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 THE PARADOX CLUB
 
 
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 THE 
 
 PARADOX CLUB 
 
 EDWARD GARNETT 
 
 ' dTOTroJTaTovg di) tivciq I'crwf Sokco aci 
 \tyeij'. tVTvxui i-tei'Tiiv tiq tv rij iroXti 
 roTf TOiovToig. o'lotg tfioi re Kal (Toi." 
 
 — ATToWoSiopov TOv KovipoXoyov irepi 
 /j.aTaiortxvias' Kfip.d. 
 
 T. FISHER UN WIN 
 26 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
 MDCCCLXXXVIII
 
 Go (?) 
 
 %0 
 
 Of what may not be broken, 
 And zuhat imtst not be spoken, 
 Be this to thee the token. 
 
 4878i.5 
 
 GKi/'T ton
 
 c < I 
 
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 CONTENTS. 
 
 -•0»- 
 
 FAGE 
 
 I. " The Windsor Castle " . . . i 
 
 11. In Defence of Woman . . .23 
 
 III, Which Leads to Socialism . . 63 
 
 IV. On London Bridge . . . . m 
 V. On Being Anticipated . . -133 
 
 VI. The Mile-End Road . . . .183
 
 " THE WINDSOR CASTLED
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 I. 
 
 ''THE WINDSOR CASTLED 
 
 The flash of a carriage-lamp in a dark 
 street lit up for an instant two faces, and 
 revealed two people to one another. 
 
 " Patrick ! " 
 
 "Nina!" 
 
 " Who would ever have thouofht of 
 meeting you here ? " 
 
 The young man and young woman, 
 who had thus met by accident in the 
 Hammersmith Broadway, turned in to- 
 wards the Windsor Castle. 
 
 It was a warm Sunday night in June,
 
 4 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 and the roadway was studded with little 
 groups of people who stood gossiping in 
 shadow. A fruit-shop hard by cast a 
 solitary bright patch across the pave- 
 ment, and here the passers-by stepped 
 into existence for a few yards of light, 
 and then stepped quietly out of it again. 
 Strings of men and women arm in arm, 
 soldiers — spots of scarlet — sailors with 
 bronzed faces, smiling girls in pink, 
 moved in front of the flaring gas like a 
 stream of marionettes and then vanished 
 to be seen no more. 
 
 On the night wind came floating the 
 sound of a horn far away. Tra la la, 
 tria tira tria la. Nearer and nearer it 
 came, and with it the quick beat of hoofs 
 and the thunder of wheels. Close at 
 hand it seemed to be ; now round the 
 bend of the road it swept ; and now the 
 people had barely time to gain the 
 causeway when an omnibus, drawn by 
 three horses, dashed past the Windsor
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 5 
 
 Castle, opposite the bracket of lights 
 where swung the sign-board, the people 
 on the top of the coach could be seen 
 laughing and chatting ; the next instant 
 they were swallowed up in the darkness, 
 and the horn was already sounding far 
 away down the street. The talkers 
 moved back into the roadway and took up 
 their conversation where they had left off. 
 The Windsor Castle stands a little 
 way back from the other houses, and 
 has an air of respectability and solidity 
 peculiar to an inn that scrutinizes its 
 visitors before they can come to close 
 quarters. Nina and Patrick brushed 
 past an old ostler who stood before a 
 pyramid of green buckets, watching with 
 melancholy eyes for an ideal four-in- 
 hand that never came ; and began to 
 pace up and down the yard, over the 
 cobbles, in the shadow of the inn. A 
 Salvationist had taken possession of the 
 darkest corner, but he was reserving his
 
 6 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 eloquence for the benefit of a celebrated 
 local Atheist who was momentarily ex- 
 pected. 
 
 "Then you have been abroad all this 
 time?" asked Patrick. 
 
 " O no ! I have been in London for 
 the last four months. And you } " 
 
 " I expect to die a clerk," he answered ; 
 " for I am still working at the office. 
 But what an odd meeting-place ! How 
 did }'ou come here ? " 
 
 "Oh," said Nina, "we have always 
 been meeting in odd places ever since 
 we were children. How curious it was, 
 for instance, that your family and mine 
 should have written for the same house 
 at such an out-of-the-way place as 
 Morthoe ? " 
 
 " My mother always declares there is 
 an affinity between the Lindons and the 
 Welds," said Patrick. " And at any 
 rate both homes broke up about the 
 same time."
 
 THE rARADOX CLUB. 7 
 
 " Come, let us leave old times alone," 
 cried Nina. "Why is it that when 
 people get together again, they always 
 go over the same old ground ? I hate 
 the past, especially since my father's 
 death. Let us talk about the present ; so 
 tell me where you are living now ? Are 
 you still on your beloved Surrey side ? " 
 
 " I have taken a garret in Ivy Lane." 
 
 "Ivy Lane ! Why that is where the 
 Paradox Club meets ! You know I am 
 a member." 
 
 " I had heard about the Club in a 
 vague way from somebody or other ; but 
 I had no idea that it was so near me. 
 How is it that you belong to it ? I 
 thought a Club that tried so hard to be 
 original must be necessarily dull." 
 
 " It amuses me," she answered ; " and 
 it has many advantages. To belong to 
 it is the easiest possible way of breaking 
 with all one's relations. A social Club 
 that has rooms in one end of the town
 
 8 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 instead of the other, that meets at ten 
 instead of the fashionable eight, that 
 includes women as well as men, is 
 so absolutely incomprehensible to the 
 average mind that all its members are 
 obviously outside Society. To the few 
 friends who really care for me it doesn't 
 matter a pin if I do what I like ; but to 
 most of my acquaintances it makes all 
 the difference in the world whether a 
 woman goes where she pleases." 
 
 " But still," urged Patrick, '' it is un- 
 pleasant for all one's friends to talk about 
 one, and say how sad it is that Nina 
 should — etc." 
 
 " No. They leave off talking, and 
 drop you altogether," said Nina; "and 
 so you get rid of the people who, on 
 the strength of having been introduced 
 to you, think they have a right to 
 criticize in detail everything you do. 
 Besides there are many advantages. I 
 never used to go about London before,"
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 9 
 
 ''But surely you needn't join the 
 Paradox Club in order to go about Lon- 
 don alone ? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't go alone ! " 
 
 " Does the Club then ramble about 
 in a body ?" 
 
 "We sometimes branch off into twos 
 and threes. I have been seeing some- 
 thing of Mr. Martell lately." 
 
 Patrick shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " I think I should like to belong," he 
 said, "just for the fun of the thing." 
 
 " What a capital idea ! And we want 
 a new member. Everybody else is so 
 much in earnest about things they know 
 nothing about, that you who know a 
 little of everything, will be a delightful 
 change. There is a Committee Meet- 
 ing to-morrow, and I will write to-night 
 and propose you." 
 
 " But perhaps they won't have me." 
 
 " Oh, I am sure they will, because 
 they can't find anybody to read a paper
 
 lO THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 for next week, and one was promised. 
 Now, if you will make one up, they will 
 be delighted to let you in, especially as 
 they know I shouldn't introduce any- 
 body very stupid. You will like it, I 
 know, because we talk of everything 
 under the sun, and have at last nearly 
 got to the point when nobody is offended 
 at anything that is said." 
 
 " But what on earth shall I write 
 about ? " he asked. 
 
 " Take that for your moral," said 
 Nina, pointing to a 'bus-driver who was 
 gallantly kissing his hand towards an 
 upper window in the inn, where fluttered 
 a white dress. They watched till the 
 girl re-appeared in the doorway, and ran 
 to join her lover under a dark archway. 
 
 " How happy she is ! " said Nina, with 
 the faintest touch of sadness in her 
 voice. 
 
 " Do you remember that evening at 
 Porlock ? " began Patrick, eagerly, look-
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. ll 
 
 ing up only to meet with a laugh from 
 Nina. 
 
 " I always feel a little sentimental on 
 Sunday night, don't you ? " she said. " I 
 put it down to the approach of Black 
 Monday, and the week's work." 
 
 Patrick was too angry to speak. He 
 vowed, for not the first time, that he 
 would never allude to Porlock again. 
 
 " What a fool I am," he thought, " to 
 keep on pretending to myself she cares 
 for me. I will never be sentimental with 
 her again, never ! " 
 
 " I will write a paper on Women and 
 Men," he said presently, changing his 
 tone so successfully that Nina knew it 
 was put on, " and I will praise the men 
 so much that all the women will get 
 indignant, and there will be a battle- 
 royal." 
 
 " Yes, praise the men ; for that will 
 irritate Mr. Chappie dreadfully. Mr. 
 Chappie is a misandrist," she explained,
 
 12 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " who will amuse you as much at first as 
 he will bore you afterwards." 
 
 •' And your misogynist ? " 
 
 " Is Mr. Martell, a Socialist whose 
 theories will not irritate you so much as 
 his pessimism." 
 
 " Does he amuse you ? " 
 
 ** No," said Nina, laughing, " 1 amuse 
 him." 
 
 *' What business has the fellow to be 
 amused with her ! " thought Patrick ; but 
 he said aloud, " Who are the other 
 celebrities of the Club ?" 
 
 " There is Mr. McWhirter, a Scotch- 
 man, of whom I can only say that if it 
 was a paradox to admit him, It would 
 certainly be a platitude to turn him out. 
 Then there is the poet, Lofthouse, who, 
 his enemies say, is a living argument 
 that Swinburne should never have come 
 into existence." i 
 
 " How so ? ' asked Patrick. 
 
 ♦'Well, they say that if he had not
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 1 3 
 
 Swinburne's metres to copy he would 
 imitate Browning, and so be unintelli- 
 gible. He is warm-hearted, though, and 
 I expect you will like him. Then there 
 is my friend, Charlotte Ward, of whom I 
 w^ill say nothing, Mrs. Lucas, Edward 
 Brinton, and several others. There are 
 two members who never by any chance 
 speak, and two others to whom nobody 
 listens." 
 
 " A pretty mixed lot ! And you meet 
 in Ivy Lane ? " 
 
 "Yes," she replied, "poor little place, 
 it is fast growing respectable ! ' Still it is 
 near the river which you were so fond of 
 and I found so dull." 
 
 "You are just as bad as all the rest," 
 he declared. " I never knew a woman 
 yet who cared for the picturesque." 
 
 "You always said that to annoy me, 
 whereas I expect I know more pic- 
 turesque scenes than you. Now have 
 you ever stood on London Bridge and 
 watched the sun rise ? "
 
 14 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " No, I haven't ; have you ? " 
 
 "Well, not yet," she admitted, "but I 
 mean to." 
 
 " People say," added Patrick, " that 
 3^ou can't have anything duller than the 
 London streets, but thanks to our Ves- 
 tries, you have roads up everywhere ; 
 and by night there are the red lamps, 
 the wigwams and the charcoal fires of 
 the workmen. From Chiswick to the 
 docks the Thames presents hundreds of 
 studies in cloud, sky, and water, ever 
 shifting in sunshine and rain. The 
 weather that we are always cursing 
 creates a thousand effects of light and 
 shade on the river, and a fog in Cheap- 
 side means rolling and lifting masses of 
 mist at London Bridge." 
 
