred 
 clothes in which my mother had mourned for my 
 father. 
 
 " It was no easy task to secure the hand I coveted, 
 for after she had saved the thousand pounds from the 
 crash to which her third husband had fallen a victim, 
 Mrs. Carcanet became again the cynosure of all neigh- 
 bouring bachelors' eyes. There was a morbid fascination 
 about her which impelled men to throw themselves at 
 her feet, as though they had been moths and her toes 
 luminous. 
 
 "But none had so much at stake as I; the thought of 
 my mother's ebon clothes lent me eloquence, and filial 
 devotion carried the day. When our engagement 
 leaked out, the stonemasons of Macclesfield touched 
 their caps respectfully when I passed. 
 
 " For nine months I lived in perfect happiness with 
 my intended widow. Everything had been arranged 
 for my decease ; the woman who had plighted her troth 
 to me, to become ray widow when death did us part, 
 had engaged to lament me in the hereditary weeds of 
 the family. My will was made. Everything had been 
 left to my future widow on that understanding. 
 
 "During the tenth month I began to get uneasy. No 
 signs of sickness had appeared. I felt as strong as a 
 drayhorse and as healthy as a hippopotamus. The 
 eleventh month passed ; still not a shade of a shadow 
 of a symptom of bodily derangement. I could not feel 
 unwell though I tried. I read all the quack medicine 
 advertisements. I pored over the properties of the 
 patent pills, which no family should be without. I
 
 A BOLT FROM THE BLUE 309 
 
 studied the records of the supernatural syrups. Not 
 even thus could I experience any unpleasant sensation. 
 My head was not dizzy, nor were my loins heavy, nor was 
 my digestion sluggish. Little black spots did not dance 
 before my eyes. My pulse was methodical, my respira- 
 tion easy, and my tongue did not wear a morning coat. 
 I began to get seriously alarmed. The days slipped 
 by slowly ; but at last the twelfth month arrived. The 
 townsfolk stared after me now when I walked in the 
 street, 'and necks were craned out of windows, as 
 though T were a condemned criminal en route, to the 
 scaffold. The notoriety became disagreeable, and during 
 the last month of my existence, I determined to be a 
 celebrity at home. In the third week an old school- 
 fellow named Eaveson called on me. He asked me 
 how I felt. I said I was sorry to say I had been 
 feeling far from ill lately. He inquired what were the 
 prospects of my dissolution. I said that death from 
 natural causes seemed improbable, but I was looking 
 confidently forward to an accident, and hoped, by care 
 and attention, to meet with one within a few days. 
 He warned me not to build too much on that chance, 
 for accidents would happen even in the best calculated 
 schemes. I replied that if I stopped at home, as I 
 intended to, I had every right to rely on the accident 
 coming off. I reminded him of what the Lancet 
 told us every week of the perils that bestrewed our 
 paths, the poison that lurked in the pot, and the disease 
 that dribbled from the kettle ; of the contagion that 
 clung to bootlaces, and the arsenic that was wafted 
 from the wall-paper ; I recalled to him the dangers of 
 fires and gas explosions and armed burglars and over- 
 toppling mirrors and falling chandeliers ; and I read out
 
 310 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 to him a graphic account of the germs and insidious 
 particles that were fooling around in the domestic 
 atmosphere, and whicli could only be foiled by 
 Badberry's Cocoa, from the use of which I carefully 
 abstained. But he shook his head sceptically and 
 went off, leaving me forlorn and discomforted. Next 
 day he returned and inquired after my health again. 
 His face brightened when I told him my condition was 
 unchanged. He said I must not mind if he came to 
 inquire every day, and even twice a day^ because he 
 felt very anxious about my health. I told him it was 
 very good of him, and pressed his hand affectionately, 
 and said that I had never believed in friendship l)efore, 
 but now I should carry to my grave the memory of In's 
 disinterested anxiety. 
 
 " ' Never say die ! ' he replied cheerily. ' I always 
 said you would weather the marriage. And what 's 
 more, I don't mind telling you now, I 've backed my 
 opinion heavily. I have ten thousand pound* on you.' 
 
 " ' What do you mean ? ' I gasped. 
 
 " ' Why, I 've made wagers amounting in all to ten 
 thousand pounds, partly with natives, partly outside, 
 that you will live beyond the usual twelvemonth. At 
 first I got large odds, for the starting-price was what- 
 ever I pleased, as I stood almost alone in my belief in 
 you. Then the betting became level, while now that you 
 have only a few days to die, the tide has turned and 
 I have had to give three to two. Yes, my boy, I have 
 stood by you all along,' he said, slapping me cheerily on 
 the back ; ' I am none of your fair-weather friends to fire 
 salute guns only when you get into port. When every 
 one spoke ill of you, and speculated on your death, I 
 alone was your friend for life. When things looked
 
 A BOLT FROM THE BLUE 311 
 
 blackest and most funereal, I alone believed in you and 
 defended your life against all odds.' 
 
 " I said with emotion that I would remember him in 
 my will, and that he might look for a legacy in a few 
 days. He answered warmly that he preferred my life 
 to any legacy I could leave him. Again I pressed his 
 hand, and the faithful fellow took his leave. 
 
 " But he left me food for reflection, which I was not 
 slow to digest. When Eavesou called the next day, I 
 asked him if he was sure to get his ten thousand if I 
 remained alive. He said that the losers were all reli- 
 able persons, and in any case he could recover these 
 debts legally, as the transaction was not a gambling one 
 but a form of life assurance. I then informed him that 
 unless he went halves with me I should die. He 
 grew pale, and besought me to reconsider my deter- 
 mination. I said I had always lived to please myself, 
 I was not going to live to please him now. He said 
 he would leave no stone unturned to save my life. I 
 said that if it were saved in mere consols it would tot 
 up to nearly £300 a year ; and that unless I could save 
 half my life for myself, I would have none of it. 
 The only way to prevent my death was to give me the 
 £5000. I pointed out that if I lived, Eaveson would 
 get all the meat and I all the bones ; that he would 
 net £10,000 while I should be left married to an unat- 
 tractive and faded widow who was not even my widow. 
 I wanted to know what there was for me to live for? 
 
 " In the end it was agreed to split my life fairly 
 between us both, Eaveson trying in the meantime to 
 increase its value. And now all my thoughts changed 
 as by magic. The will to live took the place of tlie 
 readiness to die. The chance of realising £5000 comes
 
 312 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 but rarely in a lifetime ; the chance of dying is always 
 to be had. There was plenty of time yet to provide a 
 widow to wear my mother's clothes ; they should be 
 shelved but not forgotten, I had perhaps been need- 
 lessly precipitate. The revived will to live brought 
 with it all the anxieties of which Stoics, Quietists, and 
 Buddhists warn us. To wish to live is to fear to die. 
 Now that I craved for life, a terror that I should die 
 within the week whelmed my soul. Was I really 
 destined to escape my wife's baneful spell ? Why 
 should I be luckier than the three men who had gone 
 before ? I communicated my fears to Eaveson, The 
 panic seized him too. What was to be done ? 
 
 " The solution Hashed upon me suddenly. The mortal 
 peril that threatened me arose from my marital relation to 
 the fatal widow. If I ceased to be her husband, the 
 spell would probably not work. But unfortunately a 
 divorce in this unhappy country takes time, and the 
 end of my year was bearing down upon me like some 
 grim express. A divorce was out of the question ; I 
 must be content with the next best thing. To cease 
 being Mrs. Carcanet's husband I must become some- 
 body else's. That, if not a legal divorce, would, at least, 
 be a moral one. I told Eaveson the idea. He said that 
 it was bigamy. I said that that didn't matter. Even 
 bigamy ceased to be a crime when one's life was in 
 danger. Crimes committed in self-defence, to save 
 one's life, were whitewashed by the codes of all coun- 
 tries. Desperate evils required desperate remedies. In 
 my situation, I said, bigamy would be quite laudable. 
 The only trouble was to find a fresh bride to be my 
 widow. I dared not look for her in Macclesfield, because 
 she would know of the existing wife, which would
 
 A BOLT FROM THE BLUE 313 
 
 probably set her against the match. But if I left the 
 town, then, as Eaveson pointed out, there would be some 
 difficulty in proving that I was alive. True I might 
 retui-n temporarily to Macclesfield just to be identified, 
 but then my first wife might get hold of me, and I could 
 not bear the idea of living any longer with the insipid 
 partner I had selected only to die by. It was, indeed, 
 a dilemma. This time Eaveson came to the rescue. I 
 was to leave Macclesfield on a pretext to my wife, who 
 was unaware of the dead-and-alive gossip that circled 
 round us. The gossips would think I had crawled off 
 like a wounded snake to die alone. After the honey- 
 moon, which would be also after the magic twelvemonth, 
 I was to return to Macclesfield on a pretext to my 
 wife (number two), but only to visit my lawyer and 
 other reputable citizens on pretended matters of busi- 
 ness. I was also to be casually photographed ; so that 
 after I had gone, the developed negatives might be posi- 
 tive evidences to my identity. Then, before the news 
 of my coming had spread to my wife, I was to fly again, 
 returning to my second wife or not as inclination 
 prompted. 
 
 " Trembling for my life, I put into execution the plan 
 so hurriedly sketched out. I told my wife a relative had 
 died, and I had to go and see about some property he 
 had left me. The dwelling-place of my second wife I 
 ascertained by sortilege. I opened my Bradshaw at 
 hazard, and stuck a pin into the leaf. It made a hole 
 in Long Stanton. I was in Loug Stanton next day with 
 my mother's weeds in a Gladstone bag, and barely a 
 week to spare. My life trembled in the balance. Only 
 a second marriage could save me from the maleficent 
 baleful magnetism radiating from my first wife, who
 
 314 THE CELIBATED CLUB 
 
 seemed to hypnotise her husbands away. Could I find 
 another wife in a week ? On tliat question hinged my 
 whole existence. I adopted the name of O'Flanagan 
 with brogue and beard to match. I met an old, I 
 mean, I met Miss Fallowsmith, and married her before 
 the Eegistrar, as she has told you. Will you sit down and 
 let me finish my story ? Now you shall hear why I left 
 you. Oh, but of course you have guessed it by now. Miss 
 Fallowsmith. You are Mrs. Carcanet's sister, you had 
 quarrelled years ago, and lived apart, and without 
 corresponding with each other. When on our first 
 wedding journey you blundered into saying something 
 which revealed to me the fatal truth, I felt that death 
 were, indeed, better. It was horrible, nefarious 1)eyond 
 the dreams of a Caligula or a Cenci. I liad married my 
 iindeccased luifes sister. At the lirst stopping-place after 
 that awful revelation I jumped out and left you. You 
 will admit it was the most honourable course. Don't 
 sob on my breast, please, I only did my duty. Do sit 
 down, there 's a good creature. From the moment I left 
 yon my life has been one long haunting terror. I had 
 contemplated merely bigamy, but I had committed the 
 unpardonable sin, for which there can be no forgive- 
 ness in earth or heaven. If to marry one's deceased 
 wife's sister is so revolting an offence, what must it be 
 to marry one's -zmdeceased wife's sister ? It is iniquity 
 so dire and unspeakable that the very law has neglected 
 to provide against it. The awfulness of this form of 
 bigamy is increased by the fact that there is no repair- 
 ing the evil. If your first wife dies, you cannot patch 
 up the past, for you cannot legitimise your second 
 wife, since she is your deceased wife's sister. If, on the 
 other hand, your second wife dies, the case is worse, for
 
 A BOLT FROM THE BLUE 
 
 315 
 
 you remain actually married to your deceased wife's 
 sister, having moreover inveigled the law into solemnis- 
 ing a marriage it prohibits. No, no, my dear Miss 
 Fallowsmith, let me 
 finish. Can you 
 wonder that I dared 
 not return to Mac- 
 clesfield lest my sin 
 should find me out ? 
 How Eaveson fared 
 I have never learnt. 
 I trembled at my 
 own shadow, think- "<j=^ 
 
 ing it a policeman 
 
 on my track. My 
 day was one Ioul; 
 bolt from the blue- 
 coated officials. I 
 dared not leave tlie 
 country lest my per- 
 turbation should ex- 
 cite suspicion. 
 There are always 
 so many detectives 
 about the docks. 
 The one safe place 
 for me was London, 
 the great wilderness 
 of London ; the one 
 safe disguise that of 
 
 a Scotchman. I had been an Irishman. 
 Englishnum. As a Scotchnuin I should 
 paratively secure, 
 
 !. am an 
 
 be com- 
 
 I bought a piiir of goggles with
 
 3l6 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 plain glasses (for my sight is excellent), a snuff- 
 box, and a coloured handkerchief, and took the name 
 of Andrew M'Gullicuddy. But it was too much 
 trouble to speak like an anglicised Scotchman all day 
 long. Besides, there was always the danger that I 
 would forget the accent when my temper was ruffled. 
 I hit upon the happy idea of speaking Scotch (so- 
 called) only when I was in a passion or excited. Not 
 only would the strain be less, but the genuineness so 
 much more convincing. The most cultured speaker of 
 a foreign tongue slips into his native idiom under 
 excitement. With a little care I trained myself to talk 
 Scotch whenever I felt angry or otherwise moved. The 
 dodge succeeded perfectly. Not even you, Paul, have 
 ever suspected me of being a Birmingham man, plain 
 Peter Parker. But I was yet far from easy. The fear 
 of detection still made life a nightmare. My disguise 
 was not yet impenetrable. Something more novel and 
 audacious was necessary to cover up my trail. What 
 fresh red-herring could T draw across my track ? The 
 idea was long in coming, but it came at last. / 
 invented the Bachelors' Cluh. If I founded a society 
 based on celibacy and misogyny, my guilt would be 
 buried beyond the fear of exhumation. Who would 
 ever dream of identifying Andrew M'Gullicuddy, 
 President and Founder of the Bachelors' Club, with 
 Peter Parker alias Patrick O'Flanagan, bigamist, married 
 to his undeceased wife's sister ? " 
 
 " You double-disguised villain ! " I burst out, for I 
 could contain myself no longer. "So this was your 
 pretty design, eh ? " I rushed wildly at the epigram- 
 matic tapestry, and clawed at it in my rage. "Out 
 upon you, foul Chimera, compact of perjury and
 
 A BOLT FROM THE BLUE 317 
 
 falsehood ! So you have used your friends and abused 
 your office but to cover up your trail. While I was 
 trembling to acquaint you with a secession, you were 
 yourself a marital monster, a double-dyed husband. 
 There is not a single law or by-law of the Club but you 
 have trampled upon it." 
 
 " Pardon me, Paul," replied the President, his voice 
 quivering with emotion. " This is too much. Call me 
 a bigamist if you will, but do not say I have trampled 
 upon the code of the Club, for it is a meanness I would 
 shrink from. Am I not over thirty years of age ? I 
 am. Have I ever had a disappointment in love ? I 
 have not, for I have never loved. At first we used to 
 ask of the candidate ' Has he ever been married ? ' and 
 as I, the President, was more than married, my 
 conscience used to wince a little. But I took advantage 
 of your weak-minded striving for epigram to suggest 
 the later form ' Has he ever had a disappointment in 
 love ? ' You all snapped greedily at the bait, forgetting 
 that the formula did not exhaust all the possibilities, 
 but allowed a man who had married, but not for love, to 
 slip through. Besides, you forget / was never a candi- 
 date." 
 
 The President's arguments left me breathless. 
 
 " But at first — at the foundation ? " I gasped. 
 
 "Well, what of that?" inquired M'Gullicuddy. 
 " Did I ever tell a single syllable of untruth about it ? 
 Did any one ever ask whether / was married ? No ; it 
 was I who organised this Club ; it was I who broached 
 the idea to Mandeville Brown, and he jumped at it 
 eagerly, for it fell in with his humour. But I told him 
 I would not allow him to co-operate with me unless he 
 could satisfy my most searching inquiries as to the
 
 3i8 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 integrity of his bachelorhood and the wholeness of his 
 heart. He submitted willingly to my examination, and 
 I passed him with honours. It never struck him to exa- 
 mine his examiner. (Even when I crushed his claim to 
 originality by assuring him that another married man 
 had previously remained in the Club, it never struck 
 him that it was I.) We two sought out a third and 
 so on. My inquiries into each neophyte's antecedents 
 were so minute and detailed that they never dreamt of 
 asking for mine. My criticism was so severe, ray scorn 
 for the Benedict so unconcealed, that my power and 
 position were never once questioned in the whole history 
 of the Bachelors' Club. I never evaded the tests, for I 
 was never tried by them. Do me the justice, Paul, to 
 admit that I have always striven with veritable single- 
 hearted zeal to uphold the dignity and the laws of our 
 Society, now, alas ! moribund, and that I have been an 
 impeccable President of the Bachelors' Club." 
 
 I saw that he was right. How I had wronged this great 
 and good man ! Eemorse rent my over-charged bosom. 
 I fell at his feet and craved his pardon and his blessing. 
 
 " Piise, Paul," said the kindly President, in tremulous 
 accents, " you are forgiven." 
 
 "And you are forgiven, my dear, good Patrick!" 
 came suddenly from the lips of the woman, whom we 
 had both forgotten in the last exciting moments of 
 M'Gullicuddy's monologue. " I may speak now ? " 
 
 "Yes, Miss Fallowsmith, you may speak now," said 
 the President wearily. 
 
 " Then, Patrick, there is yet time to catch the Har- 
 wich boat." 
 
 " Eh, lass ? " said Peter Parker, so startled that he 
 slipped perforce into M'Gullicuddy.
 
 A BOLT FROM THE BLUE 319 
 
 " Yes, you are my husband now, if not when you 
 married me. I was right after all when I claimed you 
 as mine." 
 
 " I cauna be your husband." 
 
 "You can, and are. My sister is dead. She died 
 soon after your leaving her. Your disappearance, taken 
 in conjunction with the deaths of her three other hus- 
 bands, excited suspicion. She was alleged to have made 
 away with you. The investigation conducted in conse- 
 quence so upset her that she died." 
 
 " False deceptive creature ! " cried the President. 
 " Then she will never wear my mother's weeds after all ! 
 I had intended leaving her a dying confession and these 
 clothes, with fresh testamentary adjurations to wear 
 them. But tliat is over now." He wept silently. 
 
 "Do not take on so, Patrick," said Miss Fallowsmith, 
 with infinite tenderness, as she passed a gentle hand 
 over the remains of his hair. " There is yet balm in 
 Gilead. Is not your own Isabella here to bear your 
 burdens and to soothe your sorrows? Come, love, 
 remember that if you have lost your first widow you 
 have still a widow left to you. I will wear those gar- 
 ments for you when you are no more, oh how gladly ! " 
 
 Peter Parker looked up. The tear in his eye was 
 blent with a sunny gleam of hope. Then the rainbow 
 faded away again into mist. 
 
 " I5ut they do not fit you." 
 
 " Oh yes, love, measure me, measure me," she cried 
 eagerly, placing his arm round her waist. 
 
 "Your diameter is too extensive," he said sadly. 
 " You will burst your cerements — I mean my mother's 
 mourning." 
 
 "No, no!" she cried ecstatically. "If that is all,
 
 320 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Patrick, do not spurn me as unlit to be your mate and 
 widow. I can reduce my weight, dear; I will take 
 daily exercise, darling ; I will use anti-fat, love; any- 
 thing to make me worthy to be your widow. Oh, if 
 there is no other way, Patrick, I would willingly starve 
 to make you happier, dearest. Only give me leave to 
 try, and you shall see that I will fit them, my darling, 
 my own and only love." Her eyes lit up in sublime 
 abnecration. Her look was that of a saint. Oh the 
 mirific workings of love, transforming the most prosaic 
 clay to the similitude of an angel ! 
 
 " But you are my deceased wife's sister," faltered the 
 President. 
 
 " What is that, love % Come, let us catch the Dutch 
 boat. Other countries are not so cruel as ours. Let 
 us continue our interrupted honeymoon to Holland. 
 There we shall be made one." 
 
 " But it 's such an unco awf u' nicht for the passage ! " 
 pleaded M'Gullicuddy excitedly. 
 
 "The night will be all right," she replied optimistically. 
 
 " Tell Willoughby to fetch me a cab," groaned the 
 President helplessly. 
 
 Deeply moved by the pathetic scene I darted out, 
 unlocked the outer door, and looked down the stairs. 
 Neither Willoughby Jones nor any of the waiters was 
 to be seen. I ran down into the twinkling square ; the 
 snow was still falling, and in tremendous flakes. I 
 hailed a four-wheeler myself. The bridal pair were 
 close on my heels. They jumped in. 
 
 " Liverpool Street, viA Brunswick Square," called out 
 the President. " I must get the Gladstone bag with my 
 mother's weeds," he explained to his intended widow. 
 
 " Drive for your life," said Mrs. M'Gullicuddy, alia&
 
 J BOLT FROM THE BLUE 321 
 
 OTlanagan, alias Parker. " A sovereign if you catch 
 the 8 P.M." 
 
 I closed the door of the cab. 
 
 " Here, Paul," said the President, holding out some- 
 thing to me. For a moment I thought he had mistaken 
 me, in his perturbation, for the usual loafer, and was 
 handing me a copper. But it was a bulkier object that 
 my palm closed upon. 
 
 "My snuff-box, Paul," said M'Gullicuddy with 
 emotion, " I shall not want it now. Keep it as a 
 memento." 
 
 " A memento marry," I said sadly, 
 
 " Yes," said M'Gullicuddy. " It is the common fate. 
 No man can escape. All right, Isabella, we 're off now. 
 Well, good-bye, Paul. To think that my first wife was 
 dead all along, and that if I had only read The, Macdes- 
 Jield Courier the Bachelors' Club would never have 
 been ! It was founded all in vain." 
 
 " All in vain ! " I echoed with a sigh. 
 
 The driver clucked, the horse advanced his foreleg, 
 and the President of the Bachelors' Club was whirled 
 off towards Holland to marry his deceased wife's sister. 
 
 The snow fell. The cab became a frosted wedding- 
 cake as it Ueeted from my ken.
 
 CHAPTEll XIIL 
 
 LADY-DAY. 
 
 I don't think I mentioned what a charming woman the 
 mother of the Graces is. She belongs, in a sense, to 
 what plain, honest, mice-fearing ladies call the shrieking 
 sisterhood, for she is a Blue Ribbonite, and speaks in 
 public. This is not so bad as a Bluestocking, for 
 althouQ-h it seems to be agreed that a woman cannot 
 know anything and yet be beautiful, there appears to 
 be nothing in Temperance that is noxious to feminine 
 charms. Charis, so I in my own mind think of the mother 
 of the Graces, is a Juno-like woman, with a neck like 
 one of the same goddess's swans. Her beautiful features 
 are alive with intelligence and kindliness ; her voice is 
 soft and musical ; her manners are sweet and perfect. 
 She is the incarnation of all that is most adorable in 
 woman. Her husband is a stockbroker. His only 
 pleasure is in his wine-cellar, which is stocked with 
 the finest vintages. 
 
 Daily contact with this charming lady had matured 
 an idea engendered in my mind already at our second 
 meeting. Charis could be made a force to raise and 
 purify tlie standard of English humour. Her sweet and 
 ffracious life had hitherto illumined but a narrow circle ; 
 what if I made its beams co-extensive with tlie country ? 
 What nobler mission could a woman ask to be born for 
 
 322
 
 LAD y-DA Y 323 
 
 than to do such needed service to our decadent comic 
 literature ? 
 
 After the death of At Home, Every Monday I had 
 been gratified to receive from an old friend the offer of 
 the editorship of a new comic paper he was projecting. 
 It was to have an entirely original feature in the shape 
 of jokes. This was the only condition the proprietor 
 made ; the rest was to be left entirely to my discretion. 
 I had long ago analysed modern English humour, even 
 as O'Eoherty had analysed the modern English novel, 
 though with more accuracy. Twenty per cent, of the 
 stuff' is of complex composition, embracing numerous 
 infifredients, some of which would make even blue litmus- 
 paper blush. The rest resolves itself simply into two 
 great genera, technically called " Drunks " and " Mother- 
 in-laws." Tliere are sixty per cent. " Drunks " to twenty 
 per cent. "Mother-in-laws," although the division is 
 rather cross. Under " Drunks " are comprised numerous 
 species, involving latciikeys, cabmen, lamp-posts, stair- 
 cases, vigil-keeping wives, gutters, etc. Under " Mother- 
 in-laws" are embraced every variety of connubial 
 kill-joy, including even other women. It was obvious 
 that in my comic paper these elements must be eschewed. 
 But could I entirely eliminate them ? They are so 
 easily invented. I miglit be so easily tempted to put 
 in one or the other as a fill-up. Besides, what rigid 
 watchfulness would be required to keep them out of the 
 contributors' copy ! The thought of the Herculean task 
 before me unnerved me. I was on the point of declin- 
 ing. Then I met Charis. 
 
 If I could prevail upon Charis to be my mother-in- 
 law, I could edit this paper with a cheerful self-reliance. 
 This pure and precious thing in mothers-in-law— (his
 
 324 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 combination of the Temperance Oratress with the Angel 
 — would effectually drive off all " Drunks" and " Mother- 
 in-laws," as by centrifugal force. Apart from her dread 
 criticism of such imbecilities after the fact, the thought 
 of her sweet and gracious ways would inevitably keep 
 them out in the first instance. I should be driven to 
 insert real wit and humour. To have the conventional 
 fatuities about mothers-in-law would not only be a libel 
 on the kind, it would be an insult to my own. Con- 
 sidering that every man's mother is a potential mother- 
 in-law, there seems to be something verging on filial 
 disrespect in this constant chevying of legal maternity. 
 
 As for "Drunks," there can be no doubt that the 
 good-humoured rollicking treatment of a bestial subject 
 does much to perpetuate the evil. The drunkard is 
 pictured as a comic personage instead of a disgusting 
 animal. Charis was great on this. She said that the 
 "Drunks," whatever disagreeable difficulties they de- 
 picted the drunkard in, never served as a moral deter- 
 rent to any one. No comic paper had ever lured one 
 single bibulous being from the paths of adulterated 
 alcohol. "Drunks," she had said from the platform, 
 were like the intoxicated blackguard whom the good 
 son of the Talmud, taking his father for a constitutional, 
 pointed out to his vinous parent, as a scarecrow and a 
 warning. The good-for-nothing Hebrew prodded the 
 refuse of the roadway with his foot till the miserable 
 creature rolled on his back and gaped. Then the father 
 asked him where he got such good wine from. 
 
 Evidently, then, the salvation of English humour lay 
 in securing Charis for a mother-in-law. Such an 
 opportunity occurs but once in a generation. This god- 
 send to helhs lettres had fallen at my feet; was I to
 
 11 i|v# 
 
 ASKED HIM WUERE HE GOT SCCU GOOD 'WISE FROM.
 
 326 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 turn away impiously ? In my hands Charis had been 
 appointed an instrument for the renaissance of English 
 comic writing. Should I approve myself too weak to 
 wield it ? No, the hour had come, and the mother-in- 
 law. The man should not lag behind. 
 
 The one drop of bitter in my cup was that this great 
 thin" — like all great things — could not be achieved 
 without sacrifice. I should have to marry. And with 
 me the President, Treasurer, and Secretary, the Com- 
 mittee, and all the members of the Bachelors' Club 
 would have to marry. It was not a mere sacrifice that 
 was demanded by the interests of art, but a holocaust. I 
 could martyr myself with pleasure, but was I justified 
 in sacrificing the Bachelors' Club on the altar of mar- 
 riage ? Did it not behove me to be all the stronger that 
 the yoke had been left on my unaided neck ? Should I 
 not stand like a rocky pillar against the whole Atlantic 
 of matrimony ? Were it not better that there should 
 be written on my tombstone : — 
 
 Impavidum ferient ruince ? 
 
 Let English humour perish. The Bachelors' Club must 
 be saved ! 
 
 And yet there were other sides to this perplexing 
 polygon. Why should the Bachelors' Club be wound 
 up, even if I married ? Could I not keep it up till such 
 time as new candidates appeared ? There was only the 
 rent to pay — the waiters had sacked themselves like 
 rats deserting a sinking ship. They never returned 
 since I put them out on that memorable night when the 
 great snow — which has been falling ever since — com- 
 menced to fall. And even if no fresh members ever 
 appeared, the impression that it was a charity, perhaps
 
 LADV-nAV 327 
 
 a refuge for poor creatures who could not get wives, 
 might gain ground. More donations might accrue, 
 especially if the institution were judiciously advertised 
 by misleading paragraphs in the newspapers, sanctimo- 
 nious circulars and broadcast publication of the names 
 of donors. Were there not many instances of similar 
 charities ? And do they not play a noble part in the 
 economy of existence, fostering the higher feelings of 
 our nature, and bringing opportunities for abnegation 
 to our very doors ? But for false beggars there would 
 be little true charity in this world. The Bachelors' 
 Club was a going concern ; it would be sheer extrava- 
 gance to wind it up if I married, especially as I should 
 then want money. It might still go on of itself, and if 
 it got good endowments it might loom large in men's 
 eyes and make a brave show, though it had not a 
 single member in the world. No, the Bachelors' Club 
 need be no obstacle to my securing Charis. This 
 settled, the advantages of matrimony rushed upon me 
 in a cohort. I had always felt it hard to give away 
 costly wedding-presents and get only miserable bits of 
 wedding-cake. If I married I should reverse the sides 
 of the bargain, and get the better of it. The money 
 expended on presents would then only have been lying 
 out at compound interest. It is so provoking to be 
 fleeced by one's best friends. Lifelong celibacy would 
 mean the entire loss of all these investments. It would 
 never occur to these cooing couples to say : " Paul is 
 going on a month's holiday ; let us club together and 
 give him a good send-off ; " or, " Paul has cut a new 
 tooth, let us give him a new umbrella, his present one 
 is so bad and bulging." No, they would stick to my 
 money and never say a word about it, unless I made a
 
 328 THE CELIBATES'' CLUB 
 
 weddins?- feast and invited them to send it back. If for 
 nothing else but to annoy his i'riends, a man ought to 
 marry. 
 
 Again, I am very fond of walking-tours in the 
 country. But, as I have remarked before, done on foot 
 they are tiresome and tedious. I have always envied 
 the man who flew along on a bicycle while I was 
 toiling footsore towards the mocking mile-post. 
 But I have never ventured to bestride a bicycle. 
 It is an animal that I hold in suspicion. It has 
 no discipline, no steadiness ; it reels to the right 
 or the left, as though it were drunk, and lurches 
 towards the gutter. It is a machine that can only be 
 recommended to suicides. A tricycle I consider an 
 unmanly and cowardly substitute. But if I could com- 
 bine safety with temerity by using a sociable, one of the 
 dearest dreams of my life would be realised, and walk- 
 ing-tours would be robbed of their thorn. Now you 
 cannot divide a sociable with a man, because, like a 
 tandem, it is so obvious a mask of cowardice. Two 
 men might just as well ride two bicycles. No, it is 
 only with a woman that one can share a sociable, for 
 then it is a concession to her weakness, and the mark 
 of a nature solicitous for others. Such a partner on 
 protracted walking-tours can only be obtained by mar- 
 
 riage. 
 
 Then there was the great snow. The downfall that 
 had started in November, and had continued for three 
 weeks, and was still going on, had been unprecedented. 
 The oldest inhabitants of the English workhouses could 
 not remember anything like it, though this may have 
 been the fault of their ailing aged memories. The snow 
 stood in heaps like the congealed waters of the
 
 LADY-DAY 329 
 
 Eed Sea; while the traffic passed through the 
 middle, like the army of the Israelites. Millions 
 of men found employment in shunting the snow 
 towards the gutters and side-walks as soon as it 
 fell. Architecture was reduced to a dead level of 
 amorphous white, and the tons of snow on the roofs 
 caved in numerous buildings. The world was one wide 
 whirl of fleecy flakes, waltzing round to the music of 
 the winds. It was a hard time for the poor, and for 
 widows and orphans, whose mourning was quite blanched 
 by the ceaseless snow. But everybody was happy 
 though avalanches slid down the chimneys and put out 
 the fires, and fountains percolated through the ceilings, 
 and cascades poured from the tiles. Such a snow- 
 storm had never happened before ; the like of it had 
 never been seen in the memory of Englishmen. Perhaps 
 it was turned on for this occasion only. It might 
 never happen again in the whole history of England ; 
 and if it did, every one had a chance of being the oldest 
 inhabitant by that time. What a tale to tell in the 
 dim years of the future, when posterity boasted of its 
 snow-storms ! How we would annihilate the miserable 
 pretensions of our descendants when they boasted of 
 the rigour of their winters ! How we should recount it 
 to our grandsons again and again ; how we should 
 freeze their young blood with the tale of the great 
 snow ! Why should I be debarred from this supreme 
 enjoyment, in itself enough to counterpoise years of 
 suffering? I had no grandchildren, nor was likely to 
 have any at the rate I was going on. Decidedly I 
 must marry and have grandchildren to whom to tell the 
 tale of the great snow. And I must marry quickly, or 
 else I might have to leave without seeing them.
 
 330 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Moreover, unless I married shortly I should probably 
 never marry at all. A few days after I had concluded 
 that my reth^ement need make no difference to the exist- 
 ence and prosperity of the Bachelors' Club, I received 
 a lucrative offer for the transfer of our rooms. This 
 decided me to drop the idea of keeping up the Club, 
 especially as I was anxious to utilise my experiences of 
 it in book-form, and the charity could always be con- 
 tinued under another name, and count even the readers 
 of these lines among its donors. So I closed with the 
 offer, though there was more in it than I bargained for. 
 Too late I discovered that the Club apartments were to 
 be converted into a newspaper office. In due course 
 the editor of the Matrimonial Noose was installed in our 
 sanctum ; while the pernicious paper itself was pub- 
 lished in the smoking-room, and the contents bills were 
 posted over our maxims. But this by the way. To 
 return to my marriage. If I published The Bachelors' 
 Cliih, necessarily embodying so much misogyny and 
 such fell high-treason to the Queen of Hearts, the odds 
 were I should never get a wife. I did not want one at 
 present, but who knew that I might not want one some 
 day ? Wives have many uses, as Bacon has pointed 
 out. Was it wise, was it prudent to cut myself off 
 from all chance of getting one ? No ; if I was ever to 
 marry, it must be before the publication of The 
 Bachelors' Club. And there was another consideration 
 which limited my time of single blessedness still more 
 straitly. Christmas was coming. If I nu^rried on 
 Christmas Day a great economy of enjoyment would be 
 effected. The Christmas party would do as the 
 wedding party. It is such a bore to be jolly, and if you 
 can kill two birds with one stone, proverbial sagacity
 
 LADY-DAY 331 
 
 recommends the massacre. The Christmas dinner would 
 do for the wedding dinner also. Instead of the dietary 
 fal-lals we should have wholesome roast beef and plum 
 pudding. There was no time to lose. It is a matter 
 of common remark that Christmas comes but once a 
 year. By next Christmas my book would be published. 
 Then the gate of matrimony would for ever be shut 
 in my bachelor face, and to me, as to the equally foolish 
 virgins, a voice would wail — 
 
 " Too late, too late, you cannot enter now." 
 
 Besides, unless I married I should never be able to 
 utilise that witty wedding-speech which I found 
 among Mandeville Brown's manuscripts. The date 
 of the wedding settled, the only problem now left 
 was by which of Charis's daughters to become her 
 son-in-law and save English humour. Maud, Alice, or 
 Kitty, — each was as good as the other. Was there any 
 way by which I could choose among them ? It is 
 always unpleasant to marry one out of several daughters, 
 because it makes such invidious distinctions. This 
 shows the advantages of polygamy over monogamy. 
 The unpleasantness was increased for me by the fact 
 that there was no reason why I should make any dis- 
 tinction at all. Tossing up suggested itself to me. But 
 I am averse from gambling. For hours I was racked 
 by doubt. Then I bethought myself that if I tvas to be 
 martyred, I might as well make as good a thing out of 
 it as any other martyr. Why not choose the girl who 
 was best adapted to my idiosyncrasies ? 
 
 The reader may have gathered from these records 
 that I am one of those unfortunate persons who find it 
 difficult to leave a room. When I pay a visit I never
 
 332 THE CELT BATES' Cl.UB 
 
 know when to go. The personal magnetism of the 
 company draws me like a bit of steel. I cannot tear 
 myself away. I sit listening and looking about me till 
 I fancy my entertainers get annoyed. Half-a-dozen 
 times I get up awkwardly to go away, but I sit down 
 again without success. As a visitor, I have too much 
 staying-power. Now if I could go out visiting with a 
 companion who would always give me the cue when to 
 go, who would take me away despite all my uneasy 
 efforts to remain, this shadow on my life would be 
 lifted. As I was to marry, I might as well marry a 
 woman who would do this. I set myself to watch the 
 three Graces carefully so as to ascertain which could 
 leave a room quickest. It did not take me long to 
 discover that it was Kitty. When I came into any 
 room and she was there, she always left it quicker than 
 any one else of the company. Kitty then must be my 
 future mother-in-law's first married daughter. 
 
 I took an early opportunity of informing Kitty of 
 the fact. I waylaid the bright, violet-eyed creature 
 with the sunny hair and the dainty figure and the 
 saucy tongue in a curtained niche of the ball-room, for 
 no niveous deluge could give pause to the pleasures of 
 Bayswater. She did not seem at all surprised, which 
 surprised me ; and she declined, which surprised me 
 still more. She made the usual sororal protestations ; 
 but if she became my sister, Charis would have become 
 my mother. And it was not a mother I was marrying 
 for, but a mother-in-law. I had a mother. I had had one 
 from my earliest infancy. I pressed Kitty for reasons, 
 and she confessed with a pretty blush and a sigh that 
 her heart was seared. I saw that she still cherished 
 the memory of Mandeville Brown. I took her soft
 
 LADV-DAV 333 
 
 tiny hand and pressed it and my suit hard. As she 
 stood there in all the flush of youth and insolent loveli- 
 ness, with her heart beating quickly beneath her gauzy 
 ball-dress, and the voluptuous music of the waltz 
 swinging dreamily to and fro, I felt quite piqued by her 
 refusal. As I looked into her beautiful eyes, I felt that 
 I had been right in deciding upon marriage. It was 
 well that English humour should be purified and 
 elevated. High ideals in life and literature seemed 
 easy to discern and to follow by the light of those 
 violet orbs. All things fair and noble seemed fairer 
 and nobler while I held her gentle fingers. It seemed 
 to me as if the world would grow dark and my new 
 paper would not contain jokes, if she took those dainty 
 digits away. I felt that I should not even need to run 
 a charity, if she only consented to become my mother- 
 in-law's daughter. What mattered to me that she still 
 thought of Mandeville Brown ; that she loved the 
 Bedlamite ? I did not want her love, any more than 
 slie could have mine. She did not love me, true, but 
 then I did not love her. Surely two negatives like that 
 should result in an affirmative, when I made my 
 proposal ! But she still shook her head in a silence 
 that was not consent. Her obstinacy was maddening 
 me. The waltz swang on. 
 
 "And you are determined to ruin my life?" 1 
 whispered hoarsely, as I thought of the coming comic 
 paper with its " drunks " and its " mother-in-laws." 
 
 " It is not my fault," she said plaintively, " I am sure 
 I am very sorry. Please, let me go, the waltz is half 
 over and my partner must be looking for me everywhere." 
 
 " Your partner stands here," I answered her, gripping 
 lier hand more fiercely. " Your partner for life."
 
 334 rHE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " No, I cannot give you the whole programme," she 
 rejoined resolutely. 
 
 "There must be some reason behind this — something 
 you are hiding from me," T said bitterly. " You led me 
 on to believe that you did not love me, and now you 
 are throwing me over, as if that were a sufficient 
 excuse. No, there is something else. Till you tell me 
 what it is I will not let you go." 
 
 "Then I will tell you," she said. "You off'er me 
 your name and fortune. I do not object to the fortune. 
 But the name I can never take. I do not mind the 
 Paul — that is nice enough. But Pry ! Become Mrs. 
 Paul Pry, indeed ! Ugh!" 
 
 "What is the matter with the name ?" I asked hotly. 
 " It is a lovely alliterative name, and this is the first 
 time I have heard any one find fault with it." • 
 
 " That may be," said the beautiful little minx, tossing 
 her golden hair. " But I prefer my own." 
 
 " Oh, Kitty, that is such a nominal difficulty !" I cried. 
 
 " It is fatal," she said decisively. " So now you 
 know. Cheer up. You '11 get over it." 
 
 "Never," I cried, as I thought of poor English 
 humour. 
 
 "No ?" she said, her violet eyes overbrimming with 
 saucy light. " What will you do then ? " 
 
 Her question restored me to myself. My duty 
 faced me, cold and stern. 
 
 " I shall marry Maud or Alice," I said quietly. 
 
 Kitty flushed. " None of my sisters shall be Mrs. 
 Pry," she said hotly and impulsively. 
 
 " Indeed ? " I sneered. " We shall see." Her selfish 
 indifference to the interests of English humour braced 
 rae to suffer and be strong
 
 LADY-DAY 335 
 
 " Yes, we shall see," she flashed back, her lovely lips 
 twitching. " It shall never be." 
 
 "Why, who will prevent it?" I said indignantly. 
 
 " I will," she said defiantly. 
 
 I laughed scornl'ully. 
 
 " You ?" I said. " And how, pray ? " 
 
 " I will become Mrs. Pry myself." 
 
 The ball-room swayed round nie, as though it had 
 joined in the waltz. The dreamy music sounded far- 
 off, like the strains of some celestial melody. The 
 blood coursed in delicious delirium through my veins. 
 I caught the bewitching little beauty in my arms and 
 kissed her. English humour would be safe after all. 
 For the love of letters I kissed her thankfully again 
 and again. i\Iy lips were grateful to hci-. 
 
 « * 
 
 The proprietor of the proposed comic paper insisted 
 on sitting next to us at supper, much to our annoyance, 
 and told me he had given up the idea. All his friends 
 had warned him that it would never do to give the public 
 new jokes. That they would never recognise them. 
 That they liked to see old friends, and never tired of 
 " drunks " and " mother-in-laws." That if a man made 
 a joke that tickled the public, he could make his 
 fortune by repeating that joke for the rest of his life. 
 That they would not let him do anything else ; and that 
 if he made another joke, his reputation as a humourist 
 would be gone. That new jokes were like new men, it 
 took them a long time to achieve recognition. That it 
 was better to stick to the old jokes. And that he pre- 
 ferred dropping the idea to dropping a lot of coin over 
 it. " Even this Bachelors' Club of yours," he said, ' will 
 fall flat."
 
 336 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 I said 1 would go through the manuscript carefully 
 and cut out all the jokes, so that the critics might 
 praise my artistic restraint, and the public buy my 
 book. I also pointed out that, like many a greater 
 fool, 1 relied largely on my title and that a book with 
 such a title ought to go, even if it were worth reading ; 
 for it could not fail to excite the liveliest interest in 
 matrimonial circles. I said that a faithful prosaic 
 chronicle of facts always had a charm for the public as 
 might be seen from the success of the Police News and 
 the Stock Exchange Quotations. I admitted that the 
 reasons which had induced my fellow-members to 
 marry were rather commonplace. None of the Bache- 
 lors had a spark of the wild originality of the gentle- 
 man who advertised recently in a Mauritius paper as 
 follows : — " A Stamp-collector, the possessor of a collec- 
 tion of 12,544 stamps, wishes to marry a lady who is 
 an ardent collector, and the possessor of the blue penny 
 stamp of Mauritius, issued in 1847." Still I ventured 
 to think that ordinary as were the stories I had to tell, 
 something was gained by sticking close to Truth in all 
 its naked and unenamelled beauty. 
 
 And, pressing Kitty's hand to reassure myself that I 
 did not intend to back out and blight her life now that 
 English humour could not be saved after all, I added 
 that I didn't care if The Bachelors' Cltih was a failure. 
 
 ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 
 
 And now, as I sit on the last night of this strange 
 and mournful year and gaze from the window of the 
 Bournemouth hotel towards the sea that moans be- 
 neath, a phantasmagoria of recollections hovers in the 
 cold starlight. My eyes fill with tears and Kitty's 
 living face grows dim as those wed faces of my
 
 LAD y-DA Y 337 
 
 comrades gleam in the spectral air. One short year ago 
 we sat all together iu the Bachelors' Club, speeding 
 the parting year with careless carousal and cynic chat — 
 and now, we are scattered as leaves before the blast. 
 How fast has brother followed brother from sunshine 
 to the honeymoon land ! Twelve brief months ago, all 
 gay and healthy, in the pride of single life, and the 
 flower of celibacy, and now we lie wed and married 
 in the four corners of the earth — Henry Eobinson in 
 the snow- clad Sierras of South America, and Oliver 
 Green in the torrid plains of India, and Israfel Mondego 
 in the droughty deserts of Australia, and M'Gullicuddy 
 beneath the red sunsets of Rotterdam. Poor President 
 — thee I pity most, for surely no man was ever so sorely 
 circumstanced as thou, M'Gullicuddy, with thy Maccles- 
 field marriage. 
 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces — gone to 
 that bourne whence no bachelor returns. At this 
 solemn season of the year I think of you all with for- 
 bearance, my anger softened by your end. Of thee, 
 Fogson, in thy farmhouse, with thy pseudo- Barbara ; 
 and thee, O'Roherty, with thy lady-novelist ; and thee, 
 Little Bethel, with thy play-loving partner ; and thee, 
 Dickray, with thy Jenny, ghostliest of brides and 
 counsellors. Nor shall the throb of pity be denied to 
 thee, Fitz-Williams, with thy rich consort ; nor to thee, 
 Twinkletop, with thy cook ; least of all to thee, 
 epigrammatic Bedlamite, Mandeville Brown. I extend 
 amnesty to you all. By my pious hand have ye all 
 been preserved in memory on the funereal fresco, 
 though for me there was none to perform the last 
 sad offices. Yea, even to thee, Willoughby Jones, and 
 to thee, dusky steward, my soul goes out in silent 
 
 Y
 
 338 
 
 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 sympathy. Bequicscatis omnes. Towards the Chib- 
 rooms, too, I raise my hand in peaceful benediction, 
 though they likewise are married, so to speak, and 
 subserve base matrimonial operations. 
 
 All gone — vanished like last year's great snow. 
 
 Clash ! clash ! Ding ! dong ! The joy-bells uslier 
 in the New Year. Kitty's face is close to mine. Our 
 tears mingle. 
 
 Farewell, farewell, boon companions, farewell — a 
 last, sad farewell. 
 
 Marriendum est omnibus. 
 
 (^,-m<:yt^w\x
 
 THE OLD MAIDS' CLUB 
 
 WITH FORTY-FOUR ILLUST RATIONS ISV F. It. TOWNSEND
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE READER MY BOOK 
 MY BOOK THE READER
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. The Algebra of Love, Plus other Tl 
 
 II. The Honorary Trier, 
 
 III. The Man in the Ironed Mask, 
 
 IV. The Club gets Advkrtised, . 
 V. The Princess of Port.man Square 
 
 VI. The Grammar of Love, . 
 
 VII. The Idyl of Trepolpen, 
 
 VIII. More about the Cherub, 
 
 IX. Of Wives and their Mistresses, 
 
 X. The Good Young Men who Lived, 
 
 XL Adventures in Search of ihe Pole, 
 
 XII. The Arithmetic and I'hvsiology of I 
 
 XIII. "The English Shakespeare," 
 
 XIV. The Old Young Woman and the New 
 XV. The Mysterious Advertiser, . 
 
 INGS, 
 
 IFE, 
 
 PAClir 
 
 345 
 355 
 363 
 
 37« 
 
 385 
 
 422 
 
 435 
 4^J3 
 471 
 484 
 498 
 526 
 536 
 562 
 
 5S1
 
 cccxliv 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 XVI. The Club becomes Popular, 
 
 XVII. A Musical Bar, 
 
 XVIII. The Beautiful Ghoul, . 
 
 XIX. La Femme Incomprise, . 
 
 XX. The Inaugural Soiree, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 600 
 
 613 
 
 627 
 
 645 
 
 655
 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE ALGEBRA OF LOVE 
 
 PLUS 
 
 OTHER THINGS 
 
 HE OLD MAIDS' CLUB was founded by Lillie 
 l_J Dulcimer in her sweet seventeenth year. She 
 had always been precocious, and could analyse her 
 own sensations before she could spell. In fact, she divided 
 her time between making sensations and analysing them. 
 She never spoke early English — the dialect which so 
 enraged Dr. Johnson — but, like John Stuart Mill, she wrote 
 a classical style from childhood. She kept a diary, not 
 necessarily as a guarantee of good faith, but for publication 
 only. It was labelled " Lillie Day by Day," and was posted 
 up from her fifth year. Judging by the analogy of the rest, 
 one might construct the entry for the first day of her life. 
 If she had been able to record her thoughts, her diary 
 would probably have begun thus : — 
 
 Sunday, September ird. — My birthday. Wept at the 
 sight of the world in which I was to be so miserable. The 
 atmosphere was so stuffy — not at all pleasing to the esthetic 
 faculties. Expected a more refined reception. A lady, to 
 whom I had never been introduced, fondled me and ad-
 
 346 THE CELIBATE!^' CLUB 
 
 dressed me as " Petsie-tootsie-wootsie." It appears that 
 she is my mother, but this hardly justifies her in degrading 
 the language of Milton and Shakespeare. Later on a man 
 came in and kissed her. I could not help thinking that 
 they might respect my presence. I understood later that 
 I must call the stranger " Poppy," and that I was not to 
 resent his familiarities, as he was very much attached to my 
 mother by Act of Parliament. Both the man and the 
 woman seem to arrogate to themselves a certain authority 
 over me. How strange that two persons you have never 
 seen before in your life should claim such rights of inter- 
 ference ! There must be something rotten in the constitu- 
 tion of society. It shall be one of my life-tasks to discover 
 what it is. I made a light lunch off milk, but do not care 
 for the beverage. The day passed slowly. I was dread- 
 fully bored by the conversation in the room — it was so 
 petty. I was glad when night came. Oh, the intolerable 
 ennui of an English Sunday ! I divine already that I am 
 destined to go through life perpetually craving for I know 
 not what, and that I shan't be happy till I get it. 
 
 Lillie was a born heroine, being young and beautiful 
 from her birth. In her fourth year she conceived a Platonic 
 affection for the boy who brought the telegrams. His 
 manners had such repose. This was followed by a hope- 
 less passion for a French cavalry officer with spurs. Every 
 one feared she would grow up to be a suicide or a poetess ; 
 for her earliest nursery rhyme was an impromptu distich 
 discovered by the nursery-maid, running : 
 
 Woonded i crawl out from the battel, 
 Life is as hollo as my raitel. 
 
 And her twelfth year was almost entirely devoted to literary 
 composition of a hopeless character, so far as publishers
 
 THE ALGEBRA OF LOVE PLUS OTHER THINGS ^^7 
 
 were concerned. It was only the success of Woman as a 
 Waste Force, in her fourteenth year, that induced them to 
 compete for her early manuscripts, and to give the world 
 the celebrated compilations, Ibsen for Infants, Broivning 
 for Babies, Carlyle for the Cradle, Newman for the Nursery, 
 Leopardi for the Little Ones, and The Schoolgirls Schopen- 
 hauer, which, together with Tracts for the Tots, make up 
 the main productions of her First Period. 
 
 After the loss of the French cavalry officer she remained 
 blas'ee till she was more than seven, when her second grand 
 passion took her. It was a very grand passion indeed this 
 time — and it lasted a full week. These things did not 
 matter while Lillie had not yet arrived at years of indis- 
 cretion ; but when she got into her teens, her father began 
 to look about for a husband for her. He was a millionaire, 
 and had always kept her supplied with every luxury. But 
 Lillie did not care for her father's selections, and sent them 
 all away with fleas in their cars instead of kind words. 
 And her father was as unhappy as his selections. In her 
 sixteenth year, her mother, who had been ailing for sixteen 
 years, breathed her last, and Lillie more freely. She had 
 grown quite to like Mrs. Dulcimer, which prevented her 
 having her own way. The situation was now very simple. 
 Mr. Dulcimer managed his immense affairs, and Lillie 
 managed Mr. Dulcimer. 
 
 He made one last effort to get her to manage another 
 man. He discovered a young nobleman who seemed fond 
 of her society, and who was in the habit of meeting her 
 accidentally at the Academy. The gunpowder being thus 
 presumably laid, he set to work to strike the match. But 
 the explosion was not such as he expected. Lillie told him 
 that no man was further from her thoughts as a possible 
 husband.
 
 348 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 "But, Lillie," pleaded the millionaire, "not one of the 
 objections you have impressed upon me applies to Lord 
 Silverdale. He is young, rich, handsome " 
 
 "Yes, yes, yes," answered Lillie, " I know." 
 
 " He is rich, and cannot be after your money." 
 
 " True," 
 
 " He has a title, which you consider an advantage." 
 
 " I do." 
 
 " He is a man of taste and culture." 
 
 " He is." 
 
 " Well, what is it you don't like ? Doesn't he ride or 
 dance well ? " 
 
 •' He dances like an angel, and rides like the devil." 
 
 "Well, what in the name of angels or devils is your 
 objection, then } " 
 
 "Father," said Lillie very solemnly, "he is all you claim, 
 
 but " The little delicate cheek flushed modestly. She 
 
 could not say it. 
 
 " But " said the millionaire impatiently. 
 
 Lillie hid her face in her hands. 
 
 " But " said the millionaire brutally. 
 
 " But I love him ! " 
 
 "You what?" roared the millionaire. 
 
 " Yes, father ; do not be angry with me. I love him 
 dearly. Oh, do not spurn me from you, but I love him 
 with my whole heart and soul, and I shall never marry any 
 other man but him." The poor little girl burst into a 
 paroxysm of weeping. 
 
 " Then you will marry him ? " gasped the millionaire. 
 
 " No, father," she sobbed solemnly, " that is an illegiti- 
 mate deduction from my proposition. He is the one man 
 on this earth I could never bring myself to marry." 
 
 " You are mad ! "
 
 THE ALGEBRA OF LOVE PLUS OTHER THINGS 349 
 
 " No, father. I am only mathematical. I will never 
 marry a man who does not love me. And don't you see 
 that, as I love him, the odds are that he doesn't love me ? " 
 
 " But he tells me he does ! " 
 
 " What is his bare assertion — weighed against the doctrine 
 of probabihty ? How many girls do you suppose Silverdale 
 has met in his varied career ? " 
 
 "A thousand, I daresay." 
 
 "Ah, that's only reckoning English society (and theatres). 
 And then he has seen society (and theatres) in Paris, Berlin, 
 Rome, Boston, a hundred places ! If we put the figure at 
 three thousand it will be moderate. Here am I, a single 
 girl " 
 
 "Who oughtn't to remain so," growled the millionaire. 
 
 "One single girl. How wildly improbable that out of 
 three thousand girls, Silverdale should just fall in love with 
 me ! It is 2999 to one against. Then there is the pro- 
 bability that he is not in love at all — which makes the odds 
 5998 to one. The problem is exactly analogous to one 
 which you will find in any Algebra. Out of a sack contain- 
 ing three thousand coins, what is the odds that a man will 
 draw the one marked coin ? " 
 
 " The comparison of yourself to a marked coin is correct 
 enough," said the millionaire, thinking of the files of fortune- 
 hunters to whom he had given the sack. " Otherwise you 
 are talking nonsense." 
 
 "Then Pascal, Laplace, Lagrange, De Moivre talked 
 nonsense," said LiUie hotly; "but I have not finished. We 
 must also leave open the possibility that the man will not 
 be tempted to draw out any coin whatsoever. The odds 
 against the marked coin being drawn out are thus 5998 to 
 one. The odds against Silverdale returning my affection 
 are 5998 to one. As Butler rightly points out, probability
 
 3SO THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 is the only guide to conduct, which is, we know from 
 Matthew Arnold, three-fourths of life. Am I to risk ruining 
 three-fourths of my life, in defiance of the unerring dogmas 
 of the Doctrine of Chances ? No, father, do not exact this 
 sacrifice from me. Ask me anything you please, and I will 
 grant it — oh, so gladly ! But do not, oh do not, ask me to 
 niarry the man I love ! " 
 
 The millionaire stroked her hair and soothed her in 
 piteous silence. He had made his pile in pig-iron, and had 
 not science enough to grapple with the situation. 
 
 "Do you mean to say," he said at last, "that because 
 you love a man, he can't love you ? " 
 
 " He can. But in all human probability he won't. Sup- 
 posing you put on a fur waistcoat, and went out into the 
 street, determined to invite to dinner the first man in a straw 
 hat, and supposing he replied that you had just forestalled 
 him, as he had gone out with a similar intention to look for 
 the first man in a fur waistcoat, what would you say ? " 
 
 The millionaire hesitated. "Well, I shouldn't like to 
 insult the man," he said slowly. 
 
 " You see ! " said Lillie triumphantly. 
 
 "Well, then, dear," said he, after much pondering, "the 
 only thing for it is to marry a man you don^t love." 
 
 " Father ! " said Lillie, in terrible tones. 
 
 The millionaire hung his head shamefacedly at the out- 
 rage his suggestion had put upon his daughter. 
 
 "Forgive me, Lillie," he said, "I shall never interfere 
 again in your matrimonial concerns." 
 
 So Lillie wiped her eyes, and founded the Old Maids' 
 Club. 
 
 She said it was one of her matrimonial concerns, and so 
 her father could not break his word, though an entire suite 
 of rooms in his own Kensington mansion was set aside for
 
 THE ALGEBRA OF LOVE PLUS OTHER THINGS 351 
 
 the rooms of the Club. Not that he desired to interfere. 
 Having read The Bachelors' Club, he thought it was the 
 surest way of getting her married. 
 
 The object of the Club was defined by the foundress as 
 " the depolarisation of the term ' Old Maid ' ; in other 
 words, the dissipation of all those disagreeable associations 
 which have gradually and most unjustly clustered about it, 
 the restoration of the homely Saxon phrase to its pristine 
 purity, and the elevation of the enviable class denoted by it 
 to their due pedestal of privilege and homage." 
 
 The conditions of membership, drawn up by Lillie, 
 were : — 
 
 I. Every candidate must be under twenty-five. 2. Every candidate 
 must be beautiful and weahhy, and undertake to continue so. 3. 
 Every candidate must have refused at least one advantageous offer of 
 marriage. 
 
 The rationale of these rules was obvious. Disappointed, 
 soured failures were not wanted. There was no virtue in 
 being an Old Maid when you had passed twenty-five. 
 Such creatures are merely old maids — Old Maids (with 
 capitals) were required to be in the flower of youth and the 
 flush of beauty. Their anti-matrimonial motives must be 
 above suspicion. They must despise and reject the married 
 state though they would be welcomed therein with open 
 arms. Only thus would people's minds be disabused of the 
 old-fashioned notions about old maids. The Old Maids 
 were expected to obey an elaborate array of by-laws, and 
 respect a series of recommendations. 
 
 According to the by-laws they were required — 
 
 I. To regard all men as brothers. 2. Not to keep cats, lap-dogs, 
 parrots, pages, or other domestic pets. 3. Not to have less than one 
 birthday per year. 4. To abjure medicine, art classes, and the confes- 
 sional. 5. Never to sjicak to a curate. 6. Not lo have an)' fads or to
 
 352 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 take part in woman's rights movements, charity concerts, or other 
 platform demonstrations. 7. Not to wear caps, curls, or similar 
 articles of attire. 8. Not to kiss females. 
 
 In addition to these were the general recommenda- 
 tions : — Never refuse the last slice of bread, etc., lest you 
 be accused of dreading celibacy. Never accept bits of 
 wedding cake, lest you be suspected of putting them under 
 your pillow. Do not express disapproval by a sniff. In 
 travelling, choose smoking carriages ; pack your umbrellas 
 and parasols inside your trunk. Never distribute tracts. 
 Always fondle children, and show marked hostility to the 
 household cat. Avoid eccentricities. Do not patronise 
 Dorothy Restaurants or the establishments of the Aerated 
 Bread Company. Never drink cocoa-nibs. In dress it is 
 better to avoid mittens, crossovers, fleecy shawls, elastic- 
 side boots, white stockings, black silk bodices with 
 pendent gold chains, and antique white lace collars. 
 One - button white kid gloves are also inadvisable for 
 afternoon concerts. Nor should any glove be worn with 
 fingers too long to pick up change at booking offices. 
 Parcels should not be wrapped in whitey-brown paper, and 
 not more than three should be carried at once. Watch- 
 pockets should not be hung over the bed. Sheets and 
 mattresses should be left to the servants to air, and rooms 
 should be kept in an untidy condition. Refrain from 
 manufacturing jam, household remedies, gossip or goose- 
 berry wine. Never nurse a cold or a relative. It is advis- 
 able not to have a married sister, as she might decease, 
 and the temptation to marry her husband is such as no 
 mere human being ought to be exposed to. For cognate 
 reasons, eschew friendship with cripples and hunchbacks 
 (especially when they have mastered the violin in twelve 
 lessons), men of no moral character, drunkards who wish
 
 THE ALGEBRA OF LOVE PLUS OTHER THINGS 353 
 
 to reform themselves, very ugly men, and husbands with 
 wives in lunatic asylums. Cultivate rather the acquaint 
 ance of handsome young men {who have been duly 
 vaccinated), for this species is too conceited to be 
 dangerous. 
 
 On the same principle were the rules for admitting 
 visitors : — 
 
 I. No unmarried lady admitted. 2. No married gentleman ad- 
 mitted. 
 
 If they admitted single ladies there would be no privilege 
 in being a member, while if they did not admit single 
 gentlemen they might be taunted with being afraid that 
 they were not fireproof. When Lillie had worked this out 
 to her satisfaction, she was greatly chagrined to find the two 
 rules were the same as for "The Bachelors' Club." To 
 show their Club had no connection with the brother insti- 
 tution, she devised a series of counterblasts to their misogynic 
 maxims. These were woven on all the antimacassars ; the 
 deadliest were : — 
 
 The husband is the only creature entirely selfish. He is a low 
 organism, consisting mainly of a digestive apparatus and a rude mouth. 
 The lover holds the cloak ; the husband drops it. Wedding dresses 
 are webs. Women like clinging robes ; men like clinging women. 
 The lover will always help the beloved to be helpless. A man likes 
 his wife to be just clever enough to comprehend his cleverness and just 
 stupid enough to admire it. Women who catch husbands rarely 
 recover. Marriage is a lottery ; every wife does not become a widow. 
 Wrinkles are woman's marriage lines, but when she gets them her 
 husband will no longer be bound. 
 
 The woman who believes her husband loves her, is capable of be- 
 lieving that she loves him. A good man's love is the most intoleraiile 
 of boredoms. A man often marries a woman because they have the 
 same tastes and prefer himself to the rest of creation. If a woman 
 could know what her lover really thought of her, she would know what
 
 354 
 
 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 to think of him. Possession is nine points of the marriage law. It is 
 impossible for a man to marry a clever woman. Marriages are made 
 in heaven, but old maids go there. 
 
 Lillie also 
 painted a 
 cynical 
 picture of 
 dubious 
 double-edged 
 incisive- 
 ness. It was 
 called " Lat- 
 ter-day Love," 
 and repre- 
 sented the ill- 
 hap of Cupid, 
 neglected 
 
 and superfluous, his quiver full, his arrows rusty, shivering 
 with the cold, amid contented couples passing him by with 
 
 LATTER-DAY LOVIC.
 
 THE HONORARY TRIER 355 
 
 never an eye for the lugubrious legend, " Pity the poor 
 blind." 
 
 The picture put the finishing touch to the rooms of the 
 Club. When Lillie Dulcimer had hung it up, she looked 
 round upon the antimacassars and felt a proud and happy 
 girl. 
 
 The Old Maids' Club was now complete. Nothing was 
 wanting except members. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE HONORARY TRIER 
 
 Lord Silverdale was the first visitor to the Old Maids' 
 Club. He found the fair President throned alone among 
 the epigrammatic antimacassars. Lillie received him with 
 dignity, and informed him that he stood on holy ground. 
 The young man was shocked to hear of the change in her 
 condition. He, himself, had lately spent his time in pluck- 
 ing up courage to ask her to change it — and now he had 
 been forestalled. 
 
 " But you must come in and see us often," said Lillie. 
 " It occurs to me that the by-laws admit you." 
 
 " How many will you be ? " murmured Silverdale, heart- 
 broken. 
 
 " I don't know yet. I am waiting for the thing to get 
 about. I have been in communication with the first candi- 
 date, and expect her any moment. She is a celebrated 
 actress." 
 
 " And who elects her ? " 
 
 " I, of course ! " said Lillie, with an imperial flash in her
 
 356 THE CELTBATES' CLUB 
 
 passionate brown eyes. She was a brunette, and her face 
 sometimes looked like a handsome thundercloud. " I am 
 the President and the Committee, and the oldest Old 
 Maid. Isn't one of the rules that candidates shall not 
 believe in woman's rights? None of the members will 
 have any voice whatever." 
 
 "Well, if your actress is a comic opera star, she won't 
 have any voice whatever." 
 
 "Lord Silverdale," said Lillie sharply, "I hate puns. 
 They spoiled the Bachelors' Club." 
 
 His lordship, who was the greatest punster of the peers, 
 and the peer of the greatest punsters, muttered savagely that 
 he would like to spoil the Old Maids' Club. LiUie punned 
 herself sometimes, but he dared not tell her of it. 
 
 " And what will be the subscription ? " he said aloud. 
 
 " There will be none. 1 supply the premises." 
 
 "Ah, that will never do. Half the pleasure of belonging 
 to a club is the feeling that you have not paid your sub- 
 scription. And how about grub ? " 
 
 " Grub ! We are not men. We do not fulfil missions 
 by eating." 
 
 "Unjust creature! Men sometimes fulfil missions by 
 being eaten." 
 
 "Well, papa will supply buns, lemonade, and ices. 
 Turple the Magnificent, as you call him, will always be 
 within hail to hand round the things." 
 
 " May I send you in a cwt. of chocolate creams? " 
 
 " Certainly. Why should weddings have a monopoly of 
 presents ? This is not the only way in which you can be of 
 service to me, if you will." 
 
 "Only discover it for me, my dear Miss Dulcimer. 
 Where there's a way there's a will." 
 
 "Well, I should like you to act as trier."
 
 THE HONORARY 7R1ER 357 
 
 " Eh ! I beg your pardon ? " 
 
 " Uon't apologise ; to try the candidates who wish to be 
 Old Maids." 
 
 " Try them ? No, no. I'm afraid I should be prejudiced 
 against bringing them in innocent." 
 
 " Don't be silly. You know what I mean. I could not 
 tell so well as you whether they possessed the true apostolic 
 spirit. You are a man — your instinct would be truer than 
 mine. Whenever a new candidate applies, I want you to 
 come up and see her." 
 
 "Really, Miss Dulcimer, I — I can't tell by looking at 
 her!" 
 
 " No, but you can by her looking at you." 
 
 "You exaggerate my insight." 
 
 " Not at all. It is most important that something of the 
 kind should be done. By the rules, all the Old Maids 
 must be young and beautiful. And it requires a high 
 degree of will and intelligence " 
 
 "To be both?" 
 
 " For such to give themselves body and soul to the Cause. 
 Every Old Maid is double-faced till she has been proved 
 single-hearted." 
 
 " And must I talk to them ? " 
 
 "In plain English " 
 
 " It's the only language I speak plainly." 
 
 "Wait till I finish, boy ! In plain English, you must flirt 
 with them." 
 
 " Flirt ?" said Silverdale, aghast. "What! With young 
 and beautiful girls ?" 
 
 " I know it is hard. Lord Silverdale, but you will do it 
 for my sake ? " They were sitting on an ottoman, and the 
 lovely face which looked pleadingly up into his was very 
 near. The young man got up and walked up and down.
 
 3S8 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " Hang it ! " he murmured disconsolately. " Can't you 
 try them on Turple the Magnificent ? Or why not get a 
 music-master or a professor of painting ? " 
 
 " Music-masters touch the wrong chord, and professors of 
 painting are mostly old masters. You are young and 
 polished, and can flirt with tact and taste." 
 
 " Thank you," said the poor young peer, making a wry 
 face. " And therefore I'm to be a flirtation machine ? " 
 
 " An electric battery if you like. I don't desire to mince 
 my words. There's no gain in not calling a spade a 
 spade." 
 
 " And less in people calling a battery a rake." 
 
 " Is that a joke? I thought you clubmen enjoyed being 
 called rakes ? " 
 
 " That is all most of us do enjoy. Take it from me that 
 the last thing a rake does is to sow wild oats." 
 