 "Ah," said Nina, with a little yawn, 
 " I knew you would get on capitally with 
 Lofthouse. He is always lecturing us 
 on our blindness." Then womanlike, 
 a little sorry at having shown she was
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 1 5 
 
 bored, she hastened to add, " I think we 
 have found the picturesque here." 
 
 Patrick looking back saw the yard was 
 full of strange shadows. From a cart 
 where flared a fierce white lisfht a bare- 
 headed man was thundering away to a 
 highly appreciative audience below. On 
 the skirt of the crowd stood a litde 
 wizened old woman intently watching 
 the Atheist's face, which was red with 
 laughter and excitement. Not a move- 
 ment escaped this Christian cat, sure of 
 her atheistical mouse. Her fixed eyes 
 and withered face said clearly what her 
 thin lips only muttered — 
 
 " You think yourself very clever with 
 your low jokes at the Holy Bible ; but 
 you will burn in Hell for this, my fine 
 fellow, for ever and ever, some day." 
 
 Presently the Salvationists in the 
 darkest corner of the yard broke into a 
 quiet hymn, which rising sad and low 
 made the world fade for a little while to
 
 1 6 THE rARADOX CLUB. 
 
 those who stood and hstened. But the 
 beer-drinkers lounging on the tavern 
 steps paid not the sHghtest attention. 
 They did not even seem to be aware of 
 the presence of either Atheist or Sal- 
 vationist, and gazed at the starry night 
 with the air of sceptics who doubted the 
 reality of all things save horse-flesh. 
 Nothinof affected them but the absence 
 of liquor ; and they measured time by 
 the number of quarts. As children turn 
 the hour-glass upside down when the 
 sand has all run through, and let a little 
 run back again, they held their glasses 
 downwards, and waiting till the froth 
 had trickled on to the ground, they 
 sighed quietly and turned back into the 
 bar for another pint of *' four-half." 
 Every Sunday night in summer they 
 came to smoke, drink, and bet in a quiet 
 way, and they always encountered the 
 preacher. Too much of even salvation 
 palls. The hymn rose louder and louder
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. I 7 
 
 and seemed to speak so confidently of a 
 life hereafter that many of the Atheist's 
 hearers became uneasy, and, thinking 
 it better to be on the safe side, turned 
 towards the Salvationists. Others sud- 
 denly remembering that infidelity is 
 hardly respectable on Sunday evening, 
 stole silently away. But the Atheist 
 held his ground with the confidence of 
 a man who knows how to pick conun- 
 drums from the Bible, and demonstrated 
 triumphantly to a few faithful followers 
 that it was superfluous for Noah to place 
 a pair of fleas in the Ark. 
 
 Nina and Patrick left the rivals for 
 popularity, and turned to examine the 
 inn that encourages all sects because 
 " preaching is thirsty work." A glance 
 round the bar, of an afternoon, reveals 
 the mother-o'-pearl buttons, the ash- 
 plants, and the bow-legs of a generation 
 that one fancied had long ago passed 
 away. The farmers, however, after the
 
 1 8 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 Saturday night's dissipation, had all 
 returned home that morning with their 
 empty hay-carts, and Nina and Patrick 
 found an almost empty bar. Two 
 women were leaning against the counter, 
 and admiring a litde curly haired boy 
 whose head was buried in a quart-pot 
 which his mother held for him to drink 
 from. Presently he dived under the 
 arms of the three gaitered stable-boys 
 leaning stick in hand against the door- 
 way, and darted across the dark yard to 
 join some barefooted little girls, dressed 
 in straight faded purple gowns, who 
 stood in a silent row before the fruiterers 
 shop, and eyed the piles of bigaroon 
 cherries that smiled crimson and white 
 in the gaslight. When a passer-by 
 bought some the children stretched out 
 their hands, but said not a word ; and 
 when a cherry or two was dropped into 
 their tiny palms, they eat them slowly 
 and solemnly to make them last as long
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. TQ 
 
 as possible. Soon they could bear to 
 look at the tantalizing fruit no longer, 
 and they slipped back to the yard with 
 its lights and shadows to play a silent 
 hide and seek, stealing in and out of the 
 crowd like little mice, and running round 
 the pyramid of green buckets where the 
 old ostler stood watchinQ; them with a 
 melancholy smile. Round and round, 
 and in and out of the shadows they ran, 
 indifferent to all that was going on, to 
 the fanaticism of the preacher, to the 
 loQfic of the Atheist, to the rollinor 
 choruses that resounded down the Broad- 
 way from the throats of the pleasure- 
 seekers, happy and careless after the 
 long summer day. 
 
 " I understand, to-night, the philoso- 
 phers who say that the world is not real 
 at all," said Patrick. 
 
 " What a shock the man who first 
 discovered that must have felt ! " laus^hed 
 Nina,
 
 20 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " Nothing seems real to me here. So 
 many opposites collected in this yard 
 seem to destroy one another. The 
 Atheist who looks on the Salvationist as 
 a fool is thought to be the Devil by that 
 old woman there. Nobody notices the 
 children who will be singing hymns or 
 roaring songs on this very spot when the 
 present generation is dead, which will be 
 in less than thirty years ! What a pretty 
 girl that was on the box-seat of the last 
 coach that Hashed by ! I thought she 
 waved her hand to me. How odd it is 
 to think that while all these cries are 
 rising to-night into the air the world is 
 going round and round ! " , 
 
 "Come ! " cried Nina, "you are getting 
 too deep for me ! When you talk of the 
 world going round and round I feel my 
 head swim. Do you expect the globe 
 to stand still because those people 
 yonder were converted so quickly ? 
 The only thing that troubles me is that
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 21 
 
 we didn't give those baby-buntings some 
 cherries." 
 
 " When you catch an Irishman moral- 
 izing," said Patrick, apologetically, " be 
 sure he is either ripe for the grave or for 
 bed. Let us " 
 
 He broke off his sentence and listened 
 to the sound that came from the Rich- 
 mond Road, the sound of many voices 
 in chorus, and the beat of many feet. 
 As the roar died away, a single voice 
 took up the song, rising clearly above 
 the dull tramp, tramp, tramp. The 
 verse lasted till the voice seemed only a 
 few yards off in the gloom, and then the 
 chorus burst forth again, shaking the 
 windows, and making every stone in the 
 Windsor Castle echo and ring. The 
 people in the yard joined in : — 
 
 "We are four jolly good fellows, we are ! 
 The best of all jolly good fellows, hurrah ! 
 We were when we started this morning, ha, 
 
 hal 
 But the rest they have all got run in ! "
 
 22 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 closing in round the singers ; and the 
 crowd swept by, a sea of faces under the 
 bracket of lights, towards Kensington. 
 
 " Let us follow them," said Nina. 
 " There is nobody left but those men 
 who are still drinking and star-gazing, 
 and their wives who are wondering what 
 they can find to pawn to-morrow." 
 
 " That is my road," she said when 
 they had reached the bottom of the 
 Broadway. " I will not take you any 
 further." 
 
 "If the Paradox Club accept me," 
 said Patrick, detaining her hand for an 
 instant, " and we see a little of London 
 together, in what character shall we 
 meet ?" 
 
 "As friends," she answered. " Good- 
 night."
 
 IN DEFENCE OF WOMAN.
 
 II. 
 
 JN DEFENCE OF WOMEN. 
 
 " Woman," said Patrick to the assembled 
 Paradox Club, "is a diamond, adorning 
 the wearer. View it in this Hght and 
 you are dazzled by its brilliancy ; in this 
 and you are struck dumb by its white- 
 ness and purity ; in this and it blushes 
 rose-pink, the colour of modesty. Yet 
 there are critics who see nought in the 
 stone but the green or yellow that is 
 reflected from their own eyes. Some 
 lament its sharpness, saying it cuts worse 
 than a knife, especially when set in a 
 ring ; others deplore its hardness ; but 
 what good is it to argue with those who
 
 26 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 would thus have a woman blunt, and 
 with those who deplore her durability ? 
 
 " Woman's superiority over man has, 
 however, been put so much in jeopardy 
 by the rise of a class whose very exist- 
 ence is a satire on their sex that it is time 
 for some one to declare the truth boldly. 
 
 "It is at best a perplexing task to 
 select examples of man's inferiority to 
 woman, for instances rush on one by the 
 thousand. Let us, merely to gain 
 breathing-space, cry ' Beauty ! ' 
 
 " The sneer which most men assume 
 to hide their mortification when they 
 look in the looking-glass is as unavailing 
 as the train of subterfuges that speedily 
 follows. It is useless for men to protest 
 that beauty is skin-deep and that they 
 would not have it as a gift. Such 
 assertions are as ridiculous as the 
 writhings that accompany them. The 
 reason of man's ugliness is of course 
 obvious. While he has chosen wives
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 27 
 
 for their beauty, he has with supreme 
 indifference for the welfare of his descen- 
 dants, not waited to be selected. Behold 
 the results of his brutality I 
 
 " The number of ugly men that are to 
 be met with in the streets is indeed ap- 
 palling to a pretty woman. To avoid 
 ^he hideous sight Beauty is often com- 
 pelled to turn her head away, and thereby 
 incur a charge of coquetry, a charge the 
 inherent absurdity of which speaks for 
 itself. 
 
 " That utilitarian nation, the Chinese, 
 has a proverb to the effect that if Sing- 
 Sing be dead it is no use to cut his head 
 off So leaving the horrible but unde- 
 niable fact that men are ugly, let us direct 
 attention to their heaviness. Here a 
 gentle hint may be given to our friends 
 that this assertion is not to be disproved 
 by their getting up and stamping about 
 the room. Rather let them approach 
 this painful subject with their boots off ;
 
 28 THE TARADOX CLUB. 
 
 for they cannot hope to imitate success- 
 fully a woman's light footstep. 
 
 " One mio^ht as well swathe Nelson's 
 Column in brown paper, and then contend 
 it w^as not there, as explain away mas- 
 culine clumsiness by saying woman is 
 exceptionally deft. Qui s excuse s accuse ! 
 In habits, language, clothing, dinners, in 
 fact, in everything men are heavy. 
 * Well, and if they are ? ' cry many manly 
 voices ; * Let us grant they are heavy, 
 what then ? ' Gentlemen, having ad- 
 mitted the fact it is useless for you to 
 shut your eyes to what follows. You 
 are like sheep going to the slaughter 
 which baa contemptuously as they flock 
 along the road. 
 