 *' I know enough of agriculture not to be indebted to you 
 for the information. But I certainly thought you were a 
 rake," said the little girl, looking up at him with limpid 
 brown eyes. 
 
 "You flatter me," he said, with a mock bow, "you are 
 young enough to know better." 
 
 " But you have seen society (and theatres) in a dozen 
 capitals ? " 
 
 " I have been behind the scenes of both," he answered 
 simply. " That is the thing to keep a man steady." 
 
 " I thought it turned a man's head," she said musingly. 
 
 "It does. Only one begins manhood with his head 
 screwed the wrong way on. Homoeopathy is the sole curat- 
 ive principle in morals. Excuse this sudden discharge of 
 copy-book mottoes. I sometimes go off that way, but you 
 musn't take me for a Maxim gun. I am not such a bore, I 
 hope."
 
 THE HONORARY TRIER 
 
 359 
 
 Lillie flew off at a feminine tangent 
 
 " All of which only proves the wisdom of my choice in 
 selecting you." 
 
 " What ! To pepper them with pellets of platitude ? " he 
 said, dropping despairingly into an arm-chair. 
 
 -\ 
 
 
 >'. 
 
 "TAKE CARE, VOU'RE SITTING ON AN EPIGKAM I' 
 
 " No. With eyeshot. Take care ! '* 
 
 "What's the matter?" 
 
 "You're sitting on an epigram." The young man started 
 as if stung, and removed the antimacassar, without how- 
 ever seeing the point.
 
 36o THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " I hope you didn't mind my inquiring whether you 
 have any morals ? " said Lillie. 
 
 " I have as many as ^sop ; the strictest investigation 
 courted ; references given and exchanged," said the peer 
 h'ghdy. 
 
 " Do be serious. You know I have an insatiable curiosity 
 to know everything about everything — to feel all sensations, 
 think all thoughts. That is the note of my being." The 
 brown eyes had an eager, wistful look. 
 
 "Oh yes — a note of interrogation." 
 
 " Oh that I were a man ! What do men think ? " 
 
 " What do you think ? Men are human beings first, and 
 masculine afterwards. And I think everybody is like a 
 suburban assembly hall — to-day a temperance lecture, 
 to-morrow a dance, next day an oratorio, then a farcical 
 comedy, and on Sunday a religious service. But about this 
 appointment ? " 
 
 " Well, let us settle it one way or another," Lillie said. 
 " Here is my proposal " 
 
 "I have an alternative proposal," he said desperately. 
 
 " I cannot listen to any other. Will you. or will you not, 
 become Honorary Trier of the Old Maids' Club ? " 
 
 " I'll try," he said at last. 
 
 " Yes or no ? " 
 
 " Shall you be present at the trials ? " 
 
 " Certainly ; but I shall cultivate myopia." 
 
 "It's a short-sighted policy, Miss Dulcimer. Still, sus- 
 tained by your presence, I feel I could flirt with the most 
 beautiful and charming girl in the world. I could do it, 
 even unsustained by the presence of the other girl." 
 
 " Oh no ! You must not flirt with me. I am the only 
 Old Maid with whom flirtation is absolutely taboo." 
 
 " Then I consent," said Silverdale, with apparent irrele-
 
 THE HONORARY TRIER 361 
 
 vance. And, seating himself on tlie piano-stool, after care- 
 fully removing an epigram from the top of the instrument, 
 he picked out "The Last Rose of Summer" with a facile 
 forefinger. 
 
 " Uon't ! " said LilHe. " Stick to your lute." 
 
 Thus admonished, the nobleman took down Lillie's banjo 
 which was hanging on the wall, and struck a few passionate 
 chords. 
 
 " Do you know," he said, " I always look on the banjo as 
 the American among musical instruments ? It is the guitar 
 with a twang. Wasn't it invented in the States ? Anyhow, 
 it is the most appropriate instrument to which to sing you 
 my Fin de Siecle Love Song." 
 
 " For Heaven's sake, don't use that poor overworked 
 phrase ! " 
 
 " Why not ? It has only a few years to live. List to my 
 sonnet." 
 
 So saying, he strummed the strings and sang in an aristo- 
 cratic baritone : — 
 
 AD CHLOEN— A Valedictory 
 
 O Chloe, you are very, very dear, 
 
 And far aVjove your rivals in the town, 
 
 Who all in vain essay to beat you down, 
 Embittered by your haughtiness austere. 
 Too high you are for lowly me, I fear. 
 
 You would not stoop to pick up e'en a crown. 
 
 Nor cede the slightest lowering of a gown, 
 Though in men's eyes far fairer to appear. 
 
 With this my message, kindly current go, 
 
 At halfpenny per word — it should be less— 
 
 To Chloe, telegraphical address 
 
 (Thus written to economise two-(/.) 
 Of Messrs. Robinson, De Vere & Co., 
 
 Coslumers, 90, Ludgate Hill, E.G.
 
 302 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Lillie laughed. " My actress's name is something like 
 Chloe. It is Clorinda — Clorinda Bell. She tells me she is 
 very celebrated." 
 
 " Oh yes, I've heard of her," he said. 
 
 " There is a sneer in your tones. Have you heard any- 
 thing to her disadvantage ? " 
 
 "Only that she is virtuous and in society." 
 
 " The very woman for an Old Maid ! She is beautiful, 
 too." 
 
 " Is she ? I thought she was one of those actresses who 
 reserve their beauty for the stage." 
 
 " Oh no. She always wears it. Here is her photograph. 
 Isn't that a lovely face ? " 
 
 " It is a lovely photograph. Does she hope to achieve 
 recognition by it, I wonder ? " 
 
 "Sceptic !" 
 
 " I doubt all charms but yours." 
 
 " Well, you shall see her." 
 
 " All right ; but mention her name clearly when you intro- 
 duce me. Women are such changing creatures — to-day 
 pretty, to-morrow plain, yesterday ugly. I have to be rein- 
 troduced to most of my female acquaintances three times a 
 week. May I wait to see Clorinda ? " 
 
 " No, not to-day. She has to undergo the preliminary 
 exam. Perhaps she may not even matriculate. Where 
 you come in, is at the graduation stage." 
 
 " I see. To pass them as Bachelors — I mean Old 
 Maids. I say, how will you get them to wear stuff gowns ?" 
 
 The bell rang loudly. " That may be she. Good-bye, 
 Lord Silverdale. Remember you are Honorary Trier of 
 the Old Maids' Club, and don't forget those chocolate 
 creams."
 
 THE MAN IN THE IRONED MASK 363 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE MAN IN THE IRONED MASK 
 
 The episode that turned Clorinda Bell's thoughts in the 
 direction of Old Maidenhood was not wanting in strange- 
 ness. She was an actress of whom everybody spoke well — 
 excepting actresses. This was because she was so respect- 
 able. Respectability is all very well for persons who 
 possess no other ability; but Bohemians rightly feel that 
 genius should be above that sort of thing. Clorinda never 
 went anywhere without her mother. This lady — a portly 
 taciturn dame, whose hair had felt the snows of sixty 
 winters — was as much a part of her as a thorn is of a rose. 
 She accompanied her always — except when she was singing 
 — and loomed like some more substantial shadow before or 
 behind her at balls and receptions, at concerts and operas, 
 private views and church bazaars. Her mother was always 
 with her behind the scenes. She helped her to make up 
 and to unmake. She became the St. Peter of the dressing- 
 room in her absence. At the Green Room Club they will 
 tell you how a royal personage, asking permission to come 
 and congratulate her, received the answer : " I shall be 
 most honoured — in the presence of my mother." 
 
 There were those who wished Clorinda had been born an 
 orphan. 
 
 But the graver sort held Miss Bell up as a typical 
 harbinger of the new era, when actresses would keep 
 mothers instead of dog-carts. There was no intrinsic 
 reason, they said, why actresses should not be received at 
 Court, and visit the homes of the poor. Clorinda was very 
 charming. She was tall and fair as a lily, with dashes of
 
 364 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 colour stolen from the rose and the daffodil, for her eyes 
 had a sparkle and her cheeks a flush, and her hair was 
 usually golden. Not the least of her physical charms was 
 the fact that she had numerous admirers. But it was 
 understood that she kept them at a distance and that they 
 worshipped there. The Society journals, to which Clorinda 
 was indebted for considerable information about herself, 
 often stated that she intended to enter a convent, as her 
 higher nature found scant satisfaction in stage triumphs, 
 and she had refused to exchange her hand either for a 
 coronet or a pile of dollars. They frequently stated the 
 opposite, but a Society journal cannot always be con- 
 tradicting a contemporary. It must sometimes contradict 
 itself as a proof of impartiality. Clorinda let all these 
 rumours surge about her unheeded, and her managers had 
 to pay for the advertisement. The money came back to 
 them, though, for Clorinda was a sure draw. She brought 
 the odour of sanctity over the footlights, and people have 
 almost as much curiosity to see a saint as a sinner — 
 especially when the saint is beautiful. 
 
 Gentlemen in particular paid frequent pilgrimages to the 
 shrine of the saint, and adored her from the ten-and- 
 sixpenny pews. There was at this period a noteworthy 
 figure in London dress-circles and stalls, an inveterate 
 first-nighter, whose identity was the subject of considerable 
 speculation. He was a mystery in a swallow-tail coat. No 
 one had ever seen him out of it. He seemed to go through 
 life armed with a white breastplate, starched shot-proof and 
 dazzling as a grenadier's cuirass. What wonder that a wit 
 (who had become a dramatic critic through drink) called 
 him " The Man in the Ironed Mask ! " Between the acts 
 he wore a cloak, a crush-hat, and a cigarette. Nobody 
 ever spoke to him, nor did he ever reply. He could not be
 
 THE MAN IN THE IRONED MASK 365 
 
 dumb, because he had been heard to murmur, " Brava, 
 bravissima," in a soft but incorrect foreign manner. He 
 was very handsome, with a high white forehead of the 
 Gothic order of architecture, and dark Moorish eyes. 
 Nobody even knew his name, for he went to the play quite 
 anonymously. The pit took him for a critic, and the 
 critics for a minor poet. He had appeared on the scene 
 (or before it) only twelve months ago, but already he was a 
 distinguished man. Even the actors and actresses had 
 come to hear of him, and not a few had peeped at him 
 between their speeches. He was certainly a sight for the 
 "gods." 
 
 Latterly he had taken to frequenting the Lymarket, where 
 Miss Clorinda Bell was " starring " for a season of legitimate 
 drama. It was the only kind the scrupulous actress would 
 play in. Whenever there was no first night on anywhere 
 else, he went to see Clorinda. Only a few rivals and the 
 company knew of his constancy to the entertainment. 
 Clorinda was, it will be remembered, one of the company. 
 
 It was the entr'acte, and the orchestra was playing a 
 gavotte, to which the eighteenth-century figures on the 
 drop-scene were dancing. The Man in the Ironed Mask 
 strolled in the lobby among the critics, overhearing the 
 views they were not going to express in print. Clorinda 
 Bell's mother was brushing her child's magnificent hair into 
 a more tragical attitude in view of the fifth act. The little 
 room was sacred to the "star," the desire of so many 
 moths. Neither maid nor dresser entered it, for Mrs. Bell 
 was as devoted to her daughter as her daughter to her, and 
 tended her as zealously as if she were a stranger. 
 
 "Yes, but why doesn't he speak?" said Clorinda. 
 
 "You haven't given him a chance, darling," said her 
 mother.
 
 366 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " Nonsense — there is the language of flowers. All my 
 lovers commence by talking that." 
 
 "You get so many bouquets, dear. It may be — as you 
 say his appearance is so distinguished — that he dislikes so 
 commonplace a method." 
 
 " Well, if he doesn't want to throw his love at my feet, he 
 might have tried to send it me in a billet-doux." 
 
 "That also is commonplace. Besides, he may know 
 that all your letters are delivered to me and opened by me. 
 The fact has often enough appeared in print." 
 
 " Ah yes ; but genius will find out a way. You remember 
 Lieutenant Campbell, who was so hit the moment he saw 
 me as Perdita, that he went across the road to the telegraph 
 office, and wired, ' Meet me at supper, top floor, Piccadilly 
 Restaurant, 11.15,' so that the doorkeeper sent the message 
 direct to the prompter, who gave it me as I came off with 
 Florizel and Camilla. That is the sort of man I admire ! " 
 
 "But you soon tired of him, darling." 
 
 " O mother ! How can you say so ? I loved him the 
 whole run of the piece." 
 
 " Yes, dear, but it was only Shakespeare." 
 
 " Would you have love a burlesque ? ' A Winter's Tale ' 
 is long enough for any flirtation. Let me see, was it 
 Campbell or Belfort who shot himself? I for — oh ! oh ! 
 that hair-pin is irritating me, mother." 
 
 " There ! there ! Is that easier ? " 
 
 " Thanks ! There's only the Man m the Ironed Mask 
 irritating me now. His dumb admiration provokes me." 
 
 " But you provoke his dumb admiration. And are you 
 sure it is admiration ? " 
 
 "People don't go to see Shakespeare seventeen times. 
 I wonder who he is — an Italian cornt most likely. Ah, 
 how his teeth flash beneath his moustache ! "
 
 THE MAS^ IN THE IRONED MASK 367 
 
 "You make me feel quite curious about him. Do you 
 think I could peep at him from the wing?" 
 
 " No, mother, you shall not be put to the inconvenience. 
 It would give you a crick in your neck. If you desire to 
 see him, I will send for him." 
 
 "Very well, dear," said the older woman submissively, 
 for she was accustomed to the gratification of her daughter's 
 whims. 
 
 So, when the Man in the Ironed Mask resumed his seat, a 
 programme girl slipped a note into his hand. He read it, his 
 face impassive as his ironed mask. When the play was over, 
 he sauntered round to the squalid court in which the stage 
 door was located, and stalked nonchalantly up the stairs. 
 The doorkeeper was too impressed by his air not to take 
 him for granted. He seemed to go on instinctively till he 
 arrived at a door, placarded " Miss Clorinda Bell — Private." 
 
 He knocked, and the silvery accents he had been listen- 
 ing to all the evening bade him come in. The beautiful 
 Clorinda, clad in diaphanous white, and radiating perfumes, 
 received him with an intoxicating smile. 
 
 " It is so kind of you to come and see me," she said. 
 
 He made a stately inclination. " The obligation is 
 mine," he said. " I am greatly interested in the drama. 
 This is the seventeenth time I have come to see you." 
 
 " I meant here," she said, piqued, though the smile 
 stayed on. 
 
 "Oh, but I understood " His eyes wandered inter- 
 rogatively about the room. 
 
 " Yes, I know ; my mother is out," she replied. " She 
 is on the stage picking up the bouquets. I believe she 
 sent you a note. I do not know why she wants to see you, 
 but she will be back soon. If you do not mind being left 
 alone with me "
 
 36S THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 "Pray do not apologise, Miss Bell," he said consider- 
 ately. 
 
 " It is so good of you to say so. Won't you sit down ?" 
 
 The Man in the Ironed Mask sat down beside the 
 dazzling Clorinda and stared expectantly at the door. 
 There was a tense silence. His cloak hung negligently upon 
 his shoulders. He held his crush hat calmly in his hand. 
 
 Clorinda was highly chagrined. She felt as if she could 
 slap his face and kiss the place to make it well, 
 
 " Did you like the play ? " she said at last. 
 
 He elevated his dark eyebrows. " Is it not obvious ? " 
 
 "Not entirely. You might come to see the players." 
 
 " Quite so, quite so." 
 
 He leaned his handsome head on his arm and looked 
 pensively at the floor. It was some moments before he 
 broke the silence again. But it was only by rising to his feet. 
 
 He walked towards the door. " I am sorry I cannot 
 stay any longer," he said. 
 
 " Oh no ! You mustn't go without seeing my mother. 
 She will be terribly disappointed." 
 
 " Not less so than myself at missing her. Good-night, 
 Miss Bell." He made his prim, courtly bow. 
 
 " Oh, but you must see her ! Come again to-morrow 
 night, anyhow," exclaimed Clorinda desperately. And 
 when his footsteps had died away down the stairs, she could 
 not repress several tears of vexation. Then she looked 
 hurriedly into her mirror, and marvelled silently. 
 
 "Is he gone already?" said her mother, entering after 
 knocking cautiously at the door. 
 
 "Yes ; he is insane." 
 
 " Madly in love with you ? " 
 
 " Madly out of love with me." 
 
 He came again the next night, stolid and courteous. To
 
 THE MAN IN THE IRONED MASK 369 
 
 Clorinda's infinite regret, her mother had been taken ill, and 
 had gone home early in the carriage. It was raining hard. 
 Clorinda would be reduced to a hansom. 
 
 "They call it the London gondola," she said, "but it is 
 least comfortable when there's most water. You have to be 
 framed in like a cucumber in a hot-house." 
 
 " Indeed ! Personally I never travel in hansoms. And 
 from what you tell me I should not like to make the experi- 
 ment to-night. Good-bye, Miss Bell; present my regrets to 
 your mother." 
 
 " Deuce take the donkey ! He might at least offer me a 
 seat in his carriage," thought Clorinda. Aloud she said, 
 " Under these circumstances, may I venture to ask you to 
 see my mother at the house ? Here is our private address. 
 Won't you come to tea to-morrow ? " 
 
 He took the card, bowed silently and withdrew. 
 
 In such wise the courtship proceeded for some weeks, 
 the invalid being confined to her room at tea-time, and 
 occupied in picking up bouquets by night. He always came 
 to tea in his cloak, and wore his Ironed Mask, and was 
 extremely solicitous about Clorinda's mother. It became 
 evident that so long as he had the ghost of an excuse for 
 talking of the absent, he would never talk of Clorinda her- 
 self At last she was reduced to intimating that she would 
 be found at the matinee of a new piece next day (to be given 
 at the theatre by a debutante)^ and that there would be 
 plenty of room in her box. Clorinda was determined to 
 eliminate her mother, who was now become an impediment 
 instead of a pretext. 
 
 But when the afternoon came, she looked for him in vain. 
 She chatted lightly with the acting- manager, who was loung- 
 ing in the vestibule, but her eye was scanning the horizon 
 feverishly. 
 
 2a
 
 370 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 "Is this woman going to be a success?" she asked. 
 " Oh yes," said the acting-manager promptly. 
 " How do you know ? " 
 
 o "^ A L L S [ 
 
 'I JUST SAW THE FLOWERS DRIVE MV. 
 
 " I just saw the flowers drive up." 
 
 Clorinda laughed. "What's the piece Uke?" 
 
 ** 1 only saw one rehearsal. It seemed great twaddle.
 
 THE MAN IN THE IRONED MASK yj\ 
 
 But the low com. has got a good catchword, so there's some 
 chance of its going into the evening bills." 
 
 "Oh, by the way, have you seen anything of that — that 
 — the Man in the Ironed Mask, I think they call him?" 
 
 " Do you mean here— this afternoon ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " No. Do you expect him ? " 
 
 " Oh no, but I was wondering if he would turn up. I 
 hear he is so fond of this theatre." 
 
 " Bless your soul, he'd never be seen at a matinee ! " 
 
 " Why not ? " asked Clorinda, her heart fluttering violendy. 
 
 " Because he'd have to be in morning dress," said the 
 acting-manager, laughing heartily. 
 
 To Clorinda his innocent merriment seemed the laughter 
 of a mocking fiend. She turned away, sick at heart. 
 
 There was nothing for it but to propose outright at tea- 
 time. Clorinda did so, and was accepted without further 
 difficulty. 
 
 "And now, dearest," she said, after she had been allowed 
 to press the first kiss of troth upon his coy lips, " I should 
 like to know who I am going to be?" 
 
 "Clorinda Bell, of course," he said. "That is the 
 advantage actresses have. They need not take their 
 husband's name in vain." 
 
 " Yes, but what am / to call you, dearest ? " 
 
 " Dearest ! " he echoed enigmatically. " Let me be 
 dearest — for a little while." 
 
 She forbore to press him further. For the moment it 
 was enough to have won him. The sweetness of that 
 soothed her wounded vanity at his indifference to the prize 
 coveted by men and convents. Enough that she was to be 
 mated to a great man, whose speech and silence alike bore 
 the stamp of individuality.
 
 372 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " Dearest be it," she answered, looking fondly into his 
 Moorish eyes. " Dearest ! dearest ! " 
 
 "Thank you, Clorinda. And now, may I see your 
 mother? I have never learned what she has to say to me." 
 
 " What does it matter now, dearest ? " 
 
 *' More than ever," he said gravely, " now she is to be my 
 mother-in-law." 
 
 Clorinda bit her lip at the dignified rebuke, and rang for 
 his mother-in-law elect, who came from the sick-room in 
 her bonnet. 
 
 " Mother," she said, as the good dame sailed through the 
 door, "let me introduce you to my future husband." 
 
 The old lady's face lit up with surprise and excitement. 
 She stood still for an instant, taking in the relationship so 
 suddenly sprung upon her. Then she darted with open 
 arms towards the Man in the Ironed Mask, and strained 
 his mask to her bosom. 
 
 " My son ! my son ! " she cried, kissing him passionately. 
 He blushed like a stormy sunset, and tried to disengage 
 himself. 
 
 " Do not crumple him, mother," said Clorinda pettishly. 
 " Your zeal is overdone." 
 
 " But he is my long-lost Absalom ! Think of the rapture 
 of having him restored to me thus. Oh, what a happy family 
 we shall be ! Bless you, Clorinda. Bless you, my children. 
 When is the wedding to be ? " 
 
 The Man in the Ironed Mask had regained his composure. 
 
 " Mother," he said sternly, " I am glad to see you looking 
 so well. I always knew you would fall on your feet if I 
 dropped you. I have no right to ask it — but as you seem 
 to expect me to marry your daughter, a little information as 
 to the circumstances under which you have supplied me 
 with a sister would be not unwelcome."
 
 THE MAN IN THE IRONED MASK 
 
 373 
 
 " Stupid boy ! Don't you understand that Miss Bell was good 
 enough to engage me as mother and travelling companion 
 when you left me to starve ? Or rather, the impresario who 
 brought her over from America engaged me, and Clorinda 
 has been, oh, so good to me ! My little drapery business 
 failed soon after you went off, leaving me to get a stranger 
 in the shop. I had no resource but — to go on the stage." 
 
 
 A FAMILY RE-UNION. 
 
 The old woman was babbling on, but the cold steel of 
 Clorinda's gaze silenced her. 
 
 The outraged actress turned haughtily to the Man in the 
 Ironed Mask. 
 
 "So this is your mother?" she said, with infinite scorn, 
 
 "So this is not your mother?" he said, with infinite 
 indignation.
 
 374 THE CETIBATES' CI.UR 
 
 "Were you ever really simple enough to suspect me of 
 having a mother ? " she retorted contemptuously. "I had 
 her on the hire system. Don't you know that a combina- 
 tion of maid and mother is the newest thing in actresses' 
 wardrobes? It is safer than having a maid, and more 
 comfortable than having a mother." 
 
 " But I have been a mother to you, Clorinda," the old 
 dame pleaded. 
 
 " Oh yes, you have always been a good, obedient woman. 
 I am not finding fault with you, and I have no wish to part 
 with you. I do find fault, and I shall certainly part with 
 your son." 
 
 " Nonsense," said the Man in the Ironed Mask. *' The 
 situation is essentially unchanged. She is still the mother 
 of one of us ; she can still become the mother-in-law of the 
 other. Besides, Clorinda, that is the only way of keeping 
 the secret in the family." 
 
 " You threaten ? " 
 
 "Certainly. You are a humbug. So am I. United we 
 stand ; separated, you fall." 
 
 "You fall too." 
 
 " Not from such a height. I am still on the first rungs." 
 
 " Nor likely to get any higher." 
 
 "Indeed? Your experience of me should have taught 
 you different. High as you are, I can raise you yet higher 
 if you will only lift me up to you." 
 
 " How do you climb ? " she said, his old ascendancy 
 reasserting itself. 
 
 " By standing still. Profound meditation on the philo- 
 sophy of modern Society has convinced me that the only 
 way left for acquiring notoriety is to do nothing. Every 
 other way has been exploited, and is suspected. It is only 
 a year since the discovery flashed upon me ; it is only a
 
 THE MAN IN THE IRONED MASK 375 
 
 year that I have been putting it into practice. And yet, 
 mark the result ! Already I 3m a known man. I had the 
 entree to no society ; for half-a-guinea a night (frequently 
 paid in paper money) I have mingled with the most ex- 
 clusive. When there was no premiere anywhere, I went to 
 see you — not from any admiration of you, but because the 
 Ly/narket is the haunt of the best society, and, in addition, 
 the virtue of Shakespeare and of yourself attracts there a 
 highly respectable class of bishops whom I have not the 
 opportunity of meeting elsewhere. By doing nothing I 
 fascinated you — somebody was sure to be fascinated by it 
 at last, as the dove flutters into the jaws of the lethargic 
 serpent — by continuing to do nothing I completed my con- 
 quest. Had I met your advances, you would have repelled 
 mine. My theories have been completely demonstrated, and 
 but for the accident of our having a common mother " 
 
 " Speak for yourself," said Clorinda haughtily. 
 
 " It is for myself that I am speaking. When we are one, 
 I shall continue this poUcy of masterly inactivity of which 
 I claim the invention, though it has long been known in 
 the germ. Everybody knows, for instance, that not to 
 trouble to answer letters is the surest way of acc^uiring the 
 reputation of a busy man ; that not to accept invitations is 
 an infallible way of getting more ; that not to care a jot 
 about the feelings of the rest of the household is an unfail- 
 ing means of enforcing universal deference. But the glory 
 still remains to him who first grasped this great law m its 
 generalised form, however familiar one or two isolated cases 
 of it may be to the world. ' Do nothing ' is the last word 
 of social science, as 'Nil admirari' was its first. Just as 
 silence is less self-contradictory than speech, so is inaction 
 a safer foundation of fame than action. Inaction is perfect. 
 The moment you do anything you are in the region of
 
 376 THE CEr /BATES' CLUB 
 
 incompleteness, of definiteness. Your work may be out- 
 done — or undone. Your inventions may be improved 
 upon, your victories annulled, your popular books ridiculed, 
 your theories superseded, your paintings decried, the seamy 
 side of your explorations shown up. Successful doing 
 creates not only enemies, but the material for their malice 
 to work upon. Only by not having done anything to 
 deserve success can you be sure of surviving the reaction 
 which success always brings. To be is higher than to do. 
 To be is calm, large, elemental ; to do is trivial, artificial, 
 fussy. To be has been the motto of the English aristo- 
 cracy ; it is the secret of their persistence. Qui s'excuse 
 s'acaise. He who strives to justify his existence imperils it. 
 To be is inexpugnable ; to do is dangerous. The same 
 principle rules in all departments of social life. What is a 
 successful reception ? A gathering at which everybody is. 
 Nobody does anything. Nobody enjoys anything. There 
 everybody is — if only for five minutes each, and whatever 
 the crush and discomfort. You are there — and there you 
 are, don't you know ? What is social ambition ? A desire 
 to be in better people's drawing - rooms. What is it for 
 which people barter health, happiness, even honour? To 
 be on certain pieces of flooring inaccessible to the mass. 
 What is the glory of doing compared with the glory of 
 being ? Let others elect to do ; I elect to be." 
 
 " So long as you do not choose to be my husband " 
 
 " It is husband or brother," he said threateningly. 
 
 " Of course. I become your sister by rejecting you, do 
 I not ? " 
 
 " Don't trifle. You understand what I mean. I will let 
 the world know that your mother is mine." 
 
 They stood looking at each other in silent defiance. At 
 last Clorinda spoke :
 
 THE MAN TN THE IRONED MASK 377 
 
 " A compromise 1 Let the world know that my mother 
 is yours." 
 
 " I see. Pose as your brother ? " 
 
 " Yes. That will help you up a good many rungs. I 
 shall not deny I am your sister. My mother will certainly 
 not deny that you are her son," 
 
 " Done ! So long as my theories are not disproved : 
 Conjugate the verb 'to be,' and you shall be successful. 
 Let me see. How does it run ? I am — your brother ; thou 
 art — my, sister; she is — my mother; we are — her children ; 
 you are— my womankind ; they are — all spoofed." 
 
 So the Man in the Ironed Mask turned out to be the 
 brother of the great and good actress, Clorinda Bell. And 
 several people had known it all along, for what but fraternal 
 interest had taken him so often to the Lymarkefi And 
 when his identity leaked out, Society ran after him, and he 
 gave the interviewers interesting details of his sister's early 
 years. And every one spoke of his attachment to his 
 mother, and of his solicitous attendance upon her. And 
 in due course the tale of his virtues reached a romantic 
 young heiress, who wooed and won him. And so he con- 
 tinued being till he was — no more. By his own request 
 they buried him in an Ironed Mask, and put upon his 
 tomb the profound inscription : 
 
 Here lies 
 THE Man who was. 
 
 And this was why Clorinda, disgusted with men and 
 lovers, and unable to marry her brother, caught at the 
 notion of the Old Maids' Club, and called upon Li Hie. 
 
 It was almost as good a cover as a mother, and it was 
 well to have something ready in case she lost her, as you
 
 378 THE CE/. I BATES' CLUB 
 
 cannot obtain a second mother even on the hire system. 
 But Lord Silverdale's report consisted of one word, " Dan- 
 gerous !" — and he rejoiced at the whim which enabled him 
 thus to protect the impulsive little girl he loved. 
 
 Clorinda divined from Lillie's embarrassment next day 
 that she was to be blackballed. 
 
 " I am afraid," she hastened to say, " that on second 
 thoughts I must withdraw my candidature, as I could not 
 make a practice of coming here without my mother." 
 
 Lillie referred to the rules. "Married women are 
 admitted," she said simply. " I presume, therefore, your 
 mother ? " 
 
 " It's just like your presumption," interrupted Clorinda, 
 and, flouncing angrily out of the Club, she invited a 
 journalist to tea. 
 
 Next day the Moon said she was going to join the Old 
 Maids' Club. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE CLUB GETS ADVERTISED 
 
 "I SEE you have disregarded my ruling, Miss Dulcimer?" 
 said Lord Silverdale, pointing to the paragraph in the Moon. 
 " What is the use of my trying the candidates if you're 
 going to admit the plucked ? " 
 
 " I am surprised at you. Lord Silverdale. I thought you 
 had more wisdom than to base a reproach on a Moon para- 
 graph. You might have known it was not true." 
 
 "That is not my experience. Miss Dulcimer. I do not 
 think a statement is necessarily false because it appears in 
 the newspapers. There is hardly a paper in which I have
 
 THE CLUB GETS ADVERTISED 379 
 
 not, at some time or other, come across a true piece of 
 news. Even the Moon is not all made of green cheese." 
 
 " But you surely do not think I would accept Clorinda 
 Bell after your warning? Not but that I am astonished. 
 She assured me she was ice." 
 
 " Precisely. And so I marked her ' Dangerous.' Are 
 there any more candidates to-day ? " 
 
 " Heaps and heaps ! From all parts of the kingdom 
 letters have come from ladies anxious to become Old 
 Maids. There is even one application from Paris. Ought 
 I to entertain that ? " 
 
 "Certainly. Candidates may hail from anywhere — ex- 
 cepting, naturally, the United States." 
 
 " But what, I wonder, has caused this tide of applica- 
 tions ? " 
 
 " The J/^^?/?, of course. The fiction that Clorinda Bell 
 intended to take the secular veil has attracted all these 
 imitators. She has given the Club a good advertisement in 
 endeavouring merely to give herself one." 
 
 " You suspect her, then, of being herself responsible for 
 the statement that she was going to join the Club ? " 
 
 " No. 1 am sure of it. Who but herself knew that she 
 was not ? " 
 
 " I can hardly imagine that she would employ such base 
 arts," said Lillie. 
 
 " Higher arts are out of employment now-a-days." 
 
 " Is there any way of finding out ? " 
 
 " I am afraid not. She has no bosom friends. Stay — 
 there is her mother ! " 
 
 " Mothers do not tell their daughters' secrets. They do 
 not know them." 
 
 " Well, there's her brother. I was introduced to him the 
 other day at Mrs. Leo Hunter's, But he seems such a
 
 38o THE CELIBATES CLUB 
 
 reticent chap. Only opens his mouth twice an hour, and 
 then merely to show his teeth. Oh, I know ! I'll get at 
 the Moon man. My aunt, the philanthropist, who is quite 
 a journalist (sends so many paragraphs round about herself, 
 you know), will tell me who invents that sort of news, and 
 I'll interview the beggar." 
 
 "Yes; won't it be fun to run her to earth?" said Lillie 
 gleefully. 
 
 Silverdale took advantage of her good-humour. 
 
 "I hope the discovery of the baseness of your sex will 
 turn you again to mine." There was a pleading tenderness 
 in his eyes, 
 
 " What ! to your baseness ? I thought you were so 
 good." 
 
 " I am no good without you," he said boldly. 
 
 " Oh, that is too rich ! Suppose I had never been 
 born?" 
 
 " I should have wished I hadn't." 
 
 " But you wouldn't have known /hadn't." 
 
 " You're getting too metaphysical for my limited under- 
 standing." 
 
 " Nonsense, you understand metaphysics as well as I 
 do," protested Lillie gravely. 
 
 " Do not disparage yourself. You know I cannot endure 
 metaphysics." 
 
 " Why not ? " 
 
 " Because they are mostly made in Germany. And all 
 Germans write as if their aim was to be misunderstood. 
 Listen to my simple English lay." 
 
 " Another love-song to Chloe ? " 
 
 " No ; a really great poem, suggested by the number of 
 papers and forms I have already seen this Moon paragraph 
 
 in."
 
 THE CLUB GETS ADVERTISED 381 
 
 He took down the banjo, thrummed it, and sang 
 
 THE GRAND PARAGRAPHIC TOUR 
 
 I composed a little story 
 
 About a cockatoo, 
 With no desire of glory, 
 
 To see what would ensue. 
 
 It took the public liking 
 
 From China to Peru ; 
 The point of it was striking, 
 
 Though perfectly untrue. 
 
 It began in a morning journal. 
 
 When gooseberries were due, 
 The subject seemed eternal, 
 
 So many scribes it drew. 
 
 And in every evening column 
 
 It made a great to-do, 
 Sub-editors so solemn 
 
 Just adding thereunto. 
 
 In the "London Correspondence" 
 
 'Twas written up anew, 
 And then a fog came on dense 
 
 And hid me quite from view. 
 
 And some said they had heard it 
 
 From keepers in the Zoo ; 
 While others, who averred it. 
 
 Had seen that cockatoo. 
 
 It lived, my little fable, 
 
 I chuckled and I crew, 
 As, at my very table, 
 
 Friends twisted it askew.
 
 382 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 It leapt across the Channel — 
 
 A bounding kangaroo ; 
 It did not shrink like flannel, 
 
 But gained in size and hue. 
 
 It appeared in French and Spanish, 
 
 With errors not a few ; 
 In Russian, Greek, and Danish, 
 
 Inaccurately, too. 
 
 And waxing more romantic 
 
 With every wind that blew, 
 It crossed the broad Atlantic, 
 
 And grew and grew and grew. 
 
 At last like boomerang it 
 
 Sped back across the blue, 
 And tall and touched with twang it 
 
 Appeared whence first it flew. 
 
 An annual affliction, 
 
 It tours the wide world through, 
 
 And I, who bred the fiction, 
 Have come to think it true. 
 
 Life's burden it has doubled. 
 
 My peace of mind it slew. 
 My dreams by it are troubled. 
 
 My days are filled with rue. 
 
 Its horrors yearly thicken, 
 
 It sticks to me like glue ; 
 And, sad and conscience-stricken, 
 
 I curse that cockatoo. 
 
 " That's what will happen with Clorinda Bell's member- 
 ship of our Club," continued the poet. " She will remain 
 a member long after it has ceased to exist. Once a thing 
 has appeared in print, you cannot destroy it. A published 
 lie is immortal. Age cannot wither it, nor custom stale its
 
 THE CLUB GETS ADVERTISED 
 
 3S3 
 
 infinite variety. It thrives by contradiction. Give me a cup 
 of tea, and I will go and interview the Mooti man at once." 
 
 The millionaire, hearing tea was on the tray, came in to 
 join them, and Silverdale soon went off to his aunt, Lady 
 Goody-GoodyTwoshoes, and got the address of the man on 
 the Moon. 
 
 "Lillie, what's this I see in the Moon about Clorinda 
 Bell joining your Club?" asked the millionaire. 
 
 " An invention, father." 
 
 The millionaire looked disappointed. 
 
 "Will all your Old Maids 
 be young?" 
 
 "Yes, papa. It is best to 
 catch them young." 
 
 " I shall be dining at the 
 Club sometimes," he an- 
 nounced irrelevantly. 
 
 "Oh no, papa. You are 
 not admissible during the 
 sittings." 
 
 "Why, you let Lord Silver- 
 dale in ! " 
 
 " Yes ; but he is not married." 
 
 "Oh!" And the millionaire went away with a brighter 
 brow. 
 
 The rest of the afternoon Lillie was busy conducting the 
 preliminary examination of a surprisingly beautiful girl who 
 answered to the name of "Princess," and would give no 
 other name for the present, not even to Turple the Mag- 
 nificent. 
 
 "You got my letter, I suppose ? " asked the Princess. 
 
 " Oh yes," said the President ; " I should have written to 
 you." 
 
 THE MILLIONAIRE.
 
 3S4 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " I thought it best to come to see you about it at once, 
 as I have suddenly determined to go to Brighton, and I 
 don't know when I may be back. I had not heard of your 
 Club till the other day, when I saw in the Moon that 
 Clorinda Bell was going to join it, and anything she joins 
 must of course be strictly proper, so I haven't troubled to 
 ask the Honourable Miss Primpole's advice — she lives 
 with me, you know. An only orphan cannot be too 
 careful." 
 
 " You need not fear," said Lillie ; " Miss Bell is not to 
 be a member. We have refused her." 
 
 " Oh, indeed ! Well, perhaps it is as well not to bring 
 the scent of the footlights over the Club. It is hard upon 
 Miss Bell : but if you were to admit her, I suppose other 
 actresses would want to come in. There are so many of 
 them that prefer to remain single." 
 
 " Are you sure you do ? " 
 
 '* Positive. My experience of lovers has been so harass- 
 ing and peculiar, that I shall never marry ; and as my best 
 friends cannot call me a wall-flower, I venture to think you 
 will find me a valuable ally in your noble campaign against 
 the degrading superstition that old maids are women who 
 have not found husbands, just as widows are women who 
 have lost them." 
 
 " I sincerely hope so," said Lillie enthusiastically. " You 
 express my views very neatly. May I ask what are the 
 peculiar experiences you speak of ? " 
 
 "Certainly. Some months ago I amused myself by 
 recording the strange episodes of my first loves, and in 
 anticipation of your request I have brought the manu- 
 script." 
 
 " Oh, please read it ! " said Lillie excitedly. 
 
 " Of course I have not given all the real names."
 
 THE PRINCESS OF PORTA! AN SQUARE 385 
 
 "No ; I quite understand. Won't you have a chocolate 
 cream before you commence ? " 
 
 " Thank you. They look lovely. How awfully sweet ! " 
 
 " Too sweet for you ? " inquired Lillie anxiously. 
 
 "No, no. I mean they are just nice." 
 
 The Princess untied the pretty pink ribbon that enfolded 
 the dainty scented manuscript, and, pausing only to munch 
 an occasional chocolate cream, she read on till the shades 
 of evening fell over the Old Maids' Club, and the soft glow 
 of the candles illumined its dainty complexion. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE PRINCESS OF PORTMAN SQUARE 
 
 *' I AM an only child. 
 
 " I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, and 
 although there was no royal crest on it, yet no princess 
 could be more comfortable in the purple than I was in 
 the ordinary trappings of babyhood. From the cradle 
 upwards I was surrounded with love and luxury. My pet 
 name ' Princess' fitted me like a glove. I was the autocrat 
 of the nursery, and my power scarce diminished when I 
 rose to the drawing-room. My parents were very obedient, 
 and did not even conceal from me that I was beautiful. In 
 short, Ihey did their best to spoil me, though I cannot admit 
 that they succeeded. I lost them both before I was sixteen. 
 My poor mother died first, and my poor father followed within 
 a week — whether from grief, or from a cold caught through 
 standing bare-headed in the churchyard, or from employing 
 the same doctor, I cannot precisely determine. 
 
 " After the usual period of sorrow, I began to pick up a 
 
 2ii
 
 386 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 bit and to go out under the care of my duenna, a faded 
 flower of the aristocracy, whose declining years my guardian 
 had soothed by quartering her on me. She is a gentle 
 old spinster, the seventh daughter of a penniless peer ; and 
 although she had seen hard times, and had almost been 
 reduced to marriage, yet she had scant respect for my ten 
 thousand a year. She has never lost the sense of con- 
 descension in living with me, and would be horrified to 
 hear she is in receipt of a salary. It is to this sense of 
 superiority on her part that I owe a good deal of the liberty 
 I enjoy under her regime. She does not expect in me that 
 rigid obedience to venerable forms and conventions which 
 she prescribes for herself; she regards it as a privilege ot 
 the higher gentlewoman to be bound hand and foot by 
 fashionable etiquette, and so long as my liberty does not 
 degenerate into licence I am welcome to as much as I 
 please of it. She has continued to call me ' Princess,' 
 finding doubtless some faint reverberation of pleasure in 
 the magnificent syllables. I should add that her name is 
 the Honourable Miss Primpole, and that she is not afraid 
 of the butler. 
 
 " Our town house was situated in Portman Square, and 
 my parents tenanted it during the season. There is nothing 
 very poetic about the Square, perhaps, not even in the 
 summer when the garden is in bloom, yet it was here that 
 I first learnt to love. This dull parallelogram was the 
 birth-place of a passion as spiritual and intangible as 
 ever thrilled maiden's heart. I fell in love with a 
 Voice. 
 
 " It was a rich baritone Voice, with a compass of two and 
 a half octaves, rising from full bass organ-notes to sweet 
 flute-like tenor tones. It was a glorious Voice, now 
 resonant with martial ecstasy^ ngw faint with mystic rapture,
 
 THE PRINCESS OF PORTMAN SQUARE 387 
 
 Its vibrations were charged with inexpressible emotion, and 
 it sang of love and death and high heroic themes. 
 
 " I heard it first a few months after my father's funeral. 
 It was night. I had been indoors all day, torpid and 
 miserable, but roused myself at last and took a few turns 
 in the Square. The air was warm and scented, a cloudless 
 moon flooded the roadway with mellow light, and sketched 
 in the silhouettes of the trees in the background. I had 
 reached the opposite side of the Square for the second time 
 when the Voice broke out. My heart stood still, and I 
 with it. 
 
 "On the soft summer air the Voice rose and fell; it 
 was accompanied on the piano, but it seemed in subtler 
 harmony with the moonlight and the perfumed repose of 
 the night. It came through an open window, behind which 
 the singer sat in the gloaming. With the first tremors of 
 that Voice my soul forgot its weariness in a strange sweet 
 trance that trembled on pain. The song seemed to draw 
 out all the hidden longing of my maiden soul, as secret 
 writing is made legible by fire. When the Voice ceased a 
 great blackness fell upon all things, the air grew bleak. I 
 waited and waited, but the Square remained silent. The 
 footsteps of stray pedestrians, the occasional roll of a 
 carriage, alone fell on my anxious ear. I returned to my 
 house, shivering as with cold. 
 
 " I had never loved before. I had read and reflected a 
 great deal about love, and knew nothing about it. I did not 
 know that I loved now — for that discovery only came later, 
 when I found myself wandering nightly to the other side of 
 the parallelogram, listening for the Voice. Rarely, very 
 rarely, was my pilgrimage rewarded, but twice or thrice a 
 week the Square became an enchanted garden, full of 
 roses, whose petals were music. Round that baritone
 
 388 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Voice I had built up an ideal man — tall and straight- 
 limbed and stalwart, fair-haired and blue-eyed and noble- 
 featured, like the hero of a Northern saga. His soul was 
 vast as the sea, shaken with the storms of passion, dimpled 
 with smiles of tenderness. His spirit was at once mighty 
 and delicate, throbbing with elemental forces, yet keen and 
 swift to comprehend all subtleties of thought and feeling. 
 I could not understand myself, yet I felt that he would 
 understand me. He had the heart of a lion and of a little 
 child ; he was as merciful as he was strong, as pure as he 
 was wise. To be with him were happiness, to feel his kiss 
 ecstasy, to be gathered to his breast delirium. But, 
 alas ! he never knew that I was waiting under his 
 window. 
 
 "I made several abortive attempts to discover who he 
 was, or to see him. According to the Directory, the house 
 was occupied by Lady Westerton. I concluded that he 
 was her eldest son. That he might be her husband— or 
 some other lady's — never even occurred to me. I do not 
 know why I should have attached the Voice to a bachelor, 
 any more than I can explain why he should be the eldest 
 son, rather than the youngest. But romance has a logic 
 of its own. From the topmost window of my house I 
 could see Lady Westerton's house across the trees, but I 
 never saw him leave or enter it. Once, a week went by 
 without my hearing him sing. I did not know whether to 
 think of him as a sick bird, or as one flown to warmer 
 climes. I tried to construct his life from his periods of 
 song, and watched the lights in his window ; my whole life 
 circled round him. It was only when I grew pale and 
 feverish, and was forced by the doctors and my guardian 
 to go yachting, that my fancies gradually detached them- 
 selves from my blue-eyed hero. The sea-salt freshened my
 
 THE PRINCESS OF PORTMAN SQUARE 389 
 
 thoughts, and I became a healthy-minded girl again, carol- 
 ling joyously in my cabin, and taking pleasure in listening to 
 my own voice. I threw my novels overboard (metaphorically, 
 that is), and set the Hon. Miss Primpole chatting instead, 
 when the seascape palled upon me. She had a great fund 
 of strictly respectable memories. Most people's recollec- 
 tions are of no use to anybody but the owner, but hers 
 afforded entertainment for both of us. By the time I was 
 back in London the Voice was no longer part even of my 
 dreams, though it seemed to belong to them. But for 
 accident, it might have remained for ever 'a Voice and 
 nothing more.' 
 
 "The accident happened at a musical afternoon in 
 Kensington. I was introduced to a tall, fair, handsome 
 blue-eyed guardsman, Captain Athelstan by name. His 
 conversation was charming, and I took a lot of it, while 
 Miss Primpole was busy flirting with a seductive Spaniard. 
 You could not tell Miss Primpole was flirting, except by 
 looking at the man. In the course of the afternoon the 
 hostess asked the Captain to sing. As he went to the 
 piano my heart began to flutter with a strange foreboding. 
 He had no music with him, but plunged at once into the 
 premonitory chords. My agitation increased tenfold. He 
 was playing the prelude to one of the Voice's songs — a 
 strange, haunting song, with a Schubert atmosphere — a song 
 which I had looked for in vain among the classics. At 
 once he was transfigured to my eyes; all my sleeping 
 romantic fancies woke to delicious life ; and in the instant 
 in which I waited, with bated breath, for the outbreak of 
 the Voice at the well-known turn of the melody, it was 
 borne in upon me that this was the only man I had ever 
 loved, or would ever love — my saga-hero ! my Berserker 1 
 my Norse giant !
 
 390 
 
 THE CELIBATES' cLVh 
 
 " When the voice started it was not my Voice. It was a 
 thin, throaty tenor. Compared with the Voice of Portman 
 
 '^^^^^' 
 
 MISS PRIMPOLE WAS FLIRTING WITH A SEDUCTIVE SPANIARD. 
 
 Square, it was as a tinkling rivulet to a rushing full-
 
 THE PRINCESS OF PORTMAN SQUARE 391 
 
 volumed river. I sank back on the lounge, hiding my 
 emotions behind my fan. 
 
 "When the song was finished, he made his way through 
 the ' bravas ' to my side. 
 
 " 'Sweetly pretty ! ' I murmured. 
 
 " ' What is ?' he asked, with a smile. 'The song or the 
 singing ? ' 
 
 " 'The song,' I answered frankly. *Is it yours ?' 
 
 *' ' No, but the singing is.' His good-humour was so 
 delightful that I forgave his not having my Voice. 
 
 " 'What is its name?' 
 
 " ' It is anonymous — like the composer.' 
 
 " ' Who is he ? ' 
 
 '"I must not tell.' 
 
 " ' Can you give me a copy of the song ?' 
 
 " He became embarrassed. 
 
 " ' I would with pleasure, if it were mine. But the fact 
 is — I — I — had no right to sing it at all, and the composer 
 would be awfully vexed if he knew.' 
 
 " * Original composer ? ' 
 
 " ' He is, indeed. He cannot bear to think of his songs 
 being sung in public' 
 
 " ' Dear me ! What a terrible mystery you are making ! ' 
 I laughed. 
 
 *' * R — eally there is no abracadabra about it. You mis- 
 understand me. But I deserve it all for breaking faith, 
 and exploiting his lovely song so as to drown my beastly 
 singing.' 
 
 " ' You need not reproach yourself,' I said. ♦ I have 
 heard it before.' 
 
 '* He started perceptibly. 
 
 " * Impossible ! ' he gasped. 
 
 " ' Thank you,' I said freezingly.
 
 39^ THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " ' But how ? ' 
 
 " ' A little bird sang it me.' 
 
 " ' It is you who are making the mystery now.' 
 
 " ' Tit for tat. But I will discover yours.' 
 
 " ' Not unless you are a witch.' 
 
 " ' A what ? ' 
 
 " ' A witch.' 
 
 " ' I am,' I said emphatically. ' So you see it's of no use 
 hiding anything from me. Come, tell me all, or I will 
 belabour you with my broomstick.' 
 
 '"If you know, why should I tell you?' 
 
 " ' I want to see if you can tell the truth.' 
 
 " ' No, I can't.' We both laughed. * See what a cruel 
 dilemma you place me in ! ' he said beseechingly. 
 
 " ' Tell me, at least, why he won't publish his songs. Is he 
 too modest, too timid ? ' 
 
 " ' Neither. He loves art for art's sake — that is all.' 
 
 " * I don't understand.' 
 
 " * He writes to please himself. To create music is his 
 highest pleasure. He can't see what it has got to do with 
 anybody else.' 
 
 " ' But surely he wants the world to enjoy his work ? ' 
 
 " ' Why ? That would be art for the world's sake, art for 
 fame's sake, not to mention art for money's sake ! ' 
 
 " ' What an extraordinary view ! ' 
 
 " * Why so ? The true artist — the man to whom creation 
 is rapture — surely he is his own world ? Unless he is in 
 need of money, why should he concern himself with the 
 outside universe? My friend cannot understand why 
 Schopenhauer should have troubled himself to chisel epi- 
 grams or Leopardi lyrics, to tell people that life was not worth 
 living. Had either been a true artist, he would have gone 
 on living his own worthless life, unruffled by the applause of
 
 THE PRINCESS OF PORT MAM SQUARE 393 
 
 the mob. My friend can understand a poet translating into 
 inspired song the sacred secrets of his soul, but he cannot 
 understand his scattering them broadcast through the 
 country, still less taking a royalty on them. He says it is 
 selling your soul in the market-place, and almost as degrad- 
 ing as going on the stage.' 
 
 " ' And do you agree with him ? ' 
 
 •' * Not entirely, otherwise I should never have yielded to 
 the temptation to sing his song to-night. Fortunately he 
 will never hear of it. He never goes into society, and I am 
 his only friend.' 
 
 " ' Dear me ! ' I said sarcastically. * Is he as careful to 
 conceal his body as his soul ? ' 
 
 "His face grew grave. 'He has an affliction,' he said, in 
 low tones. 
 
 " ' Oh, forgive me ! ' I said remorsefully. Tears came into 
 my eyes as the vision of the Norse giant gave way to that 
 of an English hunchback. My adoring worship was trans- 
 formed to an adoring matronly tenderness. Divinely-gifted 
 sufferer, if I cannot lean on thy strength, thou shalt lean on 
 mine ! 
 
 " So ran my thought, till the mist cleared from my eyes, 
 and I saw again the glorious saga-hero at my side, and 
 grew strangely confused and distraught. 
 
 " ' There is nothing to forgive,' answered Captain Athel- 
 stan ; 'you did not know him.' 
 
 " • You forget that I am a witch. But I do not know him 
 — it is true. I do not even know his name. Yet within a 
 week I undertake to become a friend of his.' 
 
 "He shook his head. 'You do not know him.' 
 
 " ' I admitted that,' I answered. ' Give me a week, and 
 he shall not only know me, he shall abjure those sublime 
 principles of his at my request.'
 
 394 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 "The spirit of mischief moved me to throw down the 
 challenge — or, was it some deeper impulse ? 
 
 " He smiled sceptically. 
 
 *' ' Of course, if you know somebody who will introduce 
 you ' he began. 
 
 " ' Nobody shall introduce me,' I interrupted. 
 
 " ' Well, he'll never speak to you first,' 
 
 " ' You mean it would be unmaidenly for me to speak to 
 him first. Well, I will bind myself to do nothing of which 
 Mrs. Grundy would disapprove. And yet the result shall 
 be as I say.' 
 
 " ' Then I shall admit you are indeed a witch.' 
 
 " * You don't believe in my power— that is. Well, what 
 will you wager ? ' 
 
 " ' If you achieve your impossibility you will deserve 
 anything.' 
 
 " ' Will you back your incredulity with a pair of gloves ? ' 
 
 "'With a hundred.' 
 
 " ' Thank you, I am not a Briareus. Let us say one pair, 
 then.' 
 
 " ' So be it' 
 
 " ' But no countermining. Promise me not to communi- 
 cate with your mysterious friend in the interval.' 
 
 "'I promise. But how shall I know the result?' 
 
 " I pondered. ' I will write — no, that would be hardly 
 proper. Meet me in the Royal Academy, room six, at the 
 portrait of a gentleman, about noon to-morrow week.' 
 
 " ' A week is a long time ! ' he sighed. 
 
 " I arched my eyebrows. ' A week a long time for such 
 a task ! ' I exclaimed. 
 
 " Next day I called at the house of the Voice. A gor- 
 geous creature in plush opened the door. 
 
 " * I want to see — to see Gracious ! I've forgotten his
 
 THE PRINCESS OF POkTMAN SQUARE 395 
 
 name ! ' I said, in patent chagrin. I clucked my tongue, 
 puckered my lips, tapped the step with my parasol, then 
 smiled pitifully at the creature in plush. He turned out to 
 be only human, for a responsive sympathetic smile flickered 
 across his pompous face. * You know — the singer ! ' I said, 
 as if with a sudden inspiration. 
 
 " ' Oh, Lord Arthur ? ' he said. 
 
 " ' Yes, of course ! ' I cried, with a little trill of laughter. 
 ' How stupid of me ! Please tell him I want to see him on 
 an important matter.' 
 
 " ' He — he's busy, I'm afraid, miss.' 
 
 " ' Oh, but he'll see me,' I said confidently. 
 
 " ' Yes, miss ; who shall I say, miss ? ' 
 
 "'The Princess.' 
 
 " He made a startled obeisance, and ushered me into a 
 little room on the right of the hall. In a few moments he 
 returned, and said, ' His lordship will be down in a second, 
 your Highness.' 
 
 " Sixty minutes seemed to go to that second, so racked was 
 I with curiosity. At last I heard a step outside and a hand 
 on the door, and at that moment a horrible thought flashed 
 into my mind. What certainty was there my singer was a 
 hunchback ? Suppose his affliction were something more 
 loathly ? What if he had a monstrous wen ? For the 
 instant after his entry I was afraid to look up. When I did, 
 I saw a short, dark-haired young man, with proper limbs 
 and refined features. But his face wore a blank expression, 
 and I wondered why I had not divined before that my 
 musician was blind. 
 
 "He bowed and advanced towards me. He came straight 
 in my direction, so that I saw he could see. The blank 
 expression gave place to one of inquiry. 
 
 "'I have ventured to call upon your lordship in reference
 
 396 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 to a charity concert,' I said sweetly. ' I am one of your 
 neighbours, living just across the Square, and as the good 
 work is to be done in the district, I dared to hope that I 
 could persuade you to take part in it.' 
 
 " I happened to catch sight of my face in the glass of a 
 chiffonier as I spoke, and it was as pure and candid and 
 beautiful as the face of one of Guido's angels. When I 
 ceased I looked up at Lord Arthur's ; it was spasmodically 
 agitated, the mouth was working wildly. A nervous dread 
 seized me. 
 
 " After what seemed an endless interval, he uttered an ex- 
 plosive 'Put!' following it up by, 'm— m— m — m — e 
 d— d — own f— f — f— f— f^f—f — or two g — g — g — g — g — 
 g— g— g ' 
 
 " ' It is very kind of you,' I interrupted mercifully. 'But 
 I did not propose to ask you for a subscription. I wanted 
 to enlist your services as a performer. But I fear I have 
 made a mistake. I understood you sang.' Inwardly I 
 was furious with the stupid creature in plush for having 
 misled me into such an unpleasant situation. 
 
 " 'I d — d— do s— s — s— s— s ' he answered. 
 
 "As he stood there hissing, the truth flashed upon me 
 at last. I had heard that the most dreadful stammerers 
 enunciate as easily as anybody else when they sing, because 
 the measured swing of the time keeps them steady. My 
 heart sank as I thought of the Voice so mutilated ! Poor 
 young peer! Was this to be the end of all my beautiful 
 visions ? 
 
 " As cheerfully as I could I cut short his sibilations. 
 
 " Oh, that's all right, then,' I said. * Then I may put 
 you down for a couple of items ? ' 
 
 "He shook his head and held up his hands deprecat 
 ingly.
 
 THE PRINCESS OF PORTMAN SQUARE 397 
 
 "'Anything but that!' he stammered. 'Make me a 
 patron, a committee-man, anything ! I do not sing in 
 pubHc' 
 
 " While he was saying this I thought long and deeply. 
 The affliction was after all less terrible than I had a right 
 to expect, and I knew from the advertisement columns that 
 it was easily curable. Demosthenes, I remembered, had 
 stoned it to death. I felt my love reviving, as I looked 
 into his troubled face, instinct with the double aristocracy 
 of rank and genius. At the worst the singing voice was 
 unaffected by the disability — and as for the conversational, 
 well, there was consolation in the prospect of having the 
 last word, while one's husband was still having the first. 
 En attendant, I could have wished him to sing his replies 
 instead of speaking them, for not only should I thus enjoy 
 his glorious voice, but the interchange of ideas would pro- 
 ceed less tardily. However, that would have made him 
 into an operatic personage, and I did not want him to look 
 so ridiculous as all that. 
 
 " It would be tedious to recount our interview at the 
 length it extended to. Suffice it to say that I gained 
 my point. Without letting out that I knew of his theories 
 of art for art's sake, I yet artfully pleaded that, whatever 
 one's views, charity alters cases, inverts everything, justifies 
 anything. 
 
 " ' For instance,' I said, with charming naivete, ' I should 
 not have dared to call on you but in its sacred name.' 
 
 " He agreed to sing two songs — nay, two of his own songs. 
 I was to write to him particulars of time and place. He 
 saw me to the door. I held out my hand, and he took it, 
 and we looked at each other, smiling brightly. 
 
 " ' B — but — I d — d — d — on't know your n — n — n — ame,' 
 be said suddenly. ' P — p — p — rincess what ? '
 
 398 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 "He spoke more fluently, now he had regained his com- 
 posure. 
 
 '' ' Princess,' I answered, my eyes gleaming merrily. 
 'That is all. The Honourable Miss Primpole will give 
 me a character, if you require one.' 
 
 "He laughed — his laugh was like the Voice — and followed 
 me with his eyes as I glided away. 
 
 " I had won my gloves — and in a day. I thought remorse- 
 fully of the poor saga-hero destined to wait a week in sus- 
 pense as to the result. But it was too late to remedy this, 
 and the organisation of the charity concert needed all my 
 thoughts. I was in for it now, and I resolved to carry it 
 through. But it was not so easy as I had lightly assumed. 
 Getting the artistes, of course, was nothing — there are always 
 so many professionals out of work or anxious to be brought 
 out, and so many amateurs in search of amusement. I 
 could have filled the Albert Hall with entertainers. 
 
 " Nor did I anticipate any difficulty in disposing of the 
 tickets. If you are at all popular in society, you can get a good 
 deal of unpopularity by forcing them on your friends. No, 
 the real difficulty about this charity concert was the discovery 
 of an object in aid of which to give it. In my innocence 
 I had imagined that the world was simply bristling with 
 unexploited opportunities for well-doing. Alas, I soon 
 found that philanthropy was an overcrowded profession. 
 There was not a single nook or corner of the universe but 
 had been ransacked by these restless free lances — not a gap, 
 not a cranny, but had been filled up. In vain I explored 
 the map, in the hopes of lighting on some undiscovered 
 hunting-ground in Far Cathay or where the khamsin sweeps 
 the Afric deserts. I found that the wants of the most 
 benighted savages were carefully attended to, and that, 
 even when they had none, they were thoughtfully supplied
 
 THE PRINCESS OF PORTA! AN SQUARE 399 
 
 with them. Anxiously I scanned the newspapers in search 
 of a calamity the sufferers by which I might relieve, but 
 only one happened during that week, and that was snatched 
 from between my very fingers by a lady who had just been 
 through the Divorce Court. In my despair I bethought 
 myself of the preacher I sat under. He was a very hand- 
 some man, and published his sermons by request. 
 
 " I went to him, and I said, ' How is the church?' 
 
 " ' It is all right, thank you,* he said. 
 
 " 'Doesn't it want anything done to it ?' 
 
 " ' No, it is in perfect repair. My congregation is so very 
 good ! ' 
 
 "I groaned aloud. ' But isn't there any improvement that 
 you would like ? ' 
 
 '"The last of the gargoyles was put up last week. 
 Mediaeval architecture is always so picturesque. I have 
 had the entire structure made mediaeval, you know.' 
 
 " ' But isn't the outside in need of renovation ? ' 
 
 " ' What ! When I have just had it made mediaeval ! ' 
 
 " ' But the interior — there must be something defective 
 somewhere ? * 
 
 " * Not to my knowledge.* 
 
 "'But think! think!' I cried desperately. 'The aisles, 
 transept, nave, lectern, pews, chancel, pulpit, apse, porch, 
 altar-cloth?, organ, spire, — is there nothing in need of 
 anything?' 
 
 "He shook his head. 
 
 " ' Wouldn't you like a coloured window to somebody? ' 
 
 " 'AH the windows are taken up. My congregation is so 
 very good.' 
 
 " ' A memorial brass, then ?* 
 
 " He mused. ' There is only one of my flock who has 
 done anything memorable lately.'
 
 400 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " My heart gave a great leap of joy. ' Then why do you 
 neglect him?' I asked indignantly. 'If we do not per- 
 petuate the memory of virtue * 
 
 " ' He's alive,' he interrupted. 
 
 " I bit my lip in vexation. 
 
 " ' I think you need a few more choristers,' I murmured. 
 
 " ' Oh no, we are sending some away.' 
 
 " * The Sunday-school Fund — how is that ? ' 
 
 '* ' I am looking about for a good investment for the sur- 
 plus. Do you know of any ? A good mortgage, perhaps ? ' 
 
 " ' Is there none on the church ? ' I cried, with a flicker of 
 hope, 
 
 ".* Heaven forbid !* 
 
 " I cudgelled my brains frantically. 
 
 " ' What do you think of a lightning-rod ? ' 
 
 " ' A premier necessity. I never preach in a building 
 unprotected by one.' 
 
 *' I made one last wild search. 
 
 ** ' How about a reredos ? ' 
 
 " He looked at me in awful, pained silence. I saw I had 
 stumbled. ' I — I — mean — a new wing,' I stammered. 
 
 " ' I am afraid you are not well this morning,' said the 
 preacher, patting my hand soothingly. ' Won't you come 
 and talk it over — whatever it is — another time ? ' 
 
 " ' No, no,' I cried excitedly. ' It must be settled at once. 
 I have it, A new peal of bells ! ' 
 
 " ' What is the matter with the bells?' he asked anxiously. 
 ' There isn't a single one cracked.' 
 
 " I saw his dubiety, and profited by it. I learnt afterwards 
 it was due to his having no ear of his own. 
 
 "'Cracked! Perhaps not,' I replied, in contemptuous 
 accents. ' But they deserve to be. No wonder the news- 
 papers keep correspondence going on the subject ! '
 
 The pRiNckss OF PortmaN- square 40 1 
 
 " ' Yes ; but what correspondents object to is the bells 
 ringing at all,' 
 
 " ' I don't wonder,' 1 said. ' I don't say your bells are 
 worse than the majority, or that I haven't got a specially 
 sensitive ear for music, but I know that when I hear their 
 harsh clanging, I — I — well, I don't feel inclined to go to 
 church, and that's the truth. I am quite sure if you had a 
 really musical set of chimes, it would increase the spiritu- 
 ality of the neighbourhood.' 
 
 " ' How so ? ' he asked sceptically. 
 
 " ' It would keep down swearing on Sundays.' 
 
 " * Oh ! ' He pondered a moment ; then said, ' But that 
 would be a great expense.' 
 
 " ' Indeed ? I thought bells were cheap.' 
 
 "'Certainly — area bells, hand bells, sleigh bells. But 
 church bells are very costly. There are only a few foundries 
 in the kingdom. But why are you so concerned about my 
 church ? ' 
 
 " * Because I am giving a charity concert, and I should 
 like to devote the proceeds to something,' 
 
 " ' A very exemplary desire. But I fear one bell is the 
 most you could get out of a charity concert.' 
 
 " I looked disappointed. ' What a pity ! It would have 
 been such a nice precedent — to improve the tone of the 
 church. The "constant readers" would have had to cease 
 their letters.' 
 
 "'No, no, impossible. A "constant reader" seems to 
 be so called because he is a constant writer.' 
 
 " ' But there might have been leaders about it.' 
 
 " ' Hardly sensational enough for that. Stay, I have an 
 idea. In the beautiful ages of faith, when a church bell 
 was being cast, the pious used to bring silver vessels to be 
 fused with the bell-metal in the furnace, so as to give the 
 
 2c
 
 46i THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 boll a finer tone. A mediaeval practice is always so poetical. 
 
 Perhaps I could revive it. My congregation is so very 
 
 good.' 
 
 " ' Good ! ' I echoed, clapping my hands. 
 " ' But a concert will not suffice— we shall need a bazaar,' 
 
 said the preacher. 
 
 *' ' Oh, but I must have a 
 concert ! ' 
 
 " • Certainly. Bazaars in- 
 clude concerts.' 
 
 "That was how the Great 
 Church Bazaar originated, and 
 how the Rev. Melitos Smith 
 came to resurrect the beauti- 
 ful medieval custom that 
 brought him so much kudos, 
 and extracted such touching 
 sentiments from hardened 
 journalists. The bazaar lasted 
 a week, and raised a number 
 of ladies in the social scale, 
 and married off three of my 
 girl friends, and cut me off the 
 visiting hst of the Duchess of 
 Dash. She was pining for a 
 chance of coming out in a 
 comic opera chanson, but, 
 this being a church bazaar, I 
 couldn't allow her to kick up her heels. 
 
 " Everything could be bought at that bazaar, from photo- 
 graphs of the Rev. Melitos Smith to impracticable mouse- 
 traps, from bread and cheese to kisses. There were endless 
 side-shows, and six gipsy girls scattered about the rooms, so 
 
 HOW THE DUCHESS WANTED 
 TO APPEAR.
 
 THE PRINCESS OF' POliTMAM SQUARE 403 
 
 that you could have your fortune told in six different ways. 
 I should not like to say how much that bazaar cost me 
 when the bill for the bells came in ; but then Lord Arthur 
 sang daily in the concert hall, and I could also deduct the 
 price of the pair of gloves Captain Athelstan gave me. Yox 
 the Captain honourably stood the loss of his wager, — nay 
 more, cheerfully accepted his defeat, and there on the spot 
 — before the portrait of another gentleman — offered to 
 enlist in the bazaar. And very useful he proved, too. We 
 had to be together, organising it, nearly all day, and I don't 
 know what I should have done without him. I don't know 
 what his regiment did without him, but then I have never 
 been able to find out when our gallant officers do their 
 work. They seem always to be saving it up for a rainy day. 
 
 " I was never more surprised in my life than when, on 
 the last night of the bazaar-boom, amid the buzz of a brisk 
 wind-up. Lord Arthur and Captain Athelstan came into the 
 little presidential sanctum which had been run up for me, 
 and requested a special interview. 
 
 " ' I can give you five minutes,' I said, for I felt my finger 
 was on the pulse of the bazaar, and my time correspond- 
 ingly important. 
 
 "They looked grateful, then embarrassed. Captain Athel- 
 stan opened his mouth — and closed it 
 
 " * You had better tell her ! ' he said nervously to Lord 
 Arthur. 
 
 •' ' N-n-no, y_y-y_y ' 
 
 " ' What is it, Captain Athelstan ? ' I interrupted pointedly, 
 for I had only five minutes. 
 
 " ' Princess, we both love you,* began the Captain, blush- 
 ing like a hobbledehoy, and rushing in niedias res. I 
 allowed them to call me Princess, because it was not my 
 Christian name.
 
 404 
 
 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " ' Gentlemen ! ' I expostulated wearily, * is this the 
 time, when I am busy feeling the pulse of the bazaar ? ' 
 
 " ' You gave us five minutes,' pleaded the Captain, deter- 
 mined to do or die, now he was in the thick of it. 
 
 > n|V>^«'fe..to '"^^ 
 
 BAZAAR PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 " ' Go on,' I said. ' I will forgive you everything — even 
 your love of me — if you are only brief.'
 
 THE PRINCESS OF PORTMAN SQUARE 405 
 
 " * We both love you. We are great friends. We have no 
 secrets. We told each other. We are doubtful if you love 
 either — or which. We have come together.' 
 
 " He fired off the short sharp sentences as from a six- 
 barrelled revolver. 
 
 " ' Captain Athelstan — Lord Arthur,' I said, ' I am deeply 
 touched by the honour you have done your friendship and 
 me. I will be equally frank — and brief — with you. I can- 
 not choose either of you, because I love you both. Like 
 every girl, I formed an ideal of a lover. I have been for- 
 tunate in finding my ideal in the flesh. I have been 
 unfortunate in finding it in two pieces. Fate has bisected 
 it, and given the form to one and the voice to the other. 
 My ideal looks like you, Captain Athlestan, and sings like 
 you, Lord Arthur. It is a stupid position, I know, and I 
 feel like the donkey between two bundles of hay. But, 
 under the circumstances, I have no choice.' 
 
 "They looked at each other half-rapturously, half-despair- 
 ingly. 
 
 " * Then what's to be done ? ' cried the Captain. 
 
 " ' I don't know,' I said hopelessly. ' Love seems not 
 only blind, but a blind alley this time.' 
 
 " ' D — d — d' you m — m — mean,' asked Lord Arthur : 
 
 ' How happy could I be with either, were t'other dear charmer away?' 
 
 " I was glad he sang it, because it precipitated matters. 
 
 " ' That is the precise position,' I admitted. 
 
 " ' Oh then, Arthur, my boy, I congratulate you,' said the 
 Captain huskily. 
 
 " ' N — n — no, I'll g — g — go away,' said the singer. 
 
 " They wrangled for full ten minutes, but the position 
 remained a block. 
 
 "'Gentlemen,' I interposed, 'if either of you had con-
 
 4o6 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 sented to accept the other's sacrifice, the problem would 
 have been solved ; only 1 should have taken the other. But 
 two self-sacrifices are as bad as none.' 
 
 "'Then let us toss up, Princess,' said the Captain 
 impulsively. 
 
 " ' Oh no ! ' I cried, with a shudder. ' Submit my life to 
 the chances of head or tail ! It would make me feel like a 
 murderess, with you for gentlemen of the jury.' 
 
 "A painful silence fell upon the sanctum; unwitting of 
 the tragedy playing within, all the fun of the fair went on 
 without. 
 
 " ' Listen,' I said at last. * I will be the wife of him who 
 wins me. Chance shall not decide, but prowess. Like the 
 Princesses of eld, I will set you a task. Whoever accom- 
 plishes it, shall win my hand.' 
 
 " ' Agreed ! ' they said eagerly, though not simultaneously. 
 
 "'Ah, but what shall it be?' I murmured. 
 
 " ' Why not a competition ? ' suggested the Captain. 
 
 "'Very well, a competition — provided you promise to 
 fight fair, and not play into each other's hands.' 
 
 "They promised; and together we excogitated and rejected 
 all sorts of competitions. The difficulty was to find some- 
 thing in which each would have a f^iir chance. At length 
 we arranged that they should play a game of chess, the 
 winner to be mated. They agreed it would be a real 
 ' match-game.' The five minutes had by this time lasted 
 half-an-hour, so I dismissed them and hastened to feel the 
 pulse of the bazaar, which was getting more and more 
 feverish as the break-up drew nigh. 
 
 " They played the game in Lord Arthur's study. Lord 
 Arthur was 'white' and the Captain 'black.' Everything 
 was fair and above-board. But they played rather slowly. 
 Every evening I sent the butler over to make inquiries.
 
 THE PRINCESS OF PORTMAN SQUARE 407 
 
 "'The Princess's compliments,' he was told to say, 'and 
 how is it to-day ? ' 
 
 " ' It is getting on,' they told him, and he came back with 
 a glad face. He was a kind soul, despite his calves, — and 
 he thought there was a child dying. 
 
 "Once a week I used to go over and look at it. Ostensibly 
 I called in connection with the bazaar accounts. I could 
 not see any difference in the position from one week's end 
 to another. There seemed to be a clump of pawns in the 
 middle, with all the other pieces looking idly on ; there was 
 no thoroughfare anywhere. 
 
 " They told me it always came like that when you played 
 cautiously. They said it was the French opening. I could 
 not see any opening anywhere; it certainly was not the 
 English way of fighting. Picture my suspense during those 
 horrible weeks ! 
 
 " ' Is this the way all match-games are played ? ' I said once. 
 
 "'N— n— o!' admittted Lord Arthur. 'We for— 
 g — g — g — ot to p— p — p — ut a t — t — t — t — t — t — ime- 
 limit.' 
 
 " ' What's the time-limit ? ' I asked the Captain, wishing 
 my singer could learn to put one to his sentences. 
 
 " ' So many moves must be made in an hour — usually 
 fifteen. Otherwise the younger champion would always 
 win, merely by outliving the elder. We forgot to include 
 that condition.' 
 
 "At length our butler brought back word that ' it couldn't 
 last much longer.' His face was grave, and he gave the 
 message in low tones. 
 
 " ' What a blessing 1 It's been lingering long enough ! I 
 wish they would polish it off !' I murmured fretfully. After 
 that I frequently caught him looking at me as if I were 
 Lucrezia Borgia.
 
 4o8 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 *' The end came suddenly. 
 
 "The butler went across to make the usual inquiry. He 
 returned, with a foolish face of horror, and whispered, ' It 
 is all over. It has been drawn by perpetual check ! ' 
 
 " * Great heavens ! ' I cried. My consternation was so 
 manifest that he forgave the utterance of a peevish moment. 
 I put on my nicest hat at once and went over. We held a 
 council of war afresh, 
 
 " ' Let's go by who catches the biggest trout,' suggested 
 the Captain. 
 
 " ' No,' I said, ' I will not be angled for. Besides, the 
 biggest is not grammatical. It should be the bigger.' 
 
 " Thus reproved, the Captain grew silent, and we came 
 to a deadlock once more. I gave up the hunt at last. 
 
 " 'I think the best plan will be for you both to go away 
 and travel. Go round the world, see fresh faces, try to 
 forget me. One of you will succeed.' 
 
 " ' But suppose we both succeed ? ' asked the Captain. 
 
 " * That would be more awkward than ever,' I admitted. 
 
 " * And if neither succeed ? ' asked Lord Arthur at some 
 length. 
 
 "*I should say neither succeeds,' I remarked severely. 
 ' Neither takes a singular verb.' 
 
 " ' Pardon me,' said Lord Arthur, with some spirit. * The 
 plurality is merely apparent. "Succeed" is subjunctive 
 after " if." ' 
 
 " ' Ah, true ! ' I said. * Then suppose you go round the 
 world, and I give my hand to whoever comes back and 
 proposes to me first ? ' 
 
 " ' Something like the men in Jules Verne ! ' cried the 
 Captain. ' Glorious ! ' 
 
 " ' Except that it can be done quicker now, ' I said. 
 
 " Lord Arthur fell in joyously with the idea, which was
 
 THE PRINCESS OF PORTMAN SQUARE 409 
 
 a godsend to me, for the worry of having about you two 
 men whom you love, and who love you, cannot be easily 
 conceived by those who have not been through it. They, 
 too, were pining away, and felt the journey would do them 
 good. Captain Athelstan applied for three months' fur- 
 lough. He was to put a girdle round the earth from West 
 to East ; Lord Arthur, from East to West. It was thought 
 this would work fairly — as, whatever advantages one out- 
 going route had over the other would be lost on the return. 
 Each drew up his scheme and prepared his equipment. 
 The starting-point was to be my house, and, consequently, 
 this was also the goal. After forty-eight days had passed 
 (the minimum time possible), I was to remain at home day 
 and night, awaiting the telegram which was to be sent the 
 moment either touched English soil again. On the receipt 
 of the telegram I was to take up my position at the front 
 window of the ground floor, with a white rose in my hair to 
 show I was still unwon, and to wait there day and night 
 for the arrival of my offer of marriage, which I was not to 
 have the option of refusing. During the race they were not 
 to write to me. 
 
 " The long-looked-for day of their departure duly arrived. 
 
 "Two hansoms were drawn up, side by side, in front of 
 the house. A white rose in my hair, I sat at the window. 
 A parting smile, a wave of my handkerchief, and my lovers 
 were off. In an instant they were out of sight. 
 
 "For a month they were out of mind too. After the 
 exhausting emotions I had undergone, this period of my life 
 was truly halcyon. I banished my lovers from my memory, 
 and enjoyed what was left of the season and of my girlish 
 freedom. In two months I should be an affianced wife, 
 and it behoved me to make the best of my short span of 
 spinsterhood. The season waned, fashion drifted to Cowes ;
 
 41 o THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 I was left alone in empty London. Then my thoughts 
 sauntered back to the two travellers. As day followed day, 
 my anxiety and curiosity mounted proportionately. The 
 forty-eight days went by, but there was no wire. They 
 passed slowly — oh, so slowly — into fifty, while I waited, 
 waited, from dawn to midnight, with ears pricked up, for 
 that double rat-tat which came not, or which came about 
 something else. The sands of September dribbled out, 
 and my fate still hung in the balance. I went about the 
 house like an unquiet spirit. 
 
 " In imagination I was seeing those two men sweeping 
 towards me — one from the East of the world, one from the 
 West. And there I stood, rooted to the spot, while from 
 either side a man was speeding inevitably towards me, 
 across oceans and continents, through canals and tunnels, 
 along deserts or rivers, pressing into his service every human 
 and animal force, and every blind energy that man had 
 tamed. To my fevered imagination I seemed to be be- 
 tween the jaws of a leviathan, which were closing upon me 
 at a terrific rate, yet which took days and days to snap 
 together, so wide were they apart, so gigantic was the 
 monster. Which of the jaws would touch me first? 
 
 "The fifties mounted into the sixties, but there was no 
 telegram. The tension became intolerable. Again and 
 again I felt tempted to fly, but a lingering sense of honour 
 kept me to my post. 
 
 " On the sixty-first day my patience was rewarded. Sitting 
 at my window one morning, I saw a telegraph boy saunter- 
 ing along. He reached the gate. He paused. I rushed 
 to the door and down the steps, seized the envelope, and 
 tore it frantically open : 
 
 "Coming, but suppose all over. — Arthur, 
 
 1
 
 THE PRINCESS OF PORTMAN SQUARE 411 
 
 " I leaned against the gate, half fainting. When I returned 
 to my room, I read the wire again, and noted it had been 
 handed in at Liverpool. In four or five hours at most I 
 should cease to belong to myself. I communicated the 
 news to the Honourable Miss Primpole, who congratulated 
 me cordially. She made no secret of her joy that the 
 nobleman had won. For my part I was still torn with con- 
 flicting emotions. Now that I knew it was to be the one, 
 I hankered after the other. Yet in the heart of the 
 storm there was peace, in the thought that the long suspense 
 was over. I ordered a magnificent repast to be laid for the 
 home-coming voyager, which would also serve to celebrate 
 our betrothal. The Honourable Miss Primpole consented 
 to grace the board, and the butler to surrender the choicest 
 vintages garnered in my father's cellar. 
 
 " Two hours and a half dragged by ; then there came 
 another wire. I opened it with some curiosity, but as my 
 eye caught the words I almost swooned with excitement. 
 It ran : 
 
 *' Arrived, but presume too late. — Athelstan. 
 
 *' With misty vision I strove to read the place of despatch. 
 It was Dover. A great wave of hope surged in my bosom. 
 My saga-hero might yet arrive in time. Half-frenziedly I 
 turned over the leaves of Bradshaw. No ; after sending 
 that wire he would just have missed the train to Victoria ! 
 Cruel ! cruel ! But stay ! there was another route. He 
 might have booked for Charing Cross. Yes ! Heaven be 
 praised ! If he did that he would just catch a train. And 
 of course he would do that — surely he would have planned 
 out every possibility while crossing the Channel, have 
 arranged for all — my Captain, my blue-eyed Berserker ! 
 But then Lord Arthur had had two and a half hours' start.
 
 412 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 I turned to Liverpool, and essayed to discover whether 
 that was sutficient to balance the difterence of the two dis- 
 tances from London. Alas ! my head swam before I had 
 travelled two stations. There were no less than four routes 
 — to Euston, to St. Pancras, to King's Cross, to Paddington! 
 Still I made out that if he had kept his head very clear, 
 and been verj', very fortunate, he might just get level with 
 the Captain. But then on a longer route the chances of 
 accidental delays were more numerous. On the whole the 
 odds were decidedly in favour of the Captain. But one 
 thing was certain — that they would both arrive in time for 
 supper. I ordered an additional cover to be laid, then I 
 threw myself upon a couch and tried to read. But I could 
 not. Terrible as was the strain, my thoughts refused to be 
 distracted. The minutes crawled along — gradually peace 
 came back, as I concluded that only by a miracle could 
 Lord Arthur win. At last I jumped up with a start, for 
 the shades of evening were falling, and my toilette was yet 
 to make. I dressed myself in a dainty robe of white, 
 trimmed with sprays of wild flowers, and I stuck the white 
 rose in my hair — the symbol that I was yet unasked in 
 wedlock, the white star of hope to the wayworn w\inderer ! 
 I did my best to be the fairest sight the travellers should 
 have seen in all the world. 
 
 " The Honourable Miss Primpole started when she 
 saw me. 'What have you been doing to yourself. 
 Princess?' she said. 'You're lovelier than I ever 
 dreamed.' 
 
 "And indeed the crisis had lent a flush to my cheek and a 
 flash to my eye which I would not willingly repay. IMy 
 bosom rose and fell with excitement In half-an-hour I 
 should be in my saga-hero's arms ! 
 
 " I went down to the ground-floor front, and seated myself
 
 THE PRINCESS OF PORTMAN SQUARE 413 
 
 at the open window, and gazed at the Square and the fiery 
 streaks of sunset in the sky. 
 
 "The Honourable Miss Primpole lay upon an ottoman, 
 less excited. Every now and again she asked : 
 
 " ' Do you see anything, Princess ? ' 
 
 "'Nothing,' I answered. 
 
 " Of course she did not take my answer literally. Several 
 times cabs and carriages rattled past the window, but with 
 no visible intention of drawing up. Duskier, duskier grew 
 the September evening, as I sat peering into the twilight. 
 
 " ' Do you see anything, Princess ? ' 
 
 " ' Nothing.' 
 
 " A moment after a hansom came dashing into sight — a 
 head protruded from it. I uttered a cry and leant forward, 
 straining my eyes. 
 
 " Captain Athelstan ! 
 
 " Yes ! No ! No ! Yes ! No ! NO ! 
 
 " Will it be believed that (such is the heart of woman) I 
 felt a sensation of relief on finding the issue still postponed ? 
 For, in the moment when the Captain seemed to flash upon 
 my vision, it was borne in upon me like a chilling blast 
 that I had lost my Voice. Never would that glorious 
 music swell for me as I sat alone with my husband in the 
 gloaming. 
 
 " The fiery streaks of sunset faded into grey ashes. 
 
 " ' Do you see anything. Princess ? 
 
 " ' Nothing.' 
 
 " Even as I spoke I heard the gallop of hoofs in the 
 quiet Square, and, half paralysed by the unexpected vision, 
 I saw Lord Arthur dashing furiously up on horseback — Lord 
 Arthur, bronzed and bearded and travel-stained, but Lord 
 Arthur beyond a doubt. He took off his hat and waved it 
 frantically in the air when he caught sight of my white
 
 414 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 figure, with the white rose of promise nesthng in my hair. 
 My poor saga-hero ! 
 Ill 
 
 _ tnj^iVC^E 
 
 Erie 
 
 \ 
 
 a 
 
 AT THE WINNING-POST. 
 
 " He reined in his beautiful steed before my window, 
 and commenced his proposal breathlessly :
 
 7 HE PRINCESS OF PORTA! AN SQUARE 415 
 
 "Even Mr. Gladstone, if he had been racing as madly 
 as Lord Arthur, might well have been flustered in his 
 speech, 
 
 *' The poor singer could not get out the first word, try as 
 he would. At last it came out like a soda-water cork, and 
 *jw/' with it. But at the 'be' there was— oh, dire to tell 
 — another stoppage. 
 
 " ' B—b—b—b—b ' 
 
 " ' Fire ! fire ! Hooray ! ' The dull roar of an advan- 
 cing crowd burst suddenly upon our ears, mingled with 
 the more piercing exultation of small boys. The thunderous 
 clatter of the fire-engine seemed to rock the soil of the 
 Square. 
 
 " But neither of us took eyes off the other. 
 
 " * j9^ / ' It was out at last. The end was near. In 
 another second I should say ' Yes.' 
 
 *' * Fire ! fire ! ' shrieked the small boys, 
 
 *' ' M—m — jii—y.' 
 
 " Lord Arthur's gallant steed shifted uneasily. The fire 
 engine was thundering down upon it. 
 
 " ' IV—w—w ' 
 
 " * Will you be ' The clarion notes of the Ca))tain 
 
 rang out above the clatter of the fire-engine, from which he 
 madly jumped. 
 
 ^ -^ ; the two travellers exclaimed together. 
 '''Mine?' \ ^ 
 
 " ' Dead heat,' I murmured, and fell back in a dead 
 
 faint. My overwrought nerves could stand no more. 
 
 Nevertheless it was a gay supper-party; the air was 
 thick with travellers' tales, and the butler did not spare the 
 champagne. We could not help being tickled by the
 
 4l6 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 quaint termination of the colossal globe-trotting competition ; 
 and we soothed Lord Arthur's susceptibilities by declaring 
 that if he had only remembered the shorter proposal formula 
 employed by his rival, he would have won by a word. It 
 was a pure fluke that the Captain was able to tie, for he had 
 not thought of telegraphing for a horse, but had taken a 
 hansom at the station, and only exchanged to the fire- 
 engine when he heard people shouting there was a fire 
 in Seymour Street. Lord Arthur obliged five times during 
 the evening, and the Honourable Miss Primpole relaxed 
 more than ever before, and accompanied him on the banjo. 
 Before we parted I had been persuaded by my lovers to 
 give them one last trial. That night three months I was to 
 give another magnificent repast, to which they were both to 
 be invited. During the interval each was to do his best to 
 become famous, and at the supper-party I was to choose 
 the one who was the more widely known throughout the 
 length and breadth of the kingdom. They were to place 
 before me what proofs and arguments they pleased, and I 
 was to decide whose name had penetrated to the greater 
 number of people. There was to be no appeal from my 
 decision, nor any limitation to what the candidates might 
 do to force themselves upon the universal consciousness, so 
 long as they did not merely advertise themselves at so much 
 a column or poster. They could safely be trusted not to 
 do anything infamous in the attempt to become famous, 
 and so there was no need to impose conditions. I had a 
 secret hope that Lord Arthur might thus be induced to 
 bring his talents before the world and get over his objection 
 to the degradation of public appearances. My hope was 
 more than justified. I grieve to say that neither strove to 
 benefit his kind. His lordship went on the music-hall stage, 
 made up as a costermonger, and devoted his wonderful
 
 THE PRINCESS OF PORTMAN SQUARE 
 
 417 
 
 voice and his musical genius to singing a Cockney ballad, 
 with a chorus consisting of the words, ' Ba, ba, ba, boodle- 
 dee,' repeated sixteen times. It caught on like a first-class 
 epidemic — ' Ba, ba, ba, boodle dee ' microbes floated in 
 every breeze. The cholera-chorus raged from Piccadilly 
 Circus to Land's End, from Kensington to John O Groat's. 
 The swarthy miners 
 hewed the coal to it ; 
 it dropped from pass- 
 ing balloons ; the sailors 
 manned the capstan 
 to it, and the sound of 
 it superseded fog- 
 horns. Duchesses 
 danced to it, and 
 squalid infants cried 
 for it. Divines with 
 difficulty kept it out of 
 their sermons ; philo- 
 sophers drew weighty 
 lessons from it ; critics 
 traced its history ; and, 
 as it didn't mean any- 
 thing, the greatest 
 Puritans hummed it 
 inaccurately. * Ba, ba, 
 ba, boodle-dee,' sang 
 Lord Arthur nightly at 
 six halls and three theatres, incidentally clearing off all the 
 debts on the family estates ; and, like a flock of sheep, the 
 great British public took up the bleat, and in every hall and 
 drawing-room blossomed the big pearl buttons of the 
 Cockney costermonger. 
 
 2d 
 
 
 m 
 
 BA, BA, BA, BOOnLE-DEE.
 
 4iS THE CELlBATkS' CLUB 
 
 "But Captain Athelstan came to the front far more 
 easily, if less profitably. He sent a testimonial to the 
 Perfect Cure Elixir. The Elixir was accustomed to testi- 
 monials from the suffering millions. The spelling had 
 generally to be corrected before they were fit for publication. 
 It also received testimonials which were useless, such as, ' I 
 took only one bottle of your Elixir, and I got fourteen days.' 
 But a testimonial from a Captain of the Guards was a gold 
 mine. The Captain was the best name the Elixir had ever 
 had ; and he had enjoyed more diseases than it had ever 
 professed to cure. Astonished by its own success, the 
 Elixir resolved to make a big spurt and kill off all its rivals. 
 
 " For the next few months. Captain Athelstan was rammed 
 down the throats of all England. He came with the 
 morning milk, in all the daily papers; he arrived by the 
 first post in a circular ; he stared at people from every dead 
 wall when they went out to business ; he was with them 
 at lunch in little plaques and placards in every restaurant ; 
 he nodded at them in every bar; ro.le with them in every 
 train and tram-car, either on the wall or on the back of the 
 ticket ; joined them at dinner in the evening papers, and 
 supplied the pipe-lights after the meal ; you took up a 
 magazine, and found he had slipped between the sheets ; 
 you went to bed, and his diseased figure haunted your 
 dreams. Life lost its sweetness, literature its charm. The 
 loathsome phantasm of the complexly-afflicted Captain got 
 between you and the sunshine. Stiff examination papers 
 (compiled from the Captain) were set at every breakfast 
 table, and you were sternly interrogated as to whether you 
 felt an all-gone sensation at the tip of your nose, and you 
 were earnestly adjured to look up your old diseases. You 
 began to read an eloquent description of the Alps, and lo I 
 there was the Captain perched on top. You started a
 
 THE PRINCESS OF PORTMAN SQUARE 419 
 
 thrilling story of the sea, and the Captain bobbed up from 
 the bottom. You began a poetical allegory concerning 
 the Valley of the Shadow, and you found the Captain had 
 been living there all his life — till he came upon the Elixir. 
 A little innocent child remarked, ' Pater, it is almost bath 
 time,' and you felt for your handkerchief in view of a 
 touching domestic idyll ; but the Captain froze your tears. 
 'Why have sunstroke in India?' you were asked; and the 
 Captain supplied the answer. Something came like a thiet 
 in the night ; it was the Captain. You were startled to see 
 that there was ' a blight over all creation,' but it turned 
 out to be only the Captain. Everything abutted on the 
 Captain— Shakespeare and the musical glasses, the Venus 
 of Milo and the ' Mikado ' \ day and night and all the 
 seasons, the potato harvest and the Durham coal strike, the 
 advantages of early rising and the American Copyright Act. 
 He was at the bottom of every passage, he lurked in every 
 avenue, he was at the end of every perspective. I'he whole 
 world was familiar with his physical symptoms, and his sad 
 history. The exjjloits of Julius Caesar were but a blur in 
 the common mind, but everybody knew that the Captain's 
 skin grew Gobelin blue ; that the whites of his eyes turned 
 L;reen ; that his tongue stuck in his cheek ; and that the 
 rest of his organism behaved with corresponding gruesome- 
 ness. Everybody knew how 'they dropped off, petrified 
 by my breath ' ; and how his sympathetic friends told him 
 in large capitals, 
 
 'VOU WILL NEVER GET BETTER, CAPTAIN'; 
 
 and how his weeping mother, anxious to soothe his last 
 hours, remarked, in reply to his request for another box of 
 somebody else's pills, ' The only box you'll ever want will 
 be a coffin'; how 'he thought it was only cholera,' but
 
 420 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 how one dose of the EHxir (which new-born babies clamoured 
 for in preference to their mother's milk) had baffled all 
 their prognostications and made him a celebrity for life. 
 
 "In private the Captain said that he really had these 
 ailments, though he only discovered the fact when he read 
 the advertisements of the Elixir. But the mess had an 
 inkling that it was all done for a wager, and christened him 
 'The Perfect Cure.' To me he justified himself on the 
 ground that he had scrupulously described himself as 
 having his tongue in his cheek, and that he really suffered 
 from love-sickness, which was worse than all the ills the 
 Elixir cured. 
 
 " I need scarcely say that I was shocked by my lovers' 
 practical methods of acquiring that renown for which so 
 many gifted souls have yearned in vain, though I must 
 admit that both gendemen retained sufficient sense of 
 decorum to be revolted by the other's course of action. 
 They remonstrated with each other gently but firmly. 
 
 "The result was that their friendship snapped, and a 
 week before the close of the competition they crossed the 
 Channel to fight a duel. I got to hear of it in time, and 
 wired to Boulogne that if they killed each other, I would 
 marry neither ; that if only one survived, I would never 
 marry my lover's murderer; and that a duel excited so 
 much gossip, that, if both survived, they would be equally 
 famous and the competition again a failure. 
 
 " These simple considerations prevented any mishap. The 
 Captain returned to his regiment, and Lord Arthur went on 
 to the Riviera to while away the few remaining days, and 
 to get extra advertisement out of not appearing at his halls 
 through indisposition. At Monte Carlo he accidentally 
 broke the bank, and explained his system to the inter- 
 viewers.
 
 THE PRINCESS OF PORT MAN SQUARE 421 
 
 " To my chagrin, for I was tired of see-sawing, this brought 
 him level with the Captain again. I had been prepared to 
 adjudicate in favour of the latter, on the ground that 
 although 'Ba, ba, ba, boodle-dee' was better known 
 than the Patent Cure Elixir, yet the originator of the song 
 remained unknown to many to whom the Captain was a 
 household word, and this in despite of the extra attention 
 secured to Lord Arthur by his rank. The second supper- 
 party was again sicklied over with the pale cast of thought. 
 ' No more competitions ! ' I said. ' You seem destined to 
 tie with each other instead of with me. I will return to 
 my original idea. I will give you a task which it is not 
 likely both will perform. I will marry the man who asks 
 me, provided he comes to me neither walking nor riding, 
 neither sailing nor driving, neither skating nor sliding nor 
 flying, neither by boat nor by balloon nor by bicycle, 
 neither by swimming nor by floating, nor by anybody 
 carrying or dragging or pushing him, neither by any move- 
 ment of hand or foot nor by any extraordinary method 
 whatever. Till this is achieved neither of you must look 
 upon my face again.' 
 
 " They looked aghast when I set the task. They went 
 away, and I have not seen them from that day to this. I 
 shall never marry now, so I may as well devote myself to 
 the cause of the Old Maids you are so nobly championing." 
 
 She rolled up the MS. 
 
 " But," said Lillie excitedly, breaking in for the first 
 time, " what is the way you want them to come ? " 
 
 The Princess laughed a silvery laugh. 
 
 " No way. Don't you understand ? It was a roundabout 
 way of saying I was tired of them." 
 
 " Oh ! " said LiUie. 
 
 " You see I got the idea from a fairy tale," said the
 
 422 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Princess. " There the doer evaded the conditions by being 
 dragged at a horse's tail. I have guarded against this, so 
 that now the thing is impossible." 
 
 Again her mischievous laughter rang through the misan- 
 thropic room. 
 
 Lillie smiled too. She felt certain Lord Silverdale would 
 find no flaw in the Princess's armour, and she was exultant 
 at so auspicious an accession. For the sake of formality, 
 however, she told her that she would communicate her 
 election by letter. 
 
 The next day a telegram came to the Club : " Compelled 
 to withdraw candidature. Feat accomplished. — Princess, 
 Hotel Metropole, Brighton.'' 
 
 Equally aghast and excited, Lillie wired back : " How ? " 
 and prepaid the reply. 
 
 '■' Lover happened to be here. Came 2ip in lift as I was 
 waiti?ig to go down." 
 
 Still intensely piqued by curiosity and vexation, Lillie 
 telegraphed : " Which .?" 
 
 ^^ Leave you to guess,'' answered the electric current. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE GRAMMAR OF LOVE 
 
 The Moon man's name was Wilkins, and he did nine-tenths 
 of the interviews in that model of the new journalism. 
 Wilkins was the man to catch the weasel asleep, hit off 
 his features with a kodak, and badger him the moment he 
 awoke as to why he went pop. Wilkins lived in a flat in 
 Chancery Lane, and had his whiskey and his feet on the
 
 THE GRAMMAR Of LOVE 423 
 
 table when Silverdale turned the handle of the door in the 
 twilight. 
 
 " What do you want?" said VVilkins gruffly. 
 
 " I have come to ask you a few questions," said Silver- 
 dale politely. 
 
 '• But I don't know you, sir," said Wilkins stiffly. " Don't 
 you see I'm busy? " 
 
 " It is true lama stranger ; but remember, sir, I shall 
 not be so when I leave. I just want to interview you about 
 I hat paragraph in the Moon, stating " 
 
 " Look here ! " roared Wilkins, letting his feet slide from 
 the table with a crash. " Let me tell you, sir, I have no 
 time to listen to your impertinence. My leisure is scant 
 and valuable. I am a hard -worked man. I can't be 
 pestered with questions from inquisitive busybodies. What 
 next, sir ? What I write in the Moon is my business and 
 nobody else's. Damn it all, sir, is there to be nothing 
 private ? Are you going to poke and pry into the concerns 
 of the very journalist ? No, sir, you have wasted your time 
 as well as mine. We never allow the public to go behind 
 what appears in our paper." 
 
 " But this is a mere private curiosity- what you tell me 
 shall never be published." 
 
 " If it could be, I wouldn't tell it you. I never waste 
 
 ropy." 
 
 " Tell me — I am willing to pay for the information — who 
 wrote the paragraph about Clorinda Bell and the Old 
 Maids' Club?" 
 
 " Go to the devil ! " roared Wilkins. 
 
 "I thought you would know more than he," said Silver- 
 dale, and left. Wilkins came down-stairs on his heels in a 
 huff, and walked towards Ludgate Hill. Silverdale thought 
 he would have another shot, and followed him unseen. The
 
 424 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 two men jumjied into a train, and after an endless-seeming 
 journey arrived at the Crystal Palace. A monster balloon 
 was going off from the grounds. Herr Nickeldorf, the 
 great aeronaut, was making in solitude an experimental 
 night excursion to Calais, as if anxious to meet his fate by 
 moonlight alone. Wilkins rushed up to Nickeldorf, who 
 was standing among the ropes giving directions. 
 
 " Go avay ! " said Nickeldorf, when he saw him, " I haf 
 noding to say to you. You make me schwitzen." He 
 jumped into the car and bade the men let go. 
 
 Ordinarily Wilkins would have been satisfied with this 
 ample material for half a column, but he was still in a bad 
 temper, and, as the car was sailing slowly upwards, he 
 jumped in, and the aeronaut gave himself up for pumped. 
 In an instant, moved by an irresistible impulse, Silverdale 
 gave a great leap and stood by the Moon man's side. The 
 balloon shot up, and the roar of the crowd became a fainf 
 murmur as the planet flew from beneath their feet. 
 
 " Good evening, Mr. Wilkins," said Lord Silverdale. " I 
 should just like to interview you about " 
 
 " You jackanapes ! " cried the Moon man, pale with 
 anger. " If you don't go away at once, I'll kick you 
 down-stairs." 
 
 " My dear Mr. Wilkins," suavely replied Lord Silver- 
 dale, " I will willingly go down, provided you accompany 
 me. I am sure Herr Nickeldorf is anxious to drop both 
 of us." 
 
 " Gezvissl' replied the aeronaut. 
 
 " Well, lend us a parachute," said Silverdale. 
 
 " No, tanks. Peoples never return parachutes." 
 
 '■ Well, we won't go away without one. I forgot to bring 
 mine with me. I didn't know I was going to have such a 
 high old time." 
 
 #
 
 THE GRAMMAR OF LOVE 425 
 
 " By what right, sir," said Mr. Wilkins, who had been strug- 
 
 "GO away, or r'l.I. KICK VOU DOWN-STAIKS." 
 
 gling with an attaclc of speechlessness, " do you persecute 
 me like this ? You are not a member of the Fourth Estate."
 
 426 THE CELIBATES' CT.UR 
 
 " No, I belong merely to the Second." 
 
 " Eh ? what ?— a Peer ! " 
 
 " I am Lord Silverdale." 
 
 " No, indeed ? Lord Silverdale ! " 
 
 " Lord Silverdale ! " echoed the aeronaut, letting two 
 sand-bags fall into the clouds. Most people lose their 
 ballast in the presence of the aristocracy. 
 
 " Oh, I am so glad ! I have long been anxious to meet 
 your lordship," said the Moon man, taking out his note 
 hook. " What is your lordship's opinion of the best fifty 
 books for the working man's library ? " 
 
 "I have not yet written fifty books." 
 
 "Ah!" said the Moon man, carefully noting down the 
 reply. 
 " And when is your lordship's next book coming out ? " 
 
 " I cannot say." 
 
 "Thank you," said the Moon man, writing it down. 
 " Will it be poetry or prose ? " 
 
 "That is as the critics shall decide." 
 
 "Is it true that your lordship has been converted to 
 Catholicism ? " 
 
 " I believe not." 
 
 " Then how does your lordship account for the rumour?" 
 
 " I have an indirect connection with a sort of new 
 nunnery, which it is proposed to found— the Old Maids' 
 Club." 
 
 " Oh yes, the one that Clorinda Bell is going to join." 
 
 " Nonsense ! who told you she was going to join ? " 
 
 The Moon man winced perceptibly at the question, as he 
 replied indignantly, " Herself ! " 
 
 "Thank you. That's what I wanted to know. Yon 
 may contradict it on the authority of the President. She 
 only said so to get an advertisement "
 
 THE GRAMMAR OF LOVE 427 
 
 "Then why give her two by contradicting it?" 
 
 "That is the woman's cleverness. Let her have the 
 advertisement, rather than that her name should be con- 
 nected with Miss Dulcimer's." 
 
 "Very well. Tell me something, please, about the 
 Club?" 
 
 " It is not organised yet. It is to consist of young and 
 beautiful women vowed to celibacy, to remove the reproach 
 of the term ' Old Maid.' " 
 
 " It is a noble idea ! " said the Moon man enthusiastic- 
 ally. "Oh, what a humanitarian time we are having !" 
 
 " Lord Silverdale," said Herr Nickeldorf, who had been 
 listening with all his ears, " I haf to you given de hospit- 
 ality of my balloon. Vill you, in return, take meine Frau 
 into de Old Maids' Club?" 
 
 " As a visitor ? With pleasure, as she is a married 
 
 woman." 
 
 " Nein, nein. I mean as an Old Maid. Ich katni sie 7iicht 
 mehr gebrauchen. I do not require her any longer." 
 
 " Ah, then, I am afraid we can't. You see she isn't an 
 Old Maid ! " 
 
 " But she haf been." 
 
 "Ah, yes, but we do not recognise past services." 
 
 "Oh, warum wasn't de Club founded before I married?" 
 groaned the old German. " Himmel, vat a terrible mistake! 
 It is to her I owe it dat I am de most celebrated aeronaut 
 in der ganzen Welt. It is de only profession in vich I 
 escape her sicker /ich. She haf de Kopf too schwach to rise 
 mit me. Ach, when I com aw/ here, it is Bimmel." 
 
 " Rather taking an unfair rise out of your partner, isn't 
 it?" queried the Moon man, with a sickly smile. 
 
 "And vat vould you haf done in — wjs sagl man — in my 
 bouts?"
 
 428 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 The Moon man winced. 
 
 " Not put them on." 
 
 " You are not yourself married ? '^ 
 
 The Moon man winced, 
 
 " No, I'm only engaged." 
 
 " Mein Herr,^' said the old German solemnly, " I haf 
 noding but drouble from you. You make to me mein 
 life von burden. But I cannot see you going to de altar 
 widout putting out de hand to safe you. It vas dumm to 
 yourself engage at all — but now dat you haf committed de 
 mistake, shtick to it ! " 
 
 " How do you mean ? " 
 
 " Keep yourself engaged. Change not your condition 
 
 any more." He pulled the valveline and relapsed into 
 silence. 
 
 "What do you say, Lord Silverdale?" said the Moon 
 man anxiously. 
 
 " I am hardly an authority. You see I have so rarely 
 been married. It depends on the character of your be- 
 trothed. Does she long to be of service in the world ?" 
 
 The Moon man winced. 
 
 " Yes, that's why she fell in love with me. Thought a 
 Moo}i man must be all noble sentiments like the Moo?i 
 itself!" 
 
 " She is, then, young," said Silverdale musingly. " Is 
 she also beautiful ? " 
 
 The Moon man winced. 
 
 " Bewitching. Why does your lordship ask ? " 
 
 " Because her services might be valuable as an Old 
 Maid." 
 
 "Oh, if you could only get Diana to see it in that 
 light ! " 
 
 " You seem anxious to be rid of iier ? "
 
 THE GRAMMAR OF LOVE 429 
 
 " I do. I confess it. It has been growing on me for 
 some time. You see hers is a soul perpetually seeking 
 more light. She is always asking questions. This thirst 
 for information would be made only more raging by mar- 
 riage. You know what Stevenson says, — 'To marry is to 
 domesticate the Recording Angel.' At present my occu- 
 pations keep me away from her — but she answers my 
 letters with as many queries as a ' Constant Reader.' She 
 wants to know all I say. do, or feel, and I never see her 
 without having to submit to a string of inquiries. It's like 
 having to fill up a census paper once a week. If I don't 
 see her for a fortnight she wants to know how I am the 
 moment we meet. If this is so before marriage, what will 
 it be after, when her opportunities of button-holing me will 
 be necessarily more frequent ? " 
 
 "But I see nothing to complain of in that!" said Lord 
 Silverdale. " Tender solicitude for one's betrothed is the 
 usual thing with those really in love. You wouldn't like her 
 to be indifferent to what you were doing, saying, feeling?" 
 
 The Moon man winced. 
 
 " No, that's just the dilemma of it, Lord Silverdale. I am 
 afraid your lordship does not catch my drift. You see, with 
 another man, it wouldn't matter ; as your lordship says, he 
 would be glad of it. But to me all that sort of thing's ' shop. 
 And I hate 'shop.' It's hard enough to be out interviewing 
 all day, without being reminded of it when you get home and 
 want to put your slippers on the fender and your feet inside 
 them, and be happy. No, if there's one thing in this world 
 I can't put up with, it's 'shop' after business hours. I want 
 to forget that I get my gold in exchange for notes of 
 interrogation. I shudder to be reminded that there are 
 such things in the world as questions — I tremble if I hear 
 a person invert the subject and predicate of a sentence. I
 
 430 7///^' CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 can hardly bear to read poetry, because the frequent inver- 
 sions make the lines look as if they were going to be 
 inquisitive. Now you understand why I was so dis- 
 courteous to your lordship, and I trust that you will pardon 
 the curt expression of my hyper-sensitive feelings. Now, 
 too, you understand why I shrink from the prospect of 
 marriage, to the brink of which I once bounded so heed- 
 lessly. No ; it is evident a life of solitude must be my 
 portion. If I am ever to steep my wearied spirit in forget- 
 fulness of my daily grind, if my nervous system is to be 
 l)reserved from premature break-down, I must have no one 
 about me who has a right of interrogation, and my house- 
 keeper must prepare my meals without even the preliminary 
 'Chop or Steak, sir?' My home-life must be restful, 
 peaceful, balsamic — it must exhale a papaverous aroma of 
 categorical propositions." 
 
 "But is there no way of getting a wife with a gift of 
 categorical conversation ? " 
 
 •' Please say, ' There is no way, etc,' for unless you your- 
 self speak categorically, the sentences grate upon my ear. 
 I can ask questions myself, without experiencing the 
 slightest inconvenience, but the moment I am myself 
 interrogated, every nerve in me quivers with torture. No, 
 I am afraid it is impossible to find a woman who will 
 eschew the interrogative form of proposition, and limit 
 herself to the affirmative and negative varieties ; who will, 
 for mere love of me, invariably place the verb after the 
 noun, and unalterably give the subject the precedence over 
 the predicate. Often and often, when my Diana in all her 
 dazzling charms looks up pleadingly into my face, I feel 
 towards her as Ahasuerus felt towards the suppliant queen 
 Esther, and I yearn to stretch out my reporter's pencil 
 towards her, and to say, ' Ask what you will — even if
 
 THE GRAMMAR OF LOVE 43t 
 
 it be half my income — so long as you do not ask a 
 question.' " 
 
 "But isn't there — I mean there is — such a thing obtain- 
 able as a dumb wife ! " 
 
 " Mutes are for funerals, not for marriages. Besides, then, 
 everybody would be asking me why I married her. No ; 
 the more I think of it, the more I see the futility of my 
 dream of matrimonial felicity. Why, a question lies at the 
 very threshold of marriage — ' Wilt thou have this woman to 
 be thy wedded wife ? ' — and to put up the banns is to 
 loose upon yourself an interviewer in a white tie. No, leave 
 me to my unhappy destiny. I must dree my weird. And 
 anything your lordship can do in the way of enabling me 
 to dree it, by soliciting my Diana into the Old Maids' 
 Club, shall be received with the warmest thanksgiving, and 
 will allow me to remain your lordship's most grateful and 
 obedient servant, Daniel Wilkins." 
 
 " Enough ! " said Lord Silverdale, deeply moved. " 1 
 will send her a circular. But do you really think you 
 would be happy if you lost her ? " 
 
 "If!" said the J/<?(^« man moodily. "It would require 
 
 a great many 'ifs' to make me happy. As I once 
 
 wrote : 
 
 If cash were always present, 
 
 And business always jmid ; 
 If skies were always pleasant, 
 
 And pipes were never laid ; 
 If toothache emigrated, 
 
 Dyspepsia disappeared, 
 And babies were cremated, 
 
 And boys and girls were speared ; 
 If shirts were always creamy, 
 
 And buttons never broke j 
 If eyes were always beamy, 
 
 And all could see a joke ;
 
 432 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 If ladies never fumbled 
 
 At railway-ticket holes ; 
 New villas never crumbled, 
 
 And lawyers boasted souls ; 
 If beer was never swallowed, 
 
 And cooks were never drunk. 
 And trades were never followed, 
 
 And thoughts were never thunk ; 
 If sorrow never troubled, 
 
 And pleasure never cloyed, 
 And animals were doubled. 
 
 And humans all destroyed : — 
 Then—i{ there were no papers, 
 
 And more words rhymed wilh "giving" — 
 Existence might be capers. 
 
 And Hfe be worth the living. 
 
 " Your lordship might give me a poem in exchange," 
 concluded the Moon man conceitedly, "An advance- 
 quote from your next volume, say." 
 
 "Very well." And the peer good-naturedly began to 
 recite the first fytte of an old English romance : 
 
 Ye whyte moon sailed o'er ye dark-blue vault, 
 
 And safelie steered 'mid ye fleet of starres, 
 And threw down smiles to ye antient salt, 
 
 While Venus flyrtede with wynkynge Mars. 
 Along ye sea-washed slipperie slabbes 
 
 Ve whelkes were stretchynge their weary limbs, 
 While prior to going to bedde ye crabbes 
 
 Were softlie chaunting their evenynge hymnes. 
 
 At this point a sudden shock threw both bards off their 
 feet, inverting them in a manner most disagreeable to the 
 Moon man. While they were dropping into poetry, the 
 balloon had been dropping into a wood, and the aeronaut 
 had thrown his grapnel into the branches of a tree. 
 
 " What's the matter ? " they cried. 
 
 " Aiies shtand out here for London !" said the Herr
 
 THE GRAMMAR OF LOVE 433 
 
 phlegmatically, " unless you vant to go mit me to Calais. 
 In five minutes I shall be overgoing de Channel." 
 
 " No, no, put us down," said the Moon man. '* I never 
 could cross the Channel. Oh, when are they going to make 
 that tunnel ? " Thereupon he lowered himself into the 
 tree, and Lord Silverdale followed his example. 
 
 " Gute Nacht ! " said the Herr. " Folkestone should be 
 someveres about. Fortunately, de moon shines, and you 
 may be able to find it ! " 
 
 " I say ! " shrieked the Moof/ man, as the balloon began 
 to free itself on its upward flight, " How far off is it ?" 
 
 " I vill not be — zvie heisst es gkich ? —interviewed. Gute 
 Nacht." 
 
 Soon the great sphere was no bigger than a star in the 
 heavens. 
 
 " This is a nice go," said the Moon man, when they had 
 climbed down. 
 
 "Oh, don't trouble. I know the south-east coast well. 
 There is sure to be a town within a four-mile radius." 
 
 " Then let us take a hansom," said the Moon man. 
 
 "Wilkins, are you — I mean you are — losing your head," 
 said Lord Silverdale. And, linking the interviewer's arm in 
 his, he fared forth into the darkness. 
 
 " Do you know what I thought," said Wilkins, as they 
 undressed in the lonely roadside inn (for ballooning makes 
 us acquainted with strange bed-fellows), " when I was slid- 
 ing down the trunk, with you on the branches above ? " 
 
 " No — what did you — I mean you did think what ! " 
 
 "Well, I'm a bit superstitious, and I saw in the situation 
 a forecast of my future. That tree typifies my genealogical 
 tree ; for when I have grown rich and prosperous by my 
 trade, there will be a peer perched somewhere on the upper 
 branches. Debrett will discover him." 
 
 2e
 
 COMING DOWN KKOM THE CLOUDS.
 
 THE IDYL OF TREPOLPEN 435 
 
 "Indeed, I hope so," said the peer fervently, "for in the 
 happy time when you shall have retired from business you 
 will be able to make Diana happy." 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE IDYL OF TREPOLPEN 
 
 " No, we can't have Diana," the President said, when Lord 
 Silverdale reported the matter. " That is, not if the Moon 
 man breaks off the engagement. According to the rules, 
 the candidate must have herself discarded an advantageous 
 marriage, and that Miss Diana will give up Mr. Wilkins is 
 extremely questionable." 
 
 " Like everything connected with the Moon man's bride. 
 However, my aerial expedition has not been fruitless ; if I 
 have not brought you a member from the clouds, at least 
 we know how right I was to pluck Clorinda Bell." 
 
 " Yes, and how right I was to appoint you Honorary 
 Trier ! " said Lillie. " I have several more candidates for 
 you, chosen from my last batch of applications. While you 
 were in the clouds I was working. I have already inter- 
 viewed them. Tliey fulfil all the conditions. It only 
 remains for you to do your part." 
 
 " Have they given good reasons for their refusal to marry 
 their lovers ? " 
 
 " Excellent reasons. Reasons so strange as to bear the 
 stamp of truth. Here is the first reduced to writing. It is 
 compounded of what Miss Ellaline Rand said to me and of 
 what she left unsaid. Read it, while I put another of these 
 love stories into shape. I am so glad I founded the Old
 
 436 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Maids' Club. It has enlarged my experience incalcul- 
 ably." 
 
 Lord Silverdale took the manuscript, and read : — 
 
 "When John Beveridge went to nurse his misanthropy in 
 the obscure fishing village of Trepolpen, he had not bar- 
 gained for the presence of Ellaline Rand. And yet there 
 she was, living in a queer little cottage on the very top of 
 the steep hill which constituted Trepolpen, and sloped 
 down to a pebbly beach where the dark nets dried and the 
 trawl boats were drawn up. The people she was staying 
 with were children of the soil and the sea — the man, a 
 rugged old fish-dealer who had been a smuggler in his time ; 
 the woman, a chirpy grandame whose eyes were still good 
 enough to allow her to weave lace by lamp-light. The 
 season was early June, and the glittering smile on the broad 
 face of the Atlantic made the roar of the breakers sound 
 like stentorian laughter. There was always a whiff of fish 
 — a blend of mackerel and crabs and mullet — striking up 
 from the beach, but the salt in the air kept the odoriferous 
 atoms fairly fresh. Everything in Trepolpen was delight- 
 fully archaic, and even the far-away suggestions of antiquity 
 about the prevailing piscine flavour seemed in poetic keep- 
 ing with the spirit of the primitive little spot. 
 
 " In a village of one street it is impossible not to live in it, 
 unless you are a coastguard, and then you don't live in the 
 village. This was why John Beveridge was a neighbour of 
 Ellaline's. He lived much lower down, where the laugh of 
 the Atlantic was louder and the scent of the fish was 
 stronger; and before he knew of Ellaline's existence he used 
 to go downhill (which is easy) to smoke his pipe and chat 
 with the trawlers and lie on his back in the sun. After 
 they had met, he grew less lazy and used to take exercise
 
 THE IDYL OF TREPOLPEN 437 
 
 by walking up to the top of the hill. Probably by this 
 time the sea-breezes had given him strength. Sometimes 
 he met EUaline coming down ; which was accident. Then 
 he would turn and walk down with her ] which was design. 
 The manner of their first meeting was novel, but in such a 
 place it could not be long delayed. Beveridge had obeyed 
 a call from the boatmen to come and help them drag in the 
 seine. He was tugging with all his might at a section of 
 the netting, for the fishers seemed to be in luck and the 
 fish unfortunate. Suddenly he heard the pit-pat of light 
 feet running down the hill, and the next moment two little 
 white hands peeping out of white cuffs were gripping the 
 net at the side of his own fleshy brown ones. For some 
 thirty seconds he was content to divine the apparition from 
 the hands. There was a flutter of sweet expectation about 
 his heart, a stirring of the sense of romance. 
 
 " The day was divine. The sky was a brooding blue ; the 
 sea was a rippling play of light on which the seine-boat 
 danced lightly. One little brown sail was visible far out in 
 the bay, the sea-gulls hovering about it. It seemed to 
 Beveridge that the scene had only been waiting for those 
 gentle little hands, whose assistance in the operation 
 of landing the spoil was such a delicious farce. They 
 could be no native lass's, these soft fingers with their pink 
 little nails Hke pretty sea-pearls. They were fingers that 
 spoke (in their mute digital dialect) of the crayon and the 
 violin-bow, rather than of the local harmonium. There was 
 something, too, about the coquettish cuffs, irresistibly at 
 variance with the village Wesleyanism. Gradually, as the 
 net came in, Beveridge let his eyes steal towards her face. 
 The prevision of romance became a certainty. It was a 
 charming little face, as symmetrically proportioned to the 
 hands as the face of a watch is. The nose was retrousse
 
 43S THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 and piquant, but the eyes contradicted it, being demure and 
 dreamy. There was a little Cupid's bow of a mouth, and 
 between the half- parted rosy lips a gleam of white teeth 
 clenched with the exertion of hauling in the seine. A 
 simple sailor's hat crowned a fluff of flaxen hair, and her 
 dress was of airy muslin. 
 
 " She was so absorbed in the glee of hauling in the fish, 
 that it was some moments before she seemed to notice that 
 her neighbour's eyes were fixed upon her, and that they 
 were not set in the rugged tan of the local masculine face. 
 A little blush leapt into the rather pale cheeks, and went 
 out again like a tiny spurt of rosy flame. Then she strained 
 more desperately than ever at the net. It was soon ashore, 
 with its wild and whirling mixture of mackerel, soles, dabs, 
 squids, turbot — John Beveridge was not certain but what 
 his heart was already among the things fluttering there in 
 the net at her feet ! 
 
 "While the trawlers were sorting out the fish, spreading 
 some on the beach and packing the mackerel in baskets, 
 Ellaline looked on, patently interested in everything but her 
 fellow amateur. After all, despite his shaggy coat and the 
 clay pipe in his mouth, he was of the town, towny ; some 
 solicitor, artist, stockbroker, doctor, on a holiday ; perhaps, 
 considering the time of the year, only a clerk. What she 
 had come to Trepolpen for was something more primitive. 
 And he ! Surely he had seen and loved pretty women 
 enough, not to stir an inch nearer this dainty vision. For 
 what but to forget the wiles and treacheries of women of the 
 town had he buried himself here ? And yet, was it the un- 
 expectedness — was it that, while bringing back the atmo- 
 sphere of great cities, she yet seemed a creature of the woods 
 and waters — he felt himself drawn to her ? He wanted to 
 talk to her, to learn who she was and what she was doing
 
 THE IDYL OF TREPOLPEN 439 
 
 here, but he did not know how to begin, though he had 
 the gift of many tongues. Not that he deemed an intro- 
 duction necessary — in Trepolpen, where not to give every- 
 body you met 'good morning' was to court a reputation 
 for surliness. And it would have been easy enough to 
 open on the weather, or the marine harvest they had both 
 helped to gather in. But somehow John Beveridge learnt 
 embarrassment in the presence of this muslined mermaiden, 
 who seemed half of the world and half of the sea. And so, 
 amid the bustle of the beach, the minutes slipped away and 
 Beveridge spoke no word, but leaned against the cliff, con- 
 tent to drowse in the light of the sun and Ellaline. 
 
 " The dealers came down to the beach — men and women 
 — ^among them a hale, grizzly old fellow, who clasped 
 Ellaline's hand in his huge, gnarled fist. The auction 
 began. John Beveridge joined the crowd at a point behind 
 the strangely assorted couple. Of a sudden Ellaline 
 turned to him with her great limpid eyes looking candidly 
 into his, and said, 'Some of those poor mackerel are not 
 quite dead yet — I wonder if they suffer?' John Beveridge 
 was taken aback. The last vestiges of his wonted assurance 
 were swept away before her sweet simplicity. 
 
 " ' I — I — really — I don't know — I've never thought about 
 it,' he stammered. 
 
 " ' Men never do,' said Ellaline, with a gentle reproachful 
 look. ' They think only of their own pain. I do hope 
 fish have no feelings.' 
 
 '"They are cold-blooded,' he reminded her, beginning to 
 recover himself. 
 
 " ' Ah ! ' she said musingly. ' But what right have we to 
 take away their lives ? They must be — oh, so happy I — in 
 the beautiful wide ocean !— I am sorry T had a hand in 
 destroying them. I shall never do it again.'
 
 440 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " 'You have very little to reproach yourself with,* he said, 
 smiling. 
 
 " * Ah ! now you are laughing at me. I know I'm not big 
 and strong, and that my muscles could have been dispensed 
 with. But the will was there, the intention was there,' she 
 said, with her serious air. 
 
 " ' Oh, of course you are a piscicide in intention,' he 
 admitted. 'But you will enjoy the mackerel all the 
 same.' 
 
 " ' No, I won't,' she said, with a charming little shake of 
 the head. ' I won't eat any.' 
 
 " 'What ! you will never more eat fish?' 
 
 " ' Never,' she said emphatically. ' I love fish, but I 
 won't eat 'em ! only tinned things, like sardines. Oh, what 
 a little stupid I am ! Don't laugh at me again, please. I 
 forgot the sardines must be caught first, before they are 
 tinned, mustn't they?' 
 
 " ' Not necessarily,' he said. ' It often suffices if sprats 
 are caught.' 
 
 " She laughed. Her laugh was a low musical ripple, like 
 one of the little sunlit waves translated into sound. 
 
 " 'Twenty-two shillings ! ' cried the owner of a lot. 
 
 " ' I'll give 'ee eleven ! ' said Ellaline's companion ; and the 
 girl turned her head to listen to the violent chaffering that 
 ensued, and when she went away she only gave John 
 Beveridge a nod and a smile. But he followed her with 
 his eyes as she toiled up the hill, growing ever smaller and 
 daintier against the horizon. The second time he met her 
 was at the Cove, a little way from the village, where great 
 foliage-crowned cliffs came crescent-wise round a space of 
 shining sand, girdled at its outer margin by tumbling, green, 
 foam-crested surges. Huge mammoth-like boulders stood 
 about, bathing their feet in the incoming tide, the cor-
 
 THE IDYL OF TREPOLPEN 441 
 
 morants perching on their pachydermatous backs. John 
 Beveridge came slowly and cautiously down the precipitous 
 half-worn path that led to the sands. There was a point 
 at which the landward margin of the shore beneath first 
 revealed itself to the descending pedestrian, and it was a 
 point so slippery that it was thoughtless of Fate to have 
 included EUaline in the area of vision. She was lying, 
 sheltered by a blue sunshade, on the golden sand, with her 
 head against the base of the cliff, abstractedly tearing a 
 long serpentine weed to dark green ribbons, and gazing out 
 dreamily into the throbbing depths of sea and sky. There 
 
 V an open book before her, but she did not seem to be 
 reading. John Beveridge saved himself by grasping a 
 stinging bush, and he stole down gently towards her, for- 
 getting to swear. 
 
 *' He came to her with footsteps muffled by the soft sand, 
 and stood looking down at her, admiring the beauty of the 
 delicate flushed young face and the flaxen hair against the 
 sober background of the aged cliff with its mellow subtly- 
 fused tints. 
 
 " ' Thinking of the little fishes — or of the gods ?' he said 
 at last, in a loud, pleasant voice. 
 
 " Rllaline gave a liitle shriek. 
 
 " ' Oh, where did you spring from ? ' she said, half raising 
 herself. 
 
 *' ' Not from the clouds,' he said. 
 
 " ' Of course not. I was not thinking of the gods,' said 
 Kllaline. 
 
 " He laughed. ' I am not even a Perseus,' he said, ' for 
 the tide, though coming in, is not yet dangerous enough to 
 be likened to the sea-monster, though you might very well 
 pass for Andromeda.' 
 
 " Rllaline blushed and rose to her feet, adjusting a wrap
 
 442 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 round her shoulders. ' I do not know,' she said, with 
 dignity, 'what I have done to encourage such a com- 
 parison.' 
 
 " John Beveridge saw he had slipped. This time there 
 was not even a stinging bush to cling to. 
 
 " 'You are beautiful, that is all I meant,' he said apolo- 
 getically. 
 
 " ' Is it worth while saying such commonplace things?' she 
 said, a little mollified. 
 
 " It was an ambiguous remark. From her it could only 
 mean that he had been guilty of compliment. 
 
 " ' I am very sorry. A thousand pardons. But pray do 
 not let me drive you away. You seemed so happy here. I 
 will go back.' He made a half-turn. 
 
 " ' Yes, I was happy,' she said simply. ' In my foolish 
 little way I thought I had discovered this spot — as if any- 
 thing so beautiful could have escaped the attention of those 
 who have been near it all their lives.' 
 
 " Her words caused him a sudden pang of anxious jealousy. 
 Must they not be true of herself? 
 
 " ' And you too seem to have discovered it ? ' she went 
 on. ' Doubtless you know all the coast well, for you were 
 here before me. Do you know,' she said, looking up at his 
 face with her candid grey eyes, ' this is the first time in my 
 life I have seen the sea, so you must not laugh if I seem 
 ignorant ; but oh , how I love to lie and hear it roar, tossing 
 its mane like some great wild animal that I have tamed and 
 that will not harm me.' 
 
 "'There are other wild animals that you may tame, here 
 by the sea,' he said. 
 
 " She considered for a moment gravely. 
 "'That is rather pretty,' she announced. 'I shall re- 
 member that. But please do not tell me again I am
 
 THE IDYL OF TREPOLPEN 443 
 
 beautiful.' She sat down on the sand, with her back to the 
 diff, re-adjusting her parasol. 
 
 "'Very well. I sit reproved,' he replied, taking up his 
 position by her side. ' What book is that you are 
 reading ? ' 
 
 " She handed him the little paper-covered, airily-printed 
 volume, suggesting summer in every leaf. 
 
 " ' Ah, it is The Cherub That Sits Up Aloft 1 ' he said, 
 with a shade of superciliousness blent with amusement. 
 
 " ' Yes ; have you read it ? ' she asked. 
 
 " ' No,' he said ; ' I have heard of it. It's by that new 
 woman who came out last year, and calls herself Andrev/ 
 Dibdin, isn't it ? ' 
 
 " ■ Yes,' said EUaline. * It made an enormous hit, don't 
 you know ? ' 
 
 " ' Oh yes, I know,' he said, laughing. ' It's a lot of 
 sentimental rot, isn't it ? Do you like it ? ' 
 
 " * I think it is sweetly pretty,' she said, a tear drop of 
 vexation gathering on her eye-lid. ' If you haven't read it, 
 why should you abuse it ? ' 
 
 " ' Oh, one can't read everything,' he said. ' But one 
 gets to pick up enough about a book to know whether he 
 cares to read it. Of course, I am aware it is about a little 
 baby on board a ship, that makes charming inarticulate 
 orations, and is worshipped by everybody, from the captain 
 to the little stowaway, and is regarded by the sailors as the 
 sweet little cherub that sits up aloft, etc., and that there is 
 a sensational description of a storm at sea — which is Clark- 
 Russell and water, or rather Clark-Russell and more water.' 
 
 " ' Ah, I see you're a cynic,' said Ellaline. ' I don't like 
 cynics.' 
 
 " ' No, indeed, I am not,' he pleaded. ' It is false, not 
 true, sentiment I object to.'
 
 444 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 "'And how do you know this is false sentiment?' she 
 asked, in honest indignation, ' when you haven't read it ? ' 
 
 " ' What does it matter ? ' he murmured, overwhelmed by 
 her sense of duty. She was evidently unaccustomed to the 
 light flippancies of elegant conversation. 
 
 " ' Oh, nothing. To some people nothing matters. Will 
 you promise to read the book if I lend it you ? ' 
 
 " ' Of course I will,' he said, delighted at the establish- 
 ment of so permanent a link. ' Only I don't want to 
 deprive you of it — I can wait till you have finished with it.' 
 
 " ' I have finished. I have read it over and over again. 
 Take it.' She handed it to him. Their finger-tips met. 
 
 " ' I recant already,' he said. ' It must have something 
 pure and good in it to take captive a soul like yours.' 
 
 " And indeed the glamour of EUaline was over every page 
 of it. As he read, he found tears of tenderness in his eyes, 
 when otherwise they might have sprung from laughter. He 
 adored the little cherub who sat up aloft on the officers' 
 table, and softened those crusty sea-dogs whose hearts were 
 become as ship's biscuits. He could not tell what had 
 come over himself, that his own sere heart should be so 
 quick again to the beauties of homely virtue and duty, to 
 the engaging simplicity and pathos of childhood, to the 
 purity of womanhood. Was it that Ellaline was all these 
 things incarnate ? 
 
 " He avowed his error and his conversion, and gradually 
 they came to meet often in the solitary creek, as was but 
 right for the only two intellectual people in Trepolpen. 
 Sometimes, too, they wandered further afield, amid the 
 ferny lanes. But the Cove was their favourite trysting- 
 place, and there, lying with his head in her lap, he would 
 talk to her of books and men and one woman. 
 
 " He found her tastes were not limited to The Cherub That
 
 7. 
 
 < 
 
 O 
 
 w 
 z 
 
 o 
 
 a 
 z 
 < 
 
 z
 
 446 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Sits Up Aloft, for she liked Meredith. ' Really,' he said, 
 ' if you had not been yourself, I should have doubted 
 whether your admiration was genuine.' 
 
 "'Yes, his women are so real. But I do not pretend to 
 care for the style.' 
 
 " ' Style ! ' he said ; * I call it a five-barred fence. To me 
 style is everything. Style alone is literature, whether it be 
 the man or not.' 
 
 " ' Oh, then, you are of the school of Addiper ? ' 
 
 " ' Ah, have you heard of that ? I am. I admire Addiper, 
 and agree with him. Form is everything — literature is only 
 a matter of form. And a book is only a form of matter.' 
 
 " ' I see,' she said, smiling. ' But I adore Addiper 
 myself, though I regret the future seems likely to be his. 
 I have read all he has written. Every line is so lucid. The 
 form is exquisite. But as for the matter I ' 
 
 " ' No matter ! ' summed up John Beveridge, laughing 
 heartily. 
 
 " ' I am so glad you agree with me sometimes,' said 
 EUaline. ' Because it shows you don't think I am so very 
 stupid after all.' 
 
 " ' Of course I don't — except when you get so enthusiastic 
 about literary people, and rave about Dibdin and Addiper 
 and Fladpick, and the rest. If you mixed with them, my 
 little girl, as I have done, you would soon lose your rosy 
 illusions. Although perhaps you are better with them.' 
 
 "'Ah, then you're not a novelist yourself?' she said 
 anxiously. 
 
 " ' No, I am not. What makes you ask ? ' 
 
 " ' Nothing. Only sometimes, from your conversation, I 
 suspected you might be.' 
 
 "'Thank you, Ellaline,' he said, 'for a very dubious 
 compliment. No, I am afraid I must forgo that claim
 
 THE IDYL OF TREPOLPEN 447 
 
 upon your admiration. Unless I tell a lie and become 
 a novelist by doing so. But then wouldn't it be the 
 truth ? ' 
 
 " 'Are you, then, a painter or a musician ? ' 
 
 " He shook his head. ' No, I do not get my living by 
 art.' 
 
 "' Not of any kind?' 
 
 " ' Not of any kind.' 
 
 " ' How do you get it ? ' she asked simyily, a candid light 
 shining in the great grey eyes. 
 
 " ' My father was a successful saddle-maker. He is 
 dead.' 
 
 "'Oh!' she said. 
 
 " ' Leather has made me from childhood up — it has 
 chastised, supported, educated me, and given me the entree 
 everywhere. So you see I cannot hold a candle to your 
 demi-gods.' 
 
 "*Ah, but there is nothing like leather,' said Elialine, 
 and stroked the head in her lap reassuringly. 
 
 " The assurance permeated John Beveridge's frame like a 
 pleasant cordial. All that was hard and leathery in him 
 seemed to be soaked soft. Here, at last, was a woman who 
 loved him for himself — an innocent trusting woman, in 
 whose weakness a man might find strength. Her pure lips 
 were like the wayside well at which the wearied wanderer 
 from great stony cities might drink and be refreshed. And 
 yet, delightful as her love would be in his droughty life, he 
 felt that his could not prove less delightful to her. That 
 he, John Beveridge, with the roses thrusting themselves 
 into his eyes, should stoop to pick the simple little daisy 
 at his feet, could not fail to fill her with an admiring 
 gratitude that would add the last charm to her passion for 
 him.
 
 448 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " But it was not till a week afterwards that the formal 
 proposal, so long impending, broke. They were resting in a 
 lane, and discussing everything they didn't want to discuss, 
 the unspoken playing with subtle sweetness about the 
 spoken. 
 
 " ' Have you read Mr. Gladstone's latest ? ' she asked at 
 last. 
 
 " ' No,' he said ; ' has Mr. Gladstone ever a latest ? ' 
 
 " ' Oh yes ; take him hour by hour, like an evening paper. 
 I'm referring to his article on " Ancient Beliefs in a Future 
 State."' 
 
 " ' What's that — the belief of old maids that they'll get 
 married ? ' 
 
 " ' Now you are blasphemous,' she cried, with a pretty pout. 
 
 " ' How ? Are old maids a sacred subject ? ' 
 
 " * Everything old should be sacred to us,' she said simply. 
 ' But you know that is not what I mean.' 
 
 " ' Then why do you say it ? ' he asked. 
 
 " ' Oh, what a tease you are ! ' she cried. ' I shan't be 
 sorry to be quit of you. Your flippancy is quite dreadful' 
 
 " ' Why, do you believe in a future state ? ' he said. 
 
 " ' Of course I do. If we had only one life, it would not 
 be worth living.' 
 