 " Is it nothing that when some men 
 laugh they shake the house } Apart 
 from the injury done to the foundations, 
 I would respectfully point out that in 
 man's heaviness lies the root of the 
 absurd accusation that women have no
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 29 
 
 sense of humour. What woman of 
 sensibihty can bear to have her wit at 
 first misunderstood, then pounded with 
 force into a stupid head, and finally- 
 guffawed over ? Even were there no 
 risk of apoplexy, coarse laughter is so 
 unspeakably revolting to the feminine 
 mind that nothing would induce most 
 women to venture on a joke when men 
 are by. Unwilling, therefore, to waste 
 their keen but delicate arrows on the 
 tough hide of man, they reserve them 
 for their own sex, whence springs the 
 ancient calumny that women hate one 
 another. 
 
 " One of the most absurd arguments 
 ever used in support of the fiction of 
 man's superiority is that he has held 
 woman in subjection ever since the world 
 began. In fancied or in real subjection? 
 
 " Woman, ages ago, finding man at 
 her elbow, reflected, ' Behold a strong, 
 coarse, and low creature, who has an
 
 30 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 absurd attachment to me! It is most 
 fitting that he should go out in the wet 
 and cold, and kill savage animals for mc 
 to eat, and dig the ground for my corn, 
 and cut down the forests, so that / may 
 walk easily. I will stay at home and 
 talk.' 
 
 ** Accordingly, she at once turned man 
 out of doors as a sort of machine, to do 
 all the rough work for which her delicate 
 organization was not fitted. And man, 
 forsooth, because he was too dull to see 
 that he was directed by an intelligence 
 superior to his own, has the arrogance to 
 claim the mastery. In virtue of the labour 
 he performs ! 
 
 " Now that marshes have been drained, 
 and ground cleared, and roads and rail- 
 ways made, and the world, in short, 
 rendered traversable, women are coming 
 to the front, and calmly and with dignity 
 dispossessing men. Their cry is no 
 longer, * We are equal,' but ' We are
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 3 1 
 
 superior.' Though Girton has not been 
 founded many years, it has more than 
 once beaten Oxford and Cambridge ; 
 though obstacles beyond number have 
 been thrown in the way of women quali- 
 fying as doctors, the unequal conditions 
 under which they rival male physicians 
 show their greater capabilities. 
 
 " We have no wish to disparage men 
 — far from it — for we believe that in 
 secret they suffer severely from the 
 gloom into which their obvious inferior- 
 ity plunges them ; but, at the same time, 
 It is a truer kindness to point out to 
 them their melancholy position, than to 
 flatter them with the delusive hope that 
 the day is near when they may at length 
 expect to rival woman. 
 
 " Considering the progress that the 
 sexes have made of late, we may well 
 exclaim with the poet : 
 
 '* 'And panting man toiled after her in vain.' 
 
 Let not man, however, despair,
 
 32 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " Though inferior in beauty and wit, 
 goodness and greatness (for we no more 
 count brutality greatness than we count 
 practical joking wit), if he unreservedly 
 commit himself to feminine hands, he 
 may, in time, raise himself almost to the 
 level of one whom he has, at least, the 
 grace to acknowledge as his better-half. 
 Count Rumford reclaimed the beggars 
 of Bavaria at a single stroke, and if it 
 were not for the denseness, the stupidity 
 of the male mind, wives might do the 
 same with their husbands to-morrow. 
 
 " Of course we do not wish to argue 
 for a single moment that woman has not 
 her faults. She, alas ! has many ; among 
 which indulgence to men stands the 
 foremost. Her heart is so large that she 
 cannot generally bear to outshine the 
 other sex either in business or conver- 
 sation ; but let her once be aroused, and 
 she will have her way, come what will. 
 Indeed, a proverb to that effect exists
 
 THE TARADOX CLUB. 33 
 
 among every nation on the face of the 
 earth. 
 
 " Uncouth characters on the skulls of 
 mammoths, testifying to woman's power, 
 were deciphered by the late Frank Buck- 
 land ; and was it not Mr. Thomson, the 
 African explorer, who asserted that above 
 the door of every Masai's hut are written 
 the words, * She ruleth here ? ' Mr. 
 Monteiro, we believe, found the same 
 thing in Angola ; but it were an idle task 
 to multiply instances. 
 
 " Doubtless there are some Positivists 
 present who will speak with no uncertain 
 sound on the illustrious Comte, and his 
 woman-worship. 
 
 " Men say that they, and they alone 
 have ruled the world. If this be so, can 
 they look with pride on the results ? 
 The evils that exist now are largely 
 caused by the hypocrisy of man, who 
 refuses to acknowledge that he is guided 
 by woman. This argument may be 
 
 3*
 
 34 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 made more plain by the illustration of a 
 vicious horse and its rider ; man is the 
 former, woman the latter, and when there 
 is a spill we should like to know who is 
 to blame. 
 
 " We will not, however, pursue our 
 argument further, nor strike a man when 
 he is down ; and it is so patent that he is 
 down that our heart is filled with pity for 
 him. We readily grant that man is 
 superior in battle ; but what a superiority 
 in the nineteenth century ! He is also 
 superior in politics ; but woman has never 
 fairly entered the lists with him. Some 
 claim he may have to width of understand- 
 ing ; but, in trying to grasp all, he misses 
 all. Commerce remains in the hands 
 of man, so does the sweating system. 
 
 "But even in the stronghold of trade 
 woman is a better bargainer than man ; 
 for, starvation apart, she will give her 
 body and soul for a little love, but he 
 often barters his for a little pleasure."
 
 THE PARADOX CI.UB. 35 
 
 A murmur of applause ran round the 
 room as Patrick concluded. The Club 
 was in a talking humour, and most of the 
 members coughed in the dangerous 
 manner that indicates a person has some 
 thing to say. 
 
 "All who have heard Mr. Weld's 
 paper this evening," said a small gentle- 
 man with a pugnacious eye, " will, I am 
 sure, join with me in assuring him of the 
 great benefit the members individually 
 and collectively have received. But I 
 confess there was an absence of statistics 
 on this most important subject, a dispo- 
 sition to smooth over the difficulties, I 
 might even go further, and say a one- 
 sidedness in a few of his statements that 
 has disappointed me." 
 
 Patrick glanced to where Nina sat, 
 hoping she would combat this just criti- 
 cism. But she remained silent, and 
 gazed earnestly at Chappie, as though 
 she were drinking in all he said,
 
 36 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " I am of course aware," continued 
 Chappie, with a wave of his hand, " that 
 Mr. Weld has approached the question 
 lightly. But it is, with all deference to 
 him, a very bad sign for a nation not to 
 treat Woman seriously. I have only to 
 call your attention to the instances of 
 Rome under the Caesars, France under 
 Napoleon III. ; and to contrast with such 
 frivolous and corrupted societies that of 
 the ancient Germans, the modern Dutch, 
 and the Bavarians — the women of which 
 last state it is impossible to treat frivo- 
 lously — to see how important it is that 
 the wives, the mothers, and the daughters 
 of England should not be approached 
 lightly." 
 
 '* But are they approached lightly, Mr. 
 Chappie ? " asked a young lady, in a timid 
 voice. 
 
 " That Woman is approached lightly } " 
 replied the oracle, with genuine indig- 
 nation, " is, I think, apparent to any
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 2>7 
 
 thinker who may have casually strayed 
 into a music hall and heard the thought- 
 less, not to say flippant manner, in which 
 she is addressed. That a youth who is 
 about to embark on the perilous voyage 
 of matrimony should address his future 
 companion with the appellation of ' Tart,' 
 
 varied perhaps by -" 
 
 Nina beckoned Patrick aside to intro- 
 duce him to a young man with curly 
 hair, who had just entered the room. 
 Lofthouse looked in Patrick's frank eyes 
 and took a fancy to him at once. He 
 always boasted that he followed instinct, 
 and a very short acquaintance with him 
 showed that he was not, at all events, 
 like Martell the Socialist, a slave of 
 Reason, Patrick, on his part, seeing that 
 Lofthouse was not a scrap in love with 
 Nina, felt immediately an extraordinary 
 sense of relief and gratitude, and was 
 ready to hail the young man as a friend 
 in the strange circle into which chance 
 had flung him.
 
 38 THE TARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " You can watch the people from 
 here," said Lofthouse, stepping on to the 
 little balcony outside the window, across 
 which a curtain was half-draped ; "and 
 I will tell you a little about them." 
 
 "Who is that extraordinary Chappie?" 
 asked Patrick. 
 
 " My dear fellow, I don't like to be 
 ill-natured," replied the Poet ; " but he is 
 an unmitigated bore. His one theme 
 is the superiority of Woman, and indeed 
 it is whispered that he is right in 
 attributing common-sense to her, since 
 four have rejected him." 
 
 " And that young lady talking to 
 him," said Patrick. 
 
 '* Would like to be the fifth ! " Loft- 
 house continued. " Miss Ward is not 
 bad-looking to my taste, but a dis- 
 tinguished critic once cruelly said of her 
 that she possessed the beauties of the 
 mind. You must think me very ill- 
 natured to repeat all this .'* "
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 39 
 
 " Oh, not at all," said Patrick, thinking 
 him most ill-natured. 
 
 " The fact is," pursued the Poet, 
 " that I have a grudge against Miss 
 Ward at the moment. The other night 
 I was talking about Swinburne, and — • 
 well perhaps I seemed a little conceited 
 — she made me promise I would perform 
 any penance she might think fit to 
 impose. What do you think it was ? " 
 
 " To repeat some of your own poetry," 
 suggested Patrick. 
 
 " Exactly ! " replied the Poet, inno- 
 cently. " How strange you should 
 have hit it ! Was it not too bad of 
 her ? " 
 
 ** The worst injury you can do a poet 
 is to read his poetry," replied Patrick, 
 sententiously. 
 
 Lofthouse frowned. 
 
 " Never mind," said Patrick, eager to 
 set matters straio^ht asfain. " It was 
 very malicious of her."
 
 40 THE rARADOX CLUB. 
 
 Lofthouse winced. 
 
 " At all events," cried the Irishman, 
 hastily, " I shall hear some to-night, and 
 that will show me a little of what you 
 really think, won't it ? " 
 
 "Yes," replied the Poet, slightly in 
 doubt as to the compliment ; " but you 
 should have been here at the last 
 meeting. The first poem was the 
 best." 
 
 " Who is that man standing by 
 himself in that corner — the man with 
 rather a melancholy face, I mean," 
 asked Patrick, anxious to escape from 
 such delicate ground. 
 
 *' Oh, that is Brinton. He is a very 
 curious fellow, and I don't quite under- 
 stand him. He has a history, I think ; 
 at least I was told so. His father was 
 of good family, but he got into difficulty, 
 and Brinton, I believe, was brought up 
 in quite low surroundings. He rarely 
 alludes to it, though from what he says
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 4 1 
 
 you will see that he knows a great deal 
 of London and London life. There ! 
 You see that dark handsome man who 
 is just speaking to him ? " 
 
 " The man with the black hair ? " 
 returned Patrick, who was on the look- 
 out for a rival. 
 
 "Yes. Well, he is Martell, the 
 Socialist. It will interest you to know 
 him, for Miss Lindon introduced him to 
 the Club, just as she has you." 
 
 " Oh, indeed ! " said Patrick, in a 
 voice that misfht have been a little 
 happier. 
 
 ** Between you and me," whispered 
 Lofthouse, maliciously, who saw how the 
 land lay, and knew that a lover will 
 swallow anything, " he is a good deal in 
 love with her." 
 
 This was a clever invention of the 
 Poet's, and Patrick immediately reversed 
 it, and in a few minutes believed that 
 what the Poet had meant to say was that
 
 42 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 Nina was a good deal in love with 
 Martell. 
 
 " What of that gentleman with the 
 red beard ? " he said, to say something. 
 
 " That is McWhirter. I can't tell you 
 anything about him. You will know 
 soon enough," groaned Lofthouse. 
 
 *' What is he ? " 
 
 " Say what isn't he. Reptile ! Philis- 
 tine ! But the extraordinary thing about 
 him is that he is always admitted 
 everywhere ; he is always at the studios ; 
 he has always the best place at the 
 theatre, and nobody knows why. For 
 instance, I met him last night at Dears- 
 ley's ! " 
 
 " Perhaps he went for the society one 
 meets there." 
 
 " He went to drink the whiskey and 
 water," said the Poet, warmly. " One 
 merit the man has, and I believe it has 
 ensured his introduction everywhere : he 
 is a good listener ! "
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 43 
 
 " Then you don't speak to one another, 
 I suppose," said Patrick. 
 
 " I don't say we are not on speaking 
 terms," said Lofthouse, " but I wouldn't 
 answer for the quaHty of our language. 
 Come, let us join the others ! " 
 
 " If a man really loves a woman," 
 they heard Chappie remarking, " the 
 best way he can show it is by not 
 marrying her." 
 
 " Most women would think that 
 pushing kindness a little too far," said 
 Nina ; " though of course they would be 
 very grateful for such consideration." 
 
 " But do not you think, Miss Lindon, 
 that as we have reached a stage when 
 every cultured man feels himself utterly 
 unworthy of the woman he loves, the 
 time is approaching when he will have 
 the courao-e to sacrifice himself to his 
 convictions, and refuse to drive a woman 
 to the degradation of marrying her 
 inferior ? "
 
 44 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " But," urged Nina, gravely, " many 
 noble women — indeed most of my 
 intimate friends — are eager to make the 
 experiment, and see whether they cannot 
 raise men, and give them loftier ideals." 
 
 " Ah, most gratifying ! " murmured 
 Chappie. 
 
 " And several who have tried," she 
 continued, "assure me that they do not 
 regret the step, for though they have, 
 as you say, in a manner thrown them- 
 selves away, still they have made their 
 husbands happy, in which they find 
 their own happiness." 
 
 " Still, to a woman who contemplates 
 a career, marriage means a sad, an utter 
 waste of time." 
 
 " My married friends say," pursued 
 Nina, "that there is not so much time 
 wasted as one might think." 
 
 " You talk of a career ! " broke in 
 Lofthousc, contemptuously. " What on 
 earth does a woman want with a qareer
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 45 
 
 at all? Not one in a thousand prefers 
 a profession to marriage." 
 
 " You forget you are in the nineteenth 
 century," said Chappie, severely. '' Re- 
 member that there are women who are 
 not guided solely by their lower feelings, 
 that all are not infatuated by the word 
 ' Love.' Many who realize that marriage 
 means the devotion of one's entire time 
 to one's family, and consequently the 
 abandonment of all serious study in 
 Literature, Science, and Art, have re- 
 fused the most tempting offers, and have 
 continued, with zest, in a life of celibacy." 
 
 " I have nae met them in Edinbro'," 
 said McWhirter, with interest. 
 
 " They are to be met with every- 
 where," persisted Chappie. " I am 
 continually hearing intellectual women 
 remark that they will never sacrifice 
 their chosen pursuit, their beloved occu- 
 pation, their prospect of a career, for the 
 mere sake of getting a husband."
 
 46 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " Yes, I agree with you," put in 
 Martell. " I, too, have often met 
 women who seemed so convinced of the 
 truth of the idea, that they were con- 
 tinually impressing it on everybody they 
 met." 
 
 Chappie, like most of his countrymen, 
 detested sarcasm, for the reason that he 
 did not understand it. 
 
 ** Thousands ! " he repeated, " thou- 
 sands ! I myself have seen innumer- 
 able instances in lady doctors, nurses, 
 post-office clerks, and teachers. Miss 
 Ward, I appeal to you. You can give 
 us the names of many such, 1. have 
 no doubt." 
 
 Miss Ward, seeing everybody had 
 turned to her, very properly ca£;t down 
 her eyes. She hesitated just so long as 
 the rules of good society demand from 
 maidens, and then turning to Nina, re- 
 marked : 
 
 " I can't remember any ; can you,
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 47 
 
 dear, except Edith Rawlinson ? She 
 always used to say — didn't she ? — that 
 painting put marriage out of the ques- 
 tion till " 
 
 " Till Robert Clayton persuaded her 
 she could carry on the two together," 
 said Nina, basely deserting her sex. 
 
 " I always think," said Chappie, 
 solemnly, " that an unwedded woman 
 is like some masterpiece fresh from the 
 hand of the master. But married, she 
 is torn away from the environment of 
 genius, and set up where, alas, she may 
 get injured, or defaced, or stained." 
 
 This unfortunate ending was rather 
 embarrassing to all present. 
 
 " I always think," said Nina, " that an 
 unmarried woman is like an unthreaded 
 needle; one is more struck by her sharp- 
 ness than by her usefulness." 
 
 " For my part I agree with Mr. 
 Chappie," said Patrick, ironically, trying 
 to revenge himself on the blunderer
 
 48 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 who had put his idol to the blush. 
 " Any modern statue outside its maker's 
 studio is sure to get defaced." 
 
 Chappie immediately rose, crossed the 
 room, and insisted on shaking hands 
 with the bewildered Irishman. 
 
 " My dear Mr. Weld," said he, " let 
 me congratulate you on having joined 
 the one cause which bands all earnest 
 workers in the nineteenth century to- 
 gether under one flag. It has been 
 reserved for us, my dear sir, to pioneer 
 humanity to the fields where Woman, 
 unfettered, may do exactly what she 
 pleases." 
 
 " But if she did," suggested Patrick, 
 "don't you think that there might be a 
 little confusion." 
 
 " All great movements are accom- 
 panied with confusion," said Chappie ; 
 " in fact, I should look with suspicion on 
 any that were not. Confusion must 
 come first, and I can assure you our 
 movement is spreading it everywhere."
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 49 
 
 " It has nae yet reached Edinbro'," 
 said McWhirter, waking up, and pro- 
 ducing a note-book. " Perhaps you 
 could gi' me the parteeculars, Mr. 
 Chappie." 
 
 " Certainly ! " replied the latter, 
 charmed at the interest his remarks 
 were exciting. " Certainly. Our organ, 
 The Wonmns Cry, is spreading the 
 movement east and west, and south and 
 north. It has penetrated to nearly every 
 centre of intellectual life. I am surprised 
 to hear you say it has not yet reached 
 your renowned Scottish metropolis, Mr. 
 McWhirter. We have a branch there 
 presided over by Mrs. Fitz-Eustace 
 Macintosh, a woman of the most extra- 
 ordinary gifts, and a great poetess. I 
 am sorry to say though, that the whole 
 of the British Press (except her country- 
 men's) and the London publishers have 
 entered into a conspiracy to ignore her 
 for some reason or other." 
 
 4
 
 50 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " Doubtless, as you say, for sojue 
 reason or other," echoed Lofthouse. 
 
 Martell was getting rather annoyed 
 that so Httle notice was taken of him. 
 Usually he had it his own way, but 
 Patrick's paper rendered rather out of 
 place the gloomy paradoxes he was ac- 
 customed to be applauded for. 
 
 " My publisher tells me," he began, 
 " that he has published twenty-nine 
 books of poetry by women, since he 
 began business, and three cookery 
 books." 
 
 " A gourmand says somewhere," said 
 Nina, " that a cook, like a soldier, has to 
 stand the glare of a searching fire, and 
 the smoke that is baneful to the com- 
 plexion. Every day is a fighting day, 
 but her warfare is almost always without 
 glory ! ' Think of the fortitude of a 
 woman who cooks her husband's dinner!" 
 
 " What of the fortitude of the man 
 that eats it ! " said the Socialist.
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 5 1 
 
 " But I heard you say yourself, Mr. 
 Martell," said Miss Ward, "that you 
 thought the conversation of most men 
 very dull." 
 
 " Teach us the art of scandal, and 
 piquancy will follow," he replied. 
 
 Chappie shook his head in sorrow. 
 "Ah," he cried, "turn to woman for 
 charity ! If you would only listen to 
 her she would teach you how easy a 
 thing- forgiveness is, if " 
 
 "If you may deplore in confidence to 
 some one else the sins of the person you 
 have forgiven ! " put in Martell. 
 
 " Many a harsh word would remain 
 unspoken," continued Chappie, " if " 
 
 " If one were free to indulije afterwards 
 in a little harmless lauQ^hter with one's 
 friends ! " 
 
 " My dear fellow, you overdo your 
 sarcasm," protested Lofthouse. " You 
 will agree with Chappie that nearly all 
 the bores you meet are men."
 
 52 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " And whose fault is that but 
 woman's?" said the Socialist. " If she 
 would only let him into the secret that 
 there is no warfare between the sexes, 
 but only between members of the same 
 sex, he would cease tiresome flattery of 
 a face where in nine cases out of ten the 
 recipient, but too well aware of the 
 truth, dreads lurking sarcasm above all 
 things. He really only wants a little 
 taking in hand to appreciate the value 
 of a woman's innuendo, and enjoy the 
 full flavour of feminine repartees." 
 
 Martell felt he was going rather far ; 
 but he was used as a Socialist to never 
 going back. 
 
 " At one stroke men would cease to be 
 bores," he explained, " if they were only 
 told that perpetually insisting on making 
 their meaning clear is horribly irritating 
 to a sex that never means what it says," 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Martell, they sometimes 
 mean what they say ! " cried Miss Ward,
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 53 
 
 Struck with sudden horror at the idea 
 that the company might reverse all the 
 maidenly sentiments she had expressed 
 that evening. 
 
 " They know at least how to take a 
 hint," admitted Martell, growing cooler. 
 " You have taught me, Miss Ward, that 
 in arofuinof with a woman success is 
 defeat." 
 
 " Victory over a woman in anything 
 is defeat," cried the Poet, impetuously, 
 adding in a whisper to Patrick, " How 
 often poor Chappie has wished to be 
 defeated ! " 
 
 " Why should we ever wish to cross 
 swords," asked Brinton, who had sat a 
 silent listener most of the time, " when 
 we have the more equal contest of 
 woman fencing woman. I always fancy 
 I see the flash of rapiers when two rivals 
 meet. Each is on guard, brilliant 
 flashes of wit mark the attack, quiet 
 replies the defence, and silence for an
 
 54 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 instant tells when one has been 
 wounded." 
 