 " ' But nine times one life would be worth living. Is 
 that the logic ? If so, happy cats ! I wonder,' he added 
 irrelevantly, ' why the number nine always goes with cats — 
 nine lives, nine tails, nine muses?' 
 
 " EUaline made a moue, and shrank petulantly away from 
 him. ' I will not discuss our future state, unless you are 
 prepared to do it seriously,' she said. 
 
 " ' I am,' he repHed, with sudden determination. • Let 
 us enter it together. I am tired of the life I've been lead 
 ing, and I love you.'
 
 THE IDYL OF TREPOLFEN 449 
 
 " ' What ! * she said, in a little horrified whisper. ' You 
 want us to commit suicide together ? ' 
 
 " ' No, no — matrimony. I cannot do it alone — I have 
 never had the courage to do it at all. With you at my 
 side, I should go forward, facing the hereafter cheerfully, 
 with faith and trust.' 
 
 " ' I — I — am — afraid — I ' she stammered. 
 
 " ' Why should you be afraid ? ' he interrupted. ' Have 
 you no faith and trust in me ? ' 
 
 " 'Oh yes,' she said, with a frank smile. ' If I had not 
 confidence in you, I should not be here with you.' 
 
 " 'You angel!' he said, his eyes growing wet under her 
 clear, limpid gaze. ' But you love me a little, too ? ' 
 
 " ' I do not,' she said, shaking her head demurely. 
 
 "John Beveridge groaned. After so decisive an avowal 
 from the essence of candour, what remained to be said ? 
 Nothing but to bid her and his hopes farewell — the latter 
 at once, the former as soon as she was escorted back to 
 Trepolpen. His affection had grown so ripe, he could not 
 exchange it for the green fruit of friendship. And yet, was 
 
 this to be the end of all that sweet idyllic interlude 
 
 a jarring note, and then silence for evermore ? 
 
 " ' But could you never learn to love me ? ' 
 
 " She laughed her girlish ringing laugh. 
 
 " ' I am not so backward as all that,' she said. * I 
 mastered it in a dozen lessons.' 
 
 " He stared at her, a wild hope kindling in his eyes. 'Did 
 I hear aright ? ' he asked, in hoarse tones. 
 
 " She nodded, still smiling. 
 
 " ' Then I did not hear aright before ?' 
 
 " ' Oh yes, you did. I said I did not love you a little. I 
 love you a great deal.' 
 
 "There were tears in the grey eyes now, but they smiled 
 
 2f
 
 450 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 on. He caught her in his arms, and the Devonshire lane 
 was transformed to Eden. How exquisite this angehc 
 frankness, when the words pleased ! How delicious the 
 candour of her caress when words were de trop ! 
 
 " But at last she spoke again. ' And now that I know you 
 love me for myself, I will tell you a secret.' The little 
 hands that had first clasped his attention were laid on his 
 shoulders, the dreamy face looked up tenderly and proudly 
 into his. ' They say a woman cannot keep a secret,' she 
 said. ' But you will never believe that again, when I tell 
 you mine ? ' 
 
 "'I never believed it,' he said earnestly. 'Consider 
 how every woman keeps the great secret of her age.' 
 
 " * Ah, that is not what I am going to tell you,' she said 
 archly. ' It is another of the great secrets of my age. You 
 remember that book you liked so much — The Chenib That 
 Sits Up Aloft V 
 
 " ' Yes ! ' he said wonderingly. 
 
 " ' Well, I wrote it ! ' 
 
 " ' You ! ' he exclaimed, startled. His image of her 
 seemed a pillar of sand upon which the simoom had burst. 
 This fresh simple maiden a complex literary being, a slave 
 of the midnight lamp ! 
 
 " 'Yes, I — I am Andrew Dibdin — the authoress who drew 
 tears from your eyes.' 
 
 " ' You Andrew Dibdin ? ' he repeated mechanically. 
 
 " She nodded her head with a proud and happy smile. 'I 
 knew you would be pleased ; but I wanted you to love me, 
 not my book.' 
 
 " ' I love both,' he exclaimed. The new conceptions had 
 quickly fitted themselves into the old. He saw now what 
 the charm of the little novel was — the book was Ellaline 
 between covers. He wondered he had not seen it before.
 
 THE IDYL OF TREPOLPEN 451 
 
 The grace, the purity, the pathos, the sweet candour, the 
 recollections of a childhood spent on the great waters in 
 the com- 
 pany of 
 kindly 
 mariners, 
 —all had 
 flowed out 
 at the 
 point of 
 her pen. 
 She had 
 put her- 
 self into 
 her work. 
 He felt a 
 subtle 
 jealousy 
 of the 
 p eo J) 1 e 
 
 THE CONFESSION OF EI.LAI.INE. 
 
 who bought her on the bookstalls for a shilling- 
 
 -or even
 
 452 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 for ninepence at the booksellers'. He wanted to have 
 her all to himself. He experienced a mad desire to buy 
 up the edition. But then there would be a new one. 
 He realised the feelings of Othello. Oh, if he could 
 but arrest her circulation ! 
 
 " ' If you knew how happy it made me to hear you say 
 you love my book ! ' she replied. ' At first I hated you 
 because you sneered at it. All my friends love my books — 
 and I wanted you to be a friend of mine.' 
 
 " ' I am more than that,' he said exultantly. * And I 
 want to love all your books. What else have you written ? ' 
 
 " ' Only two others,' she said apologetically. ' You see I 
 have only been in literature eight months, and I only write 
 straight from the heart.' 
 
 " * Yes, indeed ! ' he said. * You wear your heart upon 
 your leaves.' 
 
 " Jealous as he was of her readers, he felt that there was 
 balm in Gilead. She was not a hack-writer, turning out 
 books for the market of malice aforethought ; not the 
 complex being he had figured in the first moment of con- 
 sternation, the literary quack with finger on the pulse of the 
 public. She did but write as the birds carolled — less the 
 slave, than the genius, of the midnight lamp. 
 
 " ' But I must not wear my heart out,' she replied, laugh- 
 ingly. 'So I came down here for a month to get fresh 
 material. I am writing a novel of Cornish peasant life — 
 I want to photograph the people with all their lights and 
 shades, all their faiths and superstitions, all their ways of 
 speech and thought,— the first thorough study ever made of 
 a fast-fading phase of Old English life. You see, I didn't 
 know what to do : I feared the public would be tired of my 
 sailor-stories, and I thought I'd locate my next story on 
 land. Accident determined its environment. I learnt, by
 
 THE IDYL OF TKEPOLPEN 4<;3 
 
 chance, that we had some poor relatives in Trepolpen, 
 whom my people had dropped, and so I thought I'd pick 
 them up again, and turn them into "copy," and I welcomed 
 the opportunity of making at the same time the acquaint- 
 ance of the sea, which, as I think I told you, I have never 
 seen before. You see I was poor myself till The Cherub 
 That Sits Up Aloft showered down the gold, and, being a 
 Cockney, I had never been able to afford a trip to the sea- 
 side.' 
 
 " ' My poor EUaline ! ' he said, kissing her candid lips. 
 She was such an inveterate truth-teller that he could only 
 respect and admire and adore — though she fell from heaven. 
 Her candour infected him. He felt an overwhelming 
 paroxysm of veracity. 
 
 " The mask could be dropped now : did she not love John 
 Beveridge ? 
 
 " ' Now I see why you rave so over literary people ! ' he 
 said. 'You arc dipped in ink yourself.' 
 
 "'Yes,' she said, with a happy smile, 'there is nobody I 
 admire so much as our great writers. ' 
 
 " * But you would not love me more, if I were a great 
 writer ! ' he said anxiously. 
 
 " 'No, certainly not. I couldn't,' she said decisively. 
 
 " He stooped and kissed her gratefully. ' Thank you for 
 that, my sweet Ellaline. And now I think I can safely 
 confess that I am Addiper.' 
 
 "She gave a little shriek. Her face turned white. 
 * Addiper ! ' she breathed. 
 
 " ' Yes, dearest, it is my nom de guerre. I am Addiper, the 
 writer you admire so much, the man with whose school you 
 were pleased to say the future lies.' 
 
 " ' Addiper ! ' she said again. ' Impossible ! why, you said 
 you did not get your living by art of any kind ? '
 
 454 THE CELIBATES' CLVB 
 
 " ' Of course I don't ! ' he said. ' Books like mine— all 
 style, no sentiment morals or theology — never pay. 
 Fortunately I am able to publish them at my own expense. 
 I write only for writers. That is 'fi\vy you like me. Success- J 
 
 ful writers are those who write for readers, just as popular \ 
 
 painters are those who paint for spectators.' 
 
 "The poor little face was ashen grey now. The surprise 
 was too much for the fragile little beauty. ' Then you 
 really are Addiper ? ' she said, in low slow tones. 
 
 " ' Yes, dearest,' he said, not without a touch of pride. * I 
 am Addiper — and in you, love, I have found a fresh fount 
 of inspiration. You shall be the guiding star of my work — 
 my rare Ellaline, my pearl, my beryl. Ah, this is a great 
 turning-point in my life. To-day I enter into my third 
 manner.' 
 
 " ' This is not one of your teasing jokes ? ' she said appeal- 
 ingly, her piteous eyes looking up into his. 
 
 '"No, my Ellaline. Do you think I would hoax you 
 thus — to dash you to earth again ? ' 
 
 " ' Then,' she said slowly and painfully, ' then I can never 
 marry you. We must say "good-bye."' 
 
 " Her lover gazed at her in dazed silence. The butterflies 
 floated in the summer air, a bee buzzed about a wayside 
 flower, from afar came the tinkle of a brook. A deep peace 
 was on all things— only in the hearts of the two litterateurs 
 was pain and consternation. 
 
 " ' You can never marry me ! ' repeated John Beveridge 
 at last. * And why not ? ' 
 
 " ' I have told you. Because you are Addiper.' 
 
 " ' But that is no reason.' 
 
 " ' Is it not ? ' she said. ' I thought Addiper would have 
 a subtler apprehension.' 
 
 " 'But what is it you object to in me?'
 
 THE IDYL Of TREPOLPEN 455 
 
 " ' To your genius, of course.' 
 
 " * To my genius ! ' 
 
 " ' Yes ; no mock modesty. Between authors it won't do. 
 Every author must know very well he stands apart from the 
 world, or he would not set himself to paint it. I know 
 quite well I am not as other women. What is the use of 
 paltering with one's consciousness?' 
 
 '* Still the same delicious candour shone in the grey eyes. 
 John Beveridge, not at all grasping his dismissal, felt an 
 unreasonable impulse to kiss them. 
 
 "'Well, supposing I am a genius,' he said instead, 
 * Where's the harm ? ' 
 
 " ' No harm till you propose to yoke me with it. I 
 never will marry a genius.' 
 
 " ' Oh, don't be so absurd, Ellaline ! ' he said. ' You've 
 been reading the foolish nonsense about geniuses necessarily 
 making bad hu.sbands. No doubt in some prominent 
 instances geniuses have not been working models of the 
 domestic virtues, but, on the other hand, there are scores of 
 instances to the contrary. And blockheads make quite as 
 bad husbands as your Shelleys and your Byrons. Besides, 
 it was only in the past that geniuses were blackguards ] 
 to-day it is the correct thing to be correct. Respectability 
 now-a-days adds chastity to studies from the nude ; marital 
 fidelity enhances the force of poems of passion ; and philan- 
 thropy adds the last touch to tragic acting. So why should 
 I suffer for the sins of my predecessors? If I may judge 
 myself by my present sensations, what I am gifted with is a 
 genius for domesticity. Do not sacrifice mc, dearest, to an 
 unproved and unscientific generalisation.' 
 
 " ' It is not of that I am thinking,' Ellaline replied, shaking 
 her head sadly. ' In my opinion, the woman who refused 
 Shakespeare merely on the ground that he wrote Shake-
 
 4S6 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 speare's Works, should be sent to Coventry as a coward. 
 No, do not fancy I am that. I may not be strong, but I 
 have courage enough to marry you, if that were all. It is 
 not because I am afraid you would make me unhappy.' 
 
 '"Ah, there is something you are hiding from me,' he 
 said anxiously, impressed by the gravity and sincerity of 
 her tones. 
 
 " ' No, there is nothing. I cannot marry you because you 
 
 are a genius. 
 
 " He saw what she meant now. She had been reading 
 the modern works on genius and insanity. 
 
 *' ' Ah, you think me mad ? ' he cried. 
 
 ** ' Mad — when you love me ? ' she said, with a melancholy 
 smile. 
 
 "'You know what I mean. You think that "great wits 
 to madness nearly are allied ;" that sane as I appear there is 
 in me a hidden vein of madness. And yet, if anything, the 
 generalisation connecting genius with insanity is more 
 unsound than that connecting it with domestic infelicity. 
 It would require a genius to really prove such a connection, 
 and as he would, on his own theory, be a lunatic, what 
 becomes of his theory ? ' 
 
 " ' Your argument involves a fallacy,' replied Ellaline 
 quietly. " It does not follow that if a man is a lunatic 
 everything he says or does has the taint of madness. A 
 genius who held that genius meant insanity might be sane 
 just on this one point' 
 
 '"Or insane just on the one point. Seriously, Ellaline,' 
 said John Beveridge, beginning to lose his temper, 'you 
 don't mean to say that you believe that genius is really a 
 degenerative psychosis of the epileptoid order. If you do 
 you must be mad yourself, that's all I can say.' 
 
 ' ' Of course I should have to admit I am mad myself 
 
 I
 
 THE IDYL OF TREPOLPEN 457 
 
 if I held the theory that genius meant insanity. But I 
 don't.' 
 
 "'You don't!' he said, staring blankly at her. 'You 
 don't believe I'm insane, and you don't believe I'll make a 
 bad husband — I should be insane if I did, my sweet little 
 EUaline. And you still wish to cry off ? ' 
 
 •"I must.' 
 
 " * Then you no longer love me ! ' 
 
 *' ' Oh, I beg of you do not say that ! You do not know 
 how hard it is for me to give you. up — do not make our 
 parting harder.' 
 
 " ' Ellaline, in Heaven's name, vex me no further. What 
 is this terrible mystery? Why can you no longer think of 
 me?' 
 
 " * If you only thought of me a little you would guess. 
 But men are so selfish. If it were only you that had 
 genius, the thing would be simple. But you forget that 
 
 I too ' She paused; a little modest blush completed 
 
 the sentence. 
 
 "*Yes, I know you are a genius, my rare EUaline. But 
 what then ? ' he cried, ' I only love you the more for it.' 
 
 "'Yes; but if we marry,' said Ellaline, 'we two geniuses, 
 look what will happen.' 
 
 " He stared at her afresh — she met his gaze unflinchingly. 
 'What new scientific bogie have you been conjuring up?' 
 he murmured. 
 
 " ' Oh, I wish you would drive science out of your head,' 
 she replied pettishly. ' What have I to do with science ? 
 Really, if you go on so stupidly, I shall believe you are not 
 a genius after all.' 
 
 "'And then you will marry me ?' he said eagerly. 
 
 '" Don't be so stupid ! To speak plainly — for you seem 
 as dull as a clodhopper to-day — I cannot afford to marry a
 
 458 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 genius, and a recognised genius to boot. I am only a 
 struggling young authoress, with a considerable following, it 
 is true, but still without an unquestioned position. The 
 high-class organs that review you all to yourself still take 
 me as one of a batch, and are not always as complimentary 
 as they might be. The moment I marry you, and my rush- 
 light is hidden in your bushel, out it goes. I become 
 absorbed simply in you, a little satellite circling round your 
 planetary glory. I shall have no independent existence — 
 the fame I have toiled and struggled for will be eclipsed in 
 yours. " Mrs. Addiper — the wife of the celebrated writer, 
 scribbles a little herself, don't you know ! Wonder what he 
 could see in her." That's how people will talk of me. 
 When I go into a room, we shall be announced, " Mr. and 
 Mrs. Addiper " \ and everybody will rush round you and 
 hang on your words, and I shall be talked to only by way 
 of getting you at second-hand, as a medium through which 
 your personality is partially radiated. And parties will be 
 given " to meet Mr. Addiper," and I shall accompany you 
 for the same reason that your dress-coat will — because it is 
 the etiquette.' 
 
 " ' But, Ellaline ' he protested. 
 
 " ' Let me finish. I could not even afford to marry you 
 if my literary position were equal to yours. Such a union 
 would do nothing to enhance my reputation. No woman 
 of genius should marry a man of genius — were she even the 
 greater of the two she would become merged in him, even 
 as she would take his name. The man I must marry, the 
 man I have been waiting to fall in love with and be loved 
 by, is a plain honest gentleman, unknown to fame and 
 innocent of all aspiration but that of making me happy. 
 He must devote his life to mine, sink himself in me, 
 sacrifice himself on the altar of my fame, live only for the
 
 

 
 460 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 enhancement of my reputation. Such a man I thought I 
 had found in you — but you deceived me. I thought, here 
 is a man who loves me only for myself, but v/hose love will 
 increase tenfold when he learns that I stand on a pedestal 
 of glory, and who will rejoice at the privilege of passing the 
 rest of his days uplifting that pedestal to the gaze of the 
 world, a man who will say of me what I can hardly say 
 of myself, who will drive the bargains with my publishers, 
 wrap me up against the knowledge of malicious criticisms, 
 conduct my correspondence, receive inconvenient callers, 
 arrange my interviews, and send incessant paragraphs to 
 the papers about me, commencing Mrs. John Beveridge 
 (Andrew Dibdin), varied by Andrew Dibdin (Mrs. John 
 Beveridge). Here is a man who will be a living gratuitous 
 advertisement, inserted daily in the great sheet of the 
 times, a steadfast column of eulogy, a pillar of praise. 
 Here is a man who will be as much a halo as a husband. 
 When I enter a drawing-room with him (so ran my innocent 
 maiden dream), there will be a thrill of excitement ; every- 
 body will cluster round me ; he will efface himself or be 
 effaced; and, even if he finds anybody to talk to, it is 
 about me he will talk. Invitations to our own " At Homes " 
 will be eagerly sought after — not for his sake, but for mine. 
 All that is famous in literature and art will crowd our salon 
 — not for his sake, but for mine. And while I shall be the 
 cynosure of every eye, it will be his to jot down the 
 names of the illustrious gazers, in Society paragraphs 
 beginning Mrs. John Beveridge (Andrew Dibdin), alter- 
 nating with Andrew Dibdin (Mrs. John Beveridge). And 
 am I to give up all this merely because I love you?' 
 
 " ' Yes, why not ? ' he said passionately. ' What is fame, 
 reputation, weighed against love ? What is it to be on the 
 world's lips, if the lips we love are to be taken away ? '
 
 THE IDYL OF TREPOLPEN 461 
 
 "'How pretty!' she said, with simple admiration. 'If 
 you will not claim the phrase, I should like to give it to my 
 next heroine.' 
 
 "'Claim it?' he said bitterly. 'I do not want any 
 phrases — I want you.' 
 
 " ' Do you not see it is impossible ? If you could become 
 obscure again, it might be. You say fame is nothing 
 weighed against love. Come, now, would you give up 
 your genius, your reputation, just to marry me?' 
 
 " He was silent. 
 
 " ' Come,' she repeated. ' I have been frank with you, 
 have I not?' 
 
 " ' You have,' he admitted, with a melancholy grimace. 
 
 " ' Well, be equally frank with me. Would you sacrifice 
 these things to your love for me ? ' 
 
 " 'I could not if I would.' 
 
 " ' But would you if you could ? ' 
 
 " He did not answer. 
 
 " ' Of course you wouldn't,' she said. ' I know you as I 
 know myself.' 
 
 " ' What is the use of thinking of what can never be ? ' 
 he said impatiently. 
 
 " ' Just so. That is what I say. I can never give you 
 my hand ; so give me yours, and we'll turn homewards.' 
 
 " He gave her his hand, and she jumped lightly to her 
 feet. Then he got up and shook himself, and looked, still 
 in a sort of daze, at the gentle face and the dainty figure. 
 " He seized her passionately by the arms. 
 
 " ' And must this be the end ? ' he cried hoarsely. 
 " ' Finis,' she said decisively, though the renewed pallor 
 of her face showed what it cost her to complete the idyl. 
 
 '"An unhappy ending?' he said, in hopeless interroga- 
 tion,
 
 \ 
 
 I 
 
 462 r//E celibates:' club 
 
 " ' It is not my style,' she said simply, ' but after all this 
 is only real life.' 
 
 " He burst forth in a torrent of half-reproachful regrets — ■ 
 
 he, Addiper, the chaste, the severe, the self-contained. " 
 
 "'And you, the sweet innocent girl who won the heart I 
 no longer hoped to feel living, — you would coldly abandon 
 the love for wliose existence you are responsible. You, 
 who were to be so fresh and pure an influence on my 
 work, are content to deprive literature of those master- 
 pieces our union would have called into lieing. Oh, but •] 
 you cannot unshackle yourself thus from my life — for good 
 or evil your meeting with me determined my third manner. 
 Hitherto I thought it was for good ; now I fear it will be 
 for evil.' 
 
 " ' You seem to have forgotten all your manners,' she 
 said, annoyed. ' And if our meeting was for evil, at least 
 our parting shall be for good.' 
 
 " John Beveridge and Ellaline Rand spake no more, but 
 walked home in silence through the country lanes, on 
 which the sunlight seemed to lie cold. The past was but 
 a dream — not for these two the simple emotions which 
 cross with joy or sorrow the web of common life. At the 
 cottage near the top of the hill, where the sounds and 
 scents of the sea were faintest, they parted. The idyl of 
 Trepolpen was ended. 
 
 " And John Beveridge went downhill"
 
 MORE ABOUT THE CHERUB 463 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MORE ABOUT THE CHERUB 
 
 The trial interview between Lord Silverdale and Ellaline 
 Rand took place in the rooms of the Old Maids' Club, in 
 the presence of the President. Lillie, encouraged by the 
 rush of candidates, occupied herself in embroidering another 
 epigrammatic anti-macassar — " It is man who is vain of 
 woman's dress." She had deliberately placed herself out of 
 earshot. To Miss Rand, Lord Silverdale was a casual 
 visitor with whom she had drifted into conversation, yet she 
 behaved as prettily as if she knew she was undergoing the 
 viva voce portion of the examination for entranceship. 
 
 There are two classes of flirts — those who love to llirt, and 
 those who flirt to love. There is little to be said against 
 the latter, for they are merely experimenting. They intend 
 to fall in love, but they can hardly compass it without 
 preliminary acquaintance, and by giving themselves a wide 
 and varied selection are more likely to discover the fitting 
 object of affection. It is easy to confound both classes of 
 flirts together, and heart-broken lovers generally do so, 
 when they do not use a stronger expression. But, so far as 
 Lord Silverdale could tell, there was nothing in Miss Rand's 
 behaviour to justify him in relegating her to either class, or 
 to make him doubt the genuineness of the anti-hymeneal 
 feelings provoked by her disappointment in Trepolpen. 
 Her manner was simple and artless; she gushed, indeed, 
 but charmingly, like a daintily-sculptured figure on a marble 
 fountain in a fair plcasaunce. You could be as little 
 offended by her gush as by her candid confessions of her 
 own talents. The Lord had given her a good conceit of
 
 464 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 herself, and given it her so gracefully that it was one of her 
 chiefest charms. She spoke with his lordship of Shakespeare 
 and others of her profession, and mentioned that she was 
 about to establish a paper called The Cherub, after her 
 popular story The Cherub That Sits Up Aloft. 
 
 " I want to get into closer touch with my readers," she 
 explained, helping herself charmingly to the chocolate 
 creams. "In a book, you cannot get into direct rapport 
 with your public : your characters are your rivals, and 
 distract attention from the personality of the author. In a 
 journal I shall be able to chat with them freely, open my 
 heart to them, and gather them to it. There is a legitimate 
 curiosity to learn all about me — the same curiosity that I 
 feel about other authors. Why should I allow myself to be 
 viewed in the refracting medium of alien ink? Let me 
 sketch myself to my readers, tell them what I eat and 
 drink, how I write and when, what clothes I wear and how 
 much I pay for them, what I think of this or that book of 
 mine, of this or that character of my creation, what my 
 friends think of me, and what I think of my friends. All 
 the features of the paper will combine to make my face ; I 
 shall occupy all the stories, and every column will have me 
 at the top. In this way I hope not only to gratify my 
 yearning for sympathy, but to stimulate the circulation of 
 my books. Nay more, with the eye of my admirers thus 
 encouragingly upon me, I shall work more zealously. 
 You see, Lord Silverdale, we authors are a race apart — 
 without the public hanging upon our words we are like 
 butterflies in a London fog, or actors playing to an empty 
 auditorium," 
 
 "I have noticed that," said Lord Silverdale dryly. 
 " Before authors succeed, it takes them a year to write a 
 book ) after they succeed it takes them only a month,"
 
 MORE ABOUT THE CHERUB 465 
 
 "You see I am right," said EUaline eagerly. "That's 
 what the sun of pubhc sympathy does. It ripens work 
 quickly." 
 
 " Yes ; and when the sun is very burning, it sometimes 
 takes the authors no time at all." 
 
 "Ah, now you are laughing at me. You are speaking of 
 ♦ghosts.'" 
 
 " Yes. Ghost stories are published all the year round — 
 not merely at Christmas. Don't think I'm finding fault. I 
 look upon an author who keeps his ghost as I do on a 
 tradesman who keeps his carriage. It is a sign he has 
 succeeded." 
 
 " Oh, but it's very wicked, giving the public under- 
 weight like that ! " said Ellaline, in her sweet, serious way. 
 "How can anybody write as well as yourself? But 
 why I mentioned about the The Cherub is because 
 it has just struck me the paper might become the 
 organ of the Old Maids' Club, for I should make a 
 point of speaking freely of my aims and aspirations in 
 joining it. I presume you know all about Miss Dulcimer's 
 scheme ? " 
 
 " Oh yes. But I don't think it feasible." 
 
 "You don't?" she said, with a little tremor of astonish- 
 ment in her voice. " And why not ? " She looked anxiously 
 into his eyes for the reply. 
 
 "The candidates are too charming to remain single," he 
 explained, smiling. 
 
 She smiled back a little at him, those sweet grey eyes 
 still looking into his. 
 
 " You are not a literary man ? " she said irrelevantly. 
 
 "I am afraid I must plead guilty to trying to be," he said. 
 "The evidence is down in black and white. ' 
 
 The smile died away, and for an instant EUaline's brow 
 
 2(J
 
 466 THE CELIBATES CLUB 
 
 went into black for it. She accepted an ice from Turple 
 the Magnificent, but took her leave shortly afterwards, 
 Lillie promising to write to her. 
 
 " Well ? " said the President, when she was left alone with 
 the Honorary Trier. 
 
 That functionary looked dubious. " Up till the very last 
 she seemed single-hearted in her zeal. Then she asked 
 whether I was a literary man. You know her story. What 
 do you conclude ? " 
 
 "I can hardly come to a conclusion. Do you think 
 there is still a danger of her marrying to get some one to 
 advertise her?" 
 
 •'I think it depends on The Cherub. If The Cherub is 
 born and lives, it will be a more effectual advertising 
 medium than even a husband, and may replace him. A 
 paper of your own can puff you rather better than a husband 
 of your own — it has a larger circulation and more oppor- 
 tunities. An authoress - editress — her worth is far above 
 rubies ! Her correspondents praise her in the gates, and 
 her staff shall rise up and call her blessed. It may well 
 be that she will arrive at that stage at which a husband is 
 an incubus and marriage a manacle. In that day the 
 honour of the Club will be safe in her hands." 
 
 " What do you suggest, then ? " said Lillie anxiously. 
 
 " That you wait till she is delivered of J he Cherub before 
 deciding." 
 
 "Very well," she replied resignedly. "Only I hope we 
 shall be able to admit her. Her conception of the use of 
 man is so sublime ! " 
 
 Lord Silverdale smiled. " Ah, if the truth were known," 
 he said, " I daresay it would be that pretty women regard 
 man merely as a beast of draught and burden, a creature to 
 draw their cheques and carry their cloaks."
 
 MokB about The cherub 46^ 
 
 Lillie answered, "And men look on pretty women either 
 as home pets or as drawing-room decorations." 
 
 Silverdale said further, " I do not look on you as 
 either." 
 
 To which Lillie, *' Why do you say such obvious things ? 
 It is unworthy of you. Have you nothing worthy of you 
 in your pockets to-day ? " 
 
 "Nothing worthy of your hearing. Just a little poem 
 about another cherub." 
 
 AN ANCIENT PASSION 
 
 Mine is no passion of to-day, 
 
 Upblazing like a rocket ; 
 To-morrow doomed to die away 
 
 And leave you out of pocket. 
 
 Nor is she one who snared my love 
 
 By just the woman's graces ; 
 I loved her when, a sucking dove, 
 
 She cooed and made grimaces. 
 
 And when the pretty darling cried, 
 
 I often stooped and Idj^scd her, 
 Though cold and faint her lips replied, 
 
 As though she were my sister. 
 
 I loved her long but loved her still 
 
 When she discarded long-clothes, 
 Yet here, if she had had her will, 
 
 Would this romantic song close. 
 
 For though we wandered hand in hand, 
 
 Companions close and chronic. 
 She always made me understand 
 
 Hey motives were Platonic.
 
 468 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 She said me "Nay" with merry mien, 
 Not weeping like the cayman, 
 
 When she was Mab, the fairy Queen, 
 And I Tom King, highwayman. 
 
 'Twas at a Children's Fancy Ball 
 I got that first rejection ; 
 
 It did not kill my love at all, 
 But heightened its complexion. 
 
 My love to tell, when she grew up. 
 
 Necessitates italics. 
 Her hair was like the butter-cup 
 
 (Corolla not the calyx). 
 
 Her form was slim, her eye was bright, 
 Iler mouth a jewel-casket, 
 
 Her hand it was so soft and white 
 I often used to ask it. 
 
 And so from year to year I wooed, 
 My passion growing fiercer. 
 
 Though she in modest maiden mood 
 Addressed me as "My dear sir." 
 
 At twenty she was still as coy, 
 Her heart was like Diana's ; 
 
 The future held for me no joy 
 Save smoking choice Havannahs. 
 
 At last my perseverance woke 
 A sweet responsive passion, 
 
 And of her love for me she spoke 
 In woman's wordless fashion. 
 
 I told her, when her speech was done, 
 The task would be above her 
 
 To make a happy man of one 
 
 Who long had ceased to love her.
 
 Kl'.JECTKI > A 1 )nK KSKKS,
 
 470 THE CELIBATES,'' CLUB 
 
 LilHe put on an innocently analytical frown. " I think 
 you behaved very badly," she exclaimed. '* You might 
 have waited a little longer." 
 
 " Do you think so ? Then I will leave you to your 
 labours," said Lord Silverdale, with his wonted irrelevancy. 
 Lillie sat for a long time with pen in hand, thinking 
 without writing. As a change from writing without thinking, 
 this was perhaps a relief. 
 
 " A penny for your thoughts ! " said the millionaire, 
 stealing in upon her reflections. 
 
 Lillie started and blushed. 
 
 " I am not Ellaline Rand," she said, smiling. " Wait 
 till The Chenib comes out, and you will get hers at that 
 price." 
 
 " Was Ellaline the girl who has just gone ? " 
 
 " Did you see her? I thought you were gardening." 
 
 " So I was, but I happened to go into the dining-room 
 for a moment and saw her from the window. I suppose 
 she will be here often ? " 
 
 *' I suppose so," said Lillie dubiously. 
 
 The millionaire rubbed his hands. 
 
 *' Miss Eustasia Pallas," announced Turple the Magni- 
 ficent. 
 
 " A new candidate, probably," said the President. 
 "Father, you must go and play in the garden 1 " 
 
 The millionaire left the room meekly.
 
 OF WIVES AND THEIR MISTRESSES 471 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 OF WIVES AND THEIR MISTRESSES 
 
 "No, no," said Miss Eustasia Pallas; "you misapprehend 
 me. It is not because it would be necessary to have a 
 husband and a home of one's own, that I object to marriage, 
 but because it would be impossible to do without servants. 
 While a girl lives at home, she can cultivate her soul while 
 her mother attends to the menage. But after marriage 
 the higher life is impossible. You must have servants. 
 You cannot do your own dirty work — not merely because it 
 is dirty, but because it is the thief of time. You can hardly 
 get literature, art, music, and religion adequately into your 
 life even with the whole day at your disposal, but if you 
 had to make your own bed too, I am afraid you wouldn't 
 find time to lie on it." 
 
 " Then why object to servants ? " inquired Lillie. 
 
 " Because servants are the asphyxiators of the soul. 
 But for them I should long since have married." 
 
 " I do not quite follow you. Surely if you had servants 
 to relieve you of all the grosser duties, the spiritual could 
 then claim your undivided attention?" 
 
 " Ah, that is a pretty theory. It sounds very plausible. 
 In practice, alas ! it does not work. Like the servants. I 
 have kept my eyes open almost from the first day of my 
 life. I have observed my mother's household and other 
 people's — I speak of the great middle-classes mainly ; my 
 unalterable conviction is that every faithful wife who aspires 
 to be housekeeper too, becomes the servant of her servants. 
 They rule not only her but all her thoughts. Her life 
 circles round them. She can talk of nothing els^. Whel,her
 
 472 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 she visits or is visited, servants are the staple of her con- 
 versation. Their curious habits and customs, their love- 
 affairs, their laches, their impertinences, — these gradually 
 become the whole food of thought, ousting every higher 
 aim and idea. I have watched a girl — my bosom-friend at 
 Girton — deteriorate from a maiden to a wife, from a wife to 
 a bondswoman. First she talked Shelley, then Charley, 
 then Mary Ann. Gradually her soul shrank. She lost 
 her character. She became a mere parasite on the back 
 kitchen, a slave to the cook's drink and the housemaid's 
 followers. Those who knew my mother before she was 
 married speak of her as a bright bonny girl, all enthusiasm 
 and energy, interesting herself in all the life of her day and 
 even taking a side in politics. But when I knew her, she 
 was haggard and narrow. She never read, nor sang, nor 
 played, nor went to the Academy. The greatest historical 
 occurrences left her sympathies untouched. She did not 
 even care whether Australia or England conquered at 
 cricket, or whether Browning lived or died. You could not 
 get her to discuss Whistler or the relations of Greek drama 
 to " Gaiety " burlesque, or any other subject that interests 
 ordinary human beings. She did not want a vote. She 
 did not want any alteration in the divorce laws. She did 
 not want Russia to be a free country, or the Empire to be 
 federated. She did not want darkest England to be 
 supplied with lamps. She did not want the working classes 
 to lead better and nobler lives. She did not want to pre- 
 serve the commons or to abolish the House of Lords. She 
 did not want to do good or even to be happy. All she 
 wanted was a cook or a housemaid or a coachman, as the 
 case might be, and she was perpetually asking all her 
 acquaintance if they knew of a good one, or had heard pf 
 the outrageous behaviour of the Igst,
 
 OF WIVES AND THEIR MISTRESSES 473 
 
 " In her early married days, my father's income was not 
 a twentieth of what it is to-day, and so she was fairly happy 
 with only one servant to tyrannise over her. But she 
 always had hard mistresses, even in those comparatively 
 easy years. Poor mother ! One scene remains vividly 
 stamped upon my mind. AVe had a girl named Selina, who 
 would not get up in the morning. We had nothing to 
 complain of in the time of her going to bed, — I think she 
 went about nine, — but the earliest she ever rose was eight, 
 and my father always had to catch the eight-twenty train to 
 the city, so you may imagine how much breakfast he got. 
 My mother spoke to Selina about it nearly every day, and 
 Selina admitted the indictment. She said she could not 
 help it, she seemed to dream such long dreams and never 
 wake up in the middle. My mother had had such difficulty 
 in getting Selina that she hesitated to send her away and start 
 hunting for a new Selina, but the case seemed hopeless. 
 
 *' The winter came on, and we took to sending Selina to 
 bed at six o'clock, so that my father might be sure of a hot 
 cup of coffee before leaving home in the morning. But she 
 said the mornings were so cold and dark it was impossible 
 to get out of bed, though she tried very hard and did her 
 best. I think she spent only nine hours out of bed on the 
 average. My father gave up the hope of breakfast. He 
 used to leave by an earlier train and get something at a 
 restaurant. This grieved my mother very much — she cal- 
 culated it cost her a bonnet a month. She became deter- 
 mined to convert Selina from the error of her ways. 
 
 " She told me she was going to appeal to Selina's higher 
 nature. Reprimand had failed, but the soul that cannot be 
 coerced can be touched. 'I'hat was in the days when my 
 mother still read poetry and was semi-independent. 
 
 •"Pnje |jleak bitter dawn, my mother rose shivering^
 
 474 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 dressed herself, and went down into the kitchen, to the 
 entire disconcertion of the chronology of the black beetles. 
 She made the fire and put the kettle on to boil and swept the 
 kitchen. She also swept the breakfast-room and lighted 
 the fire and laid the breakfast. Then she sat down, put on 
 a saintly expression, and waited for Selina. 
 
 " An hour went by, but Selina did not make her appear- 
 ance. The first half- hour passed quickly, because my 
 mother was busy thinking out the exact phrases in which 
 to touch her higher nature. It required tact. A single 
 clumsy turn of language, and she might offend Selina 
 instead of elevating her. It was really quite a literary 
 effort, the adequate expression of my mother's conception 
 of the dignity and pathos of the situation,— in fact, it was 
 that most difficult branch of literature — the dramatic — for 
 my mother constructed the entire dialogue, speaking for 
 Selina as well as for herself. Like all leading ladies, especi- 
 ally when they write their own plays, my mother allotted 
 herself the ' tag,' and the last words of the duologue were : 
 
 " ' There ! there ! my good girl ! Dry your eyes. The 
 past shall be forgotten. From to-morrow a new life shall 
 begin. Come, Selina ! Drink that nice hot cup of tea— 
 don't cry and let it get cold. Thafs right.' 
 
 "The second half-hour was rather slower, my mother 
 listening eagerly for Selina's footsteps, and pricking up her 
 ears at every sound. The mice ran about the wainscotting, 
 the kettle sang blithely, the little flames leapt in the grate, 
 the kitchen and the breakfast-room were cheerful and redol- 
 ent of the goodly savours of breakfast. A pile of hot toast 
 lay upon a plate. Only Selina was wanting. 
 
 " All at once my mother heard the hall-door bang, and, 
 running to the window, she saw a figure going out into the 
 grey, freezing fog. It was my father hurrying to catcl^ his
 
 OF WIVES AND THEIR MISTRESSES 475 
 
 train. In the excitement of the experiment my mother 
 had forgotten to tell him that, for this morning at least, 
 breakfast could be had at home. He might have had such 
 beautiful tea and coffee, such lovely toast, such exquisite 
 eggs, — and there he was hastening along in the raw air on 
 an empty stomach ! My mother rapped on the panes with 
 her knuckles, but my father was late and did not hear. 
 Her own soul a little ruffled, my mother sat down again in 
 the kitchen and waited for Selina. Gradually she forgot 
 her chagrin — after all, it was the last time my father would 
 ever have to depart breakfastless. She went over the 
 dialogue again, polishing it up and adding little touches. 
 
 " I think it was past nine when Selina left her bedroom, 
 unwashed and rubbing her eyes. By that time my mother 
 had thrice resisted the temptation to go up and shake her, 
 and it was coming on a fourth time when she heard Selina's 
 massive footstep on the stair. Instantly my mother's 
 irritation ceased. She reassumed her look of sublime 
 martyrdom. She had spread a nice white cloth on the 
 kitchen table, and Selina's breakfast stood appetisingly 
 upon it. Tears came into her eyes as she thought of how 
 Selina would be shaken to her depths by the sight. 
 
 " Selina threw open the kitchen door with a peevish push, 
 for she disliked having to get up so early in these cold, 
 dark winter mornings, and vented her irritation even upon 
 insensitive woodwork. But when she saw the deep red 
 glow of the fire, instead of the dusky chillness of the normal 
 morning kitchen, she uttered a cry of joy, and, rushing 
 forwards, warmed her hands eagerly at the flame. 
 
 " ' Oh, thank you, missis !' she said, with genuine gratitude. 
 
 '* Selina did not seem at all surprised. But my mother 
 did. She became confused and nervous. She forgot her 
 words, as if from an attack of stage-fright. There was no
 
 476 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 prompter; and so for a moment my mother remained 
 speechless. 
 
 "SeHna, having warmed her hands sufficiently, drew her 
 chair to the table, and lifted the cosy from the teapot. I 
 
 " ' Why, you've let it get cold,' she sighed reproachfully, | 
 
 feeling the side of the pot. 
 
 " This was more than my mother could stand. 
 
 " ' It's you that have let it get cold,' she cried hotly. 
 
 " Now this was impromptu ' gag,' and my mother would 
 have done better to confine herself to the rehearsed dia- 
 logue. 
 
 "'Oh, missis!' cried Selina, 'how can you say that? 
 Why, this is the first moment I've come down ! ' 
 
 " ' Yes ! ' said my mother, gladly seizing the opportunity 
 of slipping back into the text. ' Somebody had to do the 
 work, Selina. In this world no work can go undone. If 
 those whose duty it is do not do it, it must fall on the 
 shoulders of other people. That is why I got up at seven 
 this morning instead of you, and have tidied up the place 
 and made the master's breakfast.' 
 
 " ' That was real good of you ! ' exclaimed Selina, with 
 impulsive admiration. 
 
 " My mother began to feel that the elaborate set piece 
 was going off in a damp sort of way, but she kept up her 
 courage and her saintly expression and continued : 
 
 '"It was freezing when I got out of my warm bed, and 
 before I could get the fire alight here, I almost perished 
 with cold. I shouldn't be surprised if I have laid the seeds 
 of consumption.' 
 
 " ' Ah,' said Selina, with satisfaction. • Now you see what 
 I have had to put up with.' She took another piece of 
 toast. 
 
 " Selina's failure to give the cues extremely disconcerted
 
 OP mvPS AND THEIR Jl//ST/?£SS£S 477 
 
 my mother. Instead of being able to make the high moral 
 remarks she had intended, she was forced to invent re- 
 partees on the spur of the moment. The ethical quality 
 of these improvisations was distinctly inferior. 
 
 " ' But you are paid for it, I'm not,' she retorted sharply. 
 
 " ' I know. That is why I say it is so good of you,' replied 
 Selina, with inextinguishable admiration. ' But you'll reap 
 the benefit of it ! Now that I've had my breakfast without 
 any trouble I shall be able to go about my work a deal 
 better. It's such a struggle to get up, missis, it tires me 
 out for the day, I assure you. Might I have another egg? ' 
 
 " My mother savagely pushed her another egg. 
 
 " ' I'm thinking it would be a good plan,' said Selina, 
 meditatively opening the egg with her fingers, ' if you would 
 get up instead of me every morning. But perhaps that was 
 what you were thinking of?' 
 
 " ' Oh, you would like me to, would you ? ' said my mother. 
 
 ** * I should be very grateful, I should indeed,' said Selina 
 earnestly, 'and I'm sure the work would be better done. 
 There don't seem to be a speck of dust anywhere,' — she 
 rubbed her dirty thumb admiringly along the dresser, — 
 ' and I'm sure the tea and toast are lots nicer than any I've 
 ever made.' 
 
 " My mother waved her hand dcprecatingly, but Selina 
 continued : ' Oh yes, you know they are. You have often 
 told me I was no use at all in the kitchen. I don't need 
 to be told of my shortcomings, missis, — all you say of me 
 is quite true. You would be ever so much more satisfied 
 if you cooked everything yourself, — I'm sure you would.' 
 
 " 'And what would you do under this beautiful scheme?' 
 inquired my mother, with withering sarcasm. 
 
 " ' I haven't thought of that yet,' said Selina simply. ' But 
 no doubt, if I looked around carefully, I should always find
 
 478 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 something to occupy me. I couldn't be long out of work, I 
 feel sure.' 
 
 " Well, that was how my mother's attempt to elevate Selina 
 by moral means came to be a fiasco. The next time she 
 tried to elevate her, it was by physical means. My mother 
 left the suburbs, and moved to a London flat very near the 
 sky. She had given up hopes of improving Selina's matutinal 
 habits, and made the breakfast hour later, through my 
 father having now no train to catch, but she thought she 
 would cure her of followers. Selina's flirtations were not 
 confined to our tradespeople and the local constabulary. 
 She would exchange remarks about the weather with the 
 most casual pedestrian in trousers. My mother thought 
 she would remove her from danger by raising her high 
 above all earthly temptations. We made the tradesmen 
 send up their goods by lift, and the only person she could 
 flirt with was the old lift-attendant. My father grumbled a 
 good deal in the early days because the lift was always at 
 the other extreme when he wanted it, but Selina's moral 
 welfare came before all other considerations. 
 
 " By and by they began to renovate the exterior of the 
 adjoining mansion. 
 
 *' They put up a scaffolding, which grew higher and higher 
 as the work advanced, and men swarmed upon it. At first 
 my mother contemplated them with equanimity, because 
 they were British working men and we were nearest heaven. 
 But, as the months went by, they began to get nearer and 
 nearer. There came a time when Selina's smile was 
 distinctly visible to the man engaged on the section of the 
 scaffolding immediately below. That smile encouraged 
 him. It seemed to say ' Excelsior.' 
 
 •' He was a veritable Don Juan, that labourer. At every 
 flat he flirted with the maid in possession. By counting
 
 OF IV/P'ES AND THEIR MISTRESSES 479 
 
 the storeys in our mansion you could calculate the number 
 of his amours. With every rise he left a love-passage 
 behind him. He was a typical man — always looking 
 higher, and when he had raised himself to a more elevated 
 position, spurning yesterday's love from beneath his feet. 
 He seemed to mount on broken hearts. And now he was 
 aspiring to the highest of all — Selina. 
 
 " Oh, it was cruel ! My mother had secluded Selina like 
 a virgin princess in an enchanted inaccessible tower, and 
 yet here was the prince calmly scaling the tower without any 
 possibility of interference. Long before he had reached the 
 top the consumption of Bass in our flat went up by leaps and 
 bounds. Selina, my mother ultimately discovered, used to 
 lower the beer by strings tied to the broom-handle. It 
 appeared, moreover, that she had two strings to her bow, for 
 a swain in a slouch hat had been likewise climbing the 
 height, at an insidious angle, which had screened him from 
 my mother's observation hitherto. Neither of these men 
 did much work, but it made them very thirsty. 
 
 " That destroyed the last vestige of my mother's faith in 
 Sclina's soul. Like all disappointed women, she became 
 crabbed and cynical. When my father's rising fortunes 
 brought her more and more under the dominion of servants, 
 the exposure and out-manoeuvring of her taskmasters came 
 to be the only pleasure of her life. She spent a great deal 
 of time in the police courts — the constant prosecution she 
 suffered from curtailed the last relics of her leisure. Every- 
 body has heard of the law's delay, but few know how much 
 time prosecutors have to lose, hanging about the court 
 waiting for their case to be called. When a servant robbed 
 her, my mother rarely got off with less than seven days. 
 The moment she had engaged a servant she became 
 morbidly suspicious of him or her. Often, when she had
 
 48o 
 
 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 dressed for dinner, it would suddenly strike her that if she 
 ransacked a certain cupboard something or other would be 
 
 LOWERING THIC BKER. 
 
 discovered, and off she would go to spoil her spotless silks.
 
 OF WIVES AND THEIR MISTRESSES 481 
 
 She had a mania for ' Spring cleanings ' once a month, so 
 as to keep the drones busy. Often I would bring a friend 
 home, only to find the dining-room in the hall and the 
 drawing-room on the landing. And yet to the end she 
 retained a certain guileless, girlish simplicity — a fresh fund 
 of hope which was not without a charm and pathos of its 
 own. To the very last she believed that faultless, flawless 
 servants existed somewhere, and she didn't intend to be 
 happy till she got them ; so that it was said of her, by my 
 sister's intended, that she passed her life on the door-step, 
 either receiving an angel or expelling a fiend. 
 
 " It showed what a fine trustful nature had been turned 
 to gall. She is at rest now, poor mother, her life's long 
 slavery ended by the soft touch of all-merciful death ! Let 
 us hope that she has opened her sorrow-stricken eyes on a 
 brighter land, where earthly distinctions are annulled, and 
 the poor heavy-laden mistress may mix on equal terms with 
 the radiant parlour-maid and the buxom cook." 
 
 The tears were in Lillie's eyes as Miss Eustasia Pallas 
 concluded her affecting recital. 
 
 " But don't you think," said the President, conquering her 
 emotion, " that with such an awful example in your memory 
 you could never yourself sink into such a serfage, even if you 
 married ? " 
 
 " I dare not trust myself," said Eustasia. •' I have seen 
 
 the fall of too many other women. Why should I expect 
 
 immunity from the general fate ? I think myself strong — 
 
 but who can fathom her own weakness ? Why, I have 
 
 actually been talking servants to you all the time. Think 
 
 how continuous is the temptation, how subtle. Were it not 
 
 better to possess my soul in peace, and to cultivate it nobly 
 
 and wisely, and become a shining light of the higher 
 
 spinsterhood ? " 
 
 ■In
 
 482 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Eustasia passed the preliminary examination and also the 
 viva voce, and Lillie was again in high feather. But before 
 the election was formally confirmed, she was chagrined to 
 receive the following letter : — 
 
 *' My Dear Miss Dulcimer, — I have good news for you. 
 Knowing your anxiety to find for me a way out of my matri- 
 monial dilemma, I am pleased to be able to inform you 
 that it has been found by my friend and literary adviser, 
 Percy Swinshel Spatt, the well - known philosopher and 
 idealist. I met him writing down his thoughts in Bond 
 Street. In the course of a dialogue upon the Beautiful, I 
 put my puzzle to him, and he solved it in a moment. ' Why 
 tnust you keep a servant?' he asked, for it is his habit to 
 question every statement he does not make. 'Why not 
 rather keep a mistress? Become a servant yourself, and all 
 your difficulties vanish.' It was like a flash of lightning. 
 'Yes,' I said, when I had recovered from the dazzle, 'but 
 that would mean separation from my husband.' 'Why?' 
 he replied, with his usual habit. 'In many houses they 
 prefer to take married couples.' 'Ah, but where should I 
 find a man of like mind, a man to whom leisure for the 
 cultivation of his soul was the one great necessity of life?' 
 ' It is a curious coincidence, Eustasia,' he replied, ' that I 
 was just myself contemplating keeping a master and retiring 
 into a hermitage below stairs, to devote myself to philo. 
 sophical contemplation. As a butler or a footman in a 
 really aristocratic establishment, my duties would be 
 nominal, and the other servants and my employers would 
 attend to all my wants. Abstract speculation would 
 naturally endue me with that grave silence and dignity 
 which seem to be the chief duties of these superior 
 creatures. It is possible, Eustasia, that I am not the first
 
 OF WIVES AND THEIR MISTRESSES 
 
 483 
 
 to perceive the advantages of this way of living, and that 
 plush is but the disguise of the philosopher. As for you, 
 Eustasia, you could become a parlour-maid. Thus should 
 we live together peacefully, with no sordid housekeeping 
 cares, no squalid interest in rates or taxes, devoted heart and 
 soul to the higher life.' *You light up for me perspectives 
 
 DREW UP THE ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 of Paradise,' I cried enthusiastically. ' Then let us get the 
 key of the garden at once,' he replied rapturously. And, 
 turning over a new leaf of his philosophical note-book, he 
 set to work there and then to draw up the advertisement : 
 ' Wanted — by a young married couple, etc' Of course we 
 had to be a little previous, because I could not consent to
 
 484 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 marry him unless we had a situation to go to. We '.vere 
 only putting what the Greek grammars call a proleptic 
 construction upon the situation. Well, it seems good 
 servants are so scarce, we got a place at once, — the exact 
 thing we were looking for. We are concealing our real 
 names (lest the profession be overrun by jealous friends 
 from Newnham and Girton and Oxford and Cambridge), 
 so that I was able to give Percy a character, and Percy to 
 give me a character. We are going into our place next 
 Monday afternoon, so, to avoid obtaining the situation by 
 false pretences, we shall have to go before the registrar on 
 the Monday morning. Our honeymoon will be spent in 
 the delightful and unexploited retreat of the servants' hall. 
 — Yours, in the higher sisterhood, 
 
 EusTASiA Pallas." 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE GOOD YOUNG MEN WHO LIVED 
 
 "It is, indeed, a happy solution," said Lord Silverdale 
 enviously. " To spend your life in the service of other 
 men, yet to save it for yourself — it reconciles all ideals." 
 
 " Well, you can very easily try it," said Lillie. " I have 
 just heard from the Princess of Portman Square — she is 
 reorganising her household in view of her nuptials. Shall 
 I write you a recommendation ? " 
 
 "No; but I will read you an Address to an Egyptian 
 Tipcat," replied his lordship, with the irrelevancy which 
 was growing upon him. "You know the recent excavations 
 have shown that the little Egyptians used to play 'pussy- 
 cat ' five thou-sand years ago."
 
 THE GOOD YOUNG MEN WHO LIVED 485 
 
 ADDRESS TO AN EGYPTIAN TIPCAT 
 
 And thou hast flown about — how strange a stoiy ! — 
 
 Full five-and-forty centuries ago, 
 
 Ere Fayoum, fired with military glory, 
 
 Received from Gurod, with purpureal show. 
 
 The sea-born captives of the spear and bow ; 
 
 And thou hast blacked, perhaps, the very finest eye 
 
 That sparkled in the twelfth Egyptian Dynasty. 
 
 The sight of thee brings visions panoramic 
 
 Of manlier games — as Faro, Pyramids ; 
 
 What hands, now tinct with substances balsamic, 
 
 Have set thee leaping like the sportive kids, 
 
 What time the passers-by did close their lids? 
 
 Did the stern priesthood strive thy cult to smother, 
 
 Or wast thou worshipped like thy purring brother? 
 
 W^here is the youth by whom thou wast created 
 
 And tipped profusely? Doth he frisk in glee 
 
 In Aahlu, or lives he, transmigrated. 
 
 The lower life Osiris did decree. 
 
 Of fowl, or fly, or fish, or fox, or flea? 
 
 Or, fnllen deeper, is he politician, 
 
 Stumping the land, his country's quack physician? 
 
 Thou sphinx in wood, unchanged, serene, immortal, 
 
 How many states and temples have decayed, 
 
 And generations passed the mystic portal. 
 
 Whilst thou, still young, hast gone on being played ? 
 
 Say when thy popularity shall fade? 
 
 And art thou — here's my last, if not my stiffest — 
 
 As good a bouncer as the hieroglyphist ? 
 
 " Why, did the hieroglyphists use to brag ? " asked LilHe. 
 
 " Shamefully. You can no more believe in their state- 
 ments than in epitaphs. There seems something peculiarly 
 mendacious about stone as a recording medium. Only
 
 486 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 it must be admitted on behalf of the hieroglyphists, 
 that it may be the Egyptologists who are the braggers. 
 There never was an ancient inscription which is not 
 capable of being taken in a dozen different ways, like a 
 party-leader's speech. Every word has six possible mean- 
 ings and half-a-dozen probable ones. The savants do but 
 pretend to understand the stones." 
 
 So saying, Lord Silverdale took his departure. On the 
 door-step he met a young lady carrying a brown-paper 
 parcel. She smiled so sweetly at him that he raised his 
 hat and wondered where he had met her. 
 
 But it was only another candidate. She faced Turple 
 the Magnificent, and smiled on unawed. Turple ended by 
 relaxing his muscles a whit, then, ashamed of himself, he 
 announced gruffly, "Miss Mary Friscoe." 
 
 After the preliminary formalities, and after having duly 
 assured herself that there was no male ear within earshot. Miss 
 Friscoe delivered herself of the following candid confession : 
 
 " I am a pretty girl, as you can see. I wear sweet frocks 
 and smiles, and my eyes are of Heaven's own blue. Men 
 are fond of gazing into them. Men are so artistic. They 
 admire the Beautiful, and tell her so. Women are so 
 different. I have overheard my girl-friends call me 'that 
 silly little flirt' 
 
 " I hold that any woman can twist any man round her 
 little finger or his arm round her waist, therefore I consider 
 it no conceit to say I have attracted considerable attentions. 
 If I had accepted all the offers I received, my marriages 
 could easily have filled a column of The Times. 
 
 " I know there are women who think that men are coarse 
 unsentimental creatures, given over to slang, tobacco, 
 billiards, betting, brandies and sodas, smoking-room stories, 
 flirtations with bar-maids, dress, and general depravity.
 
 THE GOOD YOUNG MEN WHO LIVED 487 
 
 " But the women who say or write that are soured 
 creatures, who have never been loved, have never fathomed 
 the depth and purity of men's souls. 
 
 " I have been loved. I have been loved much and often, 
 and I speak as one who knows. Man is the most maligned 
 animal in creation. He is the least gross and carnal of 
 creatures, the most exquisitely pure and refined in thought 
 and deed, the most capable of disinterested devotion, self- 
 sacrifice, chivalry, tenderness. Every man is his own 
 Bayard. 
 
 " If men had their deserts, we women — heartless, frivolous, 
 venal creatures that we are — would go down on our knees 
 to them, and beg them to marry us. I am a woman, and 
 again I speak as one who knows. For I am not a bad 
 specimen of my sex. Even my best friends admit I am only 
 silly. I am really a very generous and kind-hearted little 
 thing. I never keep my tailor waiting longer than a year. 
 I have made quite a number of penwipers for the poor, and 
 I have never told an unnecessary lie in my life. I give a 
 great deal of affection to my mother, and even a little assist- 
 ance in the household. I do not smoke scented cigarettes. 
 I read travels and biographies as well as novels, play the 
 guitar rather well, attend an art-class, rise long before 
 noon, am good-tempered, wear my ball dresses more than 
 once, turn winter dresses into spring frocks by stripping off 
 the fur and putting on galloon, and diversify my gowns by 
 changing the sleeves. In short, I am a superior, thoroughly 
 domesticated girl. 
 
 " And yet I have never met a man who has not had the 
 advantage of me in all the virtues. There was George 
 Holly, — I regret I cannot mention my lovers in chrono- 
 logical order, but my memories are so vague they all seem 
 to fuse into one another. Perhaps it is because there is
 
 488 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 a lack of distinctiveness about men — a monotonous goodness 
 which has its charm but is extremely confusing. One thing 
 I do remember, though, about George — at least, I think it 
 was George. His moustache was rather bristly, and the 
 little curled tips used to tickle one's nose comically. I 
 was very disappointed in George. I had heard such a lot 
 of talk about him, but when I got to really know him I 
 found he was not a bit like it. How I came to really know 
 him was like this. 
 
 " ' Mary,' he said, as we sat on the stairs, high up so as 
 not to be in the way of the waiters, 'Won't you say Yes, 
 and make me the happiest man alive ? Never man loved 
 as I love now ! Answer me. Do not torture me with 
 suspense.' 
 
 "I was silent — speechless with happiness. To think 
 that I had won this true manly heart ! I looked down at my 
 fan. My lips were forming the affirmative monosyllable, 
 when George continued passionately : 
 
 " ' O Mary, speak ! — Mary, the only woman I ever 
 loved ! ' 
 
 " I turned pale with emotion. Tears came into my eyes. 
 
 " ' Is this true ? ' I articulated. ' Am I really the only 
 woman you ever loved ? ' 
 
 " * By my hopes of a hereafter — Yes.' George was a bit 
 slangy in his general conversation, the shallow world never 
 knew the poetry he could rise to. 'This is the first time 
 I have known what it is to love, Mary — my sweet, my 
 
 own.' 
 
 " ' No, not your own,' I interrupted coldly, for my heart 
 was like ice within me. ' I belong to myself, and I intend 
 to. Will you give me your arm into the ball-room — Mr. 
 Daythorpe must be looking for me everywhere.' 
 
 " It sounds very wicked to say it, I know, but I cannot
 
 THE GOOD YOUNG MEN WHO LIVED 489 
 
 delay my confession longer. I love, I adore, I dote on 
 wicked men, — men who love not wisely but too well. 
 When I learnt history at school I could always answer 
 questions about the reign of Charles II., it was such a 
 deliciously wicked period. I love Burns, Lord Byron, 
 De IMusset, Heine, — all the nice naughty men of history 
 or fiction. I like Ouida's guardsmen whose love is a 
 tornado, and Charlotte Bronte's Rochester, and Richard- 
 son's Lovelace. 
 
 "I hate, I detest milksops. And a good man always 
 seems to me a milksop. It is a flaw — a terrible flaw in my 
 composition, I know — but I cannot help it. It makes me 
 miserable, but what can I do ? Nature will out. 
 
 "That was how I came to find George out, and to 
 discover he was not the terrible cavalier, the abandoned 
 squire of dames the world said he was. His reputation 
 was purely bogus. The gossips might buzz, but I had it 
 on the highest authority I was the first woman he had 
 ever loved. What pleasure is there in such a conquest? 
 It grieved me to break his heart, but I had no option. 
 
 " Daythori)e was another fellow who taught me the same 
 lesson of the purity and high emotions of his cruelly libelled 
 sex. He, too, when driven into a corner (far from the 
 madding crowd), confessed that I was the only woman he 
 had ever loved. I have tried them all — poets and 
 musicians, barristers and business men. They all had 
 suftered from the same incapacity for affection till they met 
 me. It was quite pathetic to discover how truly all men 
 were brothers. The only difference was, that while some 
 added I was the only woman they ever could love, others 
 insisted that never man had loved before as they did now. 
 The latter lovers always reminded me of advertisers ofiering 
 a superior article to anything in the trade. Nowhere could
 
 490 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 I meet the man I longed for — the man who had lived 
 and loved. Once I felt stirrings towards a handsome 
 young widower, but he went out of his way to assure me 
 he had never cared for his first wife ; after that, of course, 
 he had no chance. Unable to discover any but good 
 young men, I resigned myself perforce to spinsterhood. I 
 resolved to cultivate only Platonic relations. I told young 
 men to come to me and tell me their troubles. I encour- 
 aged them to sit at my feet and confide in me, while I 
 held their hands to give them courage. But even so they 
 would never confess to anything worth hearing, and if 
 they did love anybody it invariably turned out to be me, 
 and me only. Yes, I grieve to say these Platonic young 
 men were just as good as the others ; leaving out the 
 audacity of their proposing to me when I had given them 
 no encouragement. Here again I found men distressingly 
 alike. They are constitutionally unable to be girls' 
 chums ; they are always hankering to convert the friendship 
 into love. Time after time my anticipations of a genuine 
 comradeship were rudely dispelled by fatuous philandering. 
 Yet I never ceased to be surprised, and I never lost hope. 
 Such, I suppose, is the simple trustfulness of a girl's 
 nature. 
 
 "In time I got to know when the explosion was coming, 
 and this deadened the shock. I found it was usually 
 preceded by suicidal remarks of a retrospective character. 
 My comrades would tell me of their past lives, of the 
 days when the world's oyster was yet unopened by them. 
 In those dark days (tears of self-pity came into their eyes 
 as they spoke of them) they were on the point of suicide — 
 to a man. Only, one little thing always came to save them 
 — their first brief; the acceptance of their first article, poem 
 or song; the opportune deaths of aunts; the chance hearing
 
 I'l. ATONIC I.OVK
 
 492 
 
 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 of an organ note rolling through the portal of a village 
 church on a Sunday afternoon ; a letter from an old school- 
 master. The obvious survival of the narrators rather 
 spoiled the sensational thrill for me, but they themselves 
 were always keenly touched by the story. And from 
 suicide in the past to suicide in the future was an easy 
 transition. Alas ! I was the connecting link. They loved 
 me — and unless I returned their love, that early suicide 
 would prove to have been merely postponed. In the course 
 
 of conversation it trans- 
 pired that I was the first 
 woman they had ever 
 loved. I remember 
 once rejecting on this 
 account two such 
 Platonic failures, within 
 ten minutes of each 
 other. One was a well- 
 known caricaturist, and 
 the other was the editor 
 of a ladies' paper. Each 
 left me declaring his 
 heart was broken, that 
 I had led him on 
 shamelessly, that 1 was a heartless jilt, and that he would 
 go and kill himself My brother Tom accidentally told me 
 he saw them together about an hour afterwards at a bar in 
 the Strand, asking each other what was their poison. So 
 I learnt that they had spoken the truth. I had driven 
 them to drink. And, according to Tom, the drink at this 
 particular bar is superior to strychnine. He says men 
 always take it in preference." 
 
 " And have you then finally decided to abandon Pla- 
 
 DRIVEN TO DRINK.
 
 THE GOOD YOUNG MEN WHO LIVED 493 
 
 tonics ? " asked Lillie, when the flow of words came to an 
 end. 
 
 " Finally." 
 
 " And you have decided to enrol in our ranks ? " 
 
 Miss Mary Friscoe hesitated. 
 
 <« Well — about that part I'm not quite so certain. To tell 
 the truth, there is one young man of my acquaintance who 
 has never yet proposed. When I started for here in disgust 
 at the goodness of mankind, I forgot him, but in talking he 
 has come back to my mind. I have a strong suspicion he 
 is quite wicked. He is always painting actresses. Don't 
 you think it would be unfair to him to take my vows without 
 2;iving him a chance ? " 
 
 " Well, yes," said Lillie musingly ; " perhaps it would. 
 You would feel easier afterwards ; otherwise you might 
 always reproach yourself with the thought that you had 
 perhaps turned away from a bad man's love. You might 
 feel that the world was not so good as you had imagined in 
 your girlish cynicism, and then you might regret having 
 joined us." 
 
 "Quite so," said Miss Friscoe eagerly. "But he shall 
 be the very last man I will listen to." 
 
 " When do you propose to be proposed to by him?" 
 
 "The sooner the better. This very day, if you Hke. 
 I am going straight from here to my art-class." 
 
 *' Very well. Then you will come to-morrow and tell me 
 your final decision? " 
 
 " To-morrow." 
 
 , . • • • • 
 
 Miss Mary Friscoe arrived at the art -class late. Her 
 fellow - students of both sexes were already at their 
 easels, and her entry distracted everybody. It was a 
 motley gathering, working in motley media — charcoal,
 
 494 ^^HE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 chalk, pencil, oil, water-colour. One girl was modelling in 
 clay ; and one young gentleman, opera-glass in hand, was 
 making enlarged coloured copies of photographs. It was 
 this young gentleman that Mary came out for to see. His 
 name was Bertie Smythe. He was rich, but he would 
 always be a poor artist. His ambition was to paint the nude. 
 There were lilies of the valley in the bosom of Mary's 
 art-gown, and when she arrived she unfolded the brown- 
 paper parcel she carried, and took therefrom a cardboard 
 box containing a snow-white collar and spotless cuffs, which 
 she proceeded to adjust upon her person. She then went 
 to the drawing-board rack and stood helpless, unable to 
 reach down her board, which was quite two inches above 
 her head. There was a rush of embryo R.A.'s. Those 
 who failed to hand her the board got down the cast and 
 dusted it for her, and fixed it up according to her minute 
 and detailed directions, and adjusted her easel and brought 
 her a trestle, and lent her lead pencils and cut them for her, 
 and gave her chunks of stale bread ; for all which services she 
 rewarded them with bewitching smiles and profuse thanks, 
 and a thousand apologies. It took her a long time getting 
 to work on the charcoal cluster of plums, which had 
 occupied her ever since the commencement of the term, 
 because she never ventured to begin without holding long 
 confabulations with her fellow-students as to whether the 
 light was falling in exactly the same way as last time. 
 She got them to cock their heads on one side and survey 
 the sketch, to retreat and look at it knowingly, to measure 
 the visual angle with a stick of charcoal, or even to mani- 
 pulate delicately the great work itself. Meantime she 
 fluttered about it — chattering, alternately enraptured and 
 dissatisfied, and when at last she started it was by rubbing 
 everything out.
 
 THE GOOD YOUNG MEN WHO LIVED 495 
 
 The best position for drawing happened to be next to 
 Bertie Smythe. That artist was now engaged in copying 
 the portrait of an actress. 
 
 "O Mr. Smythe," said Mary suddenly, in a confidential 
 whisper, " I've got such a beautiful face for you to paint." 
 
 " I know you have ! " flashed Bertie, in the same intimate 
 tone. 
 
 " What a tease you are, twisting my words like that," 
 said Mary, rapping him playfully on the knuckles with her 
 maul-stick. " You know what I mean quite well ; it's a 
 cousin of mine in the country." 
 
 "I see — it runs in the family," said Bertie. 
 
 •* What runs in the family? " asked Mary. 
 