 " Mr. Martell would say," said Nina, 
 entering into the spirit of the com- 
 parison, " that every woman carries a 
 dagger. She may seem vanquished, 
 but the next instant, a stab tells the by- 
 stander that she is not disarmed." 
 
 " Ah ! You allow then that women 
 hate one another," cried the Socialist, 
 thinking he saw an opening. 
 
 " That must be a virtue in your eyes, 
 if all you say about us be true," laughed 
 Nina. 
 
 Martell paid the obvious compliment, 
 and Nina and he stepped on to the 
 balcony, leaving Patrick to the mercies 
 of Miss Ward. 
 
 His dissatisfaction was not diminished 
 by hearing shortly afterwards his name 
 mentioned by Martell with a burst of 
 laughter, in which Nina joined. He at 
 once flew to the conclusion that they
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 55 
 
 were laughing at him, and the reflection 
 that he was very mean to suspect it 
 made him more and more irritated. 
 When lovers are not uttering to them- 
 selves the platitudes of love, they are 
 thinking the paradoxes of jealousy ; and 
 Patrick was not cool-headed enouoh to 
 see that though Martell was in love, he 
 was in love with himself. He began to 
 respond so baldly to Miss Ward's 
 queries as to his exact views of Froebel's 
 Kindergarten system that she turned to 
 Lofthouse. 
 
 " Now, Mr. Lofthouse, you will not 
 refuse us one of your poems ? " 
 
 Lofthouse protested. 
 
 " Oh, how late it has grown ! I must 
 be getting home at once. Mr. Loft- 
 house, you surely will not refuse ! " 
 
 Lofthouse entreated. 
 
 " Oh, but indeed you cannot, Mr. 
 Lofthouse, for you ha.vc p/vmtsed." 
 
 " Oh, let him off, let him off! " said
 
 56 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 Martell, cheerfully, stepping off the 
 balcony with Nina. 
 
 " Aye, let the laddie aff, puir creeture ! 
 Dinna mind the poetry!" said Mc- 
 Whirter, putting in his spoke. 
 
 "Oh, it doesn't matter!" said the 
 Poet, very quickly. And he repeated the 
 following lines : 
 
 a ' 
 
 Midst Jiouses dark, froivning in gloomy 
 height, 
 A tavern tJiroiigh its open doors throws light ; 
 Within, burst after burst the laughter leaps, 
 Without, a woman in the darkness iveeps. 
 
 Dost iveep that zuhen he struck thee he forgot 
 The days that till thou diest thou can'st not ? 
 Or has some face brougJit memory to thy heart 
 To ivliisper what thou wast and what thou art? 
 
 Sojne pity and all pass ; one looks behind, 
 While still the laughter floats upon the zvind. 
 One turns the streaming tavern light to see. 
 In shadoiv weeps tJie ivoman bitterly!' 
 
 •' His poem brought me back to the
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 57 
 
 realities of life," said Nina, thoughtfully 
 to Patrick, as the two left the Club, and 
 climbed on to the top of a road-car. 
 " How artificial we were to-night ! I 
 have never been to such a light-hearted 
 meeting before." 
 
 But Patrick was anything but light- 
 hearted. He had fancied that Nina had 
 hinted to Martell that she preferred him 
 to see her home, but that the Socialist 
 had misunderstood her. The simplicity 
 and open-heartedness that made the 
 Irishman so popular among his friends, 
 gave him also all the petulance of a 
 child when crossed. 
 
 "What is Mr. Martell by profession?" 
 he inquired, after a short silence. 
 
 '* He spends most of his time in going 
 about the country, lecturing on Social- 
 ism." 
 
 " Doesn't he find that very dull ?" 
 
 " Oh, no. He told me that the con- 
 stant variety, the new faces, miners in 
 
 4*
 
 58 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 the North, labourers in the South of 
 England, fascinate him. You really 
 must get to know him better, Patrick, 
 he is such a great friend of mine." 
 
 The unlucky phrase " great friend of 
 mine " irritated Patrick still more. 
 
 " Yes, he seems to be a great friend 
 of yours. He was, as you predicted, 
 much amused with me," he said, re- 
 membering the laugh on the balcony. 
 
 "Yes, he was," said Nina, who was 
 growing sleepy, and had not seen what 
 he was driving at. " He told me he 
 was much amused with you." 
 
 She meant this as a compliment. 
 Martell had in reality told her that he 
 was much entertained by the paper "In 
 Defence of Woman." 
 
 But this was the last straw to Patrick. 
 He could restrain his childish vexation 
 no longer, and burst out : 
 
 " Oh, and you laughed with him at 
 me, Nina ! You said that we should
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 59 
 
 meet as friends to-night, and now you, 
 you " 
 
 "Patrick!" said Nina, softly. She 
 was perfectly amazed by the outburst, 
 and much hurt that he should have sus- 
 pected her of laughing at him with any- 
 body, especially with Martell, the last 
 person in the world. 
 
 " Yes," said Patrick, refusing to accept 
 any excuse for the cruel manner in which 
 he thought she had treated him ; " you 
 seem to have forgotten how long we 
 have known each other ; and now — now 
 I never want to go to the Club again!" 
 
 Immediately after he had said what 
 was in his mind he felt much relieved, 
 and, like a child, peeped anxiously out of 
 his eyes to see what would happen next. 
 
 " Really, Patrick, really, how — " said 
 Nina, in a voice which showed a mix- 
 ture of just indignation, and an aching- 
 heart. She could not bear this quarrel 
 which was so suddenly thrust upon her.
 
 6o THE TARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " How what ? " he asked, in a mild 
 voice, quite ready to make concessions, 
 and half sorry, half glad that he had 
 made her wretched. 
 
 "How can you be so ridiculous!" 
 retorted Nina, who began to see exactly 
 what had caused his anger. 
 
 *' Oh, very well ! " said Patrick, quite 
 defiant again, and with his suspicions 
 rushing back, although a small voice was 
 whispering that he was making a perfect 
 fool of himself. 
 
 " We shall soon be home now," said 
 Nina, coldly, and anxious to punish him. 
 
 They left the road-car, and walked 
 on in silence for some minutes. Then 
 they began to talk earnestly of things 
 that neither of them took the slightest 
 interest in. The names of some old 
 friends were mentioned. 
 
 "Nelly Erskine! Oh, yes; I still 
 correspond with her," said Nina. " But 
 I never can feel the same with her as I
 
 THE PARADOX CLUP.. 6 I 
 
 used to. You know she behaved very 
 coldly to her brother in trouble, and we 
 quarrelled over it. I never feel just the 
 same with people I quarrel with." 
 
 " Don't you ? " said Patrick, with a 
 sinkino^ heart. 
 
 " No," she replied, calmly. " I never 
 do. I daresay it is some fault in my 
 nature ; in fact, I am sure it is, for one 
 ought to forget as well as forgive. But 
 somehow or other, and most of all when 
 I'm. in the wrong, I never feel as though 
 we were the same. Something happens 
 you know between friends, and they 
 quarrel and that is the end of the friend- 
 ship. There you have the matter in a 
 nut-shell." 
 
 " Good-night," she said to Patrick, as 
 she inserted her latch-key. " Good- 
 night, we shall meet, I hope, at the club 
 next week." 
 
 Patrick walked home with a heavy 
 heart. He said to himself that they
 
 62 THE TARADOX CLUB. 
 
 could never feel the same exactly to- 
 wards one another, and he reproached 
 himself over and over again for having 
 behaved so badly, 
 
 " What a fool I have made of myself 
 this evening ! " he finally confided to 
 his pillow, when he at length fell asleep.
 
 WHICH LEADS TO SOCIALISM.
 
 III. 
 
 WHICH LEADS TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 When Patrick awoke the next morning, 
 his folly had assumed large proportions. 
 " How very contemptible I must have 
 seemed," he thought ; and he kept asking 
 himself how contemptible. At one mo- 
 ment he called himself, "Ass!" at the 
 next, "Idiot!" At dinner he grew more 
 cheerful, and fancied Nina must have 
 forgotten all about the incident ; but by 
 nightfall he concluded that she had meant 
 what she said, and that he could never 
 be the same to her again. Then he said 
 that she had only meant to frighten him, 
 or to make fun of him. But the next 
 moment something whispered, " Her
 
 66 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 voice showed that all was over between 
 you." Several times he sat down to 
 write to her, but after reading the few 
 stammering lines, his heart failed him, 
 and he tore the letters up, and flung 
 them away, A thousand times he told 
 himself indignantly that if he had been 
 contemptible before, he was far more 
 contemptible now to think so much of a 
 trifle ; but hard words did not do much 
 for him, and he always returned to the 
 question, " What if I never am the same 
 to her again ? " Besides all this, his brain 
 was busy with two important points : 
 first, did Nina care for Martell ? secondly, 
 did Martell love Nina? And the bitter 
 reflection that he might have been right 
 in his suspicions after all, did not lessen 
 his perplexity. 
 
 His conduct mav convince the reader, 
 who knows lovers well in theory, that 
 that Patrick was an unnaturally weak, 
 foolish, and unmanly young Irishman,
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 67 
 
 but let him remember that the epithets 
 he chooses to apply to the unfortunate 
 young fellow, may not please other 
 readers who have put love into practice. 
 Patrick was, in truth, deeply in love, and 
 his one wish was to see Nina and make 
 it up. Should he be so lucky as to be 
 forgiven, he swore to himself that he 
 wished he might never see her again, if 
 he ever behaved badly to her, his whole 
 life long. Never had he passed such a 
 lingering week ; but at length the club- 
 night arrived, and he hastened away to 
 Ivy Lane. He was decidedly early, but 
 curiously enough he encountered Nina, 
 who was gazing into a shop-window. 
 
 "What a beautiful night!" she re- 
 marked in a voice that a lover with the 
 utmost desire to make himself miserable, 
 could hardly describe as cold. 
 
 As it was so early, they paced up and 
 down the narrow street, curved like a 
 half-moon.
 
 68 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 Now that he was actually with her 
 again, his tongue refused to speak the 
 words he had been preparing for the last 
 forty- eight hours. 
 
 " Nina," he began, " I-I " 
 
 " Look at that boy up there ! " said 
 Nina, rather quickly, pointing to a win- 
 dow where a boy sat reading, his head 
 resting on his hand, with a tall candle 
 beside him. The light fell on his fair 
 flushed face, eagerly devouring the pages. 
 A woman's voice called " Tom ! " but 
 the boy read on. Then as she called 
 again, he looked round alarmed, shut the 
 book up, and blew the light out softly. 
 Presently a woman walked across the 
 now dark room, put her head out as 
 though expecting to see her son hanging 
 from the bars, and remarking, " Why, he 
 isn't there after all ! " went away. 
 