 " Beautiful faces, of course." 
 
 " Oh, that's too bad of you," said Mary, pouting. 
 " You know I don't like compliments." She rubbed a pellet 
 of bread fretfully into her drawing. 
 
 " I don't pay compliments. I tell the truth," said Bertie, 
 meeting her gaze unflinchingly. 
 
 " Oh, look at that funny little curl Miss Roberts is wearing 
 tonight!" 
 
 " Bother Miss Roberts ! When are you going to let me 
 \\di\^ your face to paint?" 
 
 " My cousin's, you mean," said Mary, rubbing away 
 harder than ever. 
 
 *' No, I don't, I mean yours." 
 
 •* I never give away photographs to gentlemen." 
 
 " Well, sit to mc, then." 
 
 "Sit to you! Where?" 
 
 "In my studio." 
 
 " Good gracious ! What are you talking about? * 
 
 " You." 
 
 " Oh, you are too tiresome. I shall never get this
 
 496 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 finished," grumbled Mary, concentrating herself so vigor- 
 ously on the drawing that she absent-mindedly erased the 
 last vestiges of it. She took up her plumb-line and held it 
 in front of her cast, and became absorbed in contemplat- 
 ing it. 
 
 " You haven't answered my question, Miss Friscoe," 
 whispered Bertie pertinaciously. 
 
 "What question?" 
 
 " When are you going to lend me your face?" 
 
 "Why, there's Mr. Biskett going home already." 
 
 " Hang Mr. Biskett ! I say, Mary " he began pas- 
 sionately. 
 
 "How are you getting on, Mr. Smythe?" came the 
 creaking voice of Potts, the drawing-master, behind him. 
 
 "Pretty well, thank you; how's yourself?" mechanically 
 replied Bertie, greatly flustered by his inopportune arrival. 
 
 Potts stared, and Mary burst into a ringing laugh. 
 
 " Look at my drawing, Mr. Potts," she said. " It will 
 come so funny." 
 
 " Why, there's nothing there," said Potts. 
 
 " Dear me, no more there is," said Mary. " I was 
 entirely dissatisfied with it. You might just sketch it in 
 for me." 
 
 Potts was accustomed to doing the work of most of the 
 lady students. They used to let him do a Uttle bit on each 
 of his rounds till the thing was completed. He set to work 
 on Mary's drawing, leaving her to finish being proposed to. 
 
 "And you really love me?" Mary was saying, while Potts 
 was sketching the second plum. 
 
 " Can you doubt it?" Bertie whispered tremulously. 
 
 "Yes, I do doubt it. You have loved so many girls, 
 you know. Oh, I have heard all about your conquests." 
 
 She thought it best to take the bull by the horns, and
 
 THE GOOD YOUNG MEN WHO LIVED 497 
 
 her breath came thick and fast as she waited for the reply 
 that would make or mar her life. 
 
 Bertie's face lit up with pleasure. 
 
 "Oh, but "he began. 
 
 "Ah yes, I know," she interrupted triumphantly. "What 
 about that actress you are painting now ? " 
 
 "Oh, well," said Bertie. "If you say 'Yes,' I promise 
 never to speak to her again." 
 
 " And you will give up your bad habits ? " she continued 
 joyfully. 
 
 "Every one. Even my cigarettes — if you say the word. 
 My whole life shall be devoted to making you happy. You 
 shall never hear a cross word from my lips." 
 
 Mary's face fell, her lips twitched. What was the use of 
 marrying a milksop like that ? Where would be the fun of 
 a union without mutual recriminations and sweet recon- 
 ciliations? She even began to doubt whether he was 
 wicked after all. 
 
 " Did you ever really love that actress ? " she whispered 
 anxiously. 
 
 "No, of course I didn't," said Bertie soothingly. "To 
 tell the truth, I have never spoken to her in my life. I 
 bought her photo in Burlington Arcade, and I only talk 
 with the fellows about ballet-girls in order not to be behind 
 the times. I never knew what love was till I met you. 
 You are the only " 
 
 Crash ! bang ! went his three-legged easel, upset by 
 
 Mary's irrepressible movement of pique. The eyes of the 
 
 class were on them in a moment, but only Mary knew 
 
 that in that crash her last hope of happiness had fallen 
 
 00. 
 
 " I do trust Miss Friscoe's last chance will not prove a 
 
 21
 
 49S THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 blank again," said Lord Silverdale, when Lillie had told 
 him of the poor girl's prior disappointments. 
 
 "Why?" asked the President. 
 
 " Because I shrink from the viva voce examination." 
 
 *' Why ? " asked the President. 
 
 " I am afraid I should be so dangerous." 
 
 "Why?" asked the President. 
 
 " Because I have loved before. I shall be desperately in 
 love with another woman all through the interview." 
 
 " Oh, I am so sorry ; but you are inadmissible," said 
 Lillie, when Miss Friscoe came to announce her willingness 
 to join the Club. 
 
 " Why ? " asked the candidate. 
 
 " Because you belong to an art-class. It is forbidden by 
 our by-laws. How stupid of me not to think of it yesterday ! " 
 
 " But I am ready to give it up." 
 
 " Oh, I couldn't dream of allowing that on any account," 
 said the President. " I hear you draw so well." 
 
 So Mary never went before the Honorary Trier. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 ADVENTURES IN SEARCH OF THE POLK 
 
 " Oh, by the way, that Miss Friscoe will not trouble you, 
 you will be glad to hear," said Lillie lightly. 
 
 "Indeed?" said Silverdale. "Then she has drawn a 
 prize after all ! I cannot say as much for the young man. 
 I hardly think she is a credit to your sex. Somehow she 
 reminded me of a woman I used to know, and of some 
 verses I wrote upon her,"
 
 AD VENTURES IN SEARCH OF THE POLE 499 
 
 [" If he had given me a chance, and not gone on to read 
 his poetry so quickly," wrote Lillie in her diary that night, 
 " I might have told him that his inference about Miss 
 Friscoe was incorrect. But it is such a trifle — it is not 
 worth telling him now— especially as he practically intimated 
 she would have been an undesirable member, and I only 
 saved him the trouble of trying her."J 
 
 Lord Silverdale read his verses without the accompani- 
 ment of the banjo, an instrument too frivolous for the tragic 
 muse. 
 
 LA FEMME QUI NE KIT PAS 
 
 It was fair with a loveliness mystic, 
 
 Like the faces that Raphael drew, 
 Enigmatic, intense, cabalistic, 
 
 But surcharged with the light of the true ; 
 Such a face, such a hauntingly magic 
 
 Incarnation of wistful regret, 
 It was tenebrous, tender, and tragic, — 
 I dream of it yet. 
 
 And there lives in my charm'd recollection 
 The sweet mouth with its lip cruelly curled, 
 
 As with bitter ironic rejection 
 
 Of the gods of the frivolous world. 
 
 Yet not ever disdain on her features 
 Was enthroned, for a heavenly peace 
 
 Often linked her with Ijright seraph creatures 
 Or statues of Greece. 
 
 I met her at dinners and dances, 
 
 Or on yachts that by moonlight went trips, 
 
 And was thrilled by her marvellous glances. 
 And the sneer or repose of her lips. 
 
 Never smile o'er her features did play light, 
 Never laughter illumined her eyes ; 
 
 She grew to seem sundered from daylight 
 And sun -kindled skies.
 
 50O THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Were they human at all, those dusk glories 
 
 Of eyes? And their owner, was she 
 A Swinburnian Lady Dolores, 
 
 Or a sprite from some shadowy sea? 
 A Cassandra at sea-trip and soiree, 
 
 Or Proserpina visiting earth ? 
 Ay, what Harpy pursued her as quarry 
 To strangle so mirth ? 
 
 Ah, but now I am wiser and sadder, 
 
 And my spirit can never again 
 At the sight of your fairness feel gladder, 
 
 O ladies, who coolly obtain 
 An enamelled and painted complexion 
 
 On conditions (which really are "style")— 
 You must never by day risk detection^ 
 And never more smile, 
 
 "I don't see where the connection with Miss Friscoe 
 comes in," said LilHe. 
 
 " No ? Why, simply if she acquired an enamelled com- 
 plexion, it might be the salvation of her, don't you see? 
 Like Henry I., she would never smile again." 
 
 Lillie smiled. Then producing a manuscript, she said : 
 
 " I think you will be interested in this story of another 
 of the candidates who applied during your expedition to 
 the clouds. It is quite unique, and for amusement I have 
 written it from the man's point of view." 
 
 *' May I come in ? " interrupted the millionaire, popping his 
 head through the door. "Are there any Old Maids here?" 
 
 "Only me," said Lillie, "or rather, only L" 
 
 "Oh, then, I'll call another time." 
 
 " No, you may come in, father. Lord Silverdale and I 
 have finished our business for the day. You can take that 
 away with you and read it at your leisure. Lord Silverdale." 
 
 The millionaire came in, but without empressenimt.
 
 ADVENTURES IN SEARCH OF THE POLE 501 
 
 That night Lord Silverdale, who was suffering from in- 
 somnia, took the manuscript to bed with him, but he could 
 not sleep till he had finished it. 
 
 • • • > I • t 
 
 *' I, Anton Mendoza, bachelor, born thirty years ago by 
 the grace of the Holy Virgin on the fete-day of San Anton, 
 patron of pigs and old maids, after sundry adventures by 
 sea and land, found myself in the autumn of last year in 
 the pestiferous atmosphere of London. I had picked up 
 bad English and a good sum of money in South America, 
 and by the aid of the two was enabled to thread my way 
 through the mazes of the metropolis. I soon tired of the 
 neighbourhood of the Alhambra (in the proximity of which 
 I had with mistaken patriotism established myself), for the 
 wealthy quarters of all great cities have more affinities than 
 differences, and after a few days of sight-seeing I resolved 
 to fare forth in quest of the real sights of London. Mount- 
 ing the box of the first omnibus that came along, I threw 
 the reins of my fortunes into the hands of the driver, and 
 drew a little blue ticket from the lottery of fate. I scanned 
 the slip of paper curiously, and learned therefrom that I was 
 going fast to ' The Angel,' which I shrewdly divined to be 
 a public-house, knowing that these islanders display no 
 poetry and imagination save in connection with beer. My 
 intuition was correct, and though it was the forenoon I 
 alighted amid a double stream of pedestrians, the one 
 branch flowing into 'The Angel,' and the other issuing 
 therefrom. Extricating myself, I looked at my compass, 
 and, following the direction of the needle, soon found my- 
 self in a network of unlovely streets. For an hour I paced 
 forwards without chancing on aught of interest, save many 
 weary organ-grinders, seemingly serenading their mistresses 
 with upward glances at their chamber-windows, and I was
 
 502 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 commencing to fear that my blue ticket would prove a 
 blank, when a savoury odour of garlic struck on my nostrils 
 and apprised me that my walk had given me an appetite. 
 Glancing sideways I saw a door swinging, the same bearing 
 in painted letters on the glass the words: 'Menotti's Restau- 
 rant — Id on park Fraticais.^ It looked a queer little place, 
 and the little back street into which I had strayed seemed 
 hardly auspicious of cleanly fare. Still the jewel of good 
 cookery harbours often in the plainest caskets, and I set the 
 door swinging again and passed into a narrow room, walled 
 with cracked mirrors and furnished with a few little tables, 
 a rusty waiter, and a proprietorial-looking person perpetually 
 bent over a speaking-tube. As noon was barely arrived, I 
 was not surprised to find the place all but empty. At the 
 extreme end of the restaurant I caught a glimpse of a stout 
 dark man with iron-grey whiskers. I thought I would go 
 and lunch at the table of the solitary customer and scrape 
 acquaintance, and thus perhaps achieve an adventure. But 
 hardly had I seated myself opposite him than a shock 
 traversed his face, the morsel he had just swallowed seemed 
 to stick in his throat, he rose coughing violently and clap- 
 ping his palm over his mouth with the fingers spread out 
 almost as if he wished to hide his face, turned his back 
 quickly, seized his hat, threw half-a-crown to the waiter, and 
 scuttled from the establishment. 
 
 " I was considerably surprised at his abrupt departure, as 
 if I had brought some infection with me. The momentary 
 glimpse I had caught of his face had convinced me 1 had 
 never seen it before, that it had no place in the photograph 
 album of my brain, though now it would be fixed there for 
 ever. The nose hooked itself on to my memory at once. It 
 must be that he had mistaken me for somebody else, some- 
 body whom he had reason to fear. Perhaps he was a criminal
 
 7. 
 
 D
 
 504 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 and imagined me a detective. I called the proprietor, and 
 inquired of him in French who the man was and what was 
 the matter with him. But he shook his head and answered, 
 ' That man there puzzles me. There is a mystery behind.' 
 
 " ' Why, has he done anything strange before to-day ? ' 
 
 " ' No, not precisely.' 
 
 " ' How then ? ' 
 
 " ' I will tell you. He comes here once a year.' 
 
 " ' Once a year ! ' I repeated. 
 
 " ' No more. This has been going on for twelve years.' 
 
 " ' What are you telling me there ? ' I murmured. 
 
 " ' It is true.' 
 
 " ' But how have you remembered him from year to year?' 
 
 " ' I was struck by his face and his air the very first time. 
 He seemed anxious, ill at ease, worried. He left his 
 chop half eaten.' 
 
 " ' Ha ! ' I murmured. 
 
 " ' Also, he looks different from most of my clients. They 
 are not of that type. Of course I forget him immediately 
 — it is not my affair. But when he comes the second time 
 I recall him on the instant, though a year has passed. 
 Again he looks perturbed, restless. I say to myself, " Aha, 
 thou art not a happy man, there is something which preys 
 on thy mind. However, thy money is good, and to the 
 devil with the rest." So it goes on. After three or four 
 visits I commence to look out for him, and I discover that 
 it is only once a year he does me the honour to arrive. 
 There are twelve years that I know him — I have seen him 
 twelve times.' 
 
 " ' And he has always this nervous air .? ' 
 
 " ' Not always. That varies. Sometimes he appears calm, 
 sometimes even happy.' 
 
 Perhaps it is your fare ? ' I said slyly. 
 
 CI ( '
 
 AD VENTURES IN SEARCH OF THE POLE 505 
 
 " * Ah no, Monsieur, that does not vary. It is always of 
 the first excellence.' 
 
 " ' Does he always come on the same date ? ' 
 
 " ' No, Monsieur. There is the puzzle. It is never 
 exactly a year between his visits — sometimes it is more, 
 sometimes it is less.' 
 
 '"There is, indeed, the puzzle,' I agreed. 'If it were 
 always the same date, it would be a clue. Ah, an idea ! 
 He comes not always on the same date of the month, but 
 he comes, perhaps, on the same day of the week, eh ? ' 
 
 " Again the proprietor dashed me back into the depths 
 of perplexity. 
 
 "'No,' he said decisively. 'Monday, Wednesday, 
 Saturday — it is all the same. The only thing that changes 
 not is the man and his dress. Always the same broad- 
 cloth frock-coat and the same high hat, and the same seals at 
 the heavy watch-chain. He is a rich man — that sees itself.' 
 
 "I wrinkled my brow and tugged the ends of my moustache 
 in the effort to find a solution. The proprietor tugged the 
 ends of his own moustache in sympathetic silence. 
 
 " ' Does he always slink out if anybody sits down opposite 
 to him ? ' I inquired again. 
 
 " ' On the contrary. He talks and chats quite freely with 
 his neighbours when there are any. I have seen his 
 countenance light up when a man has come to seat himself 
 next to him.' 
 
 "'Then to-day is the first time he has behaved so 
 strangely ? ' 
 
 "'Absolutely.' 
 
 " Again I was silent. I looked at myself curiously in the 
 cracked mirrors. 
 
 "'Do you see anything strange in my appearance?' I 
 asked the proprietor.
 
 506 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " ' Nothing in the world,' said the proprietor, shaking his 
 head vigorously. 
 
 " ' Nothing in the world,' echoed the waiter emphatically. 
 
 " ' Then why does he object to me, when he doesn't object 
 to anybody else?' 
 
 " ' Pardon,' said the proprietor. ' It is, after all, but 
 rarely that a stranger sits at his table. He comes ordinarily 
 so early for his lunch that my clients have not yet arrived, 
 and I have only the honour to serve an accidental customer 
 like yourself.' 
 
 " ' Ah, then, there is some regularity about the time of 
 day at least ? ' 
 
 '"Ah yes, there is that,' said the proprietor reflectively. 
 ' But even here there is no hard and fast line. He may be 
 an hour earlier, he may be an hour later.' 
 
 " ' AVhat a droll of a man ! ' I said, laughing, even as I 
 wondered. ' And you have not been able to discover any- 
 thing about him, though he has given it you in twelve ? ' 
 
 " ' It is not my affair,' he repeated, shrugging his 
 shoulders. 
 
 " ' You know not his name even ? ' 
 
 " ' How should I know it ? ' 
 
 " ' Ah, very well, you shall see ! ' I said, buttoning up 
 my coat resolutely and rising to my feet. ' You shall see 
 that I will find out everything at once. I, a stranger in 
 London, who love the oceans and the forests better than 
 the cities ; I, who know only the secrets of Nature, — behold 
 1 will solve you this mystery of humanity.' 
 
 " ' As Monsieur pleases,' replied the proprietor. ' For 
 me the only question is what Monsieur will have for his 
 lunch.' 
 
 " ' I want no lunch,' I cried. Then, seeing his downcast 
 face, and remembering the man must be out of sight by
 
 ADVENTURES lA' SEARCH OF THE POLE 507 
 
 this time, and nothing was to be gained by haste, I ordered 
 some broth and some chicken and ham, and strode to the 
 door to make sure there was no immediate chance of 
 coming upon him. The little by-street was almost deserted, 
 there was not a sign of my man. I returned to my seat 
 and devoted myself to my inner man instead. Then I 
 rebuttoned my coat afresh — though with less facility — and 
 sauntered out joyously. Now at last I had found some- 
 thing to interest me in London. The confidence born of 
 a good meal was strong in my bosom as I pushed those 
 swinging doors open, and cried '^ Au revoir'' to my host, for 
 I designed to return and to dazzle him with my exploits. 
 
 '■'■'• Aic revoir, Monsieur, a thousand thanks,' cried the 
 proprietor, popping up from his speaking-tube. 'But 
 where are you going ? Where do you hope to find this 
 man ? ' 
 
 " ' I go not to find the man,' I replied airily. 
 
 " ' Comment !'' he exclaimed in his astonishment. 
 
 " ' I go to seek the woman," I said, in imposing accents. 
 And, waving my hand amicably, I sallied forth into the 
 dingy little street. 
 
 " But alas for human anticipations ! The whole of that 
 day I paced the dead and alive streets of North London 
 without striking the faintest indication of a trail. After a 
 week's futile wanderings, I began to realise the immensity 
 of the English metropolis — immense not only by its actual 
 area, but by the multiplicity of its streets and windings, and 
 by the indifference of each household to its neighbours, 
 which makes every roof the cover of manifold mysterious 
 existences and potentialities. To look for a needle in a 
 bundle of hay were child's play to the task of finding a 
 face in a London suburb, q.\c\\ assuming, as I did, my 
 enigma lived in the northern district. I dared not return
 
 5o8 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 to the restaurant to inquire if perchance he had been seen. 
 I was ashamed to confess myself baffled. I shifted my 
 quarters from Leicester Square to Green Lanes, and walked 
 every day within a four mile radius of the restaurant, but 
 Fortune turned her face (and his) from me, and I raged at 
 my own folly in undertaking so hopeless a quest. At last 
 ' Patience ! ' I cried. ' Patience, and shuffle the cards ! ' 
 It was my pet proverb when off the track of anything. To 
 cut yourself adrift from the old plan and look at the problem 
 with new eyes — that was my recipe. I tried it by going 
 into the country for some stag-hunting, which, I had ascer- 
 tained from a farmer whom I met in a coffee-house, could 
 be obtained in some of the villages in the next county. 
 But English field-sports I found little to my taste, for the 
 deer had been unhorned and was let out of a cart, and it 
 was only playing at sport. The Holy Mother save me 
 from such bloodless make-believe ! Though the hunting 
 season was in full swing, I returned in disgust to the town, 
 and again confiding my fortunes to a common or garden 
 omnibus, I surveyed the street panorama from my seat on 
 the roof till the vehicle turned round for the backward 
 journey. This time I found myself in Canonbury, a dis- 
 trict within the radius I had previously explored. The 
 coincidence gave me fresh hope — it seemed a happy 
 augury of ultimate success. The saints would guide my 
 footsteps after all ; for he who wills aught intensely cajoles 
 Providence. The dusk had fallen, and the night lamps 
 had been lit in the heavens and on the earth, though 
 without imparting cheerfulness to the rigid rows of highly 
 respectable houses. I walked through street after street of 
 grey barracks, tall narrow structures, holding themselves 
 with military stiffness and ranged in serried columns, the 
 very greenery that relieved their fronts growing sympa-
 
 AD VENTURES IN SEARCH OF THE POLE 509 
 
 thetically symmetrical and sombre. I sighed for my native 
 orange-groves, I longed for a whiff of the blue Mediter- 
 ranean, I strove to recall the breezy expanses of the South 
 American pampas whence I had come, and had it not 
 been for the interest of my search I should have fled like 
 St. Anthony from the lady, though for very opposite reasons. 
 It seemed scarcely possible that romance should brood 
 behind those dull fagades ; the grosser spirit of prose seemed 
 to shroud them as in a fog. 
 
 " Suddenly, as I paced with clogged footsteps in these 
 heavy regions, I heard a voice calling somebody, and, look- 
 ing in the direction of the sound, I could not but fancy it 
 was myself whose attention was sought. A gentleman 
 standing at the hall-door of one of the houses, at the top 
 of the white steps, was beckoning in my direction. I halted, 
 and, gazing on all sides, ascertained I was the sole pedestrian. 
 Puzzled as to what he could want of me, I tried to scan 
 his features by the rays of a street lamp which faced the 
 house and under which I stood. They revealed a pleasant 
 but not English-looking face, bearded and bronzed, but 
 they revealed nothing as to the owner's designs. He stood 
 there still beckoning, and the latent hypnotism of the 
 appeal drew me towards the gate. I paused with my hand 
 on the lock. What in the name of all the saints could he 
 possibly want with me ? I had sundry valuables about my 
 person, but then they included a loaded revolver, so why 
 refuse the adventure? 
 
 ' Do come in,' he said in English, seeing my hesitation. 
 ' We are only waiting for you.' 
 
 " The mysterious language of the invitation sealed my fate. 
 Evidently I had again been mistaken for somebody else. 
 Was it that I resembled some one this man knew? If so, 
 it would probably be the same some one the other man had
 
 I ACXEl'TKI) TilK SIR WGK I.\ VITATIOX.
 
 ADVENTURES IN SEARCH OF THE POLE 511 
 
 dreaded. I seemed to feel the end of a clue at last, the 
 other end of which was tied to him 1 sought. Putting my 
 hand to my breast-pocket, to make sure it held my pistol, 
 I drew back the handle of the gate and ascended the steps. 
 There was an expression of satisfaction on the face of my 
 inviter, and, turning his back upon me, he threw the door 
 wide open, and held it courteously as I entered. A whiff 
 of warm stuffy air smote my nostrils as I stepped into the 
 hall, where an indiarubber plant stood upon a rack heavily 
 laden with overcoats. My host preceded me a few paces 
 and opened a door on the right. A confused babble of 
 guttural speech broke upon my ear, and over his shoulder 
 I caught a glimpse of a strange scene — a medley of swarthy 
 men, wearing their hats, a venerable-looking old man who 
 seemed their chief being prominent in a grim black skull- 
 cap ; there was a strange weird wick burning in a cup of 
 oil on the mantelpiece, and on a sofa at the extreme end 
 of the room sat a beautiful young lady, weeping silently. 
 
 " My heart gave a great leap. Instinct told me I had 
 found the woman. 
 
 " I made the sign of the cross and entered. 
 
 "A strange look of relief passed over the faces of the 
 company as I came in. Instinctively I removed my hat, 
 but he who had summoned me deprecated the courtesy 
 with a gesture, remarking, 'We are commencing at once.' 
 
 " I stared at him, more puzzled than ever, but kept silence, 
 lest speech should betray me and snatch the solution from 
 me on the very eve of my arrival at it. It was gathering in 
 my mind that I must strikingly resemble one of the band, 
 that the man of the restaurant had betrayed us, and that 
 he went in fear of our vengeance. Only thus could I 
 account for my reception, both by him and by the rest of 
 the gang.
 
 512 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " The patriarchal-looking chieftain got up and turned his 
 back to the company, as if surveying them through the 
 mantel mirror. He then addressed them at great length with 
 averted face in a strange language, the others following him 
 attentively, and accompanying his remarks with an under- 
 current of murmured sympathy, occasionally breaking out 
 into loud exclamations of assent in the same tongue. I 
 listened with all my ears, but could not form the least idea 
 as to what the language was. There were gutturals in it as 
 in German, but I can always detect German, if I cannot 
 understand it. There was never a word which had the 
 faintest analogy with any of the European tongues. I 
 came to the conclusion it was a patter of their own. The 
 leader spoke hurriedly for the most part, but in his slower 
 passages there was a rise and fall of the voice almost 
 amounting to a musical inflection. Near the end, after an 
 emphatic speech, frequently interrupted by applause, he 
 dropped his voice to a whisper, and a hushed silence fell 
 upon the room. The beautiful girl on the couch got up, 
 and, holding a richly-bound book in her hand, perused it 
 quietly. Her lovely eyes were heavy with tears. I drifted 
 upon a current of wonder into perusing her face, and it was 
 with a start that, at the sudden resumption of the leader's 
 speech, I awoke from my dreams. The address came to a 
 final close soon after, and then another member wound up 
 the proceedings with a little speech which was received 
 with great enthusiasm. 
 
 " While he was speaking, I studied the back of the patri- 
 arch's head. He moved it, and my eyes accidentally lighted 
 on something on the mantelpiece which sent a thrill 
 through my whole being. It was a photograph, and, unless 
 some hallucination tricked my vision, the photograph of the 
 inan I sought. I trembled with excitement. My instinct had
 
 ADVENTURES IN SEARCH OF THE POLE 513 
 
 been correct. I had found the woman. Saint Anthony had 
 guided my footsteps aright. The company was slowly 
 dispersing, chatting as it went. Everybody took leave of 
 the beautiful girl, who had by this time dried her eyes and 
 resumed the queen. I should have to go with them, and 
 without an inkling of comprehension of what had passed ! 
 What had they been plotting? What part had I been 
 playing in these uncanny transactions? What had they 
 been doing to bring suffering to this fair girl, before whom 
 all bowed in mock homage ? Was she the unwilling 
 accomplice of their discreditable designs ? I could not see 
 an inch in the bewildering fog. And was I to depart like 
 the rest, doomed to cudgel my brains till they ached like 
 caned schoolboys ? No ; my duty was clear. A gentle 
 creature was in trouble — it was my business to stay and 
 succour her. 
 
 *' Then suddenly the thought flashed upon me that she 
 loved the man who had betrayed us, that she had pleaded with 
 tears for his life, and that her petition had been granted. 
 
 " The solution seemed almost complete, yet it found me 
 no more willing to go. Had I not still to discover for what 
 end we were leagued together ? 
 
 " As I stood motionless, thus musing, the minutes and the 
 company slipped away. I was left with the man of the 
 door-step, the second speaker, and the beautiful girl. 
 
 " While I was wondering by what pretext to remain, the 
 second speaker came up to me, and said cordially, " We are so 
 much obliged to you for coming. It was very good of you." 
 
 " His English was that of a native, as I enviously noted. 
 He was a young good-looking fellow, but, as I gazed at him, 
 a vague resemblance to the stranger of the restaurant and 
 to the photograph on the mantelpiece forced itself on my 
 attention. 
 
 3iC
 
 514 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 *' ' Oh, it was no trouble, no trouble at all,' I remarked 
 cheerfully. ' I will come again if you like.' 
 
 " ' Thank you ; but this is our last night, with the excep- 
 tion of Saturday, when one can get together twenty quite 
 easily, so there is no need to trouble you, as you perhaps 
 do not reside in the neighbourhood.' 
 
 " ' Oh, but I do,' I hastened to correct him. 
 
 " * In that case we shall be very pleased to see you,' he 
 replied readily. ' I don't remember seeing you before in 
 the district ; I presume you are a newcomer ? " 
 
 " ' Yes, that's it,' I exclaimed glibly, secretly more puzzled 
 than ever. He did not remember seeing me before, nor 
 did the man of the door-step vouchsafe any information as 
 to my identity. Then I could certainly not have been 
 mistaken for somebody else. And yet — what was the 
 meaning of that significant invitation : ' We are waiting 
 only for you^ ? 
 
 " ' I thought you were a stranger,' he replied. ' I haven't 
 the pleasure of knowing your name.' 
 
 " This was the climax. But I concealed my astonish- 
 ment, having always found the ;/// admirari principle the 
 safest in enterprises of this nature. Should I tell him my 
 real name? Yes, why not? I was utterly unknown in 
 London, and my real name would be as effective a dis- 
 guise as a pseudonym. 
 
 " ' Mendoza,' T replied. 
 
 " ' Ah,' said the man of the doorstep. ' Any relation to 
 the Mendozas of Highbury ? ' 
 
 " ' I think not,' I replied, with an air of reflection. 
 
 " ' Ah well,' said the second speaker, ' we are all brothers.' 
 
 " ' And sisters,' I remarked, gallantly bowing to the 
 beautiful maiden. On second thoughts it struck me the 
 remark was rather meaningless, but second thoughts have
 
 ADVENTURES IN SEARCH OF THE POLE 515 
 
 an awkward way of succeeding first thoughts, which some- 
 times interferes with their usefulness. On third thoughts I 
 went on in my best English : ' May I in return be favoured 
 with the pleasure of knowing your name ? ' 
 
 " The second speaker smiled in a melancholy way, and 
 said, ' I beg your pardon, I forgot we were as strange to you 
 as you to us. My name is Radowski— Philip Radowski ; 
 this is my friend Martin, and this is my sister Fanny.' 
 
 " I distributed elaborate bows to the trinity. 
 
 "'You will have a little refreshment before you go?' 
 said Fanny, with a simple charm that would have made it 
 impossible to refuse, even if I had been as anxious to go as 
 I was to stay. "Oh no, I could not think of troubling 
 you,' I replied warmly ; and in due course I was sipping a 
 glass of excellent old port and crumbling a macaroon. 
 
 " This seemed to me the best time for putting out a feeler, 
 and I remarked lightly, pointing to the photograph on the 
 mantelpiece, ' I did not see that gentleman here to-night.' 
 Instantly a portentous expression gathered upon all the 
 faces. I saw I had said the wrong thing. The beautiful 
 Fanny's mouth quivered, her eyes grew wistful and pathetic. 
 
 " ' My father is dead,' she said, in a low tone. 
 
 "Dead? Her father? A great shock of horror and 
 surprise traversed my frame. His secret had gone with 
 him to the grave. 
 
 " ' Dead ! ' I repeated involuntarily. ' Oh, forgive me, 
 I did not know.' 
 
 " ' Of course not, of course not. I understand perfectly,' 
 put in her brother soothingly. 'You did not know whom 
 it was we had lost Yes, it was our father.' 
 
 " * Has he been dead long?' 
 
 " He seemed a little surprised at the question, but 
 answered, ' It is he we are mourning now.'
 
 Si6 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " I nodded my head, as if comprehending. 
 
 " ' Ah, he was a good man,' said Martin. ' I wish we 
 were all so sure of Heaven.' 
 
 " ' There are very i^w Jews like him left,' said Fanny 
 quietly. 
 
 "'Alas! he was one of the pious old school,' assented 
 Martin, shaking his head dolefully. 
 
 " My heart was thumping violently as a great wave of light 
 flooded my brain. These people, then, were Jews — that 
 strange, scattered race of heretics I had often heard of, 
 but never before come into contact with in my wild adven- 
 turous existence. The strange scene I had witnessed was 
 not, then, a meeting of conspirators, but a religious funereal 
 ceremonial ; the sorrow of Fanny was filial grief; the address 
 of the venerable old man a Hebrew prayer-reading; the 
 short speech of Philip Radowski probably a psalm in the 
 ancient language all spoke so fluently. But still, what had 
 I come to do in that galley ? 
 
 " All these thoughts flashed upon me in the twinkling 
 of an eye. There was scarce a pause between Martin's 
 observation and Radowski's remark that followed it : 
 
 " ' He was, indeed, pious. It was wonderful how he with- 
 stood the influence of his English friends. You would 
 never imagine he left Poland quite thirty years ago.' 
 
 " So I had found the Pole ! But was it too late? Any- 
 how I resolved to know what I had been summoned for. 
 The saints spared me the trouble of the search. 
 
 " ' Yes,' returned Martin, ' when you think how ready he 
 was to go to the houses of mourners, I think it perfectly 
 disgraceful that we had such difficulty in getting together 
 ten brother-Jews for the services in his memory. But for 
 the kindness of Mr. Mendoza I don't know what we should 
 have done to-night. In your place, Philip, I confess I
 
 ADVENTURES IN SEARCH OF THE POLE 517 
 
 should have felt tempted to violate the Law altogether. 1 
 can't see that it matters to the Almighty whether you have 
 nine men or ten men or five men. And I don't see why 
 Fanny couldn't count in quite as well as any man.' 
 
 " ' O Martin ! ' said Fanny, with a shocked look, ' how 
 can you talk so irreligiously ? Once we begin to break the 
 Law, where are we to stop ? Jews and Christians may as 
 well intermarry at once.' Her righteous indignation was 
 beautiful to see. 
 
 " Two things were clear now. First, I had been mistaken 
 for a Jew, probably on account of my foreign appearance. 
 Secondly, Fanny would never wed a Christian. But for 
 the first fact I would have regretted the second. For a 
 third thing was clear— that I loved the glorious Jewess 
 with all the love of a child of the South. We are not 
 tame rabbits, we Andalusians : the flash from beauty's eye 
 fires our blood, and we love instantly and dare greatly. My 
 heart glowed with gratitude to my patron saint for having 
 brought about the mistake ; a Jew I was, and a Jew I would 
 remain. 
 
 " 'You are quite right. Miss Radowski,' I said ; 'Jew and 
 Christian might as well intermarry at once.' 
 
 " ' I am glad to hear you say so,' said I'anny, turning her 
 lovely orbs towards me. ' Most young men now-a-days are 
 so irreligious.' 
 
 " Martin darted a savage glance at me. I saw at once how 
 the land lay. He was either engaged to my darling, or a 
 fia7ice in the making. I surveyed him impassively from his 
 head to his shoes, and decided to stand in them. It was 
 impossible to permit a man of such dubious religious prin- 
 ciples to link his life with a spiritually-minded woman like 
 Fanny. Such a union could only bring unhappiness to 
 both. What she needed was a good pious Jew, one of
 
 
 "KEAU IT ALOUD," SHE SAID, "IT COMHJKTS ME."
 
 ADVENTURES /JV SEARCH OF THE FOLE 519 
 
 the old school. With the help of the saints I vowed to 
 supply her needs. 
 
 " ' I think that modern young women are quite as 
 irreligious as modern young men,' retorted Martin, as he 
 left the room. 
 
 "*Yes, it is so,' sighed Fanny, the arrow glancing off 
 unheeded. Then, uplifting her beautiful eyes heavenwards, 
 she murmured, ' Ah, if they had been blessed with fathers 
 like mine ! ' 
 
 " Martin, who had only gone out for an instant, returned 
 with Fanny's hat and a feather boa, and observing, ' You 
 must really take a walk at once — you have been confined 
 indoors a whol*^ week,' helped her to put them on. I 
 felt sure his zeal for her health was overbalanced by his 
 enthusiasm for my departure. I could not very well attach 
 myself to the walking party— especially as I only felt an 
 attachment for one member of it. Disregarding the inter- 
 ruption, I remarked, in tones of fervent piety : 
 
 " ' It will be an eternal regret to me that I missed knowing 
 your father.' 
 
 " She gave me a grateful look. 
 
 " ' Look ! ' she said, seating herself on the sofa for a 
 moment, and picking up the richly-bound book lying upon 
 it, — 'look at the motto of exhortation he wrote in my 
 prayer-book before he died. Our minister says it is in the 
 purest Hebrew.' 
 
 "I went to her side and leaned over the richly-bound 
 book, which appeared to be printed backwards, and scanned 
 the inscription with an air of appreciation. 
 
 " ' Read it,' she said, * read it aloud 1 It comforts me to 
 hear it.' 
 
 " I coughed violently, and felt myself growing pale. The 
 eyes of Martin were upon me with an expression that
 
 $10 THE CELIBATES'' CLUB 
 
 seemed waiting to become sardonic. I called inwardly 
 upon the Holy Mother. There seemed to be only a few 
 words, and after a second's hesitation I murmured some- 
 thing in my most inarticulate manner, producing some 
 sounds approximately like those I had heard during the 
 service. 
 
 " Fanny looked up at me, puzzled. 
 
 *" I do not understand your pronunciation,' she said. 
 
 " I felt ready to sink into the sofa. 
 
 " * Ah, I am not surprised,' put in her brother. " From 
 Mr. Mendoza's name and appearance I should take him to 
 be a Sephardi, like the Mendozas of Highbury. They pro- 
 nounce quite differently from us, Fanny.' 
 
 " I commended him to the grace of the Virgin. 
 
 "'That is so,' I admitted. 'And I found it not at all 
 easy to follow your services.' 
 
 " ' Are you an English Sephardi or a native Sephardi ? ' 
 asked Martin. 
 
 "'A native!' I replied readily. *I was born there.' 
 Where ' there ' was I had no idea. 
 
 " ' Do you know,' said Fanny, looking so sweetly into my 
 face, ' I should like to see your country. Spain has 
 always seemed to me so romantic, and I dote on Spanish 
 olives.' 
 
 " I was delighted to find I had spoken the truth as to my 
 nativity. 
 
 " ' I shall be charmed to escort you,' I said, smiling. 
 
 •' She smiled in response. 
 
 " ' It is easy enough to go anywhere now-a-days,' said 
 Martin surlily. 
 
 '"I wish you would go to the devil,' I thought. 'That 
 would certainly be easy enough.* 
 
 " But it would have been premature to force my own com-
 
 ADVENTURES IN SEARCH OF THE POLE 521 
 
 pany upon P'anny any longer. I relied upon the presence 
 of death and her brother to hinder Martin's suit from 
 developing beyond the point it had already reached. It 
 remained to be seen whether the damage was irreparable. 
 I went again on the Saturday night, following with interest 
 the service that had seemed a council-meeting. This time 
 it began with singing, in which everybody joined, and 
 in which I took part with hearty inarticulateness. But a 
 little experience convinced me that my course was beset 
 with pitfalls — that not Mary Jane aspiring to personify a 
 Duchess could glide on thinner ice than I attempting to 
 behave as one of these strange people, with their endless 
 and all-embracing network of religious etiquette. To my 
 joy I discovered that I could pursue my suit without going 
 to synagogue, a place of dire peril, for it seems that the 
 Spaniards arc a distinct sect, mightily proud of their blood 
 and their peculiar pronunciation ; and the Radowskis, being 
 Poles, did not expect to see me worshipping with themselves, 
 which enabled me to continue my devotions in the Holy 
 Chapel of St. Vincent. It also enabled me to skate over 
 many awkward moments, the Poles being indifferently in- 
 formed as to the etiquette of their Peninsular cousins. 
 That I should have been twice taken for one of their own 
 race rather surprised me, for my physiognomical relation- 
 ship to it seemed of the slightest. The dark complexion, 
 the foreign air, doubtless gave me a superficial resemblance, 
 and in the face it is the surface that tells. I read up 
 Spanish history, and learnt that many Jews had become 
 Christians during the persecutions of the Holy Inquisition, 
 and that many had escaped the fires of the onto da fi by 
 feigning conversion, the while secretly performing their 
 strange rites, and handing down to their descendants the 
 traditions of secrecy and of Judaism, these unhappy people
 
 522 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 being styled Marranos. Perchance I was sprung from 
 some such source, but there was no hint of it in my genea- 
 logy, so far as known to me ; my name Mendoza was a good 
 old Andalusian name, and my ancestors had for generations 
 been good sons of the only true Church. The question has 
 no interest for me now. 
 
 " For although, like Cassar, I am entitled to say that I 
 came, saw, and conquered, conquering not only Fanny but 
 my rival, yet am I still a bachelor. I had driven Martin on 
 one side as easily as a steamer bearing down upon a skiff, 
 yet my own lips betrayed me. It was the desire to penetrate 
 the mystery of the restaurant that undid me, for if a woman 
 cannot keep a secret, a man cannot refrain from fathoming 
 one. The rose-gardens of love were open for my walking, 
 when the demon in possession prompted me to speech that 
 silvered the red roses with hoar-frost and ice. 
 
 " One day I sat holding her dear hand in mine. She 
 permitted me no more complex caresses, being still in 
 black. Such was the sense of duty of this beautiful warm- 
 blooded Oriental creature, that she was as cold as her 
 father's tombstone, and equally eulogistic of his virtues. 
 She spoke of them now, though I would fain have diverted 
 the talk to hers. Failing that, I seized the opportunity to 
 solve the haunting puzzle, forgetting Balthasar Gracian's 
 sage advice : Saberse dexar ganando con la for tuna — Leave 
 your luck while winning. 
 
 " ' Do you know, I fancy I once saw your father,' I said 
 earnestly. 
 
 " ' Indeed ! ' she observed, with much interest. ' Where ?' 
 
 " ' In a restaurant not many miles from here. It was 
 before noon.' 
 
 "'In a restaurant?' she repeated. "Hardly very likely. 
 There isn't any restaurant near here he would be likely to
 
 ADVENTURES IN SEARCH OF THE POLE 523 
 
 go to, and certainly not at the time you mention, when he 
 would be in the City. You must be mistaken.' 
 
 " I shook my head. ' I don't think so. I remember his 
 face so well. When I saw his photo I recognised him at once.' 
 
 *' ' How long ago was it ? ' 
 
 " ' I can tell you exactly,' I said. ' The date is graven on 
 my heart. It was the twenty-fourth of October.' 
 
 " ' This year ? ' 
 
 " ' This year.' 
 
 " ' The twenty - fourth of October ! ' she repeated 
 musingly. ' Only a few weeks before he died. Poor 
 father, peace be upon him ! The twenty-fourth of October, 
 did you say ? ' she added suddenly. 
 
 " ' What is the matter ? ' I asked. ' You are agitated.' 
 
 "*No, it is nothing. It cannot be,' she added more 
 calmly. 'Of course not.' She smiled faintly. *I 
 thought ' she paused. 
 
 '* ' You thought what ? ' 
 
 ♦"Oh, well, I'll show you I was mistaken.' She rose, 
 went to the book-case, drew out a little brown-paper-covcred 
 volume, and turned over the pages scrutinisingly. Suddenly 
 a change came over the beautiful face ; she stood motion- 
 less, pale as a statue. 
 
 " A chill shadow fell across my heart, distracted between 
 tense curiosity and dread of a tragic solution. 
 
 " ' My dear Fanny, what in Heaven's name is it ? ' I 
 breathed. 
 
 " ' Don't speak of Heaven," said Fanny, in strange harsh 
 tones, ' when you libel the dead thus.' 
 
 "' Libel the dead ! How?' 
 
 " ' Why, the twenty-fourth of October was Yom Kippiir!^ 
 
 " ' Well,' I said, unimpressed and uncomprehending, 'and 
 what of it ? '
 
 524 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 "She stared at me, staggered, and clutched at the book- 
 case for support. 
 
 " ' What of it ? ' she cried, in passionate emotion. * Do 
 you dare to say that you saw my poor father, who was 
 righteousness itself, breaking his fast in a restaurant on the 
 Day of Atonement ? Perhaps you will insinuate next that 
 his speedy death was Heaven's punishment on him for his 
 blasphemy ? ' 
 
 "In the same instant I saw the truth and my terrible 
 blunder. This fast-day must be of awful solemnity, and 
 Fanny's father must have gone systematically to a surrep- 
 titious breakfast in that queer out-of-the-way restaurant. 
 His nervousness, his want of ease, his terror at the sight of 
 me, whom he mistook for a brother-Jew, were all accounted 
 for. Once a year — the discrepancy in the date being 
 explained by the discord between Jewish and Christian 
 chronology — he hied his way furtively to this unholy meal, 
 enjoying it and a reputation for sanctity at the same time. 
 But to expose her father's hypocrisy to the trusting innocent 
 girl would be hardly the way to advance love-matters. It 
 might be difficult even to repair the mischief I had already 
 done. 
 
 " ' I beg your pardon,' I said humbly. ' You were right. 
 I was misled by some chance resemblance. If your father 
 was the pious Jew you paint him, it is impossible he could 
 have been the man I saw. Yes, and now I think of it, the 
 eyebrows were bushier and the chin plumper than those of 
 the photograph.' 
 
 "A sigh of satisfaction escaped her iips. Then her face 
 grew rigid again as she turned it upon me, and asked, in low 
 tones that cut through me like an icy blast, 'Yes, but 
 what were you doing in the restaurant on the Day of 
 Atonement ? '
 
 adventures: in search of the pole 525 
 
 " * I — I — ? ' I stammered. 
 
 " Her look was terrible. 
 
 " ' I — I — was only having a cup of chocolate," I replied, 
 with a burst of inspiration. 
 
 " As everybody knows, since the pronunciamento of Pope 
 Paul v., chocolate may be imbibed by good Catholics 
 without breaking the fasts of the Church. But alas ! it 
 seems these fanatical Eastern flagellants allow not even a drop 
 of cold water to pass their lips for over twenty-four hours. 
 
 " ' I am glad you confess it,' said Fanny witheringly. 
 * It shows you have still one redeeming trait. And I am 
 glad you spoke ill of my poor father, for it has led to the 
 revelation of your true character before it was too late. 
 You will of course understand, Mr. Mendoza, that our 
 acquaintance is at an end.' 
 
 " ' Fanny ! ' I cried frantically. 
 
 " ' Spare me a scene, I beg of you,' she said coldly. 
 *You — you, the man who pretended to such ardent 
 piety, to such enthusiasm for our holy religion — are an 
 apostate from the faith into which you were born, a blas- 
 phemer, an atheist.' 
 
 " I stared at her in dumb horror. I had entangled myself 
 inextricably. How could I now explain that it was her 
 father who was the renegade, not I ? 
 
 " * Good-bye," said Fanny. ' Heaven make you a better 
 Jew.' 
 
 " I moved desperately towards her, but she waved me 
 back. ' Dont touch me,' she cried. ' Go, go ! ' 
 
 '"But is there no hope for me?' I exclaimed, looking 
 wildly into the cold statue-like face, that seemed more 
 beautiful than ever, now it was fading from my vision. 
 
 " ' None,' she said. Then in a breaking voice she 
 ipurmured, ' Neither for you nor for nie.'
 
 526 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " 'Ah, you love me still?' I cried, striving to embrace her. 
 ' You will be my wife ? ' 
 
 " She struggled away from me. ' No, no,' she said, with a 
 gesture of horror. ' It would be sacrilege to my dead 
 father's memory. Rather would I marry a Christian — yes, 
 even a Catholic — than an apostate Jew like you. Leave 
 me, I pray you ; or must I ring the bell.?' 
 
 "I went — a sadder and a wiser man. But even my wisdom 
 availed me not, for, when I repaired to the restaurant to 
 impart it to the proprietor, this last consolation was denied 
 me. He had sold his business and returned to Italy. 
 
 '* To-morrow I start for Turkestan." 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE ARITHMETIC AND PHYSIOLOGY OF LOVE 
 
 "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
 
 THE ARITHMETIC AND PHYSIOLOGY OF LOVE 527 
 
 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." 
 
 "And so she wishes to be an object-lesson in female 
 celibacy, does she ? " said the Honorary Trier. 
 
 *' 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 forfend ! 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
 
 528 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 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 Maiden- 
 hood 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. Assuming, for the sake of simplicity, 
 that the ratio of males to females is constant, the force of 
 her example — in other words, her value as an Old Maid — 
 may be represented by '008." 
 
 " I am glad you express her as a decimal rather than a 
 vulgar fraction," said Lord Silverdale, laughing. " But you 
 erroneously postulate that the ordinary girl has the run of 
 mankind in all its tribes and religions. As a mathemat- 
 ical wrangler, you are not very 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 motives 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 I " 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 paean on the growing hos- 
 pitality of the peoples towards the gods of oth^r nations^
 
 THE ARITHMETIC AND PHYSIOLOGY OF LOVE 529 
 
 There was 3 time when free trade in divinities was taboo, 
 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, Walworih Jumper, 
 Southcote South-Place Bible-Thumper, 
 Christadelphian, Platonic, 
 Old Moravian, Masonic, 
 Corybantic Christi-antic, 
 Ethic-culture Transatlantic, 
 Anabaptist, Neo-Buddhistj 
 Zoroastrian Talmudist, 
 Lao-tsean, Theosophic, 
 Table-rapping, Philosophic, 
 Media: val -Monkish Mystic, 
 Modern Mephistophelistic, 
 Hellenistic, Calvinistic, 
 Brahministic, Cabalistic, 
 Humanistic, Tolstoistic, 
 Rather Robert Elsmeristic, 
 Altruistic Hedonistic, 
 And Agnostic Manicluvan, 
 Worshipping the Galilean. 
 
 For with equal zeal I follow 
 Siva, Allah, Zeus, Apollo, 
 Mumlio Jumbo, Dngon, Brahma, 
 Buddha alias Gautamn, 
 
 2L
 
 1 
 
 530 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Jahve, Juggernaut and Juno, 
 
 Plus some gods that but the few know— 
 
 Dzohl, Cannes, eke Potrimpos, 
 
 From Sclavonian Olympos. 
 
 Though I reverence the Mishna, 
 I can bend the knee to Krishna ; 
 I obey the latest mode in 
 Recognising 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 nil the others greater. 
 
 And I read the Zend-Avesta, 
 Koran, Bible, Roman Gesta^ 
 Ind's Upanischads and Spencer, 
 XVith affection e'er intenser. 
 
 For these many appellations 
 Of the gods of different nations, 
 / believe — from Bel 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 liglit and so little
 
 rnE AkIIHMETtC AND PHYSIOLOGY OP LOVE 531 
 
 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 he 
 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 
 passes 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 anti- 
 macassars 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 Bon- 
 heur's animals, and the Panama Canal, I can hardly venture 
 to say what the leader itself was about. And so. Miss 
 Woodpecker, you have thought of 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 pro- 
 posal of marriage ? "
 
 532 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " 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 seaside boarding- 
 house with a female cousin, and a handsome young man in 
 the house fell in love with me, and we were secretly 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 ol mortal birth, 
 
 A lovely child of lovely earth, 
 
 For kisses made and joy and mirth.
 
 THK rKi:SF,NT AND THK 1 TTURi;,
 
 534 THE CELIBATED' CLUB 
 
 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 unmistakeably 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. 
 
 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 ;
 
 THE ARITHMETIC AND PHYSIOLOGY OF LOVE 535 
 
 '• 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 pre- 
 tences ? 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 armoury, 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 goodwill 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 riglits in marriage 
 as well as London rights. In the metropolis the matri- 
 monial 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,
 
 536 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " 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 versa ? 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 behoves 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 ? 
 
 CHAPTER XHI 
 
 "the ENGLISH SHAKESPEARE*' 
 
 By a thorough knowledge of the natural laws which govern 
 the operations of human nature, and by a careful application 
 of the fine properties of well-selected men, and a judicious 
 use of every available instrument of log-rolling, the Mutual 
 Depreciation Society gradually built up a constitution strong 
 enough to defy every tendency to disintegration. Hundreds 
 of subtle malcontents floated round, ready to attack wher- 
 ever there was a weak point, but foiled by ignorance of the 
 Society's existence, and the members escaped many a fatal 
 shaft by keeping themselves entirely to themselves. The 
 idea of the Mutual Depreciation Society was that every
 
 « 
 
 THE ENGLISH SHAKESPEARE " 537 
 
 member should say what he thought of the others. The 
 founders, who all took equal shares in it, were 
 
 Tom Brown, 
 Dick Jones, 
 Harry Robinson. 
 
 Their object in founding the Mutual Depreciation Society 
 was of course to achieve literary success ; but they soon 
 perceived that their phalanx was too small for this, and 
 as they had no power without adding to their number, 
 they took steps to induce three other gentlemen to 
 solicit the privileges of membership. The second batch 
 comprised 
 
 Taffy Owen, 
 Andrew Mackay, 
 Patrick Boyle. 
 
 These six gentlemen being all blessed with youth, health, 
 and a moderate incompetence, resolved to capture the town. 
 Their tactics were simple, though their first operations were 
 hampered by ignorance of one another's ignorance. Thus, 
 it was some time before it was discovered that Mackay, 
 who had been deployed to seize the Saturday Slasher, had 
 no real acquaintance with the editor's fencing-master, while 
 Dick Jones, who had undertaken to bombard the Acadmim, 
 had started under the impression that the eminent critic to 
 whom he had dedicated his poems (by permission) was 
 still connected with the staff. But these difficulties were 
 eliminated as soon as the Society got into working order. 
 Everything comes to him who will not wait, and almost 
 before they had time to wink our six gentlemen had secured 
 the makings of an Influence. Each had loyally done his 
 best for himself and the rest, and the first spoils of the
 
 538 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 campaign, as announced amid applause by the secretary at 
 the monthly dinner, were 
 
 Two Morning Papers, 
 Two Evening Papers, 
 Two Weekly Papers. 
 
 They were not the most influential, nor even the best- 
 circulated, still it was not a bad beginning, though, of 
 course, only a nucleus. By putting out tentacles in every 
 direction, by undertaking to write even on subjects with 
 which they were acquainted, they gradually secured a more 
 or less tenacious connection with the majority of the better 
 journals and magazines. On taking stock, they found that 
 the account stood thus : 
 
 Three Morning Papers. 
 Four Evening Papeni. 
 , Eleven Weekly Papers. 
 Thirteen London Letters. 
 Seven Dramatic Columns. 
 Six Monthly Magazines. 
 Thirteen Influences on Advertisements. 
 Nine Friendships with Eminent Editors. 
 Seventeen ditto with Eminent Sub-editors. 
 Six ditto with Lady Journalists. 
 Fifty-three Loans (at two-and-six each) to Pressmen. 
 One hundred and nine Mentions of Editors' Woman- 
 kind at Fashionable Receptions. 
 
 It showed what could be achieved by six men, working 
 together shoulder to shoulder for the highest aims, in a 
 spirit of mutual good-will and brotherhood. They were 
 undoubtedly greatly helped by having all been to Oxford or
 
 (< 
 
 THE ENGLISH SHAKESPEARE " 539 
 
 Cambridge, but still much was the legitimate result of their 
 own manoeuvres. 
 
 By the time the secret campaign had reached this stage, 
 many well-meaning, unsuspecting men, not included in the 
 above inventory, had been pressed into the service of the 
 Society, with the members of which they were connected by 
 the thousand and one ties which spring up naturally in the 
 intercourse of the world, so that there was hardly any journal 
 in the three kingdoms on which the Society could not, by 
 some hook or crook, fasten a paragraph, if we except 
 such publications as the Neivgate Calendar and Lloyds^ 
 Shipping List, which record history rather than make it. 
 
 Indeed, the success of the Society in this department was 
 such as to suggest the advisability of having themselves 
 formally incorporated under the Companies' Acts for the 
 manufacture and distribution of paragraphs, for which they 
 had unequalled facilities, and had obtained valuable con- 
 cessions, and it was only the publicity re(|uired by law 
 which debarred them from enlarging their home trade to a 
 profitable industry for the benefit of non-members. Por, 
 by the peculiar nature of the machinery, it could only be 
 worked if peoi)le were unaware of its existence. They 
 resolved, however, that when they had made their pile, 
 they would start the newspaper of the future, which any 
 philosopher with an eye to the trend of things can see will 
 be a journal written by advertisers for gentlemen, and will 
 contain nothing calculated to bring a blush to the check of 
 the young person except cosmetics. 
 
 Contemporaneously with the execution of one side of the 
 plan of campaign, the Society was working the supple- 
 mentary side. Day and night, week-days and Sundays, in 
 season and out, these six gentlemen praised themselves and 
 one another, or got themselves or one another praised by
 
 540 THE CELT BATES' CLUB 
 
 non-members. There are many ways in which you can 
 praise an author, from blame downwards. There is the 
 puff categorical and the puff allusive, the lie direct and 
 the eulogy insinuative, the downright abuse and the subtle 
 innuendo, the exaltation of your man or the depression of 
 his rival. The attacking method of log-rolling must not be 
 confounded with depreciation. In their outside campaign, 
 the members used every variety of puff, but depreciation 
 was strictly reserved for their private gatherings. For this 
 was the wisdom of the club, and herein lay its immense 
 superiority over every other log-rolling club, that whereas in 
 those childish cliques every man is expected to admire every 
 other, or to say so, in the Mutual Depreciation Society the 
 obligation was all the other way. Every man was bound 
 by the rules to sneer at the work of his fellow-members, 
 and if he should happen to admire any of it, at least to 
 have the grace to keep his feelings to himself In practice, 
 however, the latter contingency never arose, and each was 
 able honestly to express all he thought, for it is impossible 
 for men to work together for a common object without 
 discovering that they do not deserve to get it. Needless to 
 point out how this sagacious provision strengthened them 
 in their campaign, for not having to keep up the tension of 
 mutual admiration, and being able to relax and breathe 
 (and express themselves) freely at their monthly symposia, 
 as well as to slang one another in the street, they were able 
 to write one another up with a clear conscience. It is well 
 to found on human nature. Every other basis proves 
 shifting sand. The success of the Mutual Depreciation 
 Society justified their belief in human nature. 
 
 Not only did they depreciate one another, but they 
 made reparation to the non- members they were always 
 trying to write down during business hours, by eulogising
 
 " THE ENGLISH SHAJ^ESPEARE " 541 
 
 them in the most generous manner in those blessed hours 
 of leisure when knife answers fork, and soul speaks to soul. 
 At such times even popular authors were allowed to have a 
 little merit. 
 
 It was at one of these periods of soul-expansion, when 
 the most petty-souled feels inclined to loosen the last two 
 buttons of his waistcoat, that the idea of the English 
 Shakespeare was first mooted. But we are anticipating, 
 which is imprudent, as anticipations are seldom realised. 
 
 One of the worst features of prosperity is that it is cloying, 
 and when the first gloss of novelty and adventure had worn 
 off, the freelances of the Mutual Depreciation Society 
 began to bore one another. You can get tired even of 
 hearing your own dispraises ; and the members were com- 
 pelled to spice their mutual adverse criticism in the highest 
 manner, so as to compensate for its staleness. The jaded 
 appetite must needs be pampered if it is to experience any- 
 thing of that relish which a natural healthy hunger for 
 adverse criticism can command so easily. This was the 
 sort of thing that went on at the dinners : — 
 
 " I say, Tom," said Andrew Mackay, " what in Heaven's 
 name made you publish your waste-paper basket under the 
 name oi Stray Thoughts? For utter and incomprehensible 
 idiocy they are only surpassed by Dick's last volume of 
 poems. I shouldn't have thought such things could come 
 even out of a lunatic asylum, certainly not without a keeper. 
 Really you fellows ought to consider me a little " 
 
 "We do. We consider you as little as possible," they 
 interrupted simultaneously. 
 
 " It isn't fair to throw all the work on me," he went on. 
 " How can I go on saying that Tom Brown is the supreme 
 thinker of the time, the deepest intellect since Hegel, with 
 a gift of style that rivals Berkeley's, if you go on turning
 
 S42 
 
 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 out twaddle that a copy-book would boggle at ? How 
 I keep repeating that for sure and consummate art, 
 
 can 
 
 for 
 
 
 0)^ 
 
 R^' 
 
 r 
 
 = -7^, 
 
 \i 
 
 li 
 
 J 1 
 
 ^^^1^ 
 
 i,',,(^H-!p 1 
 
 ,. v;-;:;:ig;'::-y ste^M'iSKSy:^ 
 
 TOM BROWN, THE SUPREME THINKER. 
 
 unfailing certainty of insight, for unerring visualisation, for
 
 " THE ENGLISH SHAKESPEARE » 543 
 
 objective subjectivity and for subjective objectivity, for 
 Swinburnian sweep of music and Shakespearean depth of 
 suggestiveness, Dick Jones can give forty in a hundred 
 (spot-stroke barred) to all other contemporary poets, if you 
 continue to vomit rhymes as false as your teeth, rhythms 
 as musical as your voice when you read them, and words 
 that would drive a drawing-room composer mad with envy 
 to set them ? I maintain it is not sticking to the bargain 
 to expose me to the danger of being found out. You 
 ought at least to have the decency to wrap up your fatuous- 
 ness in longer words or more abstruse themes. You're 
 both so beastly intelligible that a child can understand 
 you're asses." 
 
 "Tut, tut, Andrew," said Taffy Owen, "it's all very well 
 for you to talk who've only got to do the criticism. And I 
 think it's deuced ungrateful of you after we've written you 
 up into the position of leading English critic to want us to 
 give you straw for your bricks ! Do we ever complain 
 when you call us cataclysmic, creative, esemplastic, or even 
 epicene? We know it's rot, but we put up with it. A\'hen 
 you said that Robinson's last novel had all the glow and 
 genius of Dickens without his humour, all the ripe wisdom 
 of Thackeray without his social knowingncss, all the 
 imaginativeness of Shakespeare without his definiteness of 
 characterisation, we all saw at once that you were in- 
 cautiously allowing the donkey's ears to protrude too 
 obviously from beneath the lion's skin. But did any one 
 grumble ? Did Robinson, though the edition was sold out 
 the day after? Did I, though you had just called me a 
 modern IJuddhist, with the soul of an ancient Greek and the 
 radiant fragrance of a Cingalese tea-planter? I know these 
 phrases take the public, and I try to be patient." 
 
 "Owen is right," Harry Robinson put in emphatically.
 
 544 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " When you said I was a cross between a Scandinavian 
 skald and a Dutch painter, I bore my cross in silence." 
 
 " Yes ; but what else can a fellow say, when you give the 
 public such heterogeneous and formless balderdash, that 
 there is nothing for it but to pretend it's a new style, an 
 epoch making work, the foundation of a new era in literary 
 art? Really I think you others have out and away the best 
 of it. It's much easier to write bad books than to eulogise 
 their merits in an adequately plausible manner ! I think 
 it's playing it too low upon a chap, the way you fellows 
 are going on. It's taking a mean advantage of my 
 position." 
 
 "And who put you into that position, I should like to 
 know ? " yelled Dick Jones, becoming poetically excited. 
 " Didn't we lift you up into it on the point of our 
 pens ?" 
 
 " Fortunately they were not very pointed," ejaculated the 
 great critic, wriggling uncomfortably at the suggestion. " I 
 don't deny that, of course. All I say is, you're giving me 
 away now." 
 
 "You give yourself away," shrieked Owen vehemently, 
 "with a pound of that Cingalese tea. How is it Boyle 
 manages to crack up our plays without being driven to any 
 of this new-fangled nonsense ? " 
 
 "Plays !" said Patrick, looking up moodily. "Anything 
 is good enough for plays. You see I can always fall back 
 on the acting, and crack up that. I had to do that with 
 Owen's thing at the Lymarket My notice read like a 
 gushing account of the play, — in reality it was all devoted to 
 the players. The trick of it is not easy. Those who can 
 read between the lines could see that there were only three 
 of them about the piece itself, and yet the outside public 
 would never dream I was shirking expressing an opinion
 
 t( . 
 
 THE ENGLISH SHAKESPEARE " 545 
 
 about the merits of the play or pinnuig myself to any 
 definite statement. The only time, Owen, I dare say that 
 your plays are literature, is when they are a frost, for that 
 both explains the failure and justifies you. But, an' you 
 love me, Taffy, or if you have any care for my reputation, 
 do not, I beg of you, be enticed into the new folly of print- 
 ing your plays." 
 
 " But things have come to that stage, I mus^ do it," said 
 Owen, " or incur the suspicion of illiterateness." 
 
 "No, no!" pleaded Patrick, in horror, "Sooner than 
 that I will damn all the other printed plays en d/oc, and say 
 that the real literary playwrights, conscious of their position, 
 are too dignified to resort to this cheap method of self- 
 assertion. But you will not carry out your threat? 
 Remember how dangerously near you came to exposing me 
 over your Naquetie ! " 
 
 The Society laughed. Every one knew the incident, for it 
 was Patrick's stock grievance against the dramatist. Patrick, 
 being out of town, had written his eulogy of this play of 
 Owen's from his inner consciousness. On the fourth night, 
 being back in London, in deference to Owen's persuasions 
 he had gone to see Naquctte. After the tragedy, Owen 
 found him seated moodily in the stalls, long after the 
 audience had filed out. 
 
 " Knocked you, old man, this time, eh ? " queried Owen, 
 laughing complacently. 
 
 "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 wrote that Naqiieite 
 was 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. 
 
 2m
 
 546 
 
 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Cecilia was a tall, fair girl, with dreamy blue 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 
 
 "KNOCKED YOU, OLD MAN, THIS TIME, EH?" 
 
 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 yuu be mine?" 
 He had a habit of using unconventional phrases,
 
 *' 7 HE ENGLISH SHAKESPEARE " 547 
 
 " 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 charm 
 to me is your being just yourself — your simple, honest, 
 manly self? I will not have my enjoyment of your individ- 
 uality si)oilt 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 staunch, 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 
 thus. 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
 
 548 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 managers sit in an erect position. In applying for a more 
 intimate connection, he stated that he had met with a 
 misfortune, and a httle 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 a blase Society. Andrew Mackay had written an enthusi- 
 astic article in the so-called Nineteenth Century on "The 
 Cochin-China Shakespeare," and set all tongues wagging 
 about the new literary phenomenon, with whose verses the 
 boatmen of the Irrawadi rocked their children to sleep on 
 the cradle of the river, and whose dramas were played in 
 eight-hour 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 sufificiently 
 unknown to need his patronage. 
 
 " Cochin-Chinese Shakespeare, indeed ! " said Dick Jones 
 at the next symposium. " Why, judging from the copious 
 extracts you gave from his greatest drama. Baby Bantatn, 
 it is the most 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, does your mother, Fu-sia, know you are? 
 Fu-siA. I have no mother, but I have a child."
 
 « 
 
 THE ENGLISH SHAKESPEARE " 
 
 549 
 
 " Where is the Shakespearean quahty ? " repeated Andrew. 
 " Do you not feel the perfect pathos of these two lines, the 
 infiniteness of incisive significance ? To me they paint 
 
 -At *• 
 
 "SHE TOLD ME SHE COULDN'T SLEEP TILL SHE HAD KKAD IT." 
 
 the whole scene in two strokes of matchless simplicity, 
 strophe and antistrophe. Fu-sia, the repentant outcast, and 
 Hang-ho, whose honest love she rejected, stand out as in a
 
 5SO THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 flash of lightning. Nay, Shakespeare himself never wrote an 
 act of such tragic brevity, packed so full of the sense of 
 avajK-rj. 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." 
 
 The Mutual Depreciation Society burst into a roar of 
 laughter, and Andrew realised that he had put his foot 
 in 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, a Cuban, a 
 German, a Scandinavian, 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 very 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
 
 " THE ENGLISH SHAKESPEARE " 551 
 
 every place ? Hamlet, Othello, Lady Macbeth— these are 
 world-types, not English characters. Our English Shake- 
 speare must be more autochthonous, more chauvinist, more 
 provincial, or more l?or?i/', if you like to put it that way. 
 His scenes must be rooted in English life, and his person- 
 ages must smack of English soil." 
 
 There was much table-thumping when the philosopher 
 ceased. 
 
 " Excellent ! " cried 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, you would like to be the subject of the 
 discovery. But 1 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 Shakesi)eare,' why should we give 
 over the appointment to an outsider? Charity begins at 
 home." 
 
 " That IS a difficulty," admitted Andrew, puckering his
 
 552 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 brow. •' It brings us to a standstill. Seductive, there- 
 fore, 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. 
 
 "Ton my honour, Grey, you are right," said Andrew. 
 "Right as Talleyrand when he told the thief who insisted 
 that he must live, '■Mais, vwnsieur, ie ti'en vols pas la 
 nkessiie.'" 
 
 "It's an inspiration ! " said Tom Brown, moved out of his 
 usual apathy. "We all remember how Whately proved 
 that the Emperor Napoleon never existed — and the plaus- 
 ible way he did it. How few persons actually saw the 
 Emperor ! How did even these know that what they saw 
 was the 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, the modus operandi 
 was discussed, and the members parted effervescing with 
 enthusiasm, and anxious to start the campaign immedi- 
 ately. 
 
 " The English Shakespeare" was to be named " Fladpick," 
 a cognomen which, once seen, would hook itself on to the 
 memory.
 
 " THE ENGLISH SHAKESPEARE " 553 
 
 The very next day a leading article in the Daily Herald 
 casually 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 needed 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 acquaint- 
 ance. Writers were said not to possess Fladpick's imagina- 
 tion, 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, but the libraries said 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
 
 554 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 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 only of a few cognoscenti, who, being such, 
 were enabled to create for him the reputation he so 
 thoroughly deserved. The next step in the campaign was 
 to contradict this ; and the press teemed with biographies 
 and counter -biographies. Dazzler also wired numerous 
 interviews, but an authoritative statement was inserted in 
 the Acad((:U!N, 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 unre- 
 cognisable, 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 the 
 Fortnightly Cofitemporary . Patrick, who wrote the dramatic 
 criticism for seven papers, led the attack upon the audaci- 
 ous iconoclast. Journalesia was convulsed by the quarrel, 
 and even young ladies asked their partners in the giddy
 
 " THE ENGLISH SHAKESPEARE " 555 
 
 waltz whether they were Fladpickites or Anti-Fladpickites. 
 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 for your ignorance of Fladpick's awfully sweet 
 writings. Any amount of people promised one another intro- 
 ductions to Fladpick, and those who had met him enjoyed 
 quite a reflected reputation in Belgravian circles. As to the 
 Fladpicknic parties, which brother-genuises 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 of 
 kudos from refusing to be lionised, 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, saying 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 was announced 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 Fladi)ick'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 holiday. About this time, 
 too, Dazzler unconsciously helped the Society, by announ- 
 cing that Fladpick was dying of consumption in a snow-hut
 
 556 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 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 a canard. 
 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 consider- 
 able fees if invested in the usual way. But this time the 
 worry was genuine. 
 
 "Frank," she said, "I am in love." 
 
 The sword of Damocles had fallen at last, sundering them 
 for ever. 
 
 *' 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 are in rapport." 
 
 " But this is madness." 
 
 " I know it is. I have tried to fight against it. I have
 
 (( . 
 
 THE ENGLISH SHAKESPEARE " 557 
 
 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 admira- 
 tion ? " 
 
 " 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." 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, O Frank ! Frank ! he can never be mine. He will 
 probably never know of my existence, and 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
 
 "HE I l.UVEU WAS DYING IN OKIOENLAND,
 
 " TFIE ENGLISH SHAKESPEARE " 559 
 
 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 — orgive me," he stammered. "I — I — am I— 
 
 that is to say Fladpick. Oh, how can I explain what 1 
 
 mean ? " 
 
 Cecilia sobbed on. Every sob seemed to stick in Frank's 
 own throat. His impotence maddened him. ^^'as he to 
 let the woman he loved fret herself to death for a shadow ? 
 And yet to undeceive her were scarcely less fLital. 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, wag
 
 56o THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 he not responsible for Fladpick's being, and thus, Hke 
 another Frankenstein, for all the evil done by him. 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, I," he said. " I am glad you love 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 honour 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. 
 ril 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 told me that 
 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 Shake- 
 speare," she sobbed ecstatically.
 
 " THE ENGLISH SHAKESPEARE " 561 
 
 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, ana tne 
 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 honour 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 — especi- 
 ally 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 reconstructed the mas- 
 todon 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 to keep on 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 
 
 2n
 
 562 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Tartary trade-mark, 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 
 haunted 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 depredator, 
 
 'The English Shakespeare.''"' 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 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 LiUie, 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 state 
 what Providence has granted, does she ? " 
 
 " No," said Lillie savagely. " She was extremely reticent
 
 THE OLD YOUNG WOMAN AND THE NEW 563 
 
 about her history — reticent almost to the point of indiscre- 
 tion. But I daresay it's a husband." 
 
 "Oh, 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 humour, and when 
 the millionaire strolled into the Club she did not imme- 
 diately expel him. 
 
 " Well, Lillie," he said, " when are you going to give the 
 soiree to 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 stair- 
 
 cases." 
 
 " 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 Tur[)le 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
 
 564 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 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 agit- 
 ated 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 name of ' Wee Winnie.' " 
 
 " Shall I show him in ? " interposed Turple the Magni- 
 ficent. 
 
 " 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 
 splendours 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 man- 
 liness," 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 Presi- 
 dent'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 
 tri-corner hat, a pair of tanned gloves, and an eyeglass. In
 
 THE OLD YOUNG WOMAN AND THE NEW 565 
 
 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, and divide et iinpera a 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 jjrecisely 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 — Silver- 
 plume — and his book is not called Poems of Passion^ but 
 Poems of Compassion." 
 
 " Oh, well, there isn't much difference," said Nelly. 
 
 " No ; according to the proverb, Compassion is akin to 
 Passion," admitted Silverdale. 
 
 " Well, Miss Nimrod," put in Lillie, " our object is 
 easily defined. We are an association of young and beauti- 
 ful girls devoted to celibacy, in order to modify the meaning 
 of the term ' old maid.'" 
 
 Nelly Nimrod started up enthusiastically. " Bravo, old
 
 566 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 girl!" she cried, slapping the President on the back. "Put 
 me down for a flag. I catch the conception of the cam- 
 paign. It is magnificent." 
 
 " But it is not war," said Lillie deprecatingly. " Our 
 methods are peaceful, unaggressive. Our platform is merely 
 metaphorical. Our lesson is the self-sufficiency of spinster- 
 hood. 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 indignantly. " I use it to denote the mice- 
 fearing classes." 
 
 " Hear, hear," said Lillie. " Miss Nimrod, it is true 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 one's self, I suppose ? " 
 
 "Certainly not; if it is an autobiography," said Silverdale. 
 
 " That's all right, then. My book is autobiographical." 
 
 " I knew a celebrity once," said Silverdale, " a dread- 
 fully 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 flea," murmured the 
 millionaire. 
 
 " What's that ? I didn't catch that," said Nelly, looking 
 round in the direction of the voice. 
 
 " Good gracious, father, haven't you gone ? " cried Lillie,
 
 THE OLD YOUNG WOMAN AND THE NEW 567 
 
 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 re-appeared. 
 
 " 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 candidate, 
 so 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 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, I am an 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."
 
 568 
 
 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " And a pretty life you have led ! " 
 
 " I have, indeed ! " cried Miss Nimrod, goaded almost 
 to o:atory by Miss Jack's taunts. " Not the ugly, unlovely 
 life of the average woman. I have exhausted all the sensa- 
 
 f. H U'-Ajrc^o ,■ 
 
 "IS THAT THE UNIFORM OF THF. OLD MAIDS' CLUB?" 
 
 tions which are the common guerdon of youth and henlth 
 and high spirits, and which have, for the most part, been 
 selfishly monopolised by man. The splendid audacity of 
 youth has burnt in my veins, and fired me to burst my
 
 7 HE OLD YOUNG WOMAN AND THE NEW 569 
 
 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 black knee-breeches, 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 shot grouse in brown leather gaiters and 
 a sweet Norfolk jacket with half-inch tucks. But this is 
 not the climax. I have " 
 
 " 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 ? "
 
 570 
 
 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " 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 favour." 
 
 " Oh, only because 
 one can't kodak one's 
 
 
 WEE WINNIK ON HER TRAVELS. 
 
 self. Everything else I caught as I flew past." 
 
 " Ah. Did you catch many 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 is the flea ! " interrupted Miss Jack.
 
 THE OLD YOUNG WOMAN AND THE NEW 571 
 
 The millionaire started as if he had been stung. 
 
 " I won't have it 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 indiarubber 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. Recognising my 
 familiar accents, my pet eased 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-dec," 
 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-dec " 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.
 
 572 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 I looked down upon my hand, and there, poised lightly 
 yet firmly, like a butterfly upon a lily, was a giant flea. 
 Instantly, without uttering a single cry or reeling in i y 
 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 least calcu- 
 lated 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 im- 
 patiently. " 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,
 
 THE OLD YOUNG WOMAN AND THE NEW 573 
 
 " we are not here to discuss entomology or sesthetics. You 
 stated, Miss Jack, that you thought of joining us as a 
 protest against female unconventionality." 
 
 " 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 now-a-days in awife." 
 
 "What is that.?" inquired Lillie curiously. 
 
 " A chum," answered Miss Jack. " Formerly a man 
 wanted a wife — now he wants a woman to sympathise 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 favours 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 intellec- 
 tual companienship, 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's a pity you don't wear doll's clothes." 
 
 " I claim for every woman the right to live her own life 
 in her own toilette," returned Miss Jack. " The sneers 
 about dolls are threadbare. I have watched these intellec- 
 tual 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
 
 574 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 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 clamouring 
 for equality with men want to eat their cake and to have it 
 too. They want to wear masculine hats, yet to keep 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 convoy 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 eye-glass, loll a few minutes in the doorway, then go 
 down-stairs to interview the supper, and, having sated my- 
 self with chicken, champagne, and trifle, return to my club.
 
 THE OLD YOUNG WOMAN AND THE NEW 575 
 
 "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. , 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 
 ofmusic-hall talent, just to letthem haveapeepinto 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
 
 576 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 to (jualify 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 monopolise my society, and who would 
 be jealous of my bachelor friends and want me to cu 
 them, who would hanker to read my letters, and 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 ineptitude to regret, 
 marriage was the key to comparative freedom ; but in these 
 days, when woman has at last emancipated herself from the 
 thraldom 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 civilisation 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.
 
 THE OLD YOUNG WOMAN AND THE NEW 577 
 
 " 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 defeminisation 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," replied 
 that 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 thoroughly ?^«conven- 
 tional 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 to have a chop 
 at the club with me this evening, and what do you think ? 
 The baronet coughed and looked at Guy meaningly, and 
 Guy blushed and hummed and hawed and looked sheepish, 
 and at last gave me to understand he never went out to dine 
 
 20
 
 THE OLD YOUNG WOMAN AND THE NEW 579 
 
 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." 
 
 " I thank you. Wee Winnie," said Miss Jack disdainfully. 
 
 " But think how thoroughly conventional the baronet is ! 
 He won't even let his son go out without a chaperon." 
 
 "That is true," admitted Miss Jack, visibly impressed. 
 " He is about the most conventional man I ever heard of" 
 
 "A widower, too," pursued Miss Nimrod, pressing her 
 advantage. , 
 
 Miss Jack hesitated. 
 
 " And he dines seven sharp at the Junior Widows'." 
 
 "Ah, then there is no time to lose," said Miss Jack. 
 
 They went out arm in arm. 
 
 " Have you seen Patrick Boyle's poem in the Playgoers' 
 Review " ? asked Lillie, when the Club was clear. 
 
 " You mean the great dramatic critic's ? No, I haven't seen 
 it; but I have seen extracts and eulogies in every paper." 
 
 " I have it here complete," said Lillie. " It is quite 
 interesting to find there is a heart beneath the critic's waist- 
 coat. Read it aloud. No, you don't want the banjo !" 
 
 Lord Silverdale obeyed. The poem was entitled 
 
 CRITICUS IN STAI3ULIS(?). 
 
 Rallying-point of all playgoers earnest, 
 
 Packed with incongruous types of humanity, 
 
 Easily pleased, yet of critics the sternest, 
 Crudely ignoring that all things are vanity, 
 
 Pit, in thee laughter and tears blend in medley- 
 Would I could sit in thy cosy concavity ! 
 
 No ! to the stalls I am drawn, to the deadly 
 Centre of gravity.
 
 5So THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Florin, or shilling, or sixpence admission, 
 Often I've paid in my raw juvenility, 
 
 Purchasing Banbury cakes in addition, 
 ninger-beer, too, to my highest ability. 
 
 Villains I hissed like a venomous gander. 
 
 Virtue I loved next to cheesecakes or chocolate 
 
 No7i< no atrocity raises my dander, 
 
 No crime can shock o' late. 
 
 Then I could dote on a red melodrama, 
 
 Now I demand but limelight on Philosophy, 
 
 Learned allusions to Buddha and Brahma, 
 Science and Faith and a touch of Theosophy 
 
 Farces I slate, on Burlesque I am scathing. 
 Pantomime shakes for a week my serenity ; 
 
 Nothing restores my composure but bathing 
 Deep in Ibsenity. 
 
 Actors were gods to my boyish devotion, 
 Actresses angels — in tights and low bodices : 
 
 Drowned is that pretty and puerile notion. 
 
 Thrown overboard in the first of my Odysseys. 
 
 Syrens may sing submarine fascinations, 
 Adult Ulysses remains analytical, 
 
 Flat notes recording, or reedy vibrations, 
 Tranquilly critical. 
 
 Here in the stalls we are stiff as if starch, meant 
 Only for shirt-fronts, to faces had mounted up ; 
 
 Dowagers' wills may be read on their parchment, 
 Beautiful busts on your thumbs may be counted up 
 
 Girls in the pit are remarkably rosy. 
 
 Each claspt by lover who passes the paper-bag : 
 
 Here I can't even, the girls are so prosy. 
 One digit taper bag. 
 
 Yet could I sit in the pit of the Surrey, 
 
 Munching an orange or spooning with 'Arriet ,• 
 
 Sadly I fear I should be in no hurry 
 
 Backward to drive my existence's chariot.
 
 THE MYSTERIOUS ADVERTISER 581 
 
 "Squeezes" are ill compensated by crushes — 
 
 Stalls may be dull, but they're jolly luxurious ; 
 Really the way o'er past joys we can gush is 
 Awfully curious ! 
 
 Life is a chaos of comic confusion, 
 
 Past things alone take a halo harmonious ; 
 
 So from illusion we wake to illusion, 
 
 Each as the rest just as true and erroneous. 
 
 Fin de Steele I am, and so be it ! 
 
 Here's to the problems of sad sociology ! 
 
 This is my weird, — like a man I must dree it, 
 Great is chronology ! 
 
 Even so, once the great drama allured me, 
 Which we all play on the stage universal ; 
 
 "Going behind" the "green" curtain has cured me, 
 All my hope now is 'tis not a rehearsal. 
 
 Still I've played on ; to old men's parts I grew from 
 Juvenile lead, as I'd risen from small-boy ; 
 
 So I'll play on till I get my last cue from 
 Death, the old call-boy. 
 
 " Hum, not at all bad," concluded Lord Silverdale. " 1 
 wonder who wrote it." 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE MYSTERIOUS ADVERTISER 
 
 Junior Widows' Club, 
 Alidnij^kt. 
 
 "Dear Miss Dulcimer, — Just a line to tell you what a 
 lovely evening we have had. The baronet seemed greatly 
 taken with Miss Jack, and she with him, and they behaved
 
 582 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 in a most conventional manner. Guy and I were able to 
 have a real long chat, and he told me all his troubles. It 
 appears that he has just been thrown over by his promised 
 bride, under circumstances of a most peculiar character. I 
 gave him the sympathy he needed, but at the same time 
 thought to myself, Aha ! here is another member for the 
 Old Maids' Club. You rely on me — I will build you up a 
 phalanx of Old Maids that shall just swamp the memory ot 
 Hippolyte and her Amazons. I got out of Guy the name 
 and address of the girl who jilted him. I shall call upon 
 Miss Sybil Hotspur the first thing in the morning, and if I 
 do not land her, my name is not — Yours cheerily, 
 
 ' Wee Winnie." " 
 
 "This may be awkward," said the Honorary Trier, 
 returning the letter to the President. " Miss Nimrod seems 
 to take her own election for granted." 
 
 "And to think that we are anxious for members," added 
 Lillie. 
 
 "Well, we ought to have somebody to replace Miss 
 Jack," said Silverdale, with a suspicion of a smile. " But 
 do you propose to accept Wee Winnie ? " 
 
 " I don't know — she is certainly a remarkable girl. Such 
 originality and individuality ! Suppose we let things sHde 
 a little." 
 
 " Very well ; we will not commit ourselves yet by saying 
 anything to Miss Nim " 
 
 " Miss Nimrod," announced Turple the Magnificent. 
 
 " Aha ! here we are again ! " cried Wee Winnie. " How 
 are you, everybody ? How is the old gentleman ? Isn't he 
 here ? " 
 
 " He is very well, thank you, but he is not one of us," 
 said Lillie.
 
 THE MYSTERIOUS ADVERTISER 583 
 
 " Oh ! Well, anyhow, I've got another of us." 
 
 "Miss Sybil Hotspur?" 
 
 "The same. I found her raging like a volcano." 
 
 "What — smoking?" queried Silverdale. 
 
 "No, no, she is one of the old sort. She merely fumes," 
 said Wee Winnie, laughing as if she had made a joke. 
 " She was raving against the infidelity of men. Poor Guy ! 
 How his ears must have tingled. He has sent her a long 
 explanation, but she laughs it to scorn. I persuaded her 
 to let you -see it — it is so quaint." 
 
 "Have you it with you?" asked Lillie eagerly. Her 
 appetite for tales of real life was growing by what it fed upon. 
 
 " Yes, here is his letter, several quires long. But before 
 you can understand it, you must know how the breach 
 came about." 
 
 " Lord Silverdale, pass Miss Nimrod the chocolate 
 creams. Or would you like some lemonade ? " 
 
 " Lemonade, by all means," replied Wee Winnie, taking 
 up her favourite attitude astride the sofa; "with just a 
 wee drappie of whiskey in it, if you please. I daresay I 
 shall be as dry as a lime-kiln before I've finished the story 
 and read you this letter." 
 
 Turple the Magnificent duly attended to Miss Nimrod's 
 wants. Whatever he felt, he made no sign. He was 
 simply Turple the Magnificent. 
 
 "One fine day," said Wee Winnie, "or rather, one day 
 that began fine, a merry party made an excursion into the 
 country. Sybil Hotspur and her fiance Guy Fledgely (and 
 of course the baronet) were of the party. After picnicing 
 on the grass, the party broke into twos till tea-time. The 
 baronet was good enough to pair off with an unattached 
 young lady, and so Sybil and Guy were free to wander 
 away into a copse. The sun was very hot, and the young man
 
 584 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 had not spared the fizz. First he took off his coat to be 
 cooler, then with an afterthought he converted it into a 
 pillow, and went to sleep. 
 
 " Meantime Sybil, under the protection of her parasol, 
 steadily perused one of Addiper's early works, chaster in 
 style than in substance, and sneering in exquisitely chiselled 
 epigrams at the weaknesses of his sex. Sybil stole an 
 involuntary glance at Guy — sleeping so peacefully like a 
 babe in the wood, with the squirrels peeping at him trust- 
 fully. She felt that Addiper was a jaundiced cynic — that 
 her Guy, at least, would be faithful unto death. At that 
 instant she saw a folded sheet of paper on the ground near 
 Guy's shoulder. It might have slipped from the inner 
 pocket of the coat on which his head was resting, but if 
 it had she could not put it back without disturbing his 
 slumbers. Besides, it might not belong to him at all. She 
 picked up the paper, opened it, and turned pale as death. 
 This is what she read : 
 
 *' ' Manager of Daily Hurrygraph. — Please insert en- 
 closed series in order named on alternate days, commencing 
 to-day week. Postal order enclosed.' 
 
 '" I. Dearest, dearest, dearest, — Remember the grotto. — 
 
 POPSY.' 
 
 " ' 2. Dearest, dearest, dearest, — This is worse than 
 silence. Sobs are cheap to-day. — Popsy.' 
 
 " ' 3. Dearest, dearest, dearest, — Only Anastasia and the 
 dog. Thought I should have died. Cruel heart hope on. 
 The white band of hope. Watchman, what of the night? 
 Shall we say 11. 15 from Paddington, since the sea will not 
 give up its dead ? I have drained the dregs. The rest is 
 silence. Answer to-morrow, or I shall dree my weird. — 
 
 PoPSY.'
 
 THE MYSTERIOUS ADVERTISER 
 
 585 
 
 "There was no signature to the letter, but the writing 
 was that which had hitherto borne to poor Sybil the daily 
 assurances of her lover's devotion. She looked at the 
 sleeping traitor so savagely that he moved uncomfortably 
 even in his sleep. Like a serpent that scrap of paper had 
 entered into her Eden, and she put it in her bosom that it 
 
 "DEAREST IS YOU," HE SAID, WITH A GHASTLY SMII.E. 
 
 might sting her. Unnoticed, the shadows had been 
 lengthening, the sky had grown grey — as if in harmony 
 with her blighted hopes. Roughly she roused the sleeper, 
 and hastily they wended their way back to the rendezvous, 
 to find tea just over and the rush to the station just 
 beginning. There was no time to talk till they were
 
 586 THE CEIJ BATES' CLUB 
 
 seated face to face in the railway carriage. The party had 
 just caught the train, and, bundUng in anyhow, had become 
 separated. Sybil and Guy were alone again. 
 
 " Then Sybil plucked from her breast the serpent, and held 
 it up. 
 
 " ' Guy ! ' she said, ' what is this ? ' 
 
 " He turned pale. ' VV — w — here did you get that from ? ' 
 he stammered. 
 
 " ' What is this ? ' she repeated, and read in unsympathetic 
 accents, ' Dearest, dearest, dearest, — Remember the grotto. 
 — Popsy.' 
 
 " ' Who is dearest ? ' she continued. 
 
 "'You, of course,' he said, with ghastly playfulness. 
 
 " ' Indeed ? Then allow me to say, sir, I ivill remember 
 the grotto. I shall never forget it, Popsy. If you wish to 
 communicate with me, a penny postage stamp is, I believe, 
 adequate. Perhaps I am also Anastasia? to say nothing of 
 the dog. Or shall we say the 11.15 from Paddington, — 
 Popsy ? ' 
 
 " ' Sybil darling,' he broke in piteously, ' give me back 
 that paper; you wouldn't understand.' 
 
 "Sybil silently replaced the serpent in her bosom, and 
 leant back haughtily. 
 
 " ' I can explain all,' he cried wildly. 
 
 " * I am listening,' Sybil said. 
 
 " * The fact is — I — I ' The young man flushed and 
 
 stammered. Sybil's pursed lips gave him no assistance. 
 
 " ' It may seem incredible — you will not believe it' 
 
 "Sybil made no sign. 
 
 " ' I — I — am the victim of a disease.' 
 
 " Sybil stared scornfully. 
 
 " ' I — I — don't look at me like that, or I can't tell you. 
 I — I — I didn't like to tell you before, but I always knew
 
 THE MYSTERIOUS ADVERTISER 587 
 
 you would have to know some day. Perhaps it is better it 
 has come out before our marriage. Listen ! ' 
 
 "The young man leant over and breathed solemnly in 
 her ear, ' / suffer frofn an hereditary tendency to advertise in 
 the Agony Column.^ 
 
 " Sybil made no reply. The train drew up at a station. 
 Without a word Sybil left the carriage and rejoined her 
 friends in the next compartment." 
 
 " What an extraordinary excuse ! " exclaimed Lillie. 
 
 "So Sybil thought," replied Wee Winnie. "From that 
 day to this — almost a week — she has never spoken to him. 
 And yet Guy persists in his explanation — even to me, which 
 is so superfluous that I am almost inclined to believe in its 
 truth. At any rate, I will now read you his letter : 
 
 • ••>••• 
 
 " Dear Sybil, — Perhaps for the last time I address you 
 thus, for if, after reading this, you still refuse to believe me, 
 I shall not trespass upon your patience again. But for the 
 sake of our past love I beg you to read what follows in a 
 trusting spirit — and if not in a trusting spirit, at least to read 
 it. It is the story of how my father became a baronet, 
 and when you know that you will perhaps learn to pity and 
 to bear with me. 
 
 " When a young man my father was bitten by the passion 
 for contributing to the Agony Column. Some young men 
 spend their money in one way, some in another ; this was 
 my father's dissipation. He loved to insert mysterious 
 words and sentences in the advertisement columns of the 
 newspapers, so as to enjoy the sensation of giving food for 
 speculation to a whole people. To sit cjuietly at home, 
 and with a stroke of the pen influence the thoughts of 
 millions of his countrymen — this gave my father the keenest 
 satisfaction. When you come to analyse it, what more does
 
 S88 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 the greatest author do ? The Agony Column is the royal 
 road to successful authorship, if the publication of fiction in 
 leading newspapers be any test of success ; for my father 
 used sometimes to conduct whole romances by correspond- 
 ence, after the fashion of the then reigning Wilkie Collins. 
 And the Agony Column is also the most innocuous medium 
 for satisfying that craze for supplying topics of conversation 
 which sometimes leads people to crime. I make this 
 analysis to show you that there was no antecedent impro- 
 bability about what you seem to consider a wild excuse. 
 The desire to contribute to this department of journalism is 
 no isolated psychical freak ; it is related to many other 
 manifestations of mental activity, and is perfectly intelligible. 
 But this desire, like every other, may be given its head till 
 it runs away with the whole man. So it was with my father. 
 He began — half in fun — with a small advertisement, one 
 insertion. Unfortunately — or fortunately — he made a little 
 hit with it. He heard two men discussing it in a cafe. 
 The next week he tried again — unsuccessfully this time, so 
 far as he knew. But the third advertisement was again 
 a topic of conversation. Even in his own office (he was 
 training for an architect) he heard the fellows saying, Did 
 you see that funny advertisement this morning : 
 
 Be careful not to break the baby ? 
 
 " You can imagine how intoxicating this sort of thing is, 
 and how the craving for the secret enjoyment it brings may 
 grow on a man. Gradually my father became the victim of 
 a passion fiercer than the gambler's, yet akin to it. For he 
 never knew whether his money would procure him the 
 gratification he yearned for or not ; it was all a fluke. The 
 most promising mysteries would attract no attention, and 
 even a carefully planned novelette, that ran for a week with
 
 THE MYSTERIOUS ADVERTISER 5S9 
 
 as many as three characters intervening, would fall still- 
 born upon the tapis of conversation. But every failure 
 only spurred him to fresh effort. All his spare coin, all his 
 savings, went into the tills of the newspaper cashiers. He 
 cut down his expenses to the uttermost farthing, living 
 abstemiously and dressing almost shabbily, and sacrificing 
 everything to his ambition. It was lucky he was not in a 
 bank ; for he had only a moderate income, and who knows 
 to what he might have been driven ? 
 
 " At last my father struck oil. 
 
 "Tired of the unfruitful field of romance, whose best 
 days seemed to be over, my father returned to that 
 rudimentary literature which pleases the widest number 
 of readers, while it has the never-failing charm of the 
 primitive for the jaded disciples of culture. He wrote only 
 polysyllabic unintelligibilities. 
 
 " Thus for a whole week, in every morning Agony 
 Column, he published in large capitals the word : 
 Paddlepintospheroskedaddepoid. 
 
 "This was an instantaneous success. But it was only 
 a succes d'esiime. People talked of it, but they could not 
 remember it. It had no seed of permanence in it. It 
 could never be more than a nine days' wonder. It was 
 an artificial, esoteric novelty that might please the cliques, 
 but could never touch the masses. It lacked the simplicity 
 of real greatness, that unmistakeable elemental cachet which 
 commends things to the great heart of the people. After 
 a bit, this dawned upon my father ; and, profiting by his 
 experience, he determined to create something which should 
 be immortal. 
 
 " For days he racked his brains, unable to please him- 
 self. He had the critical fastidiousness of the true artist, 
 and his ideal ever hovered before him, unseizable.
 
 S90 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Grotesque words floated about him in abundance ; every 
 current of air brought him new suggestions ; he lived in a 
 world of strange sounds. But the great combination came 
 not. 
 
 " Late one night, as he sat brooding by his dying fire, 
 there came a sudden rapping at his chamber door. A flash 
 of joy illumined his face. He started to his feet. 
 
 " ' I have it ! ' he cried. 
 
 " ' Have what ?' said his friend Marple, bursting into the 
 room without further parley. 
 
 " ' Influenza,' surlily answered my father, for he was not 
 to be caught napping ; and Marple went away hurriedly. 
 Marple was something in the City. The two young men 
 were great friends, but there are some things which cannot 
 be told even to friends. It was not influenza my father had 
 got. To his fevered onomatopoetic fancy Marple's quick 
 quadruple rap had translated itself into the word 
 
 Olotutu. 
 
 *' At this hour of the day, my dear Sybil, it is superfluous 
 to say anything about this word, with which you have 
 been familiar from your cradle. It has now been before 
 the public over a quarter of a century, and it has long since 
 won immortality. Little did you think when we sat in the 
 railway carriage yesterday, that the ' Olotutu ' that glared at 
 you from the partition was the far-away cause of the cloud 
 hanging over our lives. But it may be interesting to you 
 to learn that in the early days many people put the accent 
 on the second syllable, whereas, as all the world now knows, 
 the accent is on the first, and the ' o ' of ' ol ' is short. 
 When my father lound he had set the Thames on fire, 
 he was almost beside himself with joy. At the office, the 
 clerks, in the intervals of wondering about 'Olotutu,' 
 wondered if he had come into a fortune. He determined
 
 THE MYSTERIOUS ADVERTISER 591 
 
 to follow up his success ; to back the winning word ; to 
 consecrate his life to 'Olotutu'; to put all his money on it. 
 Thenceforward, for the next three months, you very rarely 
 opened a paper without seeing the word 'Olotutu.' It 
 stood always by itself, self-complete and independent, rigid 
 and austere, in provoking sphinx-like solitude. 
 
 " Sybil, imagine to yourself my father's rapture ! To be 
 the one man in all England who had the clue to the enigma 
 of ' Olotutu ! ' At last the burden of his secret became 
 intolerable. He felt he must breathe a hint of it, or die. 
 One night, while Marple was smoking in his rooms, and 
 wondering about 'Olotutu,' my father proudly told him 
 all. 
 
 " ' Great heavens ! ' exclaimed Marple. ' Tip us your 
 flipper, old man. You are a millionaire !' 
 
 " ' A what ? ' gasped my father. 
 
 " ' A millionaire ! ' 
 
 '• ' Are you a lunatic ? ' 
 
 " ' Are you an idiot ? Don't you see that there is a 
 fortune in " Olotutu ? " ' 
 
 " ' A fortune ! How ? ' 
 
 " * By bringing it out as a Joint-Stock Company,' 
 
 '"But — but you don't understand. "Olotutu" is 
 only ■ 
 
 " ' Only an income for life,' interrupted Marple excitedly. 
 ' Look here, old boy, I'll get you up a syndicate to run it 
 in twenty-four hours.' 
 
 " ' Do you mean to say ?' 
 
 " ' I mean to do. I'm an ass not to quietly annex it all 
 to myself; but I always said I was too honest for the City. 
 Give me "Olotutu," and we'll divide the profits. Glory 
 Hooray ! ' 
 
 " He capered about the floor wildly
 
 592 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 "'But what profits? Where from?' asked my father, 
 still unenlightened ; for, outside architecture, he was a 
 green-horn. 
 
 "Marple sang the ' Ba, ba, ba, boodle-dee' of the day, 
 and continued his wild career. 
 
 " My father seized him by the throat, and pushed him 
 into a chair. 
 
 " ' Speak, man ! ' he cried agitatedly. ' Stop your tom- 
 foolery, and talk sense.' 
 
 " * I am talking cents — which is better,' said Marple 
 with a boisterous burst of laughter. 'A word that all 
 the world is talking about is a gold mine — a real gold 
 mine I mean, not one on a prospectus. Don't you see 
 that "Olotutu" is a household word, and that everybody 
 imagines it is the name of some new patent something 
 which the proprietor has been keeping dark ? I did myself. 
 When at last " Olotutu " is put upon the market, it will 
 come into the world under the fierce light that beats upon 
 a boom, and it will be snapped up like currant cake at a 
 tea-fight. Why, Nemo's Fruit Pepper, which has been on 
 every hoarding for twenty years, is not half so much talked 
 about as "Olotutu." What you have achieved is an 
 immense preliminary advertisement — and you were calmly 
 thinking of stopping there ! — within sight of Pactolus ! ' 
 
 " ' I had achieved my end,' replied my father, with 
 dignity. ' Art for art's sake — I did not work for money.' 
 
 " ' Then you refuse half the profits ? ' 
 
 " ' Oh no, no ! If the artist's work brings him money, he 
 cannot help it. I think I catch your idea now. You wish to 
 put some commodity upon the market attached to the name 
 of "Olotutu." We have a pedestal but no statue, a cloak 
 but nothing to cover.' 
 
 " ' We shall have plenty to cover soon,' observed Marple,
 
 THE MYSTERIOUS ADVERTISER §§3 
 
 winking. And he sat himself unceremoniously at my 
 writing-desk, and began scribbling away for dear life. 
 
 " ' I suppose, then,' went on my father, ' we shall have to 
 get hold of some article and manufacture it?' 
 
 " ' Nonsense,' jerked Marple. 'Where are we to get the 
 capital from ? ' 
 
 " ' Oh, I see. You will get the syndicate to do it ? ' 
 
 " ' Good gracious, man ! ' yelped Marple. ' Do you 
 suppose the syndicate will have any capital ? Let me 
 write in peace.' 
 
 "'But who is going to manufacture "Olotutu," then?' 
 persisted my father. 
 
 " ' The British public, of course,' thundered Marple. 
 My father was silenced. The feverish scratching of Marple's 
 pen continued, working my father up to an indescribable 
 nervous tension. 
 
 " ' But what will " Olotutu " be ? ' he inquired at last. ' A 
 patent medicine, a tobacco, a soap, a mine, a tea, a comic 
 paper, a beverage, a tooth powder, a hair restorer?' 
 
 " ' Look here, old man ! ' roared Marple. ' How do you 
 expect me to bother about details ? This thing has got to 
 be worked at once. The best part of the company season 
 is already over. But "Olotutu" is going to wake it up. 
 Mark my words. The shares of " Olotutu " will be at a pre- 
 mium on the day of issue. Another sheet of paper, quick.' 
 
 " ' What for ? ' 
 
 " ' I want to write to a firm of Chartered Accountants 
 and Valuers to give an estimate of the profits.' 
 
 " ' An estimate of the profits ? ' 
 
 " ' Don't talk like a parrot ! ' 
 
 " ' But how can they estimate the profits ? ' 
 
 " ' How ? What do you suppose they're chartered for ? 
 You or I couldn't do it, of course not. But it's the 
 
 2p
 
 594 
 
 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 business of accountants. That's what they're for. Pass me 
 more writing-paper — reams of it ! ' 
 
 " Marple spent the whole of that night writing letters to 
 what he called his tame guinea-pigs ; and the very next 
 day, large bills, bearing the solitary word 'Olotutu,' were 
 pasted up all over London, till the public curiosity mounted 
 
 THE PUBLIC CURIOSITY MOUNTED TO FRENZY. 
 
 to frenzy. The bill-posters earned many a half-crown by 
 misinforming the inquisitive. Marple worked like a horse. 
 First he drew up the Prospectus, leaving blanks for the 
 Board of Directors of the Company, then he filled up the 
 blanks. It was not easy. One lord was only induced to
 
 THE MYSTERIOUS ADVERTISER 595 
 
 serve by Marple's convincing representations of the good 
 ' Olotutu ' would do to the masses. When the Board was 
 complete, Marple had still to get the syndicate, iVom which 
 the Directors were to acquire ' Olotutu,' but he left that 
 till the end, knowing there would be no difficulty there. 
 I have never been able to gather from my father exactly 
 what went on, nor does my father profess to know exactly 
 himself, but he tells with regret how he used to worry 
 Marple daily by inquiring if he had yet decided what 
 * Olotutu ' was to be, as if Marple did not have his hands 
 full enough without that. Marple turned round on him one 
 day, and shrieked, ' That's your affair, not mine. You're 
 selling " Olotutu " to me, aren't you ? I can't be buyer 
 and seller too.' This, by the way, does not seem to be 
 so impossible as it sounds, for, according to my father, 
 when the Company came out, Marple bought and sold 
 ' Olotutu ' in the most mysterious manner, rigging the 
 market, watering the shares, cornering the bears, and doing 
 other extraordinary things, each and all at a profit. He was 
 not satisfied with his share of the price paid for ' Olotutu ' 
 by the syndicate, nor with his share of the enormously 
 higher price paid to the syndicate by the public, but went in 
 for Stock Exchange manoeuvres six-deep, coming out an easy 
 winner on Settling Day. One of my father's most treasured 
 collections is the complete set of proofs of the Prospectus. 
 It went through thirteen editions before it reached the public. 
 No author could revise his book more lovingly than Marple 
 revised that Prospectus. What tales printers could tell, to be 
 sure ! The most noticeable variations in the text of my 
 father's collection are the omission or addition of ciphers. 
 Some of the editions have ;!^i 20,000 for the Share Capital of 
 the Company, where others have ^1,200,000, and others 
 ;;^i 2,000. Sometimes the Directors appear to have extenu-
 
 59& THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 ated 'nought, 'sometimes to have set down 'nought' in malice, 
 As for the number of Debenture Shares, the amounts to be 
 paid up on allotment, the contracts with divers obscure 
 individuals, the number of shares to be taken up by the 
 Directors, and the number to be accepted by the Vendors in 
 part payment — these vary indefinitely ; but in no edition, not 
 even in those still void of the names of the Directors, do the 
 profits guaranteed by the Directors fall below twenty-five per 
 cent. Sometimes the complex and brain-baffling calcula- 
 tions that fill up page 3 result in a bigger profit, sometimes 
 in a smaller, but they are always cheering to contemplate. 
 There is not very much about ' Olotutu ' even in the last 
 edition, but from the very first there is a great deal about 
 the power of the Company to manufacture, import, export, 
 and deal in all kinds of materials, commodities, and articles 
 necessary for and useful in carrying on the same ; to carry 
 on any other operations or business which the Company 
 may from time to time deem expedient in connection 
 with its main business for the time being; to purchase, 
 take in exchange, or on lease, hire, or otherwise, in any part 
 of the world, for any estate or interest, any lands, factories, 
 buildings, easements, patent rights, brands, and trademarks, 
 concessions, privileges, machinery, plant, stock-in-trade, 
 utensils, necessary or convenient for the purposes of the 
 Company ; or to sell, exchange, let or rent royalty, share 
 of profits, or otherwise use and grant licences, easements, 
 and other rights of and over, and in any other manner deal 
 with or dispose of the whole or any part of the undertaking, 
 business, or property of the Company, and in consideration 
 to accept cash or shares, stock, debenture, and securities 
 of any company, whose objects are or include objects 
 similar to those of the Company. 
 
 " The actual nature of ' Olotutu ' does not seem to have
 
 THE MYSTERIOUS ADVERTISER 597 
 
 been settled till the ninth edition, but all the editions 
 include the Analyst's Report, certifying that 'Olotutu' 
 contains no injurious ingredients, and is far purer and 
 safer than any other (here there was a blank in the first 
 eight editions) in the market. From this it is evident that 
 Marple had made up his mind to something chemical, 
 though it is equally apparent that he kept an open mind as 
 regards its precise character, for in the ninth edition the 
 blank is filled up with 'tooth-powder,' in the tenth with 
 'meat-extract,' in the eleventh with ' hair-dye,' in the twelfth 
 with ' cod-liver oil,' and it is only in the thirteenth edition 
 that the final decision seems to have been arrived at in 
 favour of • soap.' This, of course, my dear Sybil, you 
 already know. Indeed, if I mistake not, ' Olotutu, the 
 only absolutely scentless soap in the market,' is your own 
 pet soap. I hope it will not shock you too much if I tell 
 you in the strictest confidence that, except in price, stamp, 
 and copious paper-wrapping, 'Olotutu' is simply bars of 
 yellow soap chopped small. It was here, perhaps, that 
 Marple's genius showed to the highest advantage. The 
 public was overdone with patent scented soaps ; there 
 seemed something unhealthy or at least molly-coddling 
 about their use ; the time was ripe for a return to the rude 
 and the primitive. ' Absolutely scentless ' became the trade- 
 mark of 'Olotutu,' and the public, being absolutely senseless 
 {pace my dear Sybil), somehow concluded that because the 
 soap was devoid of scent it was impregnated with sanitation. 
 " Is there need to prolong the story ? My father, so un- 
 expectedly enriched, abandoned architecture, and married 
 almost immediately. Soon he became the idol of a popular 
 constituency, and, voting steadily with his party, was made 
 a baronet. I was born a few months after the first dividend 
 was announced. It was a dividend of thirty-three percent. ;
 
 598 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 for ' Olotutu ' had become an indispensable adjunct to every 
 toilet-table, and the financial papers published leaders boast- 
 ing of having put their clients up to a good thing, and 'Olo- 
 tutu' was on everybody's tongue and got into everybody's eyes. 
 
 '' Can you wonder, then, that I was born with a con- 
 genital craving for springing mysteries upon the public? 
 can you still disbelieve that I suffer from a hereditary 
 tendency to advertise in the Agony Column ? 
 
 " At periodic intervals an irresistible prompting to force 
 uncouth words upon the universal consciousness seizes me ; 
 at other times I am driven to beguile the public with 
 pseudo - sensational communications to imaginary person- 
 ages. It was fortunate my father early discovered my 
 penchant, and told me the story of his life, for I think the 
 very knowledge that I am the victim of heredity helps me 
 to defy my own instincts. No man likes to feel he is the 
 shuttlecock of blind forces. Still they are occasionally too 
 strong for me, and my present attack has been unusually 
 severe and protracted. I have been passing through my 
 father's early phases, and conducting romances by corre- 
 spondence. Complementary to the series of messages 
 signed Popsy, I had prepared a series signed Wopsy, to 
 go in on alternate days ; and if you had only continued 
 your search in my coat-pocket, you would have discovered 
 these proofs of my innocence. May I trust it is now 
 re-established, and that ' Olotutu ' has washed away the 
 apparent stain on my character? With anxious heart I 
 await your reply. — Ever yours devotedly, Guv. 
 
 " Sybil's reply was : 
 
 " ' I have read your letter. Do not write to me again 1 ' 
 " She was so set against him," concluded Miss Nimrod, 
 " she would not even write this, but wired it."
 
 THE MYSTERIOUS ADVERTISER 599 
 
 " Then she does not beheve the story of how Guy 
 Fledgely's father became a baronet ? " said Lord Silverdale. 
 
 " She does not. She says ' Olotutu ' won't wash stains." 
 
 "Well, I suppose you will be bringing her up?" said the 
 President. 
 
 " I shall — in the way she should go," answered Wee 
 Winnie. " To-day is Saturday ; I will bring her on Mon- 
 day. Meantime, as it is getting very late, and as I have 
 finished my lemonade, I will bid you good afternoon — 
 Have you used ' Olotutu ' ? " 
 
 And with this facetious inquiry Miss Nimrod twirled 
 her stick, and was off. 
 
 An hour later Lillie received a wire from Wee Winnie : 
 
 " Olotutu. Wretches just reconciled. Letter follows." 
 
 And this was the letter that came by the first post on 
 Monday : 
 
 " My poor President, — We have lost Sybil. She 
 takes in the Hurrygraph, and reads the Agony Column 
 religiously. So all the week she has been exposed to a 
 terrible bombardment. 
 
 " As thus : 
 
 " Tuesday. — ' My lost Darling, — A thousand demons are 
 knocking at my door. Say you forgive me, or I will let 
 them in. — Bobo.' 
 
 " Or thus : 
 
 " Wednesday. — ' My lost Darling, — You are making a 
 terrible mistake. I am innocent. I am writing this on 
 my bended knees. The fathers have eaten a sour grape. 
 Misericordia. — Bobo.' 
 
 "The bitter cry of the outcast lover increased daily, till 
 on Saturday it became delirious ;
 
 6oo THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " ' My lost Darling,- — Save, oh save ! I have opened 
 the door. They are there — in their thousands. The 
 children's teeth are set on edge. The grave is dug. Be- 
 twixt two worlds I fall to the ground. Adieu for ever ! 
 
 — BOBO.' 
 
 "Will you believe that the poor little fool thought all 
 this was meant for her, and that, in consequence, she 
 thawed day by day, till on Saturday she melted entirely 
 and gushed on Guy's shoulder? Guy admitted that he had 
 inserted these advertisements, but he did not tell her (as 
 he afterwards told me in confidence, and as I now tell you 
 in confidence) that they had been sent in before the quarrel 
 occurred, and constituted his Agony Column romance for 
 the week — the Popsy-Wopsy romance not being intended 
 for publication till next week. He had concocted these 
 cries of despairing passion without the least idea that they 
 would so nearly cover his own case. But he says that, as 
 his hereditary craze got him into the scrape, it was only 
 fair his hereditary craze should get him out of it. So 
 that's the end of Sybil Hotspur. But let us not lament 
 her too much. One so frail and fickle was not of the stuff 
 of which Old Maids are made. Courage 1 Wee Winnie is 
 on the war-path. — Yours affectionately, 
 
 Nelly.'' 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE CLUB BECOMES POPULAR 
 
 The influence of Wee-Winnie-on-the-war-path was soon 
 apparent. On the following Wednesday morning the ante- 
 room of the Club was as 'crowded with candidates as if
 
 THE CLUB BECOMES POPULAR 601 
 
 Lillie had advertised for a clerk, with three tongues, at ten 
 pounds a year. Silverdale had gone down to Fleet Street 
 to inquire if anything had been heard of Miss Ellaline 
 Rand's projected paper, and Lillie grappled with the 
 applicants single-handed. Turple the Magnificent was 
 told to usher them into the confessional one by one, but 
 the first two candidates insisted that they were one, and as 
 he could not tell which one, he gave way. 
 
 It is said that the shepherd knows every sheep of his 
 flock individually, and that a superintendent can tell one 
 policeman from another. Some music-hall managers even 
 profess to distinguish between one pair of singing sisters and 
 all the other pairs. But even the most trained eye would be 
 puzzled to detect any difference between these two lovely 
 young creatures. They were as like as two peas or two cues, 
 or the two gentlemen who mount and descend together the 
 mirror-lined staircase of a restaurant. Interrogated as to 
 the motives of their would - be renunciation, one of them 
 replied, " My sister and myself are twins. We were born 
 so. When the news was announced to our father, he is 
 reported to have exclaimed, 'What a misfortune!' His 
 sympathy was not mis|)laced, for from our nursery days 
 upward our perfect resemblance to each other has brought 
 us perpetual annoyance. Do what we would, we could 
 never get mistaken for each other. The pleasing delusion 
 that either of us would be saddled with the misdeeds of 
 the other has got us into scrapes without number. At 
 school we each played all sorts of pranks, making sure the 
 other would be punished for them. Alas ! the consequences 
 have always recoiled on the head of the guilty party. We 
 were not even whipped for neglecting each other's lessons. 
 It was always for neglecting our own. But, in sjjite of the 
 stern refusal of experience to favour us with the usual
 
 6o2 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 imbroglio, we always went on hoping that the luck would 
 turn. We read Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, and that 
 confirmed us in our evil courses. When we grew up, it 
 would be hard to say which was the giddier, for each hoped 
 that the other would have to bear the burden of her 
 escapades. You will have gathered from our friskiness 
 that our parents were strict Puritans ; but at last they 
 allowed an eligible young curate to visit the house with a 
 view to matrimony. He was too good for us ; our parents 
 were as much as we wanted in that line. Unfortunately, in 
 this crisis, unknown to each other, the old temptation seized 
 us. Each felt it a unique chance of trying if the thing 
 wouldn't work. When the other was out of the room, each 
 made love to the unwelcome suitor so as to make him fall 
 in love with her sister. Wretched victims of mendacious 
 farce-writers ! The result was that he fell in love with us 
 both ! " 
 
 She paused a moment, overcome with emotion ; then 
 resumed : " He proposed to us both simultaneously, vowed 
 he could not live without us. He exclaimed passionately 
 that he could /lot be happy with either were t'other dear 
 charmer away. He said he was ready to become a Mormon 
 for love of us." 
 
 "And what was your reply?" said Lillie anxiously. 
 
 The fresh young voices broke out into a duet : " We 
 told him to ask papa." 
 
 "We were both so overwhelmed by this catastrophe," 
 pursued the story-teller, " that we vowed, for mutual self 
 protection against our besetting temptation to fribble at 
 the other's expense, never to let each other out of sight. 
 In the farces all the mistakes happen through the twins 
 being on only one at a time. Thus have we balanced 
 each other's tendencies to indiscretion before it was too
 
 THE CLUB BECOMES POPULAR 
 
 603 
 
 late, and saved ourselves from ourselves. This necessity of 
 being always together, imposed on us by our unhappy 
 resemblance, naturally excludes either from marriage." 
 
 'HE WAS WILLING TO BECOME A MORMON FOR LOVE OF US, 
 
 Lillie was not favourably impressed with these skittish 
 sisters. " I sympathise intensely with the sufferings of 
 either," she said slyly, "in being constrained to the society
 
 6o4 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 of the Other. But your motives of celibacy are not suffi- 
 ciently pure, nor have you fulfilled our prime condition ; 
 for, even granting that your reply to the eligible young 
 churchman was tantamount to a rejection, it still only 
 amounts to half a rejection each, which is fifty per cent, 
 below our standard." 
 
 Lillie rang the bell, Turple the Magnificent ushered the 
 twins out and the next candidate in. She was an ethereal 
 blonde in a simple white frock, and her story was as 
 simple. 
 
 " Read this Rondeau," she said. " It will tell you all.'' 
 
 Lillie took the lines. They were headed 
 
 THE LOVELY MAY— AN OLD MAID'S PLAINT 
 
 The lovely May at last is here, 
 
 Long summer days are drawing near, 
 And nights with cloudless moonshine rich : 
 
 In woodlands green, on waters clear, 
 
 Soft-couched in fern, or on the mere 
 Gliding like some white water-witch, 
 Or lunching in a leafy niche, 
 
 I see my sweet-faced sister dear. 
 
 The lovely May. 
 
 She is engaged — and her career 
 
 Is one of skittles, blent with beer, 
 While I, plain sewing left to stitch. 
 Can ne'er expect those pleasures which, 
 
 At this bright season of the year. 
 
 The lovely may. 
 
 Lillie looked up interrogatively. "But surely _>w^ have 
 nothing to complain of in the way of loveliness ? " she said. 
 
 "No, of course not. / am the lovely May. It was my 
 sister who wrote that. She died in June, and I found it 
 among her manuscripts. Remorse set in at the thought of
 
 THE CLUB BECOMES POPULAR 605 
 
 Maria stitching while I was otherwise engaged. I disengaged 
 myself at once. What's fair for one is fair for all. Women 
 should combine. While there's one woman who can't get a 
 husband, no man should be allowed to get a wife." 
 
 " Hear, hear ! " cried Lillie enthusiastically. " Only I 
 am afraid there will be always blacklegs among us who 
 will betray their sex for the sake of a husband." 
 
 "Alas yes," agreed the lovely May. "I fear such was 
 the nature of my sister Maria. She coveted even my first 
 husband." 
 
 " W^hat ! " gasped the President. " Are you a widow ? " 
 
 "Certainly! I left off black when I was engaged again, 
 and when I was disengaged I dared not resume it for fear of 
 seeming to mourn vc\y fiance." 
 
 "We cannot have widows in the Old Maids' Club," said 
 Lillie regretfully. 
 
 " Then I shall start a new Widows' Club, and Old Maids 
 shall have no place in it." And the lovely May sailed out, 
 all smiles and tears. 
 
 The next was a most divinely tall and most divinely fair 
 brunette with a brooding morbid expression. Candidate 
 gave the name of Miss Summerson. 
 
 Being invited to make a statement, she said : 
 
 " I have abandoned the idea of marrying. I have no 
 money. Ergo, I cannot afford to marry a poor man. And 
 I am resolved never to marry a rich one. I want to be 
 loved for myself, not for my want of money. You may 
 stare, but I know what I am talking about. W^hat other 
 attractions have I? Good looks? Plenty of girls with 
 money have that, who would be glad to marry the men I 
 have rejected. In the town I came from I lived with my 
 cousin, who was an heiress. She was far lovelier than I. 
 Yet all the moneyed men were at my feet. I'hey were
 
 6o6 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 afraid of being suspected of fortune-hunting, and anxious 
 to vindicate their elevation of character. Why should I 
 marry to gratify a man's vanity, his cravings after cheap 
 quixotism ? " 
 
 " Your attitude on the great question of the age does you 
 infinite credit, but as you have no banking account to put 
 it to, you traverse the regulation requiring a property quali- 
 fication," said the President 
 
 " Is there no way over the difficulty ? " 
 
 " I fear not ; unless you marry a rich man, and that 
 disqualifies you under another rule." 
 
 So Miss Summerson passed sadly into the outer dark- 
 ness, to be replaced by a young lady who gave the name of 
 Nell Lightfoot. She wore a charming hat, and a smile like 
 the spreading of sunshine over a crystal pool. 
 
 " I met a young Scotchman," she said, "at a New Year's 
 dance, and we were favourably impressed with each other. 
 On the fourteenth of the following February, I received 
 from him a Valentine containing a proposal of marriage and 
 a revelation of the degradation of masculine nature. It 
 would seem he had two strings to his bow — the other 
 being a rich widow whom he had met in a Devonshire lane. 
 Being a Scotchman, he had, for economy's sake, composed 
 a Valentine which, with a few slight alterations, would do 
 for both of us. Unfortunately for himself he sent me the 
 original draft by mistake, and here is his 
 
 VERACIOUS VALENTINE 
 
 Though the weather is snowy and dreary, 
 
 And a shiver careers down my spine, 
 Yet the heart in my bosom is cheery, 
 
 For I feel I've exchanged mine for thine. 
 Do not call it delusion, my dearie, 
 
 But become my own loved valentine.
 
 THE CLUB BECOMES POPULAR 607 
 
 _ , i stormy June day you 1 
 
 Yox that ■{ -, ,^ , , > remember, 
 
 J. New Year s dance you must J 
 
 „„ f sheltered together from rain, 
 
 When we •( , , , 
 
 t waltzed to a languorous stram, 
 
 While the sky, like the fifth of November, 1 
 
 And our souls glowed despite 'twas December / 
 
 Gleamed with lightning outrivalling P "j . 
 
 With a burning but glorious p J 
 
 Ah me ! In my fire's dying ember 
 
 dank Devonshire lane. 
 
 bright ball-room again. 
 
 I can see that \ 
 
 And 1 _ , f of the love that I "i , 
 
 M spoke i ^ ,, r . \ bore you, 
 
 V et J '' (not then, fearmg to J 
 
 And of how for a widow I \ j 
 
 Though for maidenly love my heart J ' 
 
 »y , , , • , f ) ^nd fealty I swore you. 
 
 Not a schoolgirl -! ' , , •' ' 
 
 i. I d gazed on before you. 
 
 And you listened till sunshine re- 1 
 
 Had my heart with such sweet madness / ' 
 
 T,, i you "1 .. i from me who 1 , 
 
 ^^^" I we ) p^-^^^n but stiiii h^°-y-. 
 
 And my heart and umbrella you spurned. 1 
 
 Though you may not my love have discerned. I 
 
 XT . 11 J L f hoarded-up "I 
 
 Not repelled by your | j^^^.^^ J ^ money, 
 
 I adore you, ™y ] xr 11 ' f f"'' yourself. 
 
 You are sweeter than music or honey ; 
 
 And Dan Cupid's a sensuous elf. 
 Who is drawn to the fair and the sunny, 
 
 And is blind unto nothing but pelf. 
 
 Need we feel a less genuine passion 
 Because we ■! " , ?■ live in Mayfair? 
 
 Love •{,,,, f in the hot-house of fashion, 
 
 I oft fades )
 
 6o8 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 ,_,. r an orchid that flourishes there ; 
 
 \ a moss-rose that needs the fresh air ; 
 Yet I would not my own darling lass shun 
 
 Were she even as -! . , > as she's i 
 
 I rich ) t rare. 
 
 There are fools who adore a complexion 
 
 That's like strawberries mingled with cream ; 1 
 As with Nubian blacking a-gleam ; J 
 
 A brunette ) . . . 
 
 But a blonder' '"y°^"P'^"''''^<=''°"' 
 
 And the glances from i I eyes that beam. 
 
 Then refuse not my deathless atfection, 
 Neither shatter my amorous dream. 
 
 V > *u n . (woman) , , , .,, , 
 
 You re the very first \ . , r who's thrilled me 
 (maiden) 
 
 With the passion that tongue cannot tell, 
 
 Of none else have I thought since you filled me 
 
 J despair in that Devonshire dell. 
 
 ^unrest when the waltz wove its spell. 
 
 When your final refusal has killed me, 
 
 On my heart will be found graven ] 
 
 " How Strange ! " said Lillie. " You combine the disquali- 
 fications of two of the previous candidates. You are appar- 
 ently poor, and you have received only half a proposal." 
 
 A flaming blonde, whose brow was crowned with an 
 aurora of auburn hair, was the next to burst upon the 
 epigrammatic scene. She spoke English with an excellent 
 Parisian accent : 
 
 " One has called me a young woman in a hurry," she 
 said, " and the description does not want of truth. I am 
 impatient ; I have large ideas ; I am ambitious. If I were 
 a grocer I should contract for the Sahara. I fall in love, 
 and when Alice Leioux falls in love it is like the volcano
 
 THE CLUB BECOMES POPULAR 609 
 
 which goes to make eruption. Figure to yourself that niy 
 
 I liNCIKCLK HIM WITH MY ARMS AND SPEAK WIIH MY Lll'S," 
 
 2q
 
 6io THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 I speak, me, with my fan, my eyes, my fingers, almost 
 with rfiy lips. He walks with me — but he does not speak. 
 He takes me to the spectacle — but he does not speak. He 
 promenades himself in boat with me — but he does not 
 speak. I encircle him with my arms, and I speak with my 
 lips at last — one, two, three, four, five kisses. Overwhelmed, 
 astonished, he returns me my kisses — hesitatingly, stupidly 
 — but in fine, he returns them. And then at last — with our 
 faces together, my arm round his graceful waist — he speaks. 
 The first word of love comes from his mouth — and what 
 think you that he say? Say then." 
 
 " I love you ! " murmured Lillie. 
 
 " A thousand thunders ! No ! He says : Miss Leroux 
 — Alice ; may I call you Alice ? " 
 
 " I see nothing to wonder at in that," replied Lillie quietly. 
 " Remember that for a man to kiss you is a less serious 
 step than for him to call you Alice. That were a stage on 
 the road to marriage, and should only be reached through 
 the gate of betrothal. Changes of name are the outward 
 marks of a woman's development, as much as changes of 
 form accompany the growth of the caterpillar. You, for 
 instance, began life as Alice. In due course you became 
 Miss Alice ; if you were the eldest daughter you became 
 Miss Leroux at once; if you were not, you inherited the 
 name only on your sister's death or marriage; when you 
 are betrothed you will revert to the simple Alice, and when 
 you are married you will become Mrs, Something Else ; and 
 every time you get married, if you are careful to select 
 husbands of varying patronymics, you will be furnished with 
 a change of name as well as of address. Providence, which 
 has conferred so many sufferings upon woman, has given 
 her this one advantage over man, who in the majority of 
 instances is doomed to the monotony of ossified nom^n-
 
 THE CLUB BECOMES POPULAR 6ii 
 
 clature, and has to wear the same name on his tombstone 
 which he wore on his Eton collar." 
 
 " That is all a heap of galimatias," replied the Parisienne 
 with the flaming hair. " If I kiss a man, I, surely he may 
 call me Alice without demanding it? Bah! Let him love 
 your misses with eau sucree in their veins. When he insulted 
 me with his stupidity, I became furious. I threw him — 
 how you say ? — overboard on the instant." 
 
 "Good heavens!" gasped Lillie. "Then you are a 
 murderess ! " 
 
 "Figure you to yourself that I speak at the foot of the 
 letter ? Know you not the idioms of your own barbarian 
 tongue ? It seems to me you are as mad as he. Perhaps 
 you are his sister." 
 
 " Certainly. Our rules require us to regard all men as 
 brothers." 
 
 ''Hei What?" 
 
 '* We have rejected the love of all men ; consequently we 
 have to regard them all as our brothers." 
 
 " That man there my brother ! " shrieked Alice. " Never ! 
 Never of my life ! I would rather marry him first !" And 
 she went off to do so. 
 
 The last of these competitors for the Old Maiden Stakes 
 was a whirlwind in petticoats, who welcomed the President 
 very affably. "Good morning. Miss Dulcimer," she said. 
 " I've heard of you. I'm from Boston way. You know I 
 travel about the world in search of culture. I'm spending 
 the day in Europe, so I thought I'd look you up. Would 
 you be so good as to epitomise your scheme in twenty 
 words ? I've got to see the Madonna del Cardellino in the 
 Uffizi at Florence before ten to-morrow, and I want to hear 
 an act of the Meistersingers at Bayreuth after tea." 
 
 " I'm rather tired," pleaded Lillie, overwhelmed by the
 
 6i2 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 dynamic energy radiating from every square inch of the 
 Bostonian's superficies. "I have had a hard morning's 
 work. Couldn't you call again tomorrow?" 
 
 " Impossible. I have just wired to Damietta to secure 
 rooms commanding a view of Professor Tickledroppe's 
 excavations on the banks of the Nile. I dote on archceo- 
 logical treasures and thought I should like to see the Old 
 Maids, Are they on view ? " 
 
 " No, they are not here," said Lillie evasively. " But do 
 you want to join us ? " 
 
 "Shall I have time? I remember I once wasted a week 
 getting married. Some women waste their whole lives that 
 way. Marriage is an incident of life's novel — they make it 
 the whole plot. I don't say it isn't an interesting experience. 
 Every woman ought to go through it once, but with tfae 
 infinite possibilities of culture lying all round us it's mere 
 Philistinism to give one husbandman more than a week of 
 our society. Mine is a physician practising in Philadelphia. 
 Judging by the cheques he sends me he must be a success- 
 ful man. Well, I am real glad to have had this little talk 
 with you, it's been so interesting. I will become an 
 honorary member of your charming Club with pleasure." 
 
 " You cannot if you are married. You can only be a 
 visitor." 
 
 " What's my being married got to do with it ?" inquired 
 the American, in astonishment. " This is the first time I 
 have ever heard that the name of a club has anything to do 
 with the membership. Are the members of the Savage 
 Club savages, of the Garrick Garricks, of the Supper Club 
 suppers ? " 
 
 " We are not men," Lillie said haughtily. " I could pass 
 over your relation to the hub of the universe, but when it 
 cpmes to having a private hub I have no option."
 
 A MUSICAL BAR 613 
 
 " Well, this may be your English idea of hospitality to 
 travellers of culture," replied the Bostonian warmly; "but if 
 you come to our crack Crank Club in the fall you shall be 
 as welcome as a brand new poet. Good-bye. Hope we 
 shall meet again. I shall be in Hong-Kong in June if you 
 like to drop in. Good-bye." 
 
 " Good-bye," said Lillie, pressing one hand against the 
 visitor's and the other to her aching forehead. 
 
 Silverdale found her dissolved in tears. " In future," he 
 said, when she had explained her troubles,. " I shall hang 
 the rules and by-laws in the waiting-room. The candidates 
 will then be able to eliminate themselves. By the way, 
 Ellaline Rand's Cherub is going to sit up aloft on a third 
 floor in Fleet Street." 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 A MUSICAL BAR 
 
 When Turple the Magnificent, looking uneasy, brought up 
 Frank Maddox's card, Lillie uttered a cry of surprise and 
 pleasure. Frank Maddox was a magic name to her as to all 
 the elect of the world of sweetness and light. After a 
 moment of nervous anxiety lest it should not be the Frank 
 Maddox, her fears were dispelled by the entry of the great 
 authority on art and music, whose face was familiar to her 
 from frontispiece portraits. Yqw critics possessed such 
 charms of style and feature as P"rank Maddox, who had a 
 delicious retrousse nose, a dainty rose-bud mouth, blue eyes, 
 and a wealth of golden hair. 
 
 Lillie's best hopes were confirmed. The famous critic
 
 6 14 THE CELIBATES CLUB 
 
 wished to become an Old Maid. The President and the 
 new and promising candidate had a dehghtful chat over a 
 cup of tea and the prospects of the Club. The two girls 
 speedily became friends. 
 
 "But if you join us, hadn't you better go back to your 
 maiden name?" inquired Lillie. 
 
 "Perhaps so," said Frank Maddox thoughtfully. "My 
 pen-name does sound odd under the peculiar circumstances. 
 On the other hand, to revert to Laura Spragg now might be 
 indiscreet. People would couple my name with Frank 
 Maddox's— you know the way of the world. The gossips 
 get their facts so distorted, and I couldn't even deny the 
 
 connection." 
 
 "But of course you have had your romance?" asked 
 Lillie. " You know one romance per head is our charge 
 for admission." 
 
 "Oh yes. I have had my romance. In three vols. 
 Shall I tell it you?" 
 
 " If you please." 
 
 " Listen, then. Volume L : Frank Maddox is in her 
 study. Outside the sun is setting in furrows of gold-laced 
 sagging storm-clouds, dun and " 
 
 "Oh, please, I always skip that," laughed Lillie. "I 
 know that two lovers cannot walk in a lane without the 
 author seeing the sunset, which is the last thing in the 
 world the lovers see. But when the sky begins to look 
 Black, I always begin to skip." 
 
 " Forgive me. I didn't mean to do it. Remember I'm 
 an habitual art-critic. I thought I was describing a harmony 
 of Whistler's or a movement from a sonata. It shall not 
 occur again. To the heroine enter the hero — shabby, close- 
 cropped, pale. Their eyes meet. He is thunder-struck to 
 find the heroine a woman ; blushes, stammers, and offers to
 
 A MUSICAL BAR 
 
 615 
 
 go away. Struck by something of innate refinement in his 
 manner, she presses him to avow the object of his visit. 
 At last, in dignified language, infinitely touching in its 
 reticence, he confesses he called on Mr. Frank Maddox, 
 
 THERK S A PRESCRIPTION AGAINST STARVATKJN. 
 
 the writer he admires so much, to ask a little pecuniary 
 help. He is starving. Original, isn't it, to have your hero 
 hungry in the first chapter? He speaks vaguely of having 
 ambitions wliich, unless he goes under in the struggle for
 
 6i6 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 existence, may some day be realised. There are so many 
 men in London like that. However, heroine is moved by 
 his destitute condition, and, sitting down to her desk, she 
 writes out a note, folds it up and gives it to him. ' There ! ' 
 she says, 'there's a prescription against starvation.' 'But 
 how am I to take it ? ' he asked. ' It must be taken before 
 breakfast, the first thing in the morning,' she replied, 'to 
 the editor of the Moott. Give him the note ; he will change 
 it for you. Don't mention my name.' 
 
 " He thanked me and withdrew." 
 
 " And what was in the note ? " asked Lillie curiously. 
 
 " I can't quite remember. But something of this sort : 
 ' The numerous admirers of Frank Maddox will be gratified 
 to hear that she has in the press a volume of essays on the 
 part played by colour-blindness in the symphonic move- 
 ments of the time. The great critic is still in town, but 
 leaves for Torquay next Tuesday.' For that the editor of 
 the Moon gave him half-a-crown." 
 
 " Do you call that charity ? " said Lillie, astonished. 
 
 " Certainly. Charity begins at home. Do many people 
 give charity except to advertise themselves ? Philanthropy 
 by paragraph is a perquisite of fame. Why, I have a pen- 
 sioner who comes in for all my Acadaum paragraphs. That 
 Moon par. saved our hero from starvation. Years after- 
 wards, I learnt he had frittered away twopence in having his 
 hair cut." 
 
 ** It seems strange for a starving man to get his hair cut," 
 said Lillie. 
 
 " Not when you know the cause," replied Frank Maddox. 
 " It was his way of disguising himself. And this brings me 
 to Volume II. The years pass. Once again I am in my 
 study. There is a breath of wind among the elms in the 
 front garden, and the sky is strewn with vaporous sprays of
 
 A MUSICAL BAR 617 
 
 apple-blossom — I beg your pardon. Re-enter the hero — 
 spruce, frock-coated, dignified. He recalls himself to my 
 memory — but I remember him only too well. He tells me 
 that my half-crown saved him at the turning-point of his 
 career, that he has now achieved fame and gold, that he 
 loves my writings more passionately than ever, and that he 
 has come to ask me to crown his life. The whole thing is 
 so romantic that I am about to whisper ' Yes,' when an 
 instinct of common sense comes to my aid, and my half- 
 opened lips murmur instead — ' But the name you sent up 
 — Horace Paul — it is not known to me. You say you have 
 won fame. I, at least, have never heard of you, ' " 
 
 " ' Of course not,' he replies. ' How should you ? If I 
 were Horace Paul you would not marry me; just as I 
 should certainly not marry you if you were Frank Maddox. 
 But what of Paul Horace ? ' " 
 
 " Paul Horace ! " cried Lillie. " The great composer ! " 
 
 " That is just what I exclaimed. And my hero answers — 
 ' The composer, great or little. None but a itw intimates 
 connect me with him. The change of name is too simple. 
 I always had a longing — call it morbid if you will — for 
 obscurity in the midst of renown. I have weekly harvests 
 of hair to escape any suspicion of musical attainments. But 
 you and I, dearest — think of what our life will be, enriched 
 by our common love of the noblest of the arts.' Outside, 
 the marigolds nod to the violets, the sapphire — excuse me. 
 I mean to say, thus he rambled on, growing in enthusiasm 
 with every ardent phrase, the while a deadly coldness was 
 fastening round my heart. For I felt that it could not be." 
 