 Patrick felt that now or never was the 
 time, and he burst out before Nina had 
 time to interrupt the confession she was
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 69 
 
 nervously anticipating, " Nina, I want to 
 tell you that — that I think — I hope 
 you " 
 
 " Patrick ! " she broke in hurriedly, 
 " You know we have always been friends. 
 Don't let us now be foolish, and " 
 
 Their hands met in the dark, and 
 Patrick felt that her touch lifted a moun- 
 tain from his heart. 
 
 '' 'Tis a braw nicht ! " said McWhirter's 
 voice close beside them ; and Patrick 
 cursed the unhappy Scotchman, who had 
 robbed him of such an opportunity. 
 
 The three turned into the Club, where 
 McWhirter did not improve the situa- 
 tion by drawing Nina into a corner 
 and making her give her opinion on a 
 packet of the photographs of his rela- 
 tives, which he produced from his coat- 
 tail pocket. 
 
 At length Martell arrived, and read 
 with studied indifference as follows : —
 
 yO THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 '* My paper this evening is but a col- 
 lection of frag-mentary thoughts carelessly 
 thrown together. The only thread, as 
 you will see, that runs throughout is con- 
 tempt for the existing order of things, 
 and a loose advocacy of Socialism. You 
 will remember that I have explained 
 scientific Socialism as I understand It, on 
 past occasions. 
 
 " The ordinary merchant looks with 
 intense aversion on begging and stealing, 
 though his trade is but a combination of 
 the two cemented with industry. His 
 life is passed in begging the world to 
 take his goods ; his success is insured in 
 successful cheating, or as he prefers to 
 call it, ' having the best of the bargain.' 
 To this end he employs a number of 
 ' travellers,' who are paid according to 
 their skill in persuading men to take more 
 than they can possibly sell of goods which 
 are not what they are represented to be. 
 This, we are told, is ' the custom of the
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 7 1 
 
 trade,' a phrase which is as elastic as 
 the consciences of the men who employ- 
 it. With this phrase, the manufacturer 
 swindles the merchant, the merchant the 
 tradesman, the tradesman the public, and 
 the public one another. Nobody objects, 
 for all are guilty. When the wheel is set 
 rolling, how can a spoke refuse to follow .'' 
 When a spoke in a carriage-wheel breaks, 
 the smith replaces it by a new one ; but 
 we have improved on that, we mend it, 
 and whitewash It In the Bankruptcy- 
 Court, and give It another trial. One 
 virtue trade has, and that is a great one ; 
 it offers our sons a safe career. In 
 apprenticing a boy to the most hum- 
 drum business, we can guarantee his 
 future, provided he is fairly dishonest. 
 Before I have done with trade, I would 
 give Its followers two pieces of advice. 
 First, when you are forced to engage a 
 man at starvation wages, it is cruelty to 
 deprive him of soft words. Second, in
 
 72 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 selling your soul to the devil, do not, as 
 so many eminent merchants have done 
 in working themselves night and day, 
 part with your body : it is a ruinous 
 system of discount for cash, 
 
 "Do not think, however, that I rate the 
 business man lower than the thief. The 
 State gains more by the former, for while 
 the gain of the burglar is pretty sure to 
 find its way to the publican, the dishonest 
 gain of the manufacturer occasionally 
 goes at his death to build a reformatory. 
 A thief's apprentices end on the gallows, 
 or at the best draw a good deal of money 
 from our pockets for lodging in a well- 
 built, well-drained, well-ventilated, and 
 well-lighted palace, whereas the younger 
 sons of merchants not infrequently take 
 a literary turn, or go into the Church. 
 Thieving has indeed many drawbacks. 
 For one thing, it promotes class hatred. 
 Competition is nowadays so keen that it 
 is not extraordinary a merchant should
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. ^'^ 
 
 detest a thief when the latter steals in a 
 single night what the former has taken a 
 year to filch. For another thing, a thiefs 
 business is often connected with blood- 
 shed. Were it not for this fatal flaw, 
 Society might class him as high as a bank 
 director, a publisher, or even place him 
 on an equality with a member of the Stock 
 Exchange. But the English never par- 
 don the conjunction of failure and blood- 
 shed. You ask, then, why has not a 
 certain eminent statesman been hanged 
 long ago ? My answer is that whereas 
 this eminent statesman shed blood in the 
 Soudan Campaign, his General was re- 
 sponsible for the fai litre, and as each was 
 clearly responsible for only one crime, 
 both were rewarded. 
 
 "Another objection to the thief's 
 occupation is that exigencies require him 
 to be constantly moving. Could he 
 only change his name, and select a 
 locality where people would be sure of 
 
 5
 
 74 THi: TARADOX CLUB. 
 
 finding him at home, he would be as 
 respectable a member of society as 
 Dodson or Footer of Lincoln's Inn. 
 This prejudice in the English mind 
 against shifting the scene of action has, 
 till comparatively lately, proved fatal to 
 the player, and he has been classed as 
 a vagabond in every hum-drum head. 
 But directly the stroller exchanged his 
 theatre of wood for one of stone, the 
 laws that forbade him contaminating the 
 souls of the citizens were exchanged 
 for others that permitted him to 
 burn their bodies alive, and the magis- 
 trate who would formerly have com- 
 mitted him to prison, was anxious to be 
 invited to supper. 
 
 " Beggars and thieves are always 
 coupled together, but, to my mind, with 
 much injustice. So long as the one keeps 
 out of the workhouse, and the other out 
 of the prison. Society gives them pictu- 
 resque names and pronounces them in-
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 75 
 
 teresting ; but now that ' brigand ' and 
 'mendicant' are out of fashion, our 
 statesmen erect poorhouses and Bride- 
 wells, and strive to make it equally 
 degrading to enter either. In this they 
 have never quite succeeded. While the 
 honest poor steadily refuse to camp out 
 in the casual ward, public opinion, 
 despite official platitudes, refuses to 
 believe that he who asks for bread and 
 is given a stone is on a par with him, 
 who, aided by a dark turn in the lane, 
 exchanges a stone for bread— for the 
 blood that stains the flint is not the 
 thief's. 
 
 "Another point in favour of the beggar 
 is that from the individualist's point of 
 view, no class is freer from the vice of 
 demanding State aid. This trait, indeed, 
 is strongly marked from his earliest 
 childhood. No State education for him, 
 no State inspection, none of that enerva- 
 ting control, which according to our 
 
 J
 
 76 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 greatest living philosopher is so bane- 
 ful to our national life ! Begging, in 
 short, offers a wide field to the able. I 
 submit that there are good openings in 
 the profession for young men who are 
 too scrupulous to go Into business, too 
 lazy to become clerks, and not courage- 
 ous enough to turn authors. It is true 
 that to beg is thought degrading by 
 manufacturers who give starvation wages, 
 but then it is also thought to be 
 humiliating by clerks who dare not 
 condemn their master's dishonesty, and 
 it is said not to pay by journalists ! But 
 does it pay ? From the statistics avail- 
 able there seems no doubt that the 
 average beggar — ranging from the 
 match-box beggar to the writer of the 
 beofo^infr letter — earns over double the 
 weekly wage of the seamstress of East 
 London, who works twelve hours a day ; 
 and a little more than a writer in the 
 Civil Service, who draws ^75 a year.
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 77 
 
 Be it understood that we urge only the 
 able to take up the profession. It is 
 only the extreme delicacy of touch 
 required for success that keeps the ill- 
 paid clerk and dissatisfied mechanic from 
 rushino; into the business. As it is we 
 should strongly advise no tyro to enter 
 who will not be content with ^65 per 
 annum for the first two years, but it may 
 be added that it is a profession in which 
 money can be saved, and when a little 
 capital has been accumulated a man can 
 leave begging behind, and climb to a 
 higher stage of society where ' solicit- 
 ing ' takes its place. Finally, three 
 objections may be disposed of. Some 
 authorities say, ' Once a beggar, always 
 a beggar.' If this be so, which we 
 deny, it is gratifying to think, from our 
 experience of our friends that so many 
 people are settled for life in a not 
 unprofitable industry. Secondly, it is 
 said that begging involves a course of
 
 78 THE TARADOX CLUB. 
 
 unblushino; deceit, but we answer that a 
 false leg is no more necessary to a man 
 who enters the trade, than is the truth 
 to an advertiser. Thirdly, it is objected 
 that if mendicancy be made a recognized 
 profession there will be a tremendous cry 
 of ' Competition ! ' Let our tyro, how- 
 ever, walk the streets in a frock coat 
 and a silk hat, and it will be hard to 
 distinguish him from any other respect- 
 able thief. 
 
 " I wnW now conclude my remarks," 
 continued Martell, " with a few words 
 on Socialism." Thus speaking he 
 plunged into his beloved subject. All 
 his calmness was gone, all his logic was 
 lost, swept away by his own eloquence. 
 Nature seemed to have revenged herself 
 for his indifference to everything else 
 natural or the reverse, by making him 
 ridiculous on this hobby of Socialism. 
 It looked as though he had bottled up 
 all the indiernation that he had felt on
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 79 
 
 Other subjects, for the support of this 
 most theoretical of theories. Foroettine 
 he was speaking to a dilettanti Club, 
 and not to the Northern miners he 
 thundered : — 
 
 I u < Proletariat production — capitalist 
 appropriation : workers make — traders 
 take. Socialized production : individual 
 exchange. Work in concert : exchange 
 at war. Supremacy of town : subservi- 
 ence of country. Over-crowded cities : 
 empty fields. Such are the briefest 
 possible statements of the economical 
 and social forces \vhich result in our 
 present anarchy, not for one class alone, 
 though that suffers far the most, but for 
 all. Capital dominates the planet, acts 
 irrespectively of all nationalities, grabs 
 its profits irrespective of all creeds and 
 conditions : capital is international, un- 
 
 ^ With apologies to the joint authors of " A 
 Summary of the Principles of Socialism."
 
 So THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 sectarian, destitute of regard for human- 
 ity or religion. 
 
 " ' Even the middle-class debating club 
 at Westminster, which passes muster as 
 the English House of Commons, has 
 found itself compelled by the exigencies 
 of the case to interpose between the 
 employers and their wage-slaves, be- 
 tween the Irish landlords and their serfs, 
 between adulterating poisoners and 
 their victims. Yet the House of Com- 
 mons must go. Its death will be that 
 of the House of Lords. Violence ! But 
 let us be careful of what comes after, for 
 remember that in the case of the French 
 proletariat, when the war was over Paris 
 found that though she had got rid of the 
 Emperor with his gang of professional 
 gamblers and prostitutes, France was to 
 be handed to the exploitation of a re- 
 actionist Republic. Let us therefore be 
 cautious. Let us be moderate ! Our 
 demands are at present small. We ask
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 8 1 
 
 first of all for the land. Thoueh one 
 does not see exactly how the over- 
 worked hinds of England are solely to 
 undertake the agricultural management 
 of the country, still that is no reason why 
 a handful of persons should draw vast 
 revenues from a monopoly fraudulendy 
 seized from their countrymen ; still less 
 why the land in towns, and the minerals 
 below the land in country should be 
 held for the benefit of the few. 
 