 " And why ? " inquired Lillie, in astonishment. " It seems 
 one of the marriages made in heaven.'"* 
 
 " I dared not tell him why ; and I can only tell you on 
 condition you promise to keep my secret."
 
 6i8 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 " I promise." 
 
 " Listen," whispered the great critic. " I know nothing 
 about music or art, and I was afraid he would find me out." 
 
 Lillie fell back in her chair, white and trembling. 
 Another idol shivered. " But how ?" she gasped. 
 
 " There, there, don't take on so," said the great critic 
 kindly. " I did not think you too were such an admirer of 
 mine, else I might have spared you the shock. You ask how 
 it is done. Well, I didn't set out to criticise. I can at least 
 plead that in extenuation. My nature is not wilfully per- 
 verse. There was a time when I was as pure and above 
 criticism as yourself." 
 
 She paused and furtively wiped away a tear, then resumed 
 more calmly : 
 
 *' I drifted into it. For years I toiled on, without ever a 
 thought of musical or art criticism sullying my maiden medi- 
 tations. My downfall was gradual. In early maidenhood I 
 earned my living as a type-writer. I had always had literary 
 yearnings, but the hard facts of life allowed me only this 
 rough approximation to my ideal. Accident brought excel- 
 lent literature to my machine, and it required all my native 
 honesty not to steal the plots of the novelists and the good 
 things of the playwrights. The latter was the harder 
 temptation to resist, for when the play was good enough to 
 be worth stealing from, I knew it would never be produced, 
 and my crime never discovered. Still, in spite of my 
 honesty, I benefited indirectly by my type-writing, for con- 
 tact with so much admirable work fostered the graceful 
 literary style which, between you and me, is my only merit. 
 In time I plucked up courage to ask one of my clients, a 
 journalist, if he could put some newspaper work in my way. 
 ' Wliat can you do ? ' he asked, in surprise. ' Anything,' I 
 replied, with maiden modesty. ' I see, that's your special
 
 A MUSICAL BAR 619 
 
 line,' he said musingly. * Unfortunately, we are full up in 
 that department. You see, every one turns his hand to 
 that — it's like teaching, the first thing people think of. 
 It's a pity you are a girl, because the way to journalistic 
 distinction lies through the position of office-boy. Office-girl 
 sounds strange. I doubt whether they would have you, except 
 on a Freethought organ. Our office-boy has to sweep out 
 the office and review the novels, else you might commence 
 humbly as a critic of literature. It isn't a bad post either, 
 for he supplements his income by picking rejected matter 
 out of the waste-paper basket, and surreptitiously lodging it 
 in the ' printer's copy ' pigeon-hole. His income in fees 
 from journalistic aspirants must be considerable. Yes, had 
 you been a boy you might have made a pretty good thing 
 out of literature.' ' Then there is no chance at all for me 
 on your paper?' I inquired desperately. 'None,' he said 
 sadly. ' Our editor is an awful old fogey. He is vehemently 
 opposed to the work of outsiders, and if you were to send 
 him his own leaders in envelopes he would say they were 
 rot. For once he would be a just critic. You see, there- 
 fore, what your own chance is. Even I, who have been on 
 the staff for years, couldn't do anything to help you. No, I 
 am afraid there is no hope for you unless you approach 
 our office-boy.' I thanked him warmly for his advice and 
 encouragement, and within a fortnight an article of mine 
 appeared in the paper. It was called 'The Manuscripts of 
 Authors,' and revealed, in a refined and ladylike way, the 
 secrets of the chirographic characteristics of the manuscripts 
 I had to type-write. My friend said I was exceedingly 
 practical " 
 
 " Exceedingly practical," agreed Lillie, with a suspicion 
 of a sneer. 
 
 " Because most amateur journalists write about abstract
 
 620 
 
 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 principles, whereas I had sUced out for the public a bit of 
 concrete fact, and the great heart of the people went out to 
 
 f5'.?.:i.V-<r-!| 
 
 i^V,v4?Kww;":~^.' 
 
 ^f"^nvff--:!i^-^y-^-^y.'^{^ 
 
 '•yi'^ ^ '^ Ut 
 
 :ij(t^^i^:^:- 
 
 •/.-:;":V;p^Si""iv'.Viwi~'^=WU.-i^^^^ 
 
 THE OFFICE-BOY EDITS THE PAPER. 
 
 hear the details of the way Brown wrote his books, Jones
 
 A MUSICAL BAR 621 
 
 his jokes, and Robinson his recitations. The article made 
 a hit, and annoyed the authors very much." 
 
 " So I should think," said Lillie. " Didn't they with- 
 draw their custom from you instanter ? " 
 
 " Why ? They didn't know it was I. Only my journalistic 
 friend knew, and he was too much of a gentleman to give 
 away my secret. I wrote to the editor under the name of 
 Frank Maddox, thanking him for having inserted my 
 article, and the editor said to my friend — * Egad, I fancy 
 I've made a discovery there. Why, if I were to pay any 
 attention to your idea of keeping strictly to the old grooves, 
 the paper would stagnate, my boy, simply stagnate.' The 
 editor was right, for my friend assured me the paper would 
 have died long before, if the office-boy had not con- 
 descended to edit it. Anyhow, it was to that office-boy I 
 owed my introduction to literature. The editor was very 
 proud of having discovered me, and, being installed in his 
 good graces, I passed rapidly into dramatic criticism, and 
 was even allowed to under-study the office-boy as literary 
 reviewer. He could not stomach historical novels, and 
 handed over to me all works with pronouns in the second 
 person singular. Gradually I rose to higher things, but it 
 was not until I had been musical and art critic for over 
 eighteen months that the editor learnt that the writer whose 
 virile style he had often dilated upon to my friend was a 
 woman." 
 
 " And what did he do when he learnt it ? " asked Lillie. 
 
 ** He swore " 
 
 " Profane man ! " cried Lillie. 
 
 " That he loved me — me whom he had never seen. Of 
 course, I declined him with thanks; happily there was a 
 valid excuse, because he had written his communication on 
 both sides of the paper. But even this technical touch did
 
 622 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 not mollify him, and he replied that my failure to appreciate 
 him showed I could no longer be trusted as a critic. 
 Fortunately my work had been signed, my fame was 
 established. I collected my articles into a book, and 
 joined another paper." 
 
 " But you haven't yet told me ' how it is done ' ? " 
 
 " Oh, that is the least. You see, to be a critic it is not 
 essential to know anything— you must simply be able to 
 write. To be a great critic you must simply be able to 
 write well. In my omnescience, or catholic ignorance, I 
 naturally looked about for the subject on which I could 
 most profitably employ my gift of style with the least chance 
 of being found out. A moment's consideration will con- 
 vince you that the most difficult branches of criticism are the 
 easiest. Of musical and artistic matters not one person in 
 a thousand understands aught but the rudiments; here, 
 then, is the field in which the critical ignoramus may expa- 
 tiate at large with the minimum danger of discovery. Nay, 
 with no scintilla of danger, for the subject-matter is so 
 obscure and abstruse that the grossest of errors may put on 
 a bold face, and parade as a profundity, or, driven to bay, 
 proclaim itself paradox. Only say what you have not got to 
 say authoritatively and well, and the world shall fall down and 
 worship you. The place of art in religion has undergone a 
 peculiar historical development. First men worshipped the 
 object of art; then they worshipped the artist; and now-a- 
 days they worship the art critic." 
 
 " It is true," said Lillie reflectively. " This age has wit- 
 nessed the apotheosis of the art critic." 
 
 " x\nd of all critics. And yet what can be more evident 
 than that the art of criticism was never in such a critical 
 condition? Nobody asks to see the critic's credentials. 
 He is taken at his pwn valuation. There ought to be an
 
 A MUSICAL BAR 623 
 
 examination to protect the public. Even schoolmasters are 
 now required to have certificates ; while those who pretend 
 to train the larger mind in the way it should think are left 
 to work their mischief uncontrolled. No dramatic critic 
 should be allowed to practise without an elementary know- 
 ledge of human life, law, Shakespeare, and French. The 
 musical critic should be required to be able to perform on 
 some one instrument other than his own trumpet, to distin- 
 guish tune from tonality, to construe the regular sonata, to 
 comprehend the plot of ' II Trovatore,' and to understand 
 the motives of Wagner. The art critic should be able to 
 discriminate between a pastel and a water-colour, an im- 
 pressionist drawing and a rough sketch, to know the Dutch 
 school from the Italian, and the female figure from the 
 male ; to translate morbidezza and chiaroscuro, and, failing 
 this, to be aware of the existence and uses of a vanishing 
 point. A doctor's certificate should also be produced to 
 testify that the examinee is in possession of all the normal 
 faculties, — deafness, blindness, and colour-blindness being 
 regarded as disqualifications, — and no one should be allowed 
 to practise unless he enjoyed a character for common 
 honesty, supplemented by a testimonial from a clergyman ; 
 for although art is non-moral, the critic should be moral. 
 This would be merely the passman stage ; there could 
 always be examinations in honours for the graduates. 
 Once the art critics were educated, the progress of the 
 public would be rapid. They would no longer be ready 
 to admire the canvases of Michael Angelo, who, as I learnt 
 the other day for the first time, painted frescoes; nor would 
 they prefer him, as unhesitatingly as they do now, to 
 Buonarotti, which is his surname; nor would they imagine 
 Raphael's cartoons appeared in Puncinello. All these 
 roistakes I have myself made, though no one discovered
 
 624 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 them ; while in the realm of music no one has more mis- 
 represented the masters, more discouraged the overtures of 
 young composers." 
 
 "But still I do not understand how it is done," urged 
 Lillie. 
 
 " You shall have my formula in a nutshell. I had to be 
 a musical critic and an art critic. I was ignorant of music, 
 and knew nothing of art. But I was a dab at language. 
 When I was talking of music, I used the nomenclature of 
 art. I spoke of light and shade, colour and form, delicacy 
 of outline, depth and atmosphere, perspective, foreground 
 and background, nocturnes and harmonies in blue. I 
 analysed symphonies pictorially, and explained what I saw 
 defiling before me as the music swept on. Sunsets and 
 belvedere towers, swarthy Paynims on Shetland ponies, 
 cypress plumes and Fra Angelico's cherubs, lumps of green 
 clay and delicate pillared loggias, fennel tufts and rococo 
 and scarlet anemones, and over all the trail of the serpent. 
 Thus I created an epoch in musical criticism. On the 
 other hand, when I had to deal with art, I was careful to 
 eschew every suggestion of the visual vocabulary, and to 
 confine myself to musical phrases. In talking of pictures, 
 I dwelt upon their counterpoint and their orchestration, 
 their changes of key and the evolution of their ideas, their 
 piano and forte passages, and their bars of rest, their allegro 
 and diminuendo aspects, their suspensions on the dominant. 
 I spoke of them as symphonies and sonatas and masses, 
 — said one was too staccato, and another too full of con- 
 secutive sevenths, and a third in need of transposition to the 
 minor. Thus I created an epoch in art criticism. In both 
 departments the vague and shifting terms I introduced 
 enabled me to evade mistakes and avoid detection, while 
 the creation of two epochs gave me the very first place in
 
 A MUSICAL BAR 62J 
 
 Coiifemporafy cHticism. There is nothing in which I 
 would not undertake to create an epoch. I do not say 
 I have always been happy, and it has been a source of 
 constant regret to me that I had not even learnt to play the' 
 piano when a girl, and that unplayed music still remained 
 to me little black dots." 
 
 " And so you did not dare marry the composer ? " 
 
 "No, nor tell him why. Volume III. : I said I admired 
 him so much that I wanted to go on devoting critical essays 
 to him, and my praises would be discounted by the public 
 if I were his wife. Was it not imprudent for him to alienate 
 the leading critic by marrying her? Rather would I sacrifice 
 myself, and continue to criticise him. But I love him, and 
 it is for his sake I would become an Old Maid." 
 
 " I would rather you didn't," said Lillie, her face still 
 white. " I have found so much inspiration in your books 
 that I could not bear to be daily reminded I ought not to 
 have found it." 
 
 Poor President ! The lessons of experience were hard ! 
 The Club taught her much she were happier without. 
 
 That day Lord Silverdale appropriately intoned (with 
 banjo obligato) a patter-song, which he pretended to have 
 written at the Academy, whence he had just come with the 
 conventional splitting headache. 
 
 AFTER THE ACADEMY— A Jingle 
 
 Not by Alfred Jingle 
 
 Brain a-whirling, pavement twirling, 
 
 Cranium aching, almost baking, 
 
 Mind a muddle, puddle, fuddle. 
 
 Million pictures, million mixtures. 
 
 Small and great 'uns, Brown's and Leighton's, 
 
 Sky and wall un's, short and tall 'uns, 
 
 2 11
 
 626 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 Pseudo-classic (for, alas ! Sic 
 
 Transit gloria sub Vic/orid), 
 
 Landscape, figure, white or nigger, 
 
 Steely etchings, inky sketchings, 
 
 Genre, portrait (not one caught trait), 
 
 Eke historic (kings plethoric). 
 
 Realistic, prize-fight-fistic, 
 
 Entozoic, nude heroic. 
 
 Coarse, poetic, homiletic, 
 
 Still-life (flowers, tropic bowers), 
 
 Pure domestic, making breast tick 
 
 With emotion ; endless ocean. 
 
 Glaze or scumble, craze and jumble, 
 
 Varnish mastic, sculpture plastic, 
 
 Canvas, paper (oh, for taper !), 
 
 Oil and water (oh, for slaughter !), 
 
 Children, cattle, 'buses, battle, 
 
 Seamen, satyrs, lions, waiters, 
 
 Nymphs and peasants, peers and pheasants. 
 
 Dogs and flunkeys, gods and monkeys, 
 
 Half-dressed ladies, views of Hades, 
 
 Phyllis tripping, seas and shipping, 
 
 Hearth and meadow, brooks and bread-dough 
 
 Doves and dreamers, stars and streamers, 
 
 Saucepans, blossoms, rags, opossums. 
 
 Tramway, cloudland, wild and ploughed land, 
 
 Gents and mountains, clocks and fountains, 
 
 Pan and pansy — these of fancy 
 
 Have possession in procession 
 
 Never ending, ever blending, 
 
 All a-flitter and a-glitter, 
 
 Ever prancing, ever dancing 
 
 Ever whirling, ever curling, 
 
 Ever swirling, ever twirling, 
 
 Ever bobbing, ever throbbing. 
 
 Ho ! some brandy — is it handy ? 
 
 Air seems tainting — I am fainting. 
 
 Hang all — no, don't hang all — painting 
 
 I
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL GHOUL 627 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL GHOUL 
 
 Wee Winnie called at the Club, while the President was 
 still under the cloud of depression, and Lillie had to force 
 herself to look cheerful, lest Miss Nimrod should mistake 
 ihe ntdlancholy, engendered by so many revelations of the 
 seafn?y srie <d life, for loss of faith in the Club or its 
 jiTospeots, Avid of experience as was the introspective 
 little girl, she felt almost sated for the present. 
 
 Miss Nimrod was astonished to hear of the number of 
 recent rejections, and to learn that she had whipped up the 
 Writers and the Junior Widows and her private friends to 
 such little purpose. But in the end she agreed with Lillie 
 that, as no doubt somewhere or other in the wide universe 
 ideal Old Maids were blooming and breathing, it would be 
 folly to clog themselves up in advance with inferior 
 specimens. 
 
 The millionaire, who was pottering about in his blue 
 spectacles, strolled into the Club while Wee Winnie was 
 uttering magnificent rhapsodies about the pages the Cluli 
 would occupy in the histories of England ; but this time 
 Lillie was determined the dignity of the by-laws should be 
 maintained, and had her father shown out by Turple the 
 Magnificent. Miss Nimrod went too, and so Lord Silver- 
 dale had the pleasure of finding Lillie alone. 
 
 " You ought to present me with a pair of white gloves," 
 he said gleefully. 
 
 "Why?" asked Lillie. 
 
 "I haven't had a single candidate to try for days."
 
 628 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 *' No," said Lillie, with a suspicion of weariness in her 
 voice, " they all broke down in the elementary stage." 
 
 Even as she spoke Turple the Magnificent ushered in 
 Miss Margaret Linbridge. Lord Silverdale, doubly vexed 
 at having been a little too previous in the counting of his 
 chickens, took up his hat to go, but LiUie murmured, 
 "Please amuse yourself in the library for a quarter 
 of an hour, as I may want you to do the trying at 
 
 once." 
 
 " How do you expect me to amuse myself in the 
 library?" he grumbled. "You don't keep one of my 
 books." 
 
 Miss Margaret Linbridge's story was simple, almost 
 commonplace. 
 
 "I had spent Christmas with a married sister in 
 Plymouth," she said, " and was returning to London by the 
 express on the first of January. My prospects for the New 
 Year were bright — or seemed so to my then unsophisticated 
 eyes. I was engaged to be married to Richard West- 
 bourne— a good and good-looking young man, not devoid 
 of pecuniary attractions. My brother, with whom I lived 
 and on whom I was dependent, was a struggling young 
 firework-manufacturer, and would, I knew, be glad to see 
 me married, even if it cost him a portion of his stock to 
 express his joy. The little seaside holiday had made me 
 look my prettiest, and when my brother-in-law saw me into 
 a first-class carriage and left me with a fraternally-legal kiss, 
 I rather pitied him for having to go back to my sister. 
 There was only one other person in the carriage besides 
 myself — a stern old gentleman, who sat crumpled up in the 
 opposite corner and read a paper steadily. 
 
 "The train flew along the white frosty landscape at 
 express rates, but the old gentleman never looked up from
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL GHOUL 629 
 
 his paper. The temperature was chill, and I coughed. 
 The old gentleman evinced no symptom of sympathy. I 
 rolled up my veil the better to see the curmudgeon, and 
 smiled to think what a fool he was, but he betrayed no sign 
 of sharing my amusement. 
 
 " At last, as he was turning his page, I said in my most 
 dulcet tones, *0h, please excuse my appropriating the 
 entire foot-warmer. I don't know why there is only 
 one, but I will share it with you with pleasure.' 
 
 "'Thank you,' he said gruffly, *I'm not cold.' 
 
 " ' Oh, aren't you ! ' I murmured inwardly, adding aloud, 
 with a severe wintry tone, ' Gentlemen of your age usually 
 are.' 
 
 " * Yes, but I'm not a gentleman of my age,' he growled, 
 mistaking the imbecile statement for repartee. 
 
 " ' I beg your pardon,' I said. ' I was judging by 
 appearances. Is that the Saturday Slasher you have 
 there?' 
 
 " He shook himself impatiently. ' No, it is not.' 
 
 " ' I beg your pardon,' I said. 'I was again judging by 
 appearances. May I ask what it is ? ' 
 
 " ' Threepenny Bits ! ' he jerked back. 
 
 " ' What's that? ' I asked. ' I know Broken Bits: 
 
 " ' This is a superior edition of Broken Bits at the price 
 indicated by the title. It contains the same matter, but is 
 issued at a price adapted to the means of the moneyed and 
 intellectual classes. No self-respecting person can be seen 
 reading penny weeklies — it throws doubt not only on his 
 income, but on his mental calibre. The idea of this first- 
 class edition (so to speak) should make the fortune of the pro- 
 prietor, and deservedly so. Of course the thousand pound 
 railway assurance scheme is likewise trebled, though this part 
 of the paper does not attract me personally, for my next-of-kin
 
 630 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 is a hypocritical young rogue. But imagine the horror of 
 being found dead with a penny weekly in one's pocket ! 
 You can't even explain it away.' 
 
 "He had hardly finished the sentence before a terrible 
 ghock, as of a ton of dynamite exploding under the foot- 
 warmer, lifted me into the air ; the carriage collapsed like 
 niatchwood, and I had the feeling of being thrown into the 
 next world, For a moment I recovered a gleam of con- 
 sciousness, just enough to show me I was lying dying amid 
 the debris^ and that my companion lay, already dead, in a 
 fragment of the compartment, Threepermy Bits clenched in 
 his lifeless hand, 
 
 " With a last fond touch I smoothed my hair, which had 
 got rather ruffled in the catastrophe, and, extracting with 
 infinite agony a puff from my pocket, I dabbed it spasmodic- 
 ally over my face. I dared not consult my hand-mirror, 
 I was afraid it would reveal a distorted countenance and 
 unnecessarily sadden my last moments. Whatever my 
 appearance, I had done my best for it, and I wanted to die 
 with the consciousness of duty fulfilled. Murmuring a 
 prayer that those who found my body would not imitate me 
 in judging by appearances, if they should prove discreditable 
 after all, I closed my eyes upon the world in which I had 
 been so young and happy. My whole life passed in review 
 before me, all my dearly loved bonnets, my entire wardrobe 
 from infancy upwards. Now I was an innocent child with 
 a white sash and pink ribbons, straying amid the sunny 
 meadows and plucking the daisies to adorn my hats ; anon 
 a merry maiden sporting amid the jocund schoolboys and 
 receiving tribute in toffy; then again a sedate virgin in 
 original gowns and tailor-made jackets. Suddenly a strange 
 idea jostled through the throng of bitter-sweet memories, 
 Threepenny Bits !
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL GHOUL 
 
 631 
 
 "The old gentleman's next-of-kin would come in for three 
 thousand pounds ! I should die and leave nothing to my 
 relatives but regrets ; my generous brother would be for 
 ever inconsolable now, and my funeral might be mean and 
 unworthy. And yet if the old misogynist had only been 
 courteous enough to lend me the paper, seeing I had 
 
 " I PULLED THIC PAPER FROM THE DEAD HAND.' 
 
 nothing to read, it might have been found on my body. 
 De viortitis nil nisi bonutn. Why reveal his breach of 
 etiquette to the world ? Why should I not enable him to 
 achieve poethumous politeness ! Besides, his heir was a 
 hypocritical rogue, and it were a crime against society to 
 place so large a sum at his disposal. Overwhelmed as I
 
 632 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 was by the agonies of death, I steeled myself to this last 
 duty. I wriggled painfully towards the corpse, and, 
 stretching out my neatly-gloved fingers, with a last mighty 
 effort I pulled the paper cautiously from the dead hand 
 which lay heavy upon it. Then I clasped it passionately to 
 my heart, and died." 
 
 "Died?" echoed Lillie excitedly. 
 
 " Well — lost consciousness. You are particular to a 
 shade. Myself, I see no difference between a fainting fit 
 and death, except that one attack of the latter is fatal." 
 
 "As to that," answered Lillie, "I consider we die every 
 night and dream we are alive. To fall asleep is to die 
 painlessly. It is, perhaps, a pity we are resurrected to tea 
 and toast and toilette. However, I am glad you did not 
 really die. I feared I was in for a tale of re-incarnation, 
 or spooks or hypnotism or telepathy or astral bodies. One 
 hears so many marvellous stories now that we have left off 
 believing in miracles. Really, man's credulity is the per- 
 petual miracle." 
 
 " / have not left off believing in miracles," replied Miss 
 Linbridge seriously. " How could I ? Was I not saved 
 by one ? A very gallant miracle, too, for it took no trouble 
 to save my crusty old fellow-traveller, while it left me with- 
 out a scratch. I am afraid I should not have been grateful 
 for salvation without good looks. To face life without a 
 pretty face were worse than death. You agree with me?" 
 
 " Not entirely. There are higher things in life than 
 beautiful faces," said Lillie gravely. 
 
 " Certainly. Beautiful bonnets," said the candidate, with 
 laughing levity. "And lower things — beautiful boots. But 
 you would not seriously argue that there is anything else so 
 indispensable to a woman as beauty, or that to live plain is 
 worth the .trouble of living ? '^
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL GHOUL 633 
 
 "Why not ? Plain living and high thinking ! " murmured 
 Lillie. 
 
 "All nonsense! We needn't pretend — we aren't with 
 men. You would talk differently if you were born ugly ! 
 Goodness gracious ! don't we know that a girl may have a 
 whole cemetery of virtues, and no man will look at her if 
 she is devoid of charms of face or purse? It's all humbug 
 what Ruskin says about a well-bred modest girl being 
 necessarily beautiful. It is only a pleasing fiction that 
 morality is invaluable to the complexion. Of course if 
 Ruskin's girl chose to dress with care, she could express 
 her goodness less plainly, but as a rule goodness and 
 dowdiness are synonymous. I think the function of a 
 woman is to look well, and our severest reprobation should 
 be extended to those conscienceless creatures who allow 
 themselves to be seen in the company of gentlemen, in 
 frumpish attire. It is a breach of etiquette towards the 
 other sex. A woman must do credit to the man who 
 stakes his reputation for good taste by being seen in her 
 society. She must achieve beauty for his sake, and should 
 no more leave her boudoir without it than if she were an 
 actress leaving her dressing-room." 
 
 " That the man expects the woman to make his friends envy 
 him is true," answered Lillie, "and I have myself expressed 
 this in yonder epigram. // is 7>ian who is vain of woman's 
 dress. But were we created merely to gratify man's vanity ? " 
 
 " Is not that a place in nature to be vain of? We are 
 certainly not proud of man. Think of the average husband 
 over whom the woman has to shed the halo of her beauty. 
 It is like poetry and prose bound together. It is because 
 I intend to be permanently beautiful that I have come to 
 cast in my lot with the Old Maids' Club. Your rules 
 ordain it so, and rightly."
 
 634 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 "The Club must be beautiful, certainly, but merely to 
 escape being twitted with ugliness by the shallow — for the 
 rest, it should disdain beauty. However, pray continue 
 your story. It left off at a most interesting point. You 
 had lost consciousness." 
 
 "Yes; but as my chivalrous miracle had saved me from 
 danger, I was found unconsciously beautiful (which I have 
 always heard is the most graceful way of wearing your 
 beauty). I soon came to myself with the aid of a dark- 
 eyed doctor, and I then learnt that the old gentleman had 
 been too weak to sustain the shock, and that his poor old 
 pulse had ceased to beat. My rescuers had not disturbed 
 Threepenny Bits from its position 'twixt my hand and heart, 
 in case I should die and need it. So when the line was 
 cleared, and I was sent on to London after a pleasant 
 lunch wath the dark-eyed doctor, I had the journal to read 
 after all, despite the discourtesy of the deceased. When 
 I arrived at Paddington I found Richard Westbourne 
 walking the platform like Hamlet's father's ghost, white 
 and trembling. He was scanning the carriages feverishly 
 as the train glided in with its habitual nonchalance. 
 
 " * My darling ! ' he cried, when he caught sight of my 
 dainty hat with its sweet trimmings. ' Thank Heaven ! ' 
 He twisted the door violently open and kissed me before 
 all the crowd. Fortunately I had my lovely spotted veil 
 down, so that he only pressed the tulle to my lips. 
 
 "' What is the matter?' I said ingenuously. 
 
 " ' The accident ! ' he gasped. ' Weren't you in the 
 accident ? ' 
 
 " ' Of course I was. But my dress was not very much 
 crumpled. If I had sat in the other corner I should have 
 been killed ! ' 
 
 •' ' My heroine ! ' he cried, ' How brave of you ! '
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL GHOUL 635 
 
 He made as if he would rumple my hair, but I drew 
 back. 
 
 " ' Were you waiting for me ? ' I asked. 
 
 " ' Of course. Hours and hours. Oh, the agony of it ! 
 See, here is the evening paper ! It gives you as dead.' 
 
 "'Where?' I cried nervously. His trembling forefinger 
 pointed to the place — "A beautiful young lady was also 
 extricated in an unconscious condition from this carriage." 
 
 "'Isn't it wonderful the news should be in London 
 before me?' I murmured. 'But I suppose they will 
 have names and fuller particulars in a later edition ? ' 
 
 " ' Of course. But fancy my having to be in London — • 
 unable to get to you for love or money ! ' 
 
 " ' Yes, it was very hard for me to be there all alone,' I 
 murmured. ' But please run and see after my luggage. 
 There are three portmanteaus and a little black one and 
 three bonnet boxes and two parasols, and call a hansom 
 — oh, and a brown paper parcel and a long narrow card- 
 board box ; and get me the latest editions of the evening 
 papers ; and please see that the driver isn't drunk, and 
 don't take a knock-kneed horse or one that paws the 
 ground, you know those hansom doors fly open and shoot 
 you out like rubbish — I do so hate them ; and oh, Richard, 
 don't forget those novels from Mudie's— they're done up 
 with a strap. Three bonnet boxes, remember, and all the 
 evening papers — mind ! ' 
 
 " When we were bowling homewards, he kept expressing 
 his joy by word and deed, so that I was unable to read my 
 papers. At last, annoyed, I said, 'You wouldn't be so 
 glad if you knew that my resurrection cost three thousand 
 pounds.' 
 
 " ' How do you mean ? ' 
 
 " ' Why, if I had died, somebody would have had three
 
 636 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 thousand pounds. This number of Threepeimy Bits would 
 have been found on my body, and would have entitled my 
 heir to that amount of assurance money. I need not tell 
 you who my heir is, nor to whom I had left my little all.' 
 
 " I looked into his face, and from the tenderness that 
 overflowed it I saw he fancied himself the favoured mortal. 
 There is no end to the conceit of young men. A sensible 
 fellow would have known at once that my brother was the 
 only person reasonably entitled to my scanty belongings. 
 However, there is no good done by disturbing a lover's 
 complacency. 
 
 " ' I do not want your money,' he answered, again 
 passionately pressing my tulle veil to my lips. ' I infinitely 
 prefer your life.' 
 
 " ' What a bloodthirsty highwayman ! ' 
 
 " ' I shall steal another kiss. I would rather have you 
 than all the gold in the world.' 
 
 " ' Still, gold is the next best thing,' I said, smiling at his 
 affectionateness, which my absence had evidently fostered. 
 ' So, being on the point of death, as I thought, I resolved to 
 make death worth dying, and leave a heap of gold to the 
 man I loved. This number of Threepenny Bits was not 
 mine originally. When the crash occurred, it was being 
 read by the old gentleman in the opposite corner, but his 
 next of kin is a hypocritical young scapegrace (so he told 
 me), and I thought it would be far nicer for my heir to 
 come in for the money. So I took it from his body the 
 very instant before I fainted dead away ! ' 
 
 " ' My heroine ! ' he cried again. ' So you thought of 
 your Richard even at the point of death ? What a sweet 
 assurance of your love ! ' 
 
 '"Yes, an assurance of three thousand pounds,' I 
 answered, laughing merrily. 'And now, perhaps, you
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL GHOUL 637 
 
 will let me read the details of the catastrophe. The 
 reporters seem to know ever so much more about it than 
 I do. It's getting so dusky I can hardly see — I wonder 
 what was the name of old grizzly growler — ah, here it is ! 
 The pocket-book contained letters addressed to Josiah 
 Twaddon, Esquire, and ' 
 
 '"Twaddon, did you say?' gasped Richard, clutching 
 the paper frantically. 
 
 "'Yes — don't! You've torn it! Twaddon, I can see 
 it plainly.' 
 
 *' ' Does it give his address ? ' Richard panted. 
 
 " 'Yes,' I said, surprised. 'I was just going on to read 
 that — 4 Bucklesbury Buildings ' 
 
 " ' Great heavens ! ' he cried. 
 
 " ' What is it ? Why are you so pale and agitated ? 
 Was he anything to you? Ah, I guess it — by my pro- 
 phetic soul, your uncle ! ' 
 
 " ' Yes,' he answered bitterly. ' My uncle ! My mother's 
 brother ! Wretched woman, what have you done ? ' 
 
 " My heart was beating painfully, and I felt hot all over, 
 but outwardly I froze. 
 
 " 'You know what I have done,' I replied icily. 
 
 " 'Yes, robbed me of three thousand pounds ! ' he cried. 
 
 " ' How dare you say that ? ' I answered indignantly. 
 ' Why, it was for you I meant them ! ' 
 
 " The statement was not, perhaps, strictly accurate, but my 
 indignation was sufficiently righteous to cover a whole pack 
 of lies. 
 
 '"Your intentions may have been strictly honourable,' 
 he retorted ; ' but your behaviour v/as abominable. Great 
 heavens! Do you know that you could be prosecuted?' 
 
 " * Nonsense ! ' I said stoutly, though my heart misgave 
 me. ' What for ? '
 
 638 The CELIBATES'' CLUB 
 
 " * What for ? You, a plunderer of the dead — a harpy, a 
 ghoul — ask what for ? ' 
 
 " ' But the thing was of no value ! ' I urged. 
 '"Of no intrinsic value, perhaps, but of immense value 
 under the peculiar circumstances. Why, if any one chose 
 to initiate a prosecution, you would be sent to gaol as a 
 common thief 
 
 "'Pardon me,' I said haughtily. 'You forget you are 
 speaking to a lady. As such I can never be more than a 
 kleptomaniac. You might force me to suffer from hysteria 
 in the past, but the worst that could befall me now would 
 be a most interesting advertisement. Prosecute me and 
 you will create for me an army of friends all the world 
 over. If it is thus that lovers behave, it is better to 
 have friends. I shall be glad of the exchange.' 
 
 " ' You know that 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. Pro- 
 secute me if you will — I have done you out of three 
 thousand pounds, and I am glad of it. Only one favour 
 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.
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL GHOUL 
 
 639 
 
 " '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 
 
 "l CAN NEVER BE MORE THAN A KLEPTOMANIAC." 
 
 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
 
 640 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 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 life- 
 time, 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 that Threepenny Bits belonged to my fellow-pas- 
 senger, 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
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL GHOUL 641 
 
 out our past relations ; would suspect their resumption im- 
 mediately after the verdict.' 
 
 " ' Well, then, we must break off our engagement,' I 
 repeated decisively. ' I could never marry a prosecutor in 
 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. ' Vou'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 demeanour 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 see 
 The Doll's House, you said that Nora 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 be- 
 tween our story and Ibsen's. Nora 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 Nora — forgetting for 
 whose sake the deed was done. If Nora was justified in 
 leaving her husband, how much more justified must I be 
 in leaving my betrothed ! ' " 
 
 2s
 
 642 THE CELIBATES CLUB 
 
 "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 same thing. Be- 
 sides, my telling him I did only increases the resemblance 
 between me and Nora. 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. 
 
 " Then he said in low tones, ' Maggie, can I never be- 
 come anything to you but a stranger ? ' 
 
 " ' The greatest miracle of all would have to happen, then, 
 Richard,' I quoted coldly. Then, rejecting his profiered 
 assistance, I alighted from the vehicle, and passed majestic- 
 ally 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 dis- 
 agreeable situation agreeably, leaving Dick in the wrong,
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL GHOUL 643 
 
 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 cab- 
 man 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 am sure it wouldn't suit me. I 
 have not kept my eyes open for nothing. 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 fenders, read books, and stretch themselves 
 on the most valuable sofas. If they help in the household, 
 they only make more work. They invite men home to 
 dinner on Mondays, when you can't get any fish. 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 odour 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
 
 644 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 coarse, clumsy creatures, with a code of morals that they 
 don't profess, and a creed of chivalry that they never prac- 
 tise. 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 con- 
 tempt for us which we feel for them." 
 
 These sentiments reinstated Miss Linbridge in the good 
 opinion of the President, conscious heretofore of a jarring 
 chord. She ordered in some refreshments, to get an oppor- 
 tunity of whispering to Turple the Magnificent that the 
 Honorary Trier might return. 
 
 " Oh, by the way," said Miss Linbridge, " I hunted out 
 that copy of Threepainy Bits before coming out. I have 
 kept it in a drawer as a curiosity. Here it is." 
 
 Lillie took the paper and examined it curiously, 
 
 "What's that? You reading Threepenny Bits?" said 
 Silverdale, coming in. 
 
 '* It's 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 Lin- 
 bridge 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 hap- 
 pened on New Year's Day." 
 
 " Even then it would have been too old," answered Silver- 
 dale, "for it is dated December 2, and the assurance policy 
 is only valid during the week of issue." 
 
 I
 
 LA FEMME INCOAlPRISE 645 
 
 " 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 issue is very much Hke 
 another. And see ! why, there 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. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 LA FEMME INCOMPRISE 
 
 Lord Silvkrdale 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 things 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 the top of an
 
 646 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 omnibus — a miracle of beauty and smartness. On reaching 
 the vicinity of the Old Maids' 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." 
 The polite creature 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. 
 
 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 her- 
 self chatting freely with her even before she had put her 
 through the catechism. But the catechism came at last. 
 
 " Why do 1 want to join you ? " asked the miracle. 
 " Because I am disgusted with my lover ; because I am a 
 femme 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 mis- 
 understanding 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 misunder- 
 stood ; 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 
 oi Poems of Compassion that I have had the misfortune to 
 captivate — never calls without laying a sonnet next day, in
 
 T^Wj^EJl, jJV 
 
 AMICABLY SAID, "STOP, I'UiASE.'
 
 64S THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 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 three 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 exiguous 
 The purple passion mantles to the brim. 
 
 " It sounds as if I were be-rouged 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 help looking something or the other ; and 
 when I come to read the sonnet, 1 find it is always the 
 other. Once I refused to see him for a whole week, but that 
 only resulted in seven Son?iefs of Absence, imaginatively de- 
 picting what I was saying and doing each day, and contain- 
 ing a detailed analysis of his own sensations, as well as
 
 LA FEMME INCOMPKISE 649 
 
 reminiscences of past happy hours together. Most of them 
 I had no recollection of, and the only one I could at all 
 identify was that of a morning we spent on the Ramsgale 
 cliffs, where Silverplume put his handkerchief over his face 
 and fell asleep. 
 
 "In the last lines of the sonnet it came out : 
 
 There, 'mid the poppies of the planisphere, 
 I swooned for very joy and wearihead. 
 
 " But I knew it by the poppies. Then, dear Miss Dul- 
 cimer, you should just see the things he calls me, ' Love's 
 gonfalon and lodestar,' and what-not. Very often I cannot 
 even find them in the dictionary, and it makes me uneasy. 
 Heaven knows what he may be saying about me I When 
 he talks of 
 
 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 unmistakeably at my own head, such as 
 
 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 poet- 
 ical 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 time, 
 And Indian naiads' weary walruses, 
 And yet to-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 Silver-
 
 6so THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 plume 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, 
 
 and say he is poking fun at me. But Silverplume is quite 
 serious, — I am sure of that ; and it is the worst feature of 
 the 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 uncaught 
 
 Within a world that mocks with margarine. 
 In chastened silence, mystic, epicene. 
 
 Exchanging incommunicable thought. 
 
 Diana 1 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 the continuous capacity for love-
 
 LA FEMME INCOM PRISE 651 
 
 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 sentiment- 
 ality, 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 hira 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 personal affec- 
 tionateness, 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 con- 
 tributed them), he sent me back a semi-apologetic explana- 
 tion, thus conceived : 
 
 TO CELIA 
 
 You know, of course, my name is Diana, but that is 
 his way. 
 
 'Tis not alone thy sweet eyes' gleam, 
 
 Nor sunny glances, 
 For which I weave so oft a dream 
 
 Of dainty fancies.
 
 652 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 'Tis not alone thy witching play 
 
 Of grace fantastic, 
 That makes me chant so oft a lay 
 
 Encomiastic. 
 
 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 reconciled, and 
 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 
 awe-struck tones, and left a magic circle round the poet in 
 labour. 
 
 " But I felt a shudder run through my whole being. 
 '"Goodness gracious, Silverplume,' I said, 'is this the 
 way you poets go on ? '
 
 LA FEMME INCOMPKISE 
 
 653 
 
 " * No, no, Diana,' he answered me. * It is all tommy-rot.' 
 (I quote Silverplume's words.) ' The beggar is just bringing 
 out a new volume ; and although his wife has distributed the 
 
 (r.^ !' •-) ^> 
 
 THE POET PLAYS HIS LAST CARD. 
 
 most lavish hospitality to the critics, he has never been able 
 to get himself taken seriously as a poet. There will be lots
 
 654 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 of critics here to-night, and he is playing his last card. If 
 he is not a genius now, he never will be.' 
 
 " ' 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 only shamming, 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 some arriere-pensee, 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 
 afternoorr-'all went merry as a marriage bell. 
 
 " Well, good-bye, Lillie," said Diana at last. 
 
 "Good-bye, Diana," returned Lillie. "Now /understand 
 you, I hope you won't consider yourself a fenime uicoinprise 
 any longer." 
 
 " It is only the men I complain of, dear." 
 
 " But we must ever remain incomprises by man," said 
 Lillie. *' Femme incomprise — why, it is the badge of all our 
 
 sex."
 
 THE INAUGURAL S0IR£E 655 
 
 " Yes," answered Diana ; " a woman letting down her 
 back hair is tragic to a man ; to us she only recalls bed- 
 room gossip. Good-bye.' And, nodding brightly, the 
 brisk little creature sallied into the street and captured a 
 passing bus. 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE INAUGURAL SOIREE 
 
 " Oh Lord Silverdale," cried Lillie exultantly, when he 
 made his usual visit the next afternoon. " At last I have 
 an unexceptionable candidate. We shall get under weigh at 
 last. I am so pleased, because papa keeps bothering about 
 that inaugural soiree. 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's Moon." 
 
 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 WINNl£ AND LILLIE DULCIMER. 
 
 ** I called at the Old Maids' Club yesterday," writes a 
 Moon woman, " 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
 
 656 THE CELIBATES CLUB 
 
 and jolliest girls of the day. Of course, I went as a candi- 
 date, 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 the Moon. "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 the 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." 
 
 " What are you talking about ? Who are these people ? " 
 
 " Don't you remember Wilkins, the Moon 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 any one 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'
 
 THE INAUGURAL SOIREE 65^ 
 
 Club under the notice of his Diana. Now it seems he has 
 hit on the brilliant solution of making her into a Lady Inter- 
 viewer, so that her nerves, too, shall be hypersensitive to 
 interrogatives, and husband and wife shall sit at home in a 
 balsamic restfulness permeated by none but categorical 
 propositions. Ah me, well, I envy them ! " 
 
 " You envy them ? " said Lillie. 
 
 "■\^Tiy 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 frill 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. A 
 little striped shawl covered her shoulders. 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 the Moon 
 
 2t
 
 6sg 
 
 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 to-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. 
 
 
 
 THE OLD MAID ARRIVES. 
 
 " Yes, yes, of course," said Silverdale, smiling, " they call 
 you Little Doll5\" 
 
 "Little Dolly!" she repeated to herself, mumbling and 
 chuckling. " Little Dolly ! "
 
 THE W AUGURAL SOIREE 659 
 
 " 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 nie, 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. I,illie pressed closer to 
 Lord Silverdale, and her grasp on his arm tightened. 
 
 * Very well, we shall put your name on the books at 
 ^'nce," 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.
 
 66o THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 "My darling !" he whispered, "calm yourself." 
 
 He laid 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 that 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 th^ 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 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?"
 
 THE INAUGURAL SOIREE 66| 
 
 "To-day I have brought no poem, though I have lived 
 one," said Lord Silverdale, taking her soft unresisting hand. 
 " But, hke 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 touchf.d with darkling gold- 
 Of misty, throbbing corn-fitlds, and with haze 
 
 Of softly-tinted hills and dreamy wold, 
 
 Lies warm with raiment of soft summer rays, 
 
 And in the magic air there lives a free 
 
 And 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 grey, and lend 
 A softened touch of ancient mystery ; 
 
 And ere the silent change of heaven's light 
 
 I feel the coming glory of the night. , 
 
 Oh for the sweet and sacred earnest gaze 
 
 Of eyes divine with strange and yearning tears, 
 
 To feel with me the beauty of our days. 
 The glorious sadness of our mortal years ; 
 
 The 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 tender- 
 ness, but she had turned her face away. Presently she 
 murmured, " But think what you are asking me to do. 
 How can L the President of the Old Maids' Club, be the 
 first recreant ? " 
 
 " But you are also the last to leave the ship," he replied 
 smilingly. " Besides, you are not legally elected. You 
 never came before the Honorary Trier. You were never a
 
 662 THE CELT BATES.' CLUB 
 
 member at all, so have nothing to undo. If you had 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 
 reasons into a rhyme, and send it to you on our wedding 
 morn." 
 
 " Poetry made while you wait," said Lillie, laughing. 
 The laugh suddenly froze 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 comic moiie, "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 inaugural soiree after all. I told you 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 
 learnt that he was in the garden. As they turned away, the
 
 THE INAUGURAL SOIREE 663 
 
 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 realised what was the matter. 
 
 Turple the Magnificent was sniilimg. 
 
 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, "as you have 
 resolved to be an Old Maid, I — I — well, I thought it only 
 my duty 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. " And she is not a woman." 
 
 " Gently, gently," said the millionaire. " Respect your 
 stepmother to be. if vou have no respect for my future 
 wife."
 
 664 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 ■' Lillie," said Miss Nimrod appealingly, " do not mis- 
 judge me. I have not changed 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. He didnU 
 want 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 interests of the Old Maids' 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 
 favour." 
 
 "No doubt you will make him see the desirability of 
 women remaining old maids," retorted Lillie, unappeased. 
 
 " Come, come, Lillie ! be sensible ! " said the millionaire. 
 " Nelly, you 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 
 inaugural soiree. 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. 
 
 " What does that matter ? Aren't there plenty of 
 candidates without them ? Besides, nobody'U know. 
 Each of the candidates will think the others are the menv
 
 THE INAUGURAL SOIREE 665 
 
 bers. Tell you what, boy, they shall all dance at Lillie's 
 wedding, and we'll make that the inaugural soiree^ 
 
 " But that would be to publish my failure to the world," 
 remonstrated Lillie. 
 
 "Nonsense, dear. It'll be published without that. 
 Trust the Moon. Isn't it better to take the bull by the 
 horns ? " 
 
 "Well, yes, perhaps you're right," said Lillie hesitatingly. 
 " 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 inter- 
 ference with its designs." 
 
 • •••••* 
 
 The explanatory rhyme duly came to hand on Lillie's 
 wedding morning. It was written on vellum in the bride- 
 groom's best hand, and ran : 
 
 RAINBOW 
 
 Ah, why I call you "Rainbow," sweet? 
 
 The shadows 'fore your eyes retreat, 
 
 The ground grows light beneath your feet. 
 
 You smile in your superior way, 
 A Rainbow has no feet, you say? 
 Nay, be not so precise today. 
 
 Created but to soothe and bless, 
 You followed logic to excess, 
 Repressing thoughts of tenderness.
 
 666 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 My life was chill and wan and hoary, 
 Vou came, the Bow of ancient stoiy 
 To kiss the greyness into glory. 
 
 And now as Rainbow fair to see 
 A Promise sweet you are to me 
 Of sorrow nevermore to be. 
 
 Besides the friends of the happy pair, nearly all the 
 candidates were present at the inaugural soiree of the Old 
 Maids' Club. Not quite all — because Lillie, who was 
 rapidly growing conventional, did not care to have Clorinda 
 Bell, even accompanied by her mother, or by her brother, 
 the Man in the Ironed Mask. Nor did she invite the 
 twins, nor the osculatory Alice. But she conquered her 
 prejudices in other instances, and Frank Maddox, the art 
 critic, came under the convoy of the composer, Paul 
 Horace, and Miss Mary Friscoe was brought by Bertie 
 Smythe. The Writers' Club also sent EUaline Rand, and 
 an account of the proceedings appeared in the first number 
 of the Cherub. The " Princess " was brought by Miss 
 Primpole, and Captain Athelstan and Lord Arthur came 
 together in unimpaired friendship. Eustasia Pallas and her 
 husband, Percy Swinshel Spatt, both their faces full of the 
 peace that passeth understanding, got a night oft" for the 
 occasion, and came in a hansom paid for out of the week's 
 beer-money. Turple the Magnificent, who had seen them 
 at home in the servants' hall, was outraged in his deepest 
 instincts, and multiplied occasions for offering them refresh- 
 ments merely for the pleasure of snorting in their proximity. 
 The great Fladpick (Frank Grey), accompanied by his 
 newly-won bride Cecilia, made the evening memorable by 
 the presence of " the English Shakespeare," Guy Fledgely 
 brought Sybil Hotspur, and his father the baronet was
 
 TIIE INAUGURAL SOIREE 667 
 
 under the care of Miss Jack. The lady from Boston wired 
 congratulations on the success of the Club from Yokohama 
 whither she had gone to pick up lacquer-work. 
 
 Poor Miss Summerson, the Lovely May, and the Victim 
 of the Valentine were a triad that was much admired. Miss 
 Fanny Radowski, whose oriental loveliness excited due 
 attention, came with Martin. Winifred Woodpecker was 
 accompanied by her mother, the resemblance between the 
 two being generally remarked, and Miss Margaret Linbridge 
 seemed to afford Richard Westbourne copious opportunities 
 for jealousy. Even Wilkins was there with his Diana in an 
 unprofessional capacity, Lillie having relented towards her 
 interviewer on learning that she had been really engaged to 
 Silverplume once, and that she had not entirely drawn on 
 the stores of journalistic fancy. Silverplume himself was 
 present, unconscious to what he owed the invitation, and 
 paying marked attentions to the unattached beauties. Miss 
 Nimrod promenaded the rooms on the arm of the million- 
 aire. She had improved vastly since she had become 
 effeminate, and Lillie felt she could put up with her, now 
 she would not have to live with her. Even Silverdale's 
 aunt. Lady Goody -Goody Twoshoes, could find no fault 
 with Nelly now. 
 
 It was a brilliant scene. The apartments of the Old 
 Maids' Club had been artistically decked with the most 
 gorgeous flowers that the millionaire could afford, and the 
 epigrams had been carefully removed so as to leave the 
 rooms free for dancing. As Lillie's father gazed around, he 
 felt that not many millionaires could secure such a galaxy of 
 beauty as circled in the giddy dance in his gilded saloon. 
 It was, indeed, an unexampled gathering of pretty girls — 
 this inaugural soiree of the Old Maids' Club, and the 
 millionaire's shirt-front heaved with pride and pleasure, and
 
 668 THE CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 the latter-day Cupid, that still hung on the wall, seenied to 
 take heart of grace again. 
 
 " You got my verses this morning. Rainbow mine ? " said 
 Silverdale, when the carriage drove off, and the honeymoon 
 began. 
 
 It was almost the first moment they had had together the 
 whole day. 
 
 " Yes," said Lillie softly. " And I wanted to tell you there 
 are two lines which are truer than you meant." 
 
 " I am indeed a poet, then ! Which are they?" 
 
 Lillie blushed sweetly. Presently she murmured : 
 
 "You followed logic to excess, 
 Repressing thoughts of tenderness." 
 
 " How did you know that?" she asked, her brown eyes 
 looking ingenuously into his. 
 
 " Love's divination, I suppose." 
 
 " My father didn't tell you?" 
 
 " Tell me what ? " 
 
 " About my discovery in the algebra of love.** 
 
 " Algebra of love ? " 
 
 " No, of course he didn't. I don't suppose he ever really 
 understood it," said Lillie, with a pathetic smile. " I think 
 I ought to tell you now what it was that made me so — so — 
 you understand." 
 
 She put her little warm hand lightly into his, and nestled 
 against his shoulder as if to make amends. 
 
 After a delicious silence, foi Lord Silverdale betrayed no 
 signs of impatience, Lillie confessed all. 
 
 *' So you see I have loved you ah along," she concluded. 
 " Only I did not dare hope that the chance would come to 
 pass, against which the odds were 5998." 
 
 " But, great heavens ! " cried Lord Silverdale. " Do you
 
 THE INAUGURAL SOIREE 669 
 
 mean to say this is why you were so cold to me all those 
 long weary weeks ? " 
 
 " That is the only reason," faltered Lillie. " But would 
 you have had me defy the probabilities ? " 
 
 " No, no — of course not, I wouldn't dream of such a 
 thing. But you have miscalculated them ! " 
 
 " Miscalculated them ? " 
 
 Lillie began to tremble violently. 
 
 " Yes, there is a fallacy in your ratiocination," 
 
 *' A fallacy ! " she whispered hoarsely. 
 
 " Yes, you have calculated on the theory that the proba- 
 bilities are independent, whereas they are interdependent. 
 In the algebra of love this is the typical class of proba- 
 bilities. The two events — your falling in love with me, my 
 falling in love with you — are related; they are not absolutely 
 isolated phenomena, as you have superficially assumed. It 
 is our common qualities which make us gravitate together, 
 and what makes me love you is the same thing that makes 
 you love me. Thus the odds against our loving each other 
 are immensely less than you have ciphered out. Even on 
 your own assumption they should be 5999 to one, not 
 5998, but as the whole assumption is radically vicious, it is 
 scarce worth while to point out your error of manipulation." 
 
 Lillie had fallen back, huddled up, in her corner of the 
 carriage, her face covered with her hands. 
 
 " Forgive me," said Lord Silvcrdale penitently. " I had 
 no right to correct your mathematics on your wedding-day. 
 Say two and two are six and I will make it so." 
 
 "Two and two are not six and you know it," said Lillie 
 firmly, raising her wet face. " It is I who have to ask for- 
 giveness for being so cruel to you. But if I have sinned, I 
 have sinned in ignorance. You will believe that, dearest ? " 
 
 '* I will believe anything that comes from my Rainbow's
 
 670 
 
 The CELIBATES' CLUB 
 
 lips," said Lord Silverdale. "Why! they are quite white ! 
 Let me kiss them rosy again." 
 
 Like a naughty child that has been chastened by afflic- 
 tion, she held up her face obediently to meet his. The lips 
 were already blushing. 
 
 " But confess," she said, while an arch indefinable light 
 came into the brown eyes, — " confess we have had a most 
 original courtship 1 " 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press,
 
 THE NIGGER"t5F THE ^NARCISSUS' 
 
 By JOSEPH CONRAD 
 /// 0?ie Volume, price 6s 
 
 A. T. Quiller-Couch in Pall Mall Magazine.— ' Had I to award a 
 prize among the novels of the past season, it should go to T/ie Nigger of the 
 '' Nai-cissus." Mr. Conrad's is a thoroughly good tale. He has something 
 of Mr. Crane's insistence ; he grips a situation, an incident, much as Mr. 
 Browning's Italian wished to grasp Metternich ; he squeezes emotion and 
 colour out of it to the last drop ; he is ferociously vivid ; he knows the life he 
 is writing about, and he knows his seamen too. And, by consequence, the 
 crew of the Narcisstis are the most plausibly life-like set of rascals that ever 
 sailed through the pages of fiction.' 
 
 Mr, James Payn. — 'Never, in any book with which I am acquainted, 
 has a storm at sea been so magnificently yet so realistically depicted. At 
 times, there is, the same sort of poetic power in the book that is manifested 
 by Victor Hugo ; at others, it treats matters in the most practical and 
 common-sense manner, though always with something separate about it which 
 belongs to the writer. It does not seem too much to say that Mr. Conrad 
 has, in this book, introduced us to the British merchant seaman, as Rudyard 
 Kipling introduced us to the British soldier. ' 
 
 Speaker. — 'A picture of sea-life as it is lived in storm and sunshine on 
 a merchant-ship, which, in its vividness, its emphasis, and its extraordinary 
 fulness of detail, is a worthy pendant to the battle-picture presented to us in 
 The Red Badge of Courage. . . . We have had many descriptions of storms 
 at sea before, but none like this. It is a wonderful picture. To have painted 
 it in such a fashion that its vivid colouring bites into the mind of the spectator, 
 is a very notable achievement.' 
 
 SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 
 
 Bv RICHARD HARDING DAVIS 
 In One Volume, price ds. Illustrated. 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. — 'We heartily congratulate Mr. Davis on this 
 story — it is one which it is a great delight to read and an imperative duty to 
 praise.' 
 
 The Athenaeum. — ' The adventures and exciting incidents in the book are 
 admiraljlo ; the whole story of the revolution is most brilliantly told. This 
 is really a great tale of adventure.' 
 
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 worthy of Mr. Stephen Crane. The story is artistically told as well as highly 
 exciting.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. — 'We turn the pages quickly, carried on by a 
 swiftly moving story, and many a brilliant j^assage : and when we put tlie 
 book down, our impression is that few works of this season are to be named 
 with it for the many qualities which make a successful novel. We congratu- 
 late Mr. Harding Uavis upon a very clever piece of work.' 
 
 London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEuroKD Street, W.C 
 
 A
 
 ST. IVES 
 
 By ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 Jn One Volu?/ie, price 6s. 
 
 The Times. — 'Neither Stevenson himself nor any one else has given us 
 a better example of a dashing story, full of life and colour and interest. St. 
 Ives is both an entirely delightful personage and a narrator with an enthralling 
 style — a character who will be treasured up in the memory along with David 
 Balfour and Alan Break, even with D'Artagnan and the Musketeers.' 
 
 The Daily News. ' We see our author at his best. It is Stevenson with 
 his rare eighteenth century quaintness, grace, and humaneness, to which is 
 added a sense of nature permeating the whole work and lending to it a charm 
 that the masters of the eighteenth century did not possess.' 
 
 The Scotsman.—' It is a dashing book. The hero is a glorious fellow. 
 It has " passion, impudence, and energy," and in the multitude of its quickly 
 changing scenes "there shines a brilliant and romantic grace." It is a tale 
 to keep many readers sitting up late at night.' 
 
 Literature. — ' Never, perhaps, have the fascination and the foibles of the 
 typical Frenchman been studied with such humorous insight, or hit off with 
 such felicity of touch. The dialogue is of Stevenson's best.' 
 
 THE EBB-TIDE 
 
 By ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 AND 
 
 LLOYD OSBOURNE 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The St. James's Gazette. — 'The book takes your imagination and 
 attention captive from the tirst chapter— nay, from the first paragraph — and it 
 does not set them free till the last word has been read.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. — 'We are swept along without a pause on the 
 current of the animated and vigorous narrative. Each incident and adven- 
 ture is told with that incomparable keenness of vision which is Mr. Stevenson's 
 greatest charm as a story-teller.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette.— 'It is brilliantly invented, and it is not less 
 brilliantly told. There is not a dull sentence in the whole run of it. And 
 the style is fresh, alert, full of surprises — in fact, is very good latter-day 
 Stevenson indeed.' 
 
 The World. — 'It is amazingly clever, full of that extraordinary know- 
 ledge of human nature which makes certain creations of Mr. Stevenson's pen 
 far more real to us than persons we have met in the flesh. 
 
 The Morningf Post. — 'Boldly conceived, probing some of the darkest 
 depths of the human soul, the tale has a vigour and breadth of touch which 
 have been surpassed in none of Mr. Stevenson's previous works. . . . We 
 do not, of course, know how much Mr. Osbourne has contributed to the tale, 
 but there is no chapter of which any author need be unwilling to acknow- 
 ledge, or which is wanting in vivid interest.' 
 
 London : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN 
 
 By hall CAINE 
 In One Volume, price ds. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone writes : — ' I cannot but regard with warm respect and 
 admiration the conduct of one holding your position as an admired and 
 accepted novelist who stakes himself, so to speak, on so bold a protestation 
 on behalf of the things which are unseen as against those which are seen, and 
 are so terribly effective in chaining us down to the level of our earthly 
 existence.' 
 
 Dean Farrar. — ' After all deductions and all qualifications, it seems to 
 me that The Christian is of much more serious import and of much more 
 permanent value than the immense majority of novels. It is a book which 
 makes us think.' 
 
 The Sketch. — ' It quivers and palpitates with passion, for even Mr. 
 Caine's bitterest detractors cannot deny that he is the possessor of that rarest 
 of all gifts, genius.' 
 
 The Newcastle Daily Chronicle. — ' Establishes Mr. Caine's position 
 once for all as the greatest emotional force in contemporary fiction. A great 
 effort, splendid in emotion and vitality, a noble inspiration carried to noble 
 issues — an honour to Mr. Hall Caine and to English fiction.' 
 
 The Standard. — 'The book has humour, it has pathos, it is full of colour 
 and movement. It abounds in passages of terse, bold, animated descriptions. 
 . . . There is, above all, the fascination of a skilful narrative.' 
 
 The Speaker. — ' It is a notable book, written in the heart's blood of the 
 author, and palpitating with the passionate enthusiasm that has inspired it. 
 A book that is good to read, and that cannot fail to produce an impression on 
 its readers.' 
 
 The Scotsman. — 'The tale will enthral the reader by its natural power 
 and beauty. The spell it casts is instantaneous, but it also gathers strength 
 from chapter to chapter, until we are swept irresistibly along by the impetuous 
 current of passion and action. ' 
 
 THE MANXMAN 
 
 By hall caine 
 In One Volume^ price ^s. 
 
 The Times. — 'With the exception of The Scapegoat, this is unquestion- 
 ably the finest and most dramatic of Mr. Hall Caine's novels. . . . The 
 Manxman goes very straight to the roots of human passion and emotion. It 
 is a remarkable book, throbbing with human interest.' 
 
 The Queen. — ' The Manxman is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable 
 books of the century. It will be read and re-read, and lake its place in the 
 literary inheritance of the F.nglish-sjieaking nations.' 
 
 The St. James's Gazette.—' The Manxman is a contribution to litera- 
 ture, and the most fastidious critic would give in exchange for it a wilderness 
 of that deciduous trash which our publishers call fiction. ... It is not possible 
 to part from The Manxma7i with anything but a warm tribute of approval. '^ 
 Edmund Gosse. 
 
 London : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 THE BONDMAN 
 
 By hall CAINE 
 
 With a Photogravure Portrait of the Author. 
 
 In One Volume, price 6^. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone. — ' The Bondman is a work of which I recognise the 
 
 freshness, vigour, and sustained interest, no less than its integrity of aim.' 
 
 The Times. — ' It is impossible to deny originality and rude power to this 
 saga, impossible not to admire its forceful directness, and the colossal 
 grandeur of its leading characters.' 
 
 The Academy. — 'The language of The Bondman is full of nervous, 
 graphic, and poetical English ; its interest never flags, and its situations and 
 descriptions are magnificent. It is a splendid novel.' 
 
 The Speaker. — 'This is the best book that Mr. Hall Caine has yet 
 written, and it reaches a level to which fiiction very rarely attains. . , , We 
 are, in fact, so loth to let such good work be degraded by the title of 
 "novel" that we are almost tempted to consider its claim to rank as a prose 
 epic. ' 
 
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 beyond the front rank of the novelists of the day. He has produced a story 
 which, for the ingenuity of its plot, for its literary excellence, for its delinea- 
 tions of human passions, and for its intensely powerful dramatic scenes, is 
 distinctly ahead of all the fictional literature of our time, and fit to rank with 
 the most powerful fictional writing of the past century.' 
 
 THE SCAPEGOAT 
 
 By hall caine 
 In One Volume^ price ds. 
 
 The Times. — ' In our judgment it excels in dramatic force all the Author's 
 previous eftbrts. For grace and touching pathos Naomi is a character which 
 any romancist in the world might be proud to have created, and the tale of 
 her parents' despair and hopes, and of her own development, confers upon 
 The Scapegoat a distinction which is matchless of its kind.' 
 
 The Guardian. — ' Mr. Hall Caine is undoubtedly master of a style which 
 is peculiarly his own. He is in a way a Rembrandt among novelists.' 
 
 The Athenseum. — ' It is a delightful story to read.' 
 
 The Academy. — 'Israel ben Oliel is the third of a series of the most 
 profoundly conceived characters in modern fiction.' 
 
 The Saturday Review. — ' This is the best novel which Mr. Caine has 
 yet produced.' 
 
 The Scotsman. — ' The new story will rank with Mr. Hall Caine's previous 
 productions. Nay, it will in some respects rank above them. It will take 
 its place by the side of the Hebrew histories in the Apocrypha. It is nobly 
 and manfully written. It stirs the blood and kindles the imagination.' 
 
 Truth. — 'Mr. Hall Caine has been winning his way slowly, but surely, 
 and securely I think also, to fame. You must by all means read his 
 absorbing Moorish romance. The Scapegoat. ' 
 
 London: WILLIAM HEINEM.\NN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 DREAMERS OF THE GHETTO 
 
 By I. ZANGWILL 
 In One Volume^ price ^s. 
 
 W. E. Henley in the ' Outlook.' — 'A brave, eloquent, absorbing, and, on 
 the whole, persuasive book, whose author — speaking with a magnanimity and 
 a large and liberal candour not common in his race — tells you as much, 
 perhaps, as has before been told in modern literature. ... I find them all 
 vastly agreeable reading, and I take pleasure in recognising them all for the 
 work of a man who loves his race, and for his race's sake would like to make 
 literature. . . . Here, I take it — here, so it seems to me — is that rarest of 
 rare things, a book. As I have said, I do not wholly believe in it. But it is a 
 book ; it goes far to explain the Jew ; in terms of romance it sets forth not a 
 little of the most romantic, practical, persistent, and immitigable people that 
 the world has known or will ever know. It is, in fact, a Jew of something akin 
 to genius upon Jewry — the unchangeable quantity. And I feel that the reading 
 of it has widened my horizon, and given me much to perpend.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. — ' It is hard to descril^e this book, for we can think 
 of no exact parallel to it. In form, perhaps, it comes nearest to some of 
 Walter Pater's work. For each of the fifteen chapters contains a criticism of 
 thought under the similitude of an "Imaginary Portrait." . . . We have a 
 vision of the years presented to us in typical souls. We live again through 
 crises of human thought, and are compelled by the writer's art to regard them, 
 not as a catalogue of errors or hopes dead or done with, but under the vital 
 forms in which at one time or another they confronted the minds of actual 
 men like ourselves. Nearly all these scenes from the Ghetto take the form 
 of stories. A few are examples of the imaginative short story, that fine 
 method of art. The majority are dramatic scenes chosen from the actual life's 
 history of the idealists of Jewry in almost every European land.' 
 
 THE MASTER 
 
 By I. ZANGWILL 
 
 With a Photogravure Portrait of the Author 
 /// One Volume, price ds. 
 
 The Queen. — 'It is impossible to deny the greatness of a book like The 
 Master, a veritable human document, in which the characters do exactly as 
 they would in life. ... I venture to say that Matt himself is one of the most 
 striking and original characters in our fiction, and I have not the least doubt 
 that The Master will always be reckoned one of our classics.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. — ' It is a powerful and masterly piece of work. . . . 
 Quite the best novel of the year.' 
 
 The Literary World. — ' In The Master, Mr. Zangwill has eclipsed all his 
 previous work. This strong and striking story of patience and passion, of 
 sorrow and success, of art, ambition, and vain gauds, is genuinely powerful 
 in its tragedy, and picturesque in its completeness. . . . The work, thoroughly 
 wholesome in tone, is of sterling merit, and strikes a truly tragic chord, which 
 leaves a deep impression upon the mind.' 
 
 London : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO 
 
 A Study of a Peculiar People 
 
 By L ZANGWILL 
 
 In One Volume, price ds. 
 
 The Times. — ' From whatever point of view we regard it, it is a remark- 
 able book.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle.—' Altogether we are not aware of any such minute, 
 graphic, and seemingly faithful picture of the Israel of nineteenth century 
 London. . . . The book has taken hold of us.' 
 
 The Guardian. — 'A novel such as only our own day could produce. A 
 masterly study of a complicated psychological problem in which every factor 
 IS handled with such astonishing dexterity and intelligence that again and 
 agam we are tempted to think a really good book has come into our hands.' 
 
 The Graphic— 'Absolutely fascinating. Teaches how closely akin are 
 laughter and tears.' 
 
 Black and White. — 'A moving panorama of Jewish life, full of truth, full 
 of sympathy, vivid in the setting forth, and occasionally most brilliant. Such 
 a book as this has the germs of a dozen novels. A book to read, to keep, to 
 ponder over, to remember.' 
 
 W. Archer in ' The World.'—' The most powerful and fascinating book 
 I have read for many a long day.' 
 
 The Manchester Guardian.— 'The best Jewish novel ever written.' 
 