 " 'But Socialists have no factious pre- 
 judices, and are influenced by no jealous- 
 ies of a clique. We call therefore also 
 for the immediate management and 
 ownership of the railways by the State, 
 so that the inland communications of 
 the country may be under the control 
 of the people at large, and carried on for 
 their benefit, regard being had to the 
 full remuneration of the labour of all 
 who are engaged in the work of trans- 
 port. 
 
 5*
 
 82 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " 'As with railways so with shipping. 
 There the whole economical forms are 
 ready, in the same way, for immediate 
 management by the State, and the 
 transfer could be arranged almost with- 
 out a hitch. 
 
 " ' This is borne out by the greatest 
 scientists in despite of huckster economy 
 and huckster economists, whose princi- 
 pal professors are forced to eat their 
 own words as administrators and to 
 stultify their teaching as thinkers by 
 sheer pressure of the course of events. 
 At this hour the State is by far the 
 largest employer of labour in the king- 
 dom. But I have said enough to show 
 you that if the proletariat of the world 
 unite, they will conquer the Capitalists, 
 and the Bourgeoisie, the two greatest 
 foes of Humanity. Unite! only unite. 
 
 " ' For this we educate, to this end we 
 agitate, to achieve a certain victory for 
 all we orofanize. Unite! Unite! Unite!'"
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. S^ 
 
 For half an hour longer he continued 
 In this strain, while Patrick sat aghast 
 at the cataract, though he rejoiced in 
 his heart at the sudden revelation of 
 Martell's craze. " Capitalist," " proleta- 
 riat," " bourgeoisie," " labour-force," 
 " hind," " drudge," " organization," 
 "coterie," "bed-rock," "marauder," 
 "altruism," " surplus value," "universal 
 brotherhood," '' propaganda," " primeval 
 man," " landlord rascality," "fuglemen," 
 "bare subsistence," " monopoly," "wage 
 slave class," " class robbery," " countless 
 generations," and " exploitation," throb- 
 bed through his brain till he feebly 
 wondered whether he was bourgeois or 
 proletariat, or merely an overworked 
 hind exploited by his capitalistic and 
 marauding employer. Finally, he gave 
 up his vain efforts to reach the bed-rock 
 of the matter, and he sat hopeless and 
 dazed, not daring to laugh lest Nina 
 should think him ill-natured.
 
 $4 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 At length the Sociahst brought his 
 harangue to a close. With the fmal 
 word "municipalisation " he threw his 
 papers into the firegrate. 
 
 Miss Ward was always delighted with 
 lectures she did not understand, for she 
 rightly thought they must be exception- 
 ally intellectual. 
 
 " I should like to say," she began, 
 *' that my experiences are very different 
 to Mr. Martell's. There is much dis- 
 tress, but then the poor are so wasteful. 
 Several women I know burn coal. Now 
 we always use coke at home. And I 
 am told the men smoke a great deal of 
 bad tobacco, and injure their digestions. 
 Would it not be more sensible if they 
 bought a little of the very best ? And 
 then they are so proud. My brother 
 tells me that they will not move into the 
 model dwellings, because they dislike 
 showing certificates of character." 
 
 " Ah, how truly wicked, how foolish ! " 
 murmured Chappie.
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 85 
 
 " Yes," she continued, delighted at his 
 remark. " Don't you think, Mr. Chappie, 
 it is very sad ? Only a week ago a 
 woman was most impertinent to a dear 
 friend of mine, who, asking her to allow 
 the baby to be christened, said, ' You 
 know, Mrs. Thomas, we must not have 
 any little heathens in Cornwall Build- 
 mo;s ! 
 
 " Most preposterous in the extreme ! " 
 cried Chappie, indignant at such un- 
 feminine pride. 
 
 This exhibition roused Brinton, who 
 immediately attacked Martell on English 
 Socialism. 
 
 ** Your denunciation of trade and 
 business men is absurd," said he. " Of 
 course the merchant carries his private 
 faults into business life, just as the clerk 
 or your favourite ' proletariat ' carry 
 theirs. Perhaps he underpays them, and 
 perhaps they waste their time. What 
 then ? But it is characteristically mean 
 
 y-
 
 86 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 of the clerk to decry the man on whom 
 he depends. You talk of merchants and 
 manufacturers as though they should all 
 have been strangled at the hour of their 
 birth. I, as you know, have been a 
 working man, and no cant is so sicken- 
 ing to me as the cant of the working 
 classes. They slander their employers 
 for doing what they themselves are 
 loneinof to do ; but without them, or 
 men like them, they would hardly get 
 bread to eat. They are envious of the 
 man who has risen, either by industry, or 
 talent, or pluck ; the man who bears all 
 the battle, who takes everything on his 
 shoulders, and pays his subordinates 
 what they are worth." 
 
 " Do you not think, Mr. Chappie," 
 sighed Miss Ward, " that the spectacle 
 of the relations of employer to employed 
 in England is very unedifying?" 
 
 " An unfit survival," replied Chappie, 
 "is always truly barbarian beside the com- 
 plexus of civilization — socialized man."
 
 ■ THE PARADOX CLUB. 8/ 
 
 " Perhaps you will give us your ex- 
 perience of the Socialists, Brinton," 
 sneered Martell. 
 
 " Nearly all the Socialists I ever 
 met," continued Brinton, " were blind 
 optimists. Analyse their speeches, and 
 you find nothing, simply nothing but a 
 denunciation of existing evils, and a 
 glowing picture of the ideal State, the 
 way to attain to which they leave to the 
 inflamed imaginations of their hearers, 
 who generally conclude that the way to 
 Utopia is to march along in a street 
 procession with red flags," 
 
 " It is very characteristic of the boiir- 
 geoisiel' said Martell, ironically, " to 
 iofnore scientific Socialism and Karl 
 Marx." 
 
 " I am coming to them," replied 
 Brinton, roused for once. " Social- 
 istic leaders are of one of two classes, 
 the hot and the cold. The hot draw 
 their adherents from the poor, who
 
 88 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 will shout, and no wonder, poor fel- 
 lows ! for anybody who promises them 
 a bit of bread, and to whom the offer 
 of a whole slice, spread with Socialistic 
 butter, is simply irresistible. The cold 
 adherents arc those who sit contentedly 
 down to prepare flawless systems of 
 government for a people that is a mass 
 of contradictions, men who cheerfully 
 contribute their pence to the propaganda 
 of an Utopia that is rendered impossible 
 by an European war, or a rise in the price 
 of wheat. These two parties, who once 
 wrote, ' Socialists are influenced by no 
 jealousies of a clique,' have quarrelled 
 over the important question whether 
 there is more chance of convertinof the 
 universe to their views by a system of 
 halfpenny leaflets, or by concentrating 
 their strength, and getting a representa- 
 tive into the House of Commons. The 
 contempt that these two sections have 
 for one another shows, it is true, on each
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 89 
 
 side a certain amount of shrewdness. 
 But the utmost that the hot party can do 
 is to turn themselves into Radicals ; and 
 the utmost the cold can do is to produce 
 a masterpiece of theory, which will be 
 triumphantly picked to pieces twenty 
 years after it has been forgotten, as was 
 the case with * Das Kapital.' " 
 
 *' Your acquaintance with English 
 Socialism," said Martell, who looked 
 highly amused, " Is sufficient to enable 
 you to give us a lively caricature of the 
 two sections ; but your talent for super- 
 ficiality will hardly lead you to ignore 
 the fact that the whole tendency of our 
 legislation is Socialistic, that the Labour 
 party and the trade unionists are joining 
 hands all over the country, and that 
 hundreds of intellectual men have been 
 converted in the last few months to our 
 side." 
 
 " Thirty years ago," replied Brinton, 
 " the pendulum swung towards in-
 
 90 THE TARADOX CLUB. 
 
 divldualism. Now It is ncaring Social- 
 ism, Do you really believe it will 
 not swing back again ? It is true 
 that there is now a tendency towards 
 Socialism ; it is true that the examples set 
 by Germany and America are arguments 
 in your favour ; but what will be the net 
 results of your success ? You say happi- 
 ness for the people. I say no, and only 
 time can decide. Your movement is as 
 ephemeral as any other. I contend that 
 there is no deep desire in human nature 
 for Socialism, but the exact contrary; 
 and I say that Socialism is far and away 
 too rigid to satisfy any people for long. 
 You arc in reality misled by the merely 
 temporary attraction it has for mankind. 
 But your Socialism can never get far ; 
 for directly it gains the Radicals it be- 
 comes Opportunist, and Opportunism is 
 fatal to its vital principle. After all, 
 your aim is to force people to do what 
 Christians teach should be done through 
 
 \
 
 THE TARADOX CLUB. 9 1 
 
 kindness. Will you succeed better than 
 they ? " 
 
 Brinton stopped his harangue at last, 
 feeling that he was talking of what he 
 knew very little, and of what Martell 
 knew less. 
 
 " Yes, we shall succeed better," 
 answered the Socialist, "because beinof 
 forced to do a thing saves people the 
 trouble of perpetually keeping them- 
 selves up to the mark. How much 
 cash would the State get if the payment 
 of taxes v/as voluntary ? Morality will 
 be the income-tax of the Socialists." 
 
 " Yes, and the only way you can come 
 into power is by promising to repeal 
 both," retorted Brinton, " But your 
 idea of a co-operative commonwealth is 
 simply ludicrous," he continued. " Look 
 at London ! Its inhabitants are split up 
 into clusters of stars circling round 
 thousands of suns, represented by the 
 trjades, the professions, the ablest and 
 the richest men, the capitalists, the "
 
 92 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " Public-houses ! " suggested Patrick. 
 
 " Exactly. Well, without these suns 
 we Londoners would find ourselves in 
 the dark." 
 
 " These capitalistic suns of yours 
 often suffer eclipse," said Martell. 
 
 " They are often eclipsed by fresh 
 suns," said Brinton, " the warmth and 
 wealth of which is created by the shat- 
 tering of many humble stars. The 
 principle of this universe of London is 
 employment, and naturally there are a 
 good many collisions in the rush of 
 competition." 
 
 " What we Socialists want to do,'' 
 explained Martell, " is to exchange thi.s 
 astronomical muddle for a solar system!. 
 We would crush all your individual suns 
 into one huge sun, the State, round 
 which the planets — Mars the army, 
 Mercury literature, Jupiter the law-7- 
 would circle harmoniously." * 
 
 " I should circle round Venus," mur- 
 
 1
 
 THE PARADOX CLUH. 93 
 
 mured Patrick to himself, glancing in 
 Nina's direction. 
 
 But Nina had disappeared into the 
 balcony some time before with Chappie, 
 and the sound of their earnest voices 
 came indistinctly through the window. 
 
 " No, ]\Ir. Chappie," Lofthouse, who 
 was sitting nearest, heard her say, " it 
 can never be." 
 
 " But I ask " said Chappie's 
 
 voice. The remainder was lost to the 
 listener. 
 
 *' I wonder what on earth they can be 
 saying," thought the Poet. " I wouldn't 
 answer for Chappie when he is left 
 alone in the moonshine with a pretty 
 girl. It always turns his brain. Still, 
 it's none of my business. I won't listen 
 any more." 
 
 " I assure you, Mr. Chappie, you are 
 mistaken," came Nina's voice again, in 
 remarkably decided tones. 
 
 " Good gracious, I believe it's a pro-
 
 94 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 posal ! " thought Lofthouse, half in 
 doubt, " Martell was right when he 
 said nothing is so dangerous to a man 
 as a warm June night." He left the 
 window and joined the others, who 
 were yawning, and had not recovered 
 yet from the dose of Sociahsm. 
 
 " You always come so appropriately, 
 Mr. Lofthouse," simpered Miss Ward. 
 " Only fancy ! we were wishing that 
 you would recite one of your beautiful 
 poems." 
 
 The poet had already selected the 
 one he intended to repeat that evening, 
 but he had calculated on Nina being 
 present. " Chappie, too," he thought, 
 " would have liked to have heard it. 
 He has good taste, though he is such an 
 ass." He waited for a moment in the 
 hope that they would leave the balcony, 
 but they remained there, and were still 
 talking earnestly. 
 
 The happy thought struck the poet
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 95 
 
 that he could repeat his verses to Nina 
 alone afterwards, and feeling mollified 
 by Miss Ward's judicious use of her 
 adjectives, he began : 
 
 " The primrose peeps through the bracken dry, 
 Clouds chase clouds across the sky ; 
 The ashpoles, slender and silver, siuay 
 On the hillside, in the morning grey. 
 
 Sweet is the song that the wind sings to me : 
 
 * Your Love is waiting, ivaiting. 
 The apple zuill fall, but a touch needs the tree ; 
 
 Your Love is ivaiting, waiting.' 
 Her curls are tangled, tangled by the wind ; 
 
 Her cheeks are fresJier, fresJicr than the rain. 
 The grasses at her bosom quiver, rise and fall, 
 
 Quiver as she draivs her breath to fall again. 
 
 The mist rolls up to the stone ivall loiu ; 
 'Neath the hawthorn hedge no zuind doth blozv. 
 Szuay, oh, ashpoles slender I oh rain, pelt on ! 
 Her eyes bring the sunshine, though no sun has 
 shone. 
 
 Oh, sweet is the song that the zuind sings to me : 
 ' Your Love is zvaiting, waiting. 
 
 The bracken is dry 'ncath the hazv thorn tree ; 
 Your Love is waiting, zvaiting! "
 
 96 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 "It reminds me faintly of one of Mere- 
 dith's, Mr. Lofthouse," said a voice, and 
 the poet, looking up, saw that Chappie 
 and Nina had just stepped back into 
 the room. 
 
 " I believe she only heard half of it ! " 
 said Lofthouse to himself, with some 
 vexation ; but he speedily forgot his 
 annoyance in wondering whether Nina's 
 rather subdued manner, and Chappie's 
 bewildered air, meant that a proposal 
 had been made and rejected. Evidently 
 none of the others noticed anything out 
 of the common, though perhaps the dis- 
 cussion at the other end of the room was 
 demanding all their attention. 
 
 " He does well to make verses on the 
 country," Martell remarked. "He would 
 find it difficult to take London for his 
 theme, the city * where men and women, 
 half-clothed and half-fed, stumble from a 
 pauper cradle to a pauper grave ! ' " 
 
 " Good gracious, Mr. Martell ! " cried 
 Miss Ward. Y,
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 97 
 
 " I was only quoting William Morris 
 again," he returned ; " but speaking 
 seriously, you can count the beauties of 
 London on the fingers of one hand." 
 
 " London is inexhaustible," cried Loft- 
 house, " quite inexhaustible ! Wherever 
 I go I see fresh beauties, fresh vistas, 
 fresh " 
 
 " Advertisements ! " suggested Nina, 
 recovering her equanimity. 
 
 "Advertisements educate the people," 
 put in McWhirter, "which is most im- 
 portant. I assure you. Miss Lindon, the 
 other day I was actually deceived by a 
 monkey on a hoarding, and I tried to 
 stroke it. A very life-like beestle ! You 
 know I am a bit shortsiMited, and " 
 
 " Hush ! " said Miss Ward, in a warn- 
 ing tone, as she saw the poet's eye 
 glaring at the interruption. " Go on, 
 please, Mr. Lofthouse. I am much 
 interested by what you say." 
 
 " Well," said Lofthouse, swallowing his 
 
 6
 
 98 THE TARADOX CLUB. 
 
 wrath, " I say that London is full of beauty, 
 perfectly full of beauty. Look at Seven 
 Dials ! I assure you it is most poetical ! 
 And, indeed, I am writing a little poem on 
 the subject. You think I am joking, but I 
 can assure you that it is to Drury Lane at 
 midnight that a man should go who would 
 successfully translate Dante's ' Inferno."* 
 
 "Yes," echoed Patrick, who feared 
 lest the poet's enthusiasm should make 
 a good cause ridiculous. " Why do we 
 get pictures year after year of scenes in 
 Venice, and not one of Wcntworth 
 Street (now that Petticoat Lane has 
 been so barbarously treated) on a Sun- 
 day morning ? " 
 
 " I went down Went worth Street last 
 May," said the Poet, "and saw a mass 
 of colour as brilliant as the pleaminof 
 mackerel the hawkers were crying. Hun- 
 dreds of women with pink, or buttercup 
 yellow, or olive green, or dark blue shawls 
 thrown over their heads, Jewesses with
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 99 
 
 dark brown hair, Irishwomen with those 
 exquisite deep bkie eyes and black eye- 
 brows, were sitting in the doorways, or 
 standing at the stalls, bearing the chaff 
 of the men good-humouredly. Oh, the 
 colour in those piles of blood oranges ! 
 The road was choked with fish, fruit, 
 flowers, vegetables, and meat, and 
 in the middle two streams of men and 
 women struggled to pass one another, 
 jostling to right and left. At the top 
 of the street I found a little recess, 
 where a ring of black-eyed girls were 
 dancing and singing : 
 
 " Oh, Jenny is a-wccping, a-weeping, a-weep- 
 
 in<^ ■ 
 Oh, Jenny is a-weeping on a fine summer's 
 
 day." 
 
 " You are not really enthusiastic over 
 the picturesque, you're enthusiastic over 
 the women," remarked Martell. " But 
 how on earth you can draw such a pic- 
 ture of Petticoat Lane, I don't know.
 
 lOO THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 Where I only see the vilest, the most 
 degraded faces, faces yellow with disease 
 and stained with crime, you fnid form 
 and colour, and light and shade, and 
 goodness knows what. I do not know 
 which is the most repulsive, the ej^es of 
 the wrinkled haofs one meets there, 
 greedy with the love of gain, or the eyes 
 of the men brutal with cold lust." 
 
 " Pray remember, Mr. Martell," inter- 
 rupted Chappie, "that we have been 
 honoured with the presence of our lady 
 friends this eveninof." 
 
 "Well, how you can extract from a 
 street of the most repulsive Jews, the 
 most brutalized men, and the most de- 
 graded wonien, the glorious Hashes of 
 colour you describe, is astounding ! " 
 
 " Colour ! " said Lofthouse, scornfully, 
 " colour there was on this day, but the 
 man who looks for colour in London is 
 a fool. Who wants colour when you 
 have such exquisite light and shade ^. I
 
 THE PARADOX CLUD. lOI 
 
 really believe, Martell, you know very 
 little of London," 
 
 "Indeed!" cried the Socialist, who 
 prided himself on being indifferent to 
 any attack on his person, his virtues, or 
 his creed, but whose foible was his 
 knowledge, for on that he built his 
 theories. 
 
 "Yes, as little of its beauties as the 
 cabman who has driven over every inch. 
 Do you know the fortress of Lower 
 Thames Street ? " 
 
 " Or the silence of Hosier Lane ? " 
 said Patrick. 
 
 " Have you ever passed through West 
 Smithheld on an April day, with the 
 blue sky and the fleecy white moun- 
 tains of cloud overhead, and the racing 
 shadows contrasting with the sunshine 
 on the redbrick of the market ? " 
 
 '^ Or through the ravine of the 
 Minories ?" asked Patrick. 
 
 " Have you ever seen the Scotchmen
 
 I02 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 dance the Hifjhland nin^f over the naked 
 swords in the heart-shaped ring to the 
 skirl of the bagpipes ? " demanded Loft- 
 house. 
 
 " And where and when may that Exhi- 
 bition be seen ? " asked Martell, con- 
 temptuously. 
 
 "Ah, you may weel call it an Exhibi- 
 tion," interrupted McWhirter, who had 
 as usual missed the point in note-taking ; 
 *-' and a most intellectual exhibition, too, I 
 can testify, having seen it myself in Flower 
 and Dean Street on Easter morninof." 
 
 " I trust that no women are present at 
 such an insane diversion," said Chappie, 
 sententiously. 
 
 " Eh, but there are," chuckled Mc- 
 Whirter; "and you should see the lasses 
 stroke the laddies' bare calves." 
 
 *' Disgraceful ! how unwomanly ! " mur- 
 mured Miss Ward. " How can they be 
 so utterly lost to all sense of decency ? 
 Ah, Mr. Chappie, no wonder the tone 
 of the East End is so low ! "
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. IO3 
 
 " The fact is, Lofthouse," said the 
 SocIaHst, " that as you have an artistic 
 bent, and as you are kept in London all 
 the year round, you translate the things 
 that are utterly ugly in themselves into 
 things of beauty merely for your own 
 satisfaction. We shall hear you next cal- 
 ling the Regent's Canal a fairy stream, 
 and Maida Vale a smiling valley." 
 
 " The fact is," cried Lofthouse, who 
 generally grew paradoxical in argument, 
 " that the rich never know the best parts 
 of London at all. How can they, when 
 they rarely approach the Thames below 
 Richmond ? Pall Mall is mediocre by 
 day, and South Kensington is tame by 
 night." 
 
 " Eh, but the Ceety ! " began Mc- 
 Whirter. " I'm thinkin' you'll nae 
 persuade the laddies to admire the 
 asphalte, Mr. Lofthouse, or the braw 
 hansom cabs, Hoot mon, but they make 
 a fearsome din ! "
 
 I04 THE TARADOX CLUB. 
 
 "Refuteliim, Lofthouse," cried Patrick; 
 '* you have an easy task." 
 
 " Give us a little lecture on the sub- 
 ject," suggested the Socialist, ironically. 
 
 " I will," cried Lofthouse, taking up 
 the challenge. " Why, this very house 
 is in the midst of the most suggestive 
 bit of London. Turn into ' Duke's 
 Head Passage,' opposite, on an April 
 day, and listen to the caged linnet singing 
 to the strip of blue sky shut in by the 
 overhanging, almost touching