 THE KING OF SCHNORRERS 
 
 Grotesques and Fantasies 
 By I. ZANGWILL 
 
 With over Ninety Illustrations by Phil May and Others. 
 I7i One Volume, price ds. 
 
 The Athenaeum.- 'Several of Mr. Zangwill's contemporary Ghetto char- 
 acters have already become almost classical; but in The King of ScJuiorrers 
 he goes back to the Jewish community of the eighteenth century for the 
 hero of his principal story ; and he is indeed a stupendous hero . . . anyhow, 
 he is well named the king of beggars. The illustrations, by Phil May, add 
 greatly to the attraction of the book.' 
 
 The Saturday Review. — ' Mr. Zangwill has created a new figure in 
 fiction, and a new type of humour. The entire series of adventures is a 
 triumphant progress. . . . Humour of a rich and active character pervades 
 the delightful history of Manasses. Mr. Zangwill's book is altogether very 
 good reading. It is also very cleverly illustrated by Phil May and other 
 artists.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle.—' It is a beautiful story. The King of Schnorrers 
 is that great rarity— an entirely new thing, that is as good as it is new.' 
 
 The World. — ' The exuberant and even occasionally overpowering humour 
 of Mr. Zangwill is at his highest mark in his new volume, The King of 
 Schnorrers. ' 
 
 London: WILLIAM IIEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 THE PREMIER AND THE PAINTER 
 
 By I. ZANGWILL and LOUIS COWEN 
 In One Volume^ price 6^. 
 
 The Graphic. — ' It might be worth the while of some industrious and 
 capable person with plenty of leisure to reproduce in a volume of reasonable 
 size the epigrams and other good things witty and serious which The Premier 
 and the Painter contains. There are plenty of them, and many are worth 
 noting and remembering.' 
 
 The St. James's Gazette. — 'The satire hits all round with much impar- 
 tiality ; while one striking situation succeeds another till the reader is alto- 
 gether dazzled. The story is full of life and " go " and brightness, and will 
 well repay perusal.' 
 
 The Morning Post. — 'The story is described as a "fantastic romance," 
 and, indeed, fantasy reigns supreme from the first to the last of its pages. It 
 relates the history of our time with humour and well-aimed sarcasm. All the 
 most prominent characters of the day, whether political or otherwise, come in 
 for notice. The identity of the leading politicians is but thinly veiled, while 
 many celebrities appear in propria persond. Both the "Premier" and 
 "Painter" now and again find themselves in the most critical situations. 
 Certainly this is not a stor)' that he who runs may read, but it is cleverly 
 original, and often lightened by bright flashes of wit.' 
 
 THE FOURTH NAPOLEON 
 
 By CHARLES BENHAM 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Academy. — 'The picture of the incapable, ambitious sentimentalist, 
 attitudinising in his shabby London lodgings, attitudinising on the throne, and 
 sinking into flabby senility, while still in his own eyes a hero, is far more 
 than a successful piece of portraiture. It is a profound and moving allegory 
 of life. Surely to have produced such an effect is a high triumph of art. The 
 other people are all drawn with uncommon subtlety and vigour. Mr. Bcnham 
 follows great models. lie has learned much from Thackeray, and there is a 
 strong hint of Balzac in the half-ironical swiftness of change from scene to 
 scene. It is a fine piece of work, with enough wit and style and knowledge 
 of life to set up half-a-dozen ordinary novels. It is one of the best first books 
 wc have read for a long lime. ' 
 
 The Saturday Review. — 'A definite attitude to life, the courage of his 
 opinion of human nature, and a biting humour, have enabled Mr. Benham to 
 write a very good novel indeed. The book is worked out thoroughly ; the 
 people in it are alive ; they are interesting.' 
 
 I. Zangwill in 'The Jewish Chronicle.' — 'Surely one of the most 
 remarkable first books of our day. A daring imagination, a sombre, subtle 
 sense of la comedie kurnaine, such are the characteristics of this powerful 
 book. ... A thoroughness and subtlety which Balzac could not have 
 excelled. Most first books are, in essence, autobiographies. It is as much 
 because The Fourth Napoleon reveals powers of wholly imaginative combina- 
 tion as because of its actual achievement, that I venture to think it marks the 
 advent of a novelist who has only to practice concentration and to study his 
 art to take no ordinary position in English fiction.' 
 
 London : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 THE WAR OF THE WORLDS 
 
 By H. G. wells 
 In One Volume^ price (ys. 
 
 The Spectator.—' In The War of the Worlds Mr. Wells has achieved a 
 very notable success. As a writer of scientific romances he has never been 
 surpassed. In manner, as in scheme and incident, he is singularly original, 
 and if he suggests any one it is Defoe. He has not written haphazard, but 
 has imagined and then followed his imagination with the utmost niceness and 
 sincerity. In his romance two things have been done with marvellous power : 
 the imagining of the Martians, their descent upon the earth and their final 
 overthrow, and the description of the moral effects produced on a great city 
 by the attack of a ruthless enemy. . . . That his readers will read with 
 intense pleasure and interest we make no sort of doubt, for the book is one of 
 the most readable and most exciting works of imaginative fiction published 
 for many a long day. There is not a dull page in it. When once one has 
 taken it up, one cannot bear to put it down without a pang. It is one of the 
 books which it is imperatively necessary to sit up and finish.' 
 
 The Academy.—' Mr. Wells has done nothing before quite so fine as this. 
 He has two distinct gifts— of scientific imagination and of mundane observa- 
 tion—and has succeeded in bringing them together and harmoniously into 
 play. His speculative science is extraordinarily detailed, and the probable 
 departures from possibility are, at least, so contrived as not to offend the 
 reader who has but a small smattering of exact knowledge. Given the 
 scientific hyi^otheses, the story as a whole is remarkably plausible. You 
 feel it, not as romance, but as realism. As a crowning merit of the 
 book, beyond its imaginative vigour and its fidelity to life, it suggests 
 rather than obtrudes moral ideas. ... It is a thoughtful as well as an 
 unusually vivid and effective bit of workmanship. Already Mr. Wells has 
 his imitators, but their laboured productions, distinguished either by prolixity 
 or inaccuracy, neither excite the admiration of scientific readers nor attract 
 the attention of the world in general.' 
 
 THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU 
 
 By H. G. wells 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The SpectatOi . — ' There is nothing in Swift's grim conceptions of animal- 
 ised men and rationalised animals more powerfully conceived. Doctor Moreau 
 is a figure to make an impression on the imagination, and his tragic death has 
 a kind of poetic justice which satisfies the mind of the reader. Although we 
 do not recommend The Island of Doctor Moreau to readers of sensitive 
 nerves, as it might well haunt them too powerfully, we believe that Mr. 
 Wells has almost rivalled Swift in the power of his very gruesome, but very 
 salutary as well as impressive, conception.' 
 
 The St. James's Gazette.—' There can be no question that Mr. Wells has 
 written a singularly vivid and stimulating story. The idea is original and 
 boldly fantastic. The description of the strange Beast Folk is powerful, and 
 even convincing. The reader follows with a growing interest the fate of the 
 stranger who is cast by accident upon this island of pain and terror. There 
 are thrilling episodes and adventurous moments, and, above all, that happy 
 knack of the tale-teller which makes you want to go on till you have got to 
 the end of the story. The book is well written, with occasional passages that 
 show a rare felicity in the use and handling of language. There is none of the 
 younger romancers more gifted.' 
 
 London : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 ILLUMINATION 
 
 By HAROLD FREDERIC 
 In One Vohe/ne, price 6s. 
 
 The Spectator. — 'There is something more than the mere touch of tlie 
 vanished hand that wrote The Scaiici Letter in llhiniiiiation, which is the 
 best novel Mr. Harold Frederic has produced, and, indeed, places him very 
 near if not quite at the head of the newest school of American fiction. . . . 
 Illumination is undoubtedly one of the novels of the year. ' 
 
 The Manchester Guardian. — ' A remarkable book, and likely to be the 
 novel of the year. It is a long time since a book of such genuine importance 
 has appeared. It will not only afford novel-readers food for discussion during 
 the coming season, but it will eventually fill a recognised place in English 
 fiction.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. — ' Mr. Harold Frederic is winning his way by 
 sure steps to the foremost ranks of writers of fiction. Each book he gives us 
 is an advance upon the one before it. . . . His story is chiselled in detail, 
 but the details gradually merge into a finished work ; and when we close the 
 last page we have a new set of men and women for our acquaintances, a new 
 set of provocative ideas, and almost a Meissonier in literature to add to our 
 shelves. . . . Mr. Frederic's new novel is the work of a man born to write 
 fiction ; of a keen observer, a genuine humorist, a thinker always original 
 and sometimes even profound ; and of a man who has thoroughly learned 
 the use of his own pen.' 
 
 THE BROOM OF THE WAR-GOD 
 
 By H. N. BRAILSFORD 
 In One Volutne, price 6s. 
 
 The World. — ' The Broom of the War-Cod is something more than a 
 romance. Founded upon the late Graeco-Turkish War, it is quite the most vivid 
 and most realistic picture of the lamentable campaign that we have yet met with. 
 In it the truth is clearly, pitilessly told, and we learn what war really means 
 when undertaken by the bankrupt and demoralised Government of a fourth- 
 rate Power. Full to the brim with detail, the conversations retailed make 
 excellent reading for all except the Greek officers and the Crown Prince, 
 whose hopeless incompetency and cowardice deservedly meet with pitiless 
 reprobation. But, apart from its political aspect, we follow the fortunes of 
 the Foreign Legion — composed mostly of the offscourings of the whole of 
 Europe, but containing a certain leaven of fine fellows — with absorbed interest. 
 Once more we read of the shameful retreat from Pharsala, the prelude to a 
 succession of disasters vividly recapitulated in this fine story. The book con- 
 tains a capital portrait-gallery of Philhellenes, some Cockney studies worthy 
 of Kipling himself, and the background of Grecian life and surroundings is 
 drawn with no uncertain hand ; but the story is a saddening one, for the lurid 
 Ught of war in its most unfavourable aspect illumines the whole.' 
 
 London: WILLIAM IIEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C. 
 
 A 2
 
 ON THE FACE OF THE WATERS 
 
 By flora ANNIE STEEL 
 In One Volume^ price 6s. 
 
 The Spectator. — 'We have read Mrs. Steel's book with ever-increasing 
 surprise and admiration — surprise at her insight into people with whom 
 she can scarcely have been intimate, admiration for the genius which has 
 enabled her to realise that wonderful welter of the East and West, which 
 Delhi must have presented just before the INIutiny. There is many an officer 
 who would give his sword to write military history as Mrs. Steel has written 
 the history of the rising, the siege, and the storm. It is the most wonderful 
 picture. We know that none who lived through the Mutiny will lay the book 
 down without a gasp of admiration, and believe that the same emotion will be 
 felt by thousands to whom the scenes depicted are but lurid phantasmagoria.' 
 
 The Saturday Review. — 'Many novelists and spinners of tales have 
 made use of the Indian Mutiny, but Mrs. Steel leaves them all a long way 
 behind. On the Face of the Waters is the best novel of the Great Mutiny, 
 and we are not likely to see its rival in our time.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. — 'A picture, glowing with colour, of the most 
 momentous and dramatic events in all our Empire's later history. We have 
 read many stories having for their setting the lurid background of the Indian 
 Mutiny, but none that for fidelity to fact, for vivacity of imagination, for 
 masterly breadth of treatment, comes within half a dozen places of this.' 
 
 THE POTTER'S THUMB 
 
 By flora ANNIE STEEL 
 Jn One Volume^ price (iS. 
 
 The Globe. — 'This is a brilliant story — a story that fascinates, tingling 
 with life, steeped in sympathy with all that is best and saddest,' 
 
 The Manchester Guardian. — 'The impression left upon one after reading 
 The Potter's Thumb is that a new literary artist, of very great and unusual 
 gifts, has arisen. . . . In short, Mrs. Steel must be congratulated upon having 
 achieved a very genuine and amply deserved success.' 
 
 The Glasgow Herald, — 'A clever story which, in many respects, brings 
 India very near to its readers. The novel is certainly one interesting alike to 
 the Anglo-Indian and to those untravelled travellers who make their only 
 voyages in novelists' romantic company, ' 
 
 The Scotsman. — ' It is a capital story, full of variety and movement, which 
 brings with great vividness before the reader one of the phases of Anglo- 
 Indian life. Mrs. Steel writes forcibly and sympathetically, and much of the 
 charm of the picture which she draws lies in the force with which she brings 
 out the contrast between the Asiatic and European world. The Potter's 
 Thzimb is very good reading, with its mingling of the tragedy and comedy of 
 life. Its evil woman /«r excellence ... is a finished study.' 
 
 London : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 IN THE PERMANENT WAY 
 
 Bv FLORA ANNIE STEEL 
 In One Volume, price ds. 
 
 The Spectator. — 'While her only rival in this field of ficlion is Mr. 
 Kipling, her work is marked by an even subtler appreciation of the Oriental 
 standpoint — both ethical and religious — a more exhaustive acquaintance with 
 native life in its domestic and indoor aspects, and a deeper sense of the moral 
 responsibilities attaching to our rule in the East. The book is profoundly 
 interesting from beginning to end.' 
 
 The World. — 'All Indian, all interesting, and all characteristic of the 
 writer's exceptional ability, knowledge, and style. It is needless to say that 
 there is beauty in every one of these tales. The author goes farther in the 
 interpretation to us of the mysterious East than any other writer.' 
 
 Literature. — ' The tales of the fanaticism and humanity of Deen Mahomed, 
 of the love and self-sacrifice of Glory-of- Woman, ot the superstition and self- 
 sacrifice of Hajji-Raheen — are so many fragments of palpitating life taken 
 from the myriadfold existence of our Indian Emjjire to make us realise which 
 is not merely a service to literature. Mrs. Steel's sketches are founded, like 
 Mr. Kipling's, on "the bed-rock of humanity," and they will live.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette.— 'A volume of charming stories and of stories 
 possessing something more than mere charm. Stories made rich with beauty 
 and colour, strong with the strength of truth, and pathetic with the intimate 
 pathos which grows only from the heart. All the mystery and the frankness, 
 the simplicity and the complexity of Indian life are here in a glowing setting of 
 brilliant Oriental hues. A book to read and a book to buy. A book which 
 no one but Mrs. Steel could have given us, a book which all persons of leisure 
 should read, and for which all persons of taste will be grateful.' 
 
 FROM THE FIVE RIVERS 
 
 By flora ANNIE STEEL 
 In One Volume.^ price bs. 
 
 The Times. — ' Time was when these sketches of native Punjabi society 
 would have been considered a curiosity in literature. They arc sufficiency 
 remarkable, even in these days, when interest in the "dumb millions" of 
 India is thoroughly alive, and writers, great and small, vie in ministering to it. 
 They are the more notable as being the work of a woman. Mrs. Steel has 
 evidently been brought into close contact with the domestic life of all classes, 
 Hindu and Mahomcdan, in city and village, and has steeped herself in their 
 customs and superstitions. . . . Mrs. Steel's book is of exceptional merit and 
 freshness.' 
 
 The Athenaeum. — 'They possess this great merit, that they reflect the 
 habits, modes of life, and ideas of the middle and lower classes of the popula- 
 tion of Northern India better than do systematic and more pretentious works.' 
 
 The Globe. — ' She puts before us the natives of our Empire in the East as 
 they live and move and speak, with their pitiful superstitions, their strange 
 fancies, their melancholy ignorance of what poses with us for knowledge and 
 civilisation, their doubt of the new ways, the new laws, the new people. 
 "Shah Sujah's Mouse," the gem of the collection — a touching tale of un- 
 reasoning fidelity towards an English " Sinny Baba" is a tiny bit of perfect 
 writing.' 
 
 Lo.NDON: WILLIAM IIEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Strekt, W.C.
 
 THE GADFLY 
 
 By E. L. VOYNICH 
 
 Jn One Volume, price ds. 
 
 The Academy. — *A remarkable story, which readers who prefer flesh and 
 blood and human emotions to sawdust and adventure should consider as some- 
 thing of a godsend. It is more deeply interesting and rich in promise than 
 ninety-nine out of every hundred novels.' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. — 'The character is finely drawn, with a tragic 
 power and intensity which leave a lasting impression on the reader.' 
 
 The World. — 'The author's name is unknown to us : if this be his first 
 work of fiction, it makes a mark such as it is given very few to impress, for 
 the strength and originality of the story are indisputable, and its Dis-like gloom 
 is conveyed with unerring skill. It is not faultless, but the Padre of the 
 beginning, who is the Cardinal of the end, the one woman of the story, whose 
 influence is so pervading, but so finely subordinated to the supreme interest, 
 and the grandeur of the close of the tragedy, make us disinclined to look for 
 flaws.' 
 
 The St. James's Gazette. — 'A very strikingly original romance which 
 will hold the attention of all who read it, and establish the author's reputation 
 at once for first-rate dramatic alsility and power of expression. No one who 
 opens its pages can fail to be engrossed by the vivid and convincing manner 
 in which each character plays his part and each incident follows the other. 
 Exciting, sinister, even terrifying, as it is at times, we must avow it to be a 
 work of real genius, which will hold its head high among the ruck of recent 
 fiction. ' 
 
 THE MINISTER OF STATE 
 
 By J. A. STEUART 
 In One Volume, price 6i". 
 
 The Daily Mail. — ' A brilliantly clever novel, charged with intellectuality 
 and worldly knowledge, written with uncommon literary finish, pulsating 
 with human nature. The story is constructed with marked ability, the 
 characters are skilfully dift'erentiated, and the literary workmanship gives 
 continual pleasure.' 
 
 The Globe. — ' Its style is clear and vigorous, its matter interesting ; in fact, 
 Mr. Steuart has produced an excellent piece of work.' 
 
 The World.- — 'The working of character and the power of self-making have 
 rarely been so finely delineated as in this novel, which is nothing that fiction 
 ought not to be, while its qualities place it far above the novels we are 
 accustomed to, even of the higher class. It is dramatic, romantic and 
 realistic ; and, apart from those charms, it pleases the very soul by the care- 
 fulness, the cultivation of its style, the sense of respect for his art and his 
 public conveyed by the writer's nice apportionment and finish. The life 
 history of the Scotch laddie is one to be followed with vivid interest.' 
 
 The Literary World. — 'A novel which should make the author's name 
 a familiar one among all classes of readers. To a polished style Mr. Steuart 
 adds an ability to interest us in his characters which does not always go with 
 epigrammatic writing. The story is one that appeals with great force both 
 to the young and to the old.' 
 
 •London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 THE LONDONERS 
 
 By ROBERT HICHENS 
 
 In One Vohitne, price ds. 
 
 Punch. — ' Mr. Hichens calls his eccentric story " an absurdity," and so it 
 is. As amusing nonsense, written in a happy-go-lucky style, it works up to 
 a genuine hearty-laugh-extracting scene. . . . The Londoners is one of 
 the most outrageous pieces of extravagant absurdity we have come across for 
 many a day.' 
 
 The Manchester Guardian. — 'A roaring farce, full of excellent fooling, 
 and capital situations.' 
 
 The Globe. — ' It is refreshing to come across a really amusing book now 
 and again, and to all in search of a diverting piece of absurdity we can 
 recommend The Lofidoners. Herein Air. Hichens has returned to his earlier 
 manner, and it will be added to his credit that the author of The Gnen 
 Carnation has for a second time contributed to the innocent gaiety of the 
 nation.' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. — ' A farce and a very excellent one. Should be 
 read by every one in searcii of a laugh. Mr. Hichens simply revels in 
 epigrams, similes, and satire, and his achievements in this respect in The 
 Londoners will disappoint no one. It reads as if the author himself laughed 
 when writing it, and the laughter is contagious.' 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette. — ' It is all screamingly funny, and does great credit 
 to Mr. Hichens's luxuriant imagination.' 
 
 FLAMES 
 
 Bv ROBERT HICHENS 
 In One Volume, price ds. 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. — ' A cunning blend of the romantic and the real, the 
 work iif a man who can observe, who can think, who can imagine, and who 
 can write. . . . And the little thumb-nail sketches of the London streets have 
 the grim force of a Callot. But the real virtue of the book consists of its 
 tender, sympathetic, almost reverential picture of Cuckoo Bright. Not that 
 there is any attempt at idealising her ; she is shown in all her tawdry, slangy, 
 noisy vulgarity, as she is. But in despite of all this, the woman is essen- 
 tially a heroine, and lovable. If it contained nothing more than what we 
 do not hesitate to call this beautiful story — and it does contain more — 
 Flames would be a noteworthy book.' 
 
 The World. — 'An exceedingly clever and daring work . , . a novel so 
 weirdly fascinating and engrossing that the reader easily forgives its length. 
 Its unflagging interest and strength, no less than its striking originality, both 
 of design and treatment, will certainly rank it among the most notable novels 
 of the season.' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. — ' It carries on the attention of the reader from 
 the first chapter to the last. It is full of exciting incidents, very modern, and 
 excessively up-to-date.' 
 
 Lo.ndon: WILLIAM IIEINEMANN, 21 Bediord Street, W.C.
 
 AN IMAGINATIVE MAN 
 
 By ROBERT HICHENS 
 
 Author of 'The Green Carnation' 
 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Guardian. — 'There is no possible doubt as to the cleverness of the 
 book. The scenes are exceeding powerful.' 
 
 The Graphic. — 'The story embodies a study of remarkable subtlety and 
 power, and the style is not only vivid and picturesque, but in those passages 
 of mixed emotion and reiiection, which strike what is, perhaps, the charac- 
 teristic note of late nineteenth century prose literature, is touched with some- 
 thing of poetic charm. ' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. — ' It treats an original idea with no little skill, and 
 it is written with a distinction which gives M. Hichens a conspicuous place 
 amongst the younger story-tellers who are really studious of English diction. 
 ... It is marked out with an imaginative resource which has a welcome note 
 of literature.' 
 
 The Scotsman. — 'It is no doubt a remarkable book. If it has almost 
 none of the humour of its predecessor {The Green Carnation), it is written 
 with the same brilliancy of style, and the same skill is shown in the drawing 
 of accessories. Mr. Hichens's three characters never fail to be interesting. 
 They are presented with very considerable power, while the background of 
 Egyptian life and scenery is drawn with a sure hand. ' 
 
 THE FOLLY OF EUSTACE 
 
 By ROBERT HICHENS 
 In One Volume, price ds. 
 
 The Daily Telegfraph. — 'There is both imaginative power and a sense of 
 style in all that Mr. Hichens writes, coupled with a distinct vein of humour.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. — 'Admirably written, and in the vein that Mr. 
 Ilichens has made peculiarly his own.' 
 
 The World. — 'The author of An Imaginative Man took a high place 
 among imaginative writers by that remarkable work, and The Folly of 
 Eustace fully sustains his well -merited repute as a teller of tales. The little 
 story is as fantastic and also as reasonable as could be desired, with the 
 occasional dash of strong sentiment, the sudden turning on of the lights of 
 sound knowledge of life and things that we find in the author when he is most 
 fanciful. The others are weird enough and strong enough in human interest 
 to make a name for their writer had his name needed making.' 
 
 London : WILUAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 THE NAULAHKA 
 
 A Tale of West and East 
 
 By RUDYARD KIPLING and WOLCOTT BALESTIER 
 
 In One Volume^ price 6i". 
 
 The Athenaeum. — ' There is no one but Mr. Kipling who can make his 
 readers taste and smell, as well as see and hear, the East ; and in this book 
 (if we except the description of Tarvin's adventures in the deserted city of 
 Gunvaur, which is perhaps less clear-cut than usual) he has surely surpassed 
 himself. In his faculty for getting inside the Eastern mind and showing its 
 queer workings, Mr. Kipling stands alone.' 
 
 The Academy. — ' The Nanlahka contains passages of great merit. 
 There are descriptions scattered through its pages which no one but Mr. 
 Kipling could have written. . . . Whoever reads this novel will find much of 
 it hard to forget . . . and the story of the exodus from the hospital will rank 
 among the best passages in modern fiction.' 
 
 The Times. — 'A happy idea, well adapted to utilise the respective ex- 
 perience of the joint authors. . . . An excellent story. . . . The dramatic 
 train of incident, the climax of which is certainly the interview between 
 Sitabhai and Tarvin, the alternate crudeness and ferocity of the girl-queen, the 
 susceptibility of the full-blooded American, hardly kept in subjection by his 
 alertness and keen eye to business, the anxious eunuch waiting in the distance 
 with the horses, and fretting as the stars grow paler and paler, the cough of 
 the tiger slinking home at the dawn after a fruitless night's hunt — the whole 
 forms a scene not easily effaced from the memor}'.' 
 
 THE MAN OF STRAW 
 
 By EDWIN PUGH 
 In One Volume, price ds. 
 
 The Daily Mail. — ' So finely imagined and so richly built up with natural 
 incident and truthful detail, that no one who cares for a fine novel, finely 
 written, can afford to let it pass. Mr. Pugh's study of John Coldershaw is, 
 in its strength, a graduated truth of detail, masterly almost beyond possibility 
 of overpraise. Possibly it is the London setting which lends the story a 
 touch of the style of Dickens. Certain it is that London humanity has never 
 been so well portrayed since Dickens ceased to portray it.' 
 
 Black and White. — ' Certain to be widely read and to be discussed, since 
 it is notable f jr matter and manner alike. Abounds in magnificent situations. 
 The realism is ever touched with imagination, and it is often powerful and 
 never dull.' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. — ' Places its author in the front rank of the new 
 realism. Nothing that Mr. Pugh describes is a mere fancy picture — every 
 stroke of his pen brings conviction with it. He writes with the instinct of 
 an artist, and selects his incidents with marvellous skill.' 
 
 The Scotsman. — ' A story of singular power and absorbing interest. The 
 author proves himself a keen, sympathetic student of life in the poorer parts 
 of the Metropolis. It is impossible to convey anything like an adequate 
 conception of the sustained animation and the dramatic vigour of the book, 
 or of the fertile imagination of the writer. It is full of scenes of pathos, of 
 humour, or of those possessing a fine blending of both qualities.' 
 
 Londo.n: WILLIAM IIEINEMANN, 21 JiEDFORD Street, W.C
 
 THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH 
 
 By GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO 
 
 T?i One Volume, price 6i-. 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette.— 'A masterpiece. The story holds and haunts 
 one. Unequalled even by the great French contemporary whom, in his realism, 
 D'Annunzio most resembles, is the account of the pilgrimage to the shrine of 
 the Virgin by the sick, deformed, and afflicted. It is a great prose poem, that, 
 of its kind, cannot be surpassed. Every detail of the scene is brought before 
 us in a series of word-pictures of wonderful power and vivid colouring, and the 
 ever-recurring refrain Viva Maria ! Ma}-ia Evviva ! rings in our ears as we 
 lay down the book. It is the w'ork of a master, whose genius is beyond 
 dispute.' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. — 'The author gives us numerous delightful pictures, 
 pictures of Italian scenery, simple sketches, too, of ordinary commonplace 
 innocent lives. The range of his female portrait gallery is almost as wide and 
 varied as that of George Meredith. His Ippolita, his Marie Ferris, his 
 Giuliana Hermil live as strong and vivid presentments of real and skilfully 
 contrasted women. The Triumph of Death ends with a tragedy as it also 
 begins with one. Between the two extremes are to be found many pages of 
 poetry, of tender appreciation of nature, of rare artistic skill, of subtle and 
 penetrative analysis.' 
 
 The Westminster Gazette. — ' For a vivid and searching description of 
 the Italian peasant on his religious side, written with knowledge and under- 
 standing, these pages could hardly be surpassed. We see their Paganism and 
 their poverty and their squalor, yet also that imaginative temper which lends 
 a certain dignity to their existence. The narrative is remorseless . . . yet it 
 is rich and full of atmosphere. M. D'Annunzio has a tender eye for natural 
 detail ; the landscape of Italy, its flowers and trees, kindles him to genuine 
 poetry. We are left at the close of his story with a feeling that something 
 like genius is at work. This book is one which will not yield to any simple 
 test. It is a work of singular power, which cannot be ignored, left unread 
 when once started, or easily banished from the mind when read.' 
 
 GOD'S FOUNDLING 
 
 By a. J. DAWSON 
 
 In One J^oliinie, price 6j". 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. — 'Both as regards strength and sincerity of 
 purpose (Mr. Dawson seems at length to have rid himself of that unwhole- 
 some decadent taint) and excellence of portraiture, this story is a surprising 
 advance on any of his former efforts. The character of Mr. Morley Fenton, 
 the strong man tired, is a very fine and striking piece of work. George 
 Bernard, the happy-go-lucky, clean-lived Bohemian, is a very manly, lovable, 
 and life-like character. . . . The main thesis of the' story — to wit, that no 
 man can work out his brother's salvation — is powerfully and skilfully 
 developed. As the work of a young writer, God^s Foundling- strikes me as 
 being not only full of promise, but also as something very like an achieve- 
 ment.' 
 
 London: WILLIAxM IIEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 THE THIRD VIOLET 
 
 By STEPHEN CRANE 
 In One Volume, price ds. 
 
 The Academy. — 'A precipitate outpouring of lively pictures, a spontaneous 
 dazzle of colour, a frequent success in the quest of the right word and phrase, 
 were among the qualities which won for The Red Badge of Courage immediate 
 recognition as the product of genius. These qualities, with less of their 
 excess, are manifest in The Third Violet; and the sincere psychology, the 
 scientific analysis, which, in the earlier work, lay at the root of the treatment 
 of its subject-matter, are no less sure in the author's portrayal of more daily 
 emotions — of the hackneyed, but never to be outworn, themes of a man's 
 love, a woman's modesty, and the snobbery which is very near to us all. Of 
 the hundreds who strive after this inward vision, and this power of just 
 expression, once in a decade of years, or in a score, one attains to them ; and 
 tlie result is literature.' 
 
 The Athenaeum. — ' In his present book, Mr. Crane is more the rival of 
 Mr. Henry James than of Mr. Rudyard Kipling. But he is intensely American, 
 which can hardly be said of Mr. Henry James, and it is possible that if lie 
 continues in his present line of writing, he may be the author who will intro- 
 duce the United States to the ordinary English world. We have never come 
 across a book that brought certain sections of American society so perfectly 
 before the reader as does The Third Violet, which introduces us to a farming 
 family, to the boarders at a summer hotel, and to the young artists of New 
 York. The picture is an extremely pleasant one, and its truth appeals to the 
 English reader, so that the effect of the book is to draw him nearer to his 
 American cousins. The Third Violet incidentally contains the best dog we 
 have come across in modern fiction. Mr. Crane's dialogue is excellent, and 
 it is dialogue of a type for which neither The Red Badge of Courage nor his 
 later books had prepared us.' 
 
 CLEO, THE MAGNIFICENT 
 
 By 'Z. Z.' 
 In One Volume, price ds. 
 
 The Academy. — 'A sound piece of work.' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. — 'The father of the young poet, who begins by 
 scorning his son's ambitions and ends by becoming his devoted admirer, is 
 capitally described ; so, too, in more delicate and original fashion, is Lady 
 Thiselton, the platonic friend of the hero.' 
 
 The Daily Mail. — 'This is, in many respects, one of the best pieces of 
 fiction we have read for some time. ... It is a strong piece of work, more 
 than commonly clever, conscentious, and sound, and made bright by characters 
 that are in most cases true to life.' 
 
 The Scotsman. — 'The story is well written, and it never loses the strong 
 hold it takes rjn the reader at the beginning.' 
 
 The Morning Post. — Cleo herself is a portrait full of observation, keen 
 sarcasm, and knowledge of her peculiar type. Very good also is the sketch 
 of the worthy Kctterings.' 
 
 The Jewish Chronicle. — ' It is original in conception ; it is worked out 
 with infinite conscientiousness and care ; it is a book of deepest pathos, and 
 of pathos that is half akin to humour. . . . He has written a romance of 
 youth, which is full of the earnestness and courage of youth, and is a work of 
 remarkable interest and attractiveness.' 
 
 London; WILLIAM IIEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 THE WORLD AND A MAN 
 
 By 'ZZ' 
 
 /;/ One Vohime, price 6s. 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. — 'This is an extremely clever novel. A Drama in 
 Dutch was clever, but this book is wsrth a dozen of it. In all modern fiction 
 there is no character more thoroughly realised than the Man with whom the 
 World dealt so disastrously. Z Z has analysed his hero according to the 
 best method of a literary artist. The story . . . fascinates from the sheer 
 power of its telling. Z Z's literary method is the literary method of Mr. 
 George Gissing, of Mr. George Moore, of Emile Zola. Although there are 
 so many details, one can see plainly enough that each has been carefully 
 selected for reproduction. In this respect his work is superior to that of most 
 modern realists, and to that of one, perhaps of two, of the writers we have 
 just mentioned. He is absolutely faithful to life. He gives just so much as 
 will produce a strong, vivid, memorable impression. The World a)id a Man 
 is a serious contribution to literature.' 
 
 The Globe. — ' Sincere and thoughtful, and so much above the average, 
 that all who read for profit should hasten to judge it for themselves.' 
 
 The Observer. — ' A strongly-written story which will please those readers 
 who care for the more serious kind of fiction. A clever and readable work, 
 which may be recommended to all who look for something more than mere 
 " flowers, froth, and flummery" in the fiction which they peruse.' 
 
 A DRAMA IN DUTCH 
 
 By 'Z Z' 
 l7i One Vohane, price ds. 
 
 The Speaker. — 'A novel of such remarkable merit, and written with such 
 easy mastery of style. From first to last this striking and powerful story 
 maintains a high level of excellence, betokening no 'prentice hand. It is a 
 story teeming with humour and pathos, instinct with the irony of human fate, 
 and quick to apprehend the subtle twists and inconsistencies of human 
 character. Above all, it is deliciously original . . . and told with great spirit, 
 humour, and dramatic vigour. A vivid picture of a side of life upon which 
 little light has been cast by our novelists since Dickens laid down his pen.' 
 
 The Westminster Gazette. — ' \^ivid in portraiture, vivacious in manner. 
 . . . The combination of close observation and grim sardonic humour gives 
 the book a decided charm. , . . The pathetic figure of Peter is drawn with a 
 tenderness which indefinitely enlarges our impression of the author's dramatic 
 possibilities.' 
 
 The Aberdeen Daily Free Press. — ' In the publication of this and 
 kindred works, Mr. Heincmann is doing much to maintain the freshness and 
 vigour of our English fiction. . . . He has seldom provided a pleasanter and 
 yet more bracing work than the Drama now before us. ... As a mere story 
 it will carry delight to even the most unthinking.' 
 
 London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 THE BETH BOOK 
 
 By SARAH GRAND 
 I?i One Vohitiie, price 6s. 
 
 Punch. — 'The heroine of the Beth Book is one of Sarah Grand's most 
 fascinating creations. With such realistic art is her life set forth that, for a 
 while, the reader will probably be under the impression that he has before him 
 the actual story of a wayward genius compiled from her genuine diary. The 
 story is absorbing ; the truth to nature in the characters, whether virtuous, 
 ordinary, or vicious, every reader, with some experience will recognise. 
 
 Sketch.—' Madame Sarah Grand has given us the fruits of much thought 
 and hard work in her new novel, wherein she tells of the " life of a woman 
 of genius." Beth's character is moulded by the varied experiences of her 
 early youth, and ever}' detail is observed with the masterly hand that gave 
 us the pranks of the Heavenly Tiviiis. As a study of the maturing process of 
 character and of the influence of surroundings exercised on a human being, 
 this book is a complete success and stands far ahead of the novels of recent date. ' 
 
 The Standard. — 'The style is simple and direct, and the manner altogether 
 is that of a woman who has thought much and evidently felt much. It is 
 impossible to help being interested in her book.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. — 'There is humour, observation, and sympathetic 
 insight into the temperaments of both men and women. Beth is realised ; we 
 more than admit, we assert, that we love her.' 
 
 The Globe. — ' It is quite safe to prophesy that those who peruse The Beth 
 Book will linger delightedly over one of the freshest and deepest studies of 
 child character ever given to the world, and hereafter will finil it an ever- 
 present factor in their literary recollections and impressions.' 
 
 THE HEAVENLY TWINS 
 
 By SARAH GRAND 
 I}i One Volume, price ds. 
 
 The Athenaeum. — ' It is so full of interest, and the characters are so 
 eccentrically humorous yet true, that one feels inclined to pardon all its 
 faults, and give oneself up to unreserved enjoyment of it. . . . The twins 
 Angelica and Diavolo, young barbarians, utterly devoid of all respect, con- 
 ventionality, or decency, arc among the most delightful and amusing children 
 in fiction.' 
 
 The Academy. — ' The adventures of Diavolo and Angelica — the 
 "heavenly twins" — are delightfully funny. No more original children were 
 ever put into a book. Their audacity, unmanageableness, and genius for 
 mischief — in none of which qualities, as they are here shown, is there any 
 taint of vice — are refreshing ; and it is impossible not to follow, with very 
 keen interest, the progress of these youngsters.' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. — ' Everybody ought to read it, for it is an inex- 
 haustible source of refreshing and highly stimulating entertainment.' 
 
 Punch. — ' The Twins themselves are a creation : the epithet " Heavenly" 
 for these two mischievous little fiends is admirable.' 
 
 The Queen. — ' There is a touch of real genius in The Heavenly Twins.'' 
 
 The Guardian. — 'Exceptionally brilliant in dialogue, and dealing with 
 modern society life, this book has a purpose — to draw out and emancipate 
 women. ' 
 
 LONPON : WILLIAM IIEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 IDEALA 
 
 A STUDY FROM LIFE 
 By SARAH GRAND 
 
 In Oiie Volume, price ds. 
 
 The Morning Post. — 'Sarah Grand's Ideala. ... A clever book in 
 itself, is especially interesting when read in the light of her later works. 
 Standing alone, it is remarkable as the outcome of an earnest mind seeking 
 in good faith the solution of a difficult and ever present problem. . . . Ideala 
 is original and somewhat daring. . . . The story is in many ways delightful 
 and thought-suggesting.' 
 
 The Liverpool Mercury. — 'The book is a wonderful one— an evangel 
 for the fair sex, and at once an inspiration and a comforting companion, to 
 which thoughtful womanhood will recur again and again.' 
 
 The Glasgow Herald. — 'Ideala has attained the honour of a fifih 
 edition. . . . The stir created by The Heavenly Twins, the more recent 
 work by the same authoress, Madame Sarah Grand, would justify this step. 
 Ideala can, however, stand on its own merits.' 
 
 The Yorkshire Post.— 'As a psychological study the book cannot fail to 
 be of interest to many readers.' 
 
 The Birmingham Gazette. — 'Madame Sarah Grand thoroughly deserves 
 her success. Ideala, the heroine, is a splendid conception, and her opinions 
 are noble. . , . The book is not one to be forgotten. ' 
 
 OUR MANIFOLD NATURE 
 
 By SARAH GRAND 
 
 In One Volume, price Gs. 
 
 The Spectator. — 'Insight into, and general spnpathy with widely 
 differing phases of humanity, coupled with power to reproduce what is seen, 
 with vivid distinct strokes, that rivet the attention, are qualifications for 
 work of the kind contained in Our Manifold Nature which Sarah Grand 
 evidently possesses in a high degree. . . , AH these studies, male and female 
 alike, are marked by humour, pathos, fidelity to life, and power to recognise 
 in human nature the frequent I'ecurrence of some apparently incongruous 
 and remote trait, which, when at last it becomes visible, helps to a com- 
 prehension of what might otherwise be inexplicable. ' 
 
 The Speaker.— 'In Our Manifold Nature Sarah Grand is seen at her 
 best. How good that is can only be known by those who read for them- 
 selves this admirable little volume. In freshness of conception and originality 
 of treatment these stories are delightful, full of force and piquancy, whilst 
 the studies of character are carried out with equal firmness and delicacy.' 
 
 The Guardian. — ' Our Manifold Nature is a clever book. Sarah Grand 
 has the power of touching common things, which, if it fails to make them 
 "rise to touch the spheres," renders them exceedingly interesting.' 
 
 London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 THE GODS ARRIVE 
 
 By ANNIE E. HOLDSWORTH 
 In One Volume, price 6.t. 
 
 The Review of Reviews. — ' Extremely interesting and very clever. The 
 characters are well drawn, especially the women. Old Martha is a gem ; 
 there are very few more palpably living and lovable old women in modern 
 fiction than her.' 
 
 The Guardian. — ' There is really good work in Miss Iloldsworth's books, 
 and this is no exception to the rule. In many ways it is really a fine story ; 
 the dialogue is good, and the characters are interesting. The peasants, too, 
 are well drawn.' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. — ' Packed full of cleverness : the minor personages 
 are instinct with comedy. 
 
 The Observer. — ' The book has the attractive qualities which have 
 distinguished the author's former works, some knowledge of human nature, 
 touches of humour rubbing shoulders with pathos, a keen sympathy for the 
 sorrows of life — all these make her story one to be read and appreciated.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. — 'The book is well written, the characters keenly 
 observed, the incidents neatly presented.' 
 
 The Queen. — 'A book to linger over and enjoy.' 
 
 The Literary World. — 'Once more this talented writer and genuine 
 observer of human nature has given us a book which is full of valuable and 
 attractive qualities. It deals with realities ; it makes us think.' 
 
 THE YEARS THAT THE LOCUST 
 HATH EATEN 
 
 By ANNIE E. HOLDSWORTH 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Literary World. — 'The novel is marked by great strength, which 
 is always under subjection to the author's gift of restraint, so that we are made 
 to feel the intensity all the more. Pathos and humour (in the true sense) go 
 together through these chaj^ters ; and for such qualities as earnestness, insight, 
 moral courage, and thoughtfulness. The Years that the Locust hath Eaten 
 stands out prominently among noteworthy books of the time.' 
 
 The Standard. — 'A worthy successor io Joanna Traill, Spinster. It is 
 quite as powerful. It has insight and sympathy and pathos, humour, and 
 some shrewd understanding of human nature scattered up and down its pages. 
 Moreover, there is beauty in the story and idealism. . . . Told with a humour, 
 a grace, a simplicity, that ought to give the story a long reign. . . . The 
 charm of the book is undeniable ; it is one that only a clever woman, full of 
 the best instincts of her sex, could have written.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. — ' The book should not be missed by a fastidious 
 novel-reader.' 
 
 London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 THE LAST SENTENCE 
 
 By maxwell GRAY 
 
 Author of 'The Silence of Dean Maitland,' etc. 
 
 In One Volume, py'ice ds. 
 
 The Standard. —' 77^^ Last Sentence \% a remarkable story; it aboumls 
 ■with dramatic situations, the interest never for a moment Hags, and the 
 cliaracters are well drawn and consistent.' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. — 'One of the most powerful and adroitly worked- 
 out plots embodied in any modern work of fiction runs through The Last 
 Sentence. . . . This terrible tale of retriljution is told with well-sustained 
 force and picturesqueness, and abounds in light as well as shade.' 
 
 The Morning Post. — ' Maxwell Gray has the advantage of manner that is 
 both cultured and picturesque, and while avoiding even the appearance of the 
 melodramatic, makes coming events cast a shadow before them so as to excite 
 and entertain expectation. ... It required the imagination of an artist to 
 select the kind of Nemesis which finally overtakes this successful evil-doer, 
 and which affords an affecting climax to a rather fascinating tale. ' 
 
 The Lady's Pictorial. — 'The book is a clever and powerful one. . . . 
 Cynthia Marlowe will live in our memories as a sweet and noble woman ; one 
 of whom it is a pleasure to think of beside some of the "emancipated" 
 heroines so common in the fiction of the day.' 
 
 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH 
 
 By M. HAMILTON 
 I/i One Volume, price 6j'. 
 
 The Observer. — 'Miss Hamilton has seldom written to better advantage 
 than in this volume. The book is mainly dependent for interest on its 
 characterisation, but there is a distinctly human note struck throughout, and 
 the author displays keen insight into everyday life and its complications.' 
 
 Literature. — 'Well told in a vein of vigorous and consistent realism.' 
 
 The Court Journal. — It is written with good taste, and is full of shrewd 
 perceptive touches, so the interest is sustained agreeably without effort and 
 without the artificial stimulus of sensationalism. The story, in a word, is 
 both interesting and pleasant, and one that should not be missed.' 
 
 The Scotsman. — ' The story is admirably told and has a very real interest, 
 because the characters are real. ' 
 
 London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 MCLEOD OF THE CAMERONS 
 
 By M. HAMILTON 
 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Speaker. — ' We have read many novels of life at Malta, but none so 
 vivid and accurate in local colour as JSP Lead of the Camerons. A well-told 
 and powerful story . . . acute analysis of character ; it offers a standard of 
 perfection to which the majority of writers of fiction cannot attain.' 
 
 The Literary World. — 'A decidedly good story. It hac some very 
 original features, is well told, and is entertaining enough to hold the reader^ 
 in close attention. ' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. — ' A well told story. A lifelike picture of garrison 
 existence in Malta, as well as a number of vigorous and convincing character- 
 sketches, outlined with considerable force, and filled in with great delicacy of 
 finish. From beginning to end, the story is alive with human interest.' 
 
 The Manchester Guardian. — ' Striking and exceedingly readable. Miss 
 Hamilton is to be congratulated upon a very fresh, exciting, and yet natural 
 piece of work.' 
 
 A SELF-DENYING ORDINANCE 
 
 By M. HAMILTON 
 
 In One Volume, price ds. 
 
 The Athenaeum. — 'The characters are exceptionally distinct, the movc- 
 nicnt is brisk, and the dialogue is natural and convincing.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. — 'Joanna Conway is on distinctly new lines, and 
 it has given us pleasure to follow her spicy, attractive personality through 
 all the phases of her carefully, finely-depicted evolution.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. — 'An excellent novel. Joanna Conway is one of 
 the most attractive figures in recent fiction. It is no small tribute to the 
 author's skill that this simple country girl, without beauty or accomplishments, 
 is from first to last so winning a personality. The book is full of excellent 
 observation.' 
 
 Woman. — 'Contains the finest, surest, subtlest character drawing that 
 England has had from a new writer for years and years past.' 
 
 London: WILLIAM IIEINEMANN, 21 Bedkord Street, W.C.
 
 MARIETTA'S MARRIAGE 
 
 By W. E. NORRIS 
 In One Volume^ price ds. 
 
 The Athenaeum. — 'A fluent style, a keen insight into certain types of 
 human nature, a comprehensive and humorous view of modern society — these 
 are gifts Mr. Norris has already displayed, and again exhibits in his present 
 volume. From the first chapter to the last, the book runs smoothly and 
 briskly, with natural dialogue and many a piquant situation.' 
 
 The Morning Post.— 'Mr. Norris has had the good fortune to discover 
 a variety of the "society" novel which offers little but satisfaction to the 
 taste. Perfectly acquainted with the types he reproduces, the author's 
 characterisation is, as always, graphic and convincing. Rarely has the type 
 of \.\\Qfciiii/ic incomprise been studied with such careful attention or rendered 
 with so much of subtle comprehension as in Marietta.' 
 
 The Sketch. — 'It would be difficult to over-estimate the ability it dis- 
 plays, its keen reading of human nature, the careful realism of its descriptions 
 of life to-day.' 
 
 The Daily News. — 'Every character in the book is dexterously drawn. 
 Mr. Norris's book is interesting, often dramatic, and is the work of, if not a 
 deep, a close and humorous observer of men and women.' 
 
 The Observer. — 'Novels from Mr. Norris's pen are invariably welcome, 
 and this will be no exception to the rule. Amongst other capabilities, he 
 possesses a strong knowledge of human nature, and his characters, be their 
 natures good, bad, or indifferent, are scrupulously true to life.' 
 
 The Spectator. — 'A specimen of Mr. Norris's work when he is in his 
 happiest mood.' 
 
 THE DANCER IN YELLOW 
 
 byw. e. norris 
 
 In One Volume, price ds. 
 
 Lady's Pictorial. — 'This is a capital novel. The story is very human, 
 very well told, and rather pathetic' 
 
 The Daily News. — 'The story is developed with great ingenuity and 
 skill, and there is nothing unreal or sentimental in the pathos of the closing 
 scenes. This book is one of the best that he has given us of late.' 
 
 The Academy. — 'The whole book teems with cultivated irony and humour. ' 
 
 The Spectator. — 'Daisy herself is a masterpiece — certainly one of the 
 finest of Mr. Norris's very fine portraits.' 
 
 The Manchester Guardian. — ' From first to last it is easy, pleasant read- 
 ing ; full, as usual, of shrewd knowledge of men and things.' 
 
 The Guardian. — 'A very clever and finished study of a dancer at one of 
 the London theatres. We found the book very pleasant and refreshing, and 
 laid it down with the wish that there were more like it.' 
 
 The World. — ' The Dancer in Yellow takes us by surprise. The story is 
 both tragic and pathetic. . . . We do not think he has written any more 
 clever and skilful story than this one, and particular admiration is due to the 
 byways and episodes of the narrative.' 
 
 The Speaker. — ' Like all Mr. Norris's stories, it is a tale of society — in 
 other words, of the actual life of the present day — and it gives us many of 
 those clever sketches of country houses and their owners, and clubs and their 
 frequenters. . . . There is a strong element of tragedy in the tale ; all lovers 
 of his work will find a great deal to their taste in The Dancer in Yellow.'' 
 
 London : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C
 
 A VICTIM OF GOOD LUCK 
 
 By W. E. NORRIS 
 
 /;/ One Volume^ price (ys. 
 
 The World. — ' Here is Mr. Norris in his best form again, giving us an 
 impossible story with such imperturbable composure, such quiet humour, 
 easy polish, and irresistible persuasiveness, that he makes us read A Victim 
 of Good Luck right through with eager interest and unflagging amusement, 
 without being aware, until we regretfully reach the end, that it is just a 
 farcical comedy in two delightful volumes.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. — 'It has not a dull page from first to last. Any 
 one with normal health and taste can read a book like this with real pleasure.' 
 
 The Spectator. ^ — 'Mr. Norris displays to the full his general command of 
 narrative expedients which are at once happily invented and yet quite natural 
 — which seem to belong to their place in the book, just as a keystone belongs 
 to its place in the arch. . . . The brightest and cleverest book which Mr. 
 Norris has given us since he wrote The Rogue.^ 
 
 The Saturday Review. — 'Novels which are neither dull, unwholesome, 
 morbid, nor disagreeable, are so rare in these days, that A Victim of Good 
 Luck . , . ought to find a place in a book-box filled for the most part with 
 light literature. . . . We think it will increase the reputation of an already 
 very popular author.' 
 
 THE COUNTESS RADNA 
 
 uy w. e. norris 
 
 In One Vohime, price ds. 
 
 The Times. — ' He is a remarkably even writer. And this novel is almost 
 as good a medium as any other for studying the delicacy and dexterity of his 
 workmanship.' 
 
 The Morning Post. — ' The fidelity of his portraiture is remarkable, and 
 it has rarely appeared to so much advantage as in this brilliant novel.' 
 
 The Daily News. — ' The Countess Radna contains many of the qualities 
 that make a story by this writer welcome to the critic. It is caustic in style, 
 the character drawing is clear, the talk natural ; the pages are strewn with 
 good things worth quoting.' 
 
 The Speaker. — 'In style, skill in construction, and general "go," it is 
 worth a (lu/.en ordinary novels.' 
 
 Black and White. — ' The novel, like all Mr, Norris's work, is an exces- 
 sively clever piece of work, and the author never for a moment allows his 
 grasp of his plot and his characters to slacken. 
 
 The Westminster Gazette. — ' Mr. Norris writes throughout with much 
 liveliness and force, saying now and then something that is worth remember- 
 ing. And he sketches his minor characters with a firm touch.' 
 
 LoNDO.N : WILLIAM IIEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 WITHOUT SIN 
 
 By martin J. PRITCHARD 
 
 Iji One Volume, price ds. 
 
 The World. — 'The ingenious manner in which the story is sustained to 
 the end, the undoubted fascination of the writing, and the convincing charm 
 of the principal characters are what make this novel so intensely interesting.' 
 
 The Academy. — ' One is hardly likely to go far wrong in predicting that 
 Without Sin will attract abundant notice, on account not only of the daring 
 conception which forms its basis, but of the skilful way in which a delicate 
 subject is handled. . . . There is something indescribably pathetic in the 
 situation here produced and its sequel.' 
 
 The Daily News. — ' In this extraordinary book there are many tender 
 passages that would adorn many a story of a more •' normal " character. ' 
 
 The Revievy of Reviews. — ' An extremely clever book. . . . The story 
 is very delicately handled, and abounds in situations of thrilling interest. A 
 unique and daring book.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette.— ' Martin Pritchard's knowledge of the Ghetto 
 life is excellent, and excellently rendered. The j'oung Jewish girl who is 
 overtaken by a grave situation is realised to the best powers of the author. 
 . . . Granting the position, its treatment is unexceptionable. The critical 
 reader will dwell upon the pictures of Jewish life. These reveal in their 
 author a perception and an insight which augur well for his future eftbrts. 
 In any case, and from any point of view the book is worth perusal and 
 consideration.' 
 
 ANDRIA 
 
 By PERCY WHITE 
 
 In One Volume, price ds. 
 
 The Athenaeum. — ' In the small area oi Andria may be found more clever- 
 ness than in a score of common novels.' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. — ' Cannot fail to secure the sincerest admiration 
 as a collection of lifelike and convincing character-sketches, in every one of 
 which the touch of a master-hand is conspicuously and continuously manifest. 
 . . . Sparkles with brilliant metaphor and trenchant epigram.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. — ' One of the most brilliantly executed portraits in 
 modern fiction, the portrait of Louis Olway, philosopher and pessimist. . . . 
 The irony of it all is delicious.' 
 
 The Daily Graphic. — ' Aiidria is a worthy successor to Mr, Bailey- 
 Martin and that caustic study Corruption.' 
 
 The Glasgow Herald. — ' Andria is a good novel ; it touches many phases 
 of life ; its author writes as a gentleman, and his tone is refreshingly wholesome.' 
 
 The Standard. — 'A clever novel, subtle and discriminating in its character- 
 drawing, and full of excellent things. ... It shows, too, a greater capacity 
 for kindliness and sympathy, and a wider view of humanity than its pre- 
 decessors.' 
 
 The Daily News. — ' It goes without saying that a book from the pen of Mr. 
 Percy White abounds in cleverness. ... In some respects the story interests 
 VIS more than its predecessors. It is, we think, more human. ... It is all 
 very well done, with certainty of touch and convincing restraint of manner.' 
 
 LoNDo.v: WILLIAM HEINEMANX, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 CORRUPTION 
 
 By PERCY WHITE 
 In One Vohwie, price ds. 
 
 The Speaker. — 'In his first book, Mr.Bailey-Martin, Mr. White gave 
 us a remarkable picture of the sordidness of life in a suburban household. 
 In the present volume he rises to a higher social level, and treats of rising 
 members of Parliament, of political leaders, and even of Prime Ministers. 
 . . . The sketches of types are both forcible and true.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. — 'None can travel over his brightly-written 
 pages without being gladdened by the little flashes of epigram which light up 
 the scene for us, or stirred by the shrewdness and worldly wisdom which he 
 has put into the mouths of his characters. One of the charms of the book 
 lies in the conviction that its author knows the world, and is full of a broad, 
 full knowledge, and therefore sympathy with the foibles, passions, and sins 
 with which it abounds. ... It is a sermon preached on the old .-Eschylian 
 text, that the evil-doer must always suffer. The book is a drama of biting 
 intensity, a tragedy of infle.xible purpose and relentless result.' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. — ' Corruption more than fulfils the brilliant pro- 
 mises of Mr. Bailey -Martin. . . . As its title indicates, it deals with the 
 political and social cankers of the day, which it lays bare with a fearless and 
 unerring touch.' 
 
 MR. BAILEY-MARTIN 
 
 By PERCY WHITE 
 
 With a Photogravure Portrait of the Author 
 
 In One Volume^ price 6s. 
 
 The Times. — * Mr. \Miite has written an audacious book.' 
 
 The Athenaeum. — 'Mr. White, with the aid of the necessary qualities — 
 dry humour and delicate irony — succeeds nearly all the time. . . . The char- 
 acter is one e.xceedingly difficult to portray. . . . Mr. White has resisted the 
 temptation to force and exaggerate the note, and this is probably the secret of 
 his success.' 
 
 The Speaker. — 'There is cleverness enough in Mr. Bailey- Martin to 
 furnish forth a dozen novels. ... It shows not only a remarkable knowledge 
 of contemporary life, but a keen insight into character, and a considerable 
 degree of literary power.' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. — ' The book teems with smart sayings and graphic 
 characterisations, and cannot fail to make a mark among the cleverest novels 
 of the year.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. — 'The book must be pronounced a well-nigh un- 
 qualified triumph.' 
 
 The National Observer. — ' Admirably clever, and deserving to be read by 
 those who are bored with the average novel.' 
 
 Lo.ndo.n: WILLIAM HEINEMANX, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 IN HASTE AND AT LEISURE 
 
 By E. LYNN LINTON 
 /;/ One Volume^ price 65". 
 
 The Speaker. — 'Mrs. Lynn Linton commands the respect of her readers 
 and critics. Her new story, In Haste and at Leisure, is as powerful a piece 
 of writing as any that we owe to her pen.' 
 
 The St. James's Budget— 'A thorough mistress of English, Mrs. Lynn 
 Linton uses the weapons of-knowledge and ridicule, of sarcasm and logic, with 
 powerful effect; the shallow pretences of the "New "Woman" are ruthlessly 
 torn aside.' 
 
 The Literary World. — ' A\Tiatever its exaggerations may be, In Haste and 
 at Leisure remains a notable achievement. It has given us pleasure, and we 
 can recommend it with confidence.' 
 
 The Daily Graphic.—' It is an interesting story, while it is the most 
 tremendous all-round cannonade to which the fair emancipated have been 
 subjected.' 
 
 The World. — ' It is clever, and well written.' 
 
 The Graphic. — ' It is thoroughly interesting, and it is full of passages that 
 almost irresistibly tempt quotation.' 
 
 The St. James's Gazette.— 'It is a novel that ought to be, and will be, 
 widely read and enjoyed.' 
 
 The Manchester Courier.— 'In this cruelly scientific analyses of the 
 "New Woman," ]Mrs. Lynn Linton writes with all the bitterness of Dean 
 Swift. The book is one of remarkable power.' 
 
 THE SPOILS OF POYNTON 
 
 By HENRY JAMES 
 /// One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The National Observer.— 'One of the finest works of the imagination, if 
 not actually the finest, that has come from the press for several years. A 
 work of brilliant fancy, of delicate humour, of gentle satire, of tragedy and 
 comedy in appropriate admixture. A polished and enthralling story of the 
 lives of men and women, who, one and all, are absolutely real. We con- 
 gratulate Mr. James without reserve upon the power, the delicacy, and the 
 charm of a book of no common fascination.' 
 
 The Bookseller. — 'Shows all Mr. James's wonted subtleness of observa- 
 tion and analysis, fine humour, and originality of thought.' 
 
 The Standard. — 'Immensely clever.' 
 
 The Daily News. — ' Mr. James's art is that of the miniaturist. In this 
 book we have much of the delicate whimsicalities of expression, of the amaz- 
 ing cleverness in verbal parryings ; we never cease to admire the workman- 
 ship.' 
 
 The St. James's Gazette. — 'A notable novel, written with perfect com- 
 mand of the situation, original — a piece of exquisitely polished literature.' 
 
 The Manchester Guardian. — 'Delightful reading. The old felicity of 
 phrase and epithet, the quick, subtle flashes of insight, the fastidious liking 
 for the best in character and art, are as marked as ever, and give one an 
 intellectual pleasure for which one cannot be too grateful. ' 
 
 London : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 WHAT MAISIE KNEW 
 
 By henry JAMES 
 
 In Otie Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Academy. — ' We have read this book with amazement and delight : 
 with amazement at its supreme deHcacy ; with delight that its author retains 
 an unswerving allegiance to literary conscience that forbids him to leave a 
 slipshod phrase, or a single word out of its appointed place. There are many 
 writers who can write dialogue that is amusing, convincing, real. But there 
 is none who can reach Mr. James's extraordinary skill in tracing dialogue 
 from the first vague impulse in the mind to the definite spoken word.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle-. — ' A work of art so complex, so many-coloured, so 
 variously beautiful ! One is bewildered, one is a little intoxicated. The 
 splendid voice still rings in one's ears, the splendid emotions still vibrate 
 in one's heart, but one is not yet ready to explain or to translate them. It 
 is life, it is human life, with the flesh and blood and the atmosphere of life ; 
 it is English life, it is the very life of London. But it is not what they call 
 "realism." It is life seen, felt, understood, and interpreted by a rich ima- 
 gination, by an educated temperament ; it is life with an added meaning ; 
 it is life made rhythmic ; it is life sung in high melodious prose ; and that, it 
 seems to us, is the highest romance.' 
 
 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 By henry JAMES 
 
 Ifi One Volume, price ds. 
 
 The Morning Post — ' Mr. James stands almost alone among contemporary 
 novelists, in that his work as a whole shows that time, instead of impairing, 
 ripens and widens his gifts. He has ever been an example of style. His 
 already wide popularity among those who appreciate the higher literature of 
 fiction should be considerably increased by the production of this excellent 
 novel.' 
 
 The Daily News. — 'A melodrama wrought with the exquisiteness of a 
 madrigal. All the characters, however lightly sketched, are drawn with that 
 clearness of insight, with those minute, accurate, unforeseen touches that tell 
 of relentless observation. The presentation is so clear that they seem to 
 move in an atmosphere as limpid as that which permeates the pictures painted 
 by Dc Ilooghe, It may be the consumate literary art with which the whole 
 thing is done that the horror of the theme does not grip us. At the sinister 
 crisis we remain calm enough to admire the unfailing felicity of the author's 
 phrase, the subtlety of his discriminating touches, the dexterity of his 
 handling.' 
 
 The Scotsman. — 'A masterpiece of Mr. James's analytical genius and 
 finished literary style. It also shows him at his dramatic best. He has 
 never written anything in which insight and dramatic power are so marvel- 
 lously combined with fine and delicate literary workmanship.' 
 
 London : WILLIAM IIEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 EMBARRASSMENTS 
 
 By henry JAMES 
 In One Vohcme, price ds. 
 
 The Times. — ' Mr. James's stones are a continued protest against super- 
 ficial workmanship and slovenly style. He is an enthusiast who has devoted 
 himself to keeping alive the sacred fire of genuine literature ; and he has his 
 reward in a circle of constant admirers.' 
 
 The Daily News. — ' Mr. Henry James is the Meissonier of literary art. 
 In his new volume, we find all the exquisiteness, the precision of touch, that 
 are his characteristic qualities. It is a curiously fascinating volume.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. — 'His style is well-nigh perfect, and there are 
 
 phrases which reveal in admirable combination the skill of the practised crafts- 
 man, and the inspiration of the born writer.' 
 
 The National Observer. — 'The delicate art of INIr. Henry James has 
 rarely been seen to more advantage than in these stories.' 
 
 The St. James's Gazette. — 'AH four stories are delightful for adnrirable 
 workmanship, for nicety and precision of presentation, and The Way it Came 
 is beyond question a masterpiece.' 
 
 The Literary World. — ' Admirers of Mr. Henry James will be glad to 
 have this collection of polished stories. There is a fine finish about all his 
 work : no signs of hurry or carelessness disfigure the most insignificant para- 
 graph. Embarrassments is as good as anything he has written. As the work 
 of a .sincere and brilliantly clever writer it is welcome.' 
 
 TERMINATIONS 
 
 By henry JAMES 
 
 In One Vohane, price 6s. 
 
 The Times. — ' All the stories are told by a man whose heart and soul are 
 in his profession of literature.' 
 
 The Morning Post. — 'The discriminating will not fail to recognise in the 
 tales composing this volume workmanship of a very high order and a wealth 
 of imaginative fancy that is, in a measure, a revelation.' 
 
 The Athenzeum. — ' The appearance of Terminations will in no way shake 
 the general belief in Mr. Henry James's accomplished touch and command of 
 material. On the contrary, it confirms conclusions long since foregone, and 
 will increase the respect of his readers. . . . With such passages of trenchant 
 wit and sparkling observation, surely in his best manner, Mr. James ought to 
 be as satisfied as his readers cannot fail to be.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. — 'What strikes one, in fact, in every corner of 
 Mr. James's work is his inordinate cleverness. These four tales are so clever, 
 that "one can only raise one's hands in admiration. The insight, the sympathy 
 with character, the extraordinary observation, and the neat and dexterous 
 phrasing— these qualities are everywhere visible.' 
 
 The Scotsman. — ' All the stories are peculiar and full of a rare interest.' 
 
 London: WILLIAM HLINEMANN, 21 Bedford Streict, W.C.
 
 A COURT INTRIGUE 
 
 By basil THOMSON 
 In One Volume, Price 6s. 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. — 'The description of the Court is broad farce. 
 There is a topsyturvydom about everything that is almost Gilbertian. Lovers 
 of mystery are hardly to be satisfied without a little gore, and it is to these 
 that we commend A Court Tnln'giie.' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. — ' The hero is a personage worthy to have figured 
 in Alphonse Daudet's Les Kois en Exile, Told with great power and striking 
 impressiveness. ' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. — 'The romance is sprightly and entertaining. 
 jNIr. Thomson must have the credit for an audacious and happy piece of 
 invention. ' 
 
 The Guardian. — 'Admirably told. The reader's curiosity is keut awake 
 the whole time. , . . The idea is both original and ingenious. ' 
 
 The Academy. — 'Mr. Thomson has three first-rate qualities : wit, inven- 
 tion, and an admirable manner. No cleverer book will appear this side of 
 Christmas. A book at once enthralling and original.' 
 
 The Morning' Post. — 'The balance is always evenly held between 
 pleasant comedy and farce in Mr. Thomson's decidedly clever work. His 
 conceit is carried out with vivacity and considerable lightness of touch, to 
 which is added just enough pathos.' 
 
 CHUN-TI-KUNG 
 
 By CLAUDE REES 
 In One Vohane, Price ds. 
 
 The World. — 'Apart from its love interest, the novel is decidedly enter- 
 taining, as the author is not only a keen student of Chinese character, but has 
 written powerfully, and as one having authority, on the intricacies of ofiicial 
 and social life and habits in the Flowery Land.' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. — ' A novel of exceptional merit ; probably the most 
 elaborate and painstaking study of celestial life and character that has ever yet 
 appeared in the Englisli language, or, for that matter, in any European tongue.' 
 
 The Literary World.— 'A wonderfully intimate and presumably accurate 
 account of the life and doings of a middle-class young Chinaman. The first 
 part is delightfully humorous and original . . . with much of the peculiar 
 charm which carries the reader into such a wonderful atmosphere of things 
 Asiatic' 
 
 The St. James's Budget. — 'A striking bit of work. While it is so lightly 
 and amusingly written that it would attract readers seeking only entertain- 
 ment, it speaks with knowledge of matters that claim the interest of the serious 
 thinker. The book is an artistic and well-rounded whole, and is a valuable 
 contribution to the literature that gives one part of the world some idea of the 
 life the other part is living.' 
 
 London; WILLLVM IIEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C
 
 THE L ATEST F ICTION 
 
 KING CIRCUMSTANCE 
 
 By EDWIN PUGH 
 In One Volume, price ds. 
 
 THE HOUSE OF HIDDEN TREASURE 
 
 By maxwell GRAY 
 /;/ One Volume, price ds. 
 
 THE LAKE OF WINE 
 
 By BERNARD CAPES 
 In One Volume, price ds. 
 
 THE OPEN BOAT 
 
 By STEPHEN CRANE 
 In One Volume, price ds. 
 
 THE TWO MAGICS 
 
 By henry JAMES 
 hi One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 A CHAMPION IN THE SEVENTIES 
 
 By EDITH A. BARNETT 
 /// One Volume, price, 6s. 
 
 PHASES OF AN INFERIOR PLANET 
 
 By ELLEN GLASGOW 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 THE DULL MISS ARCHINARD 
 
 By ANNE D. SEDGWICK 
 In One Volimie, price 6s. 
 
 THE KING'S JACKAL 
 
 By RICHARD HARDING DAVIS 
 
 /// One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 THE SCOURGE-STICK 
 
 By Mrs. CAMPBELL-PRAED 
 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 London : WILLIAM IIEINEMANN, 2i Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Form L9-Series4939
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 374 723 
 
 PR 
 
 5922 
 
 C33 
 1898 
 
 L.
 
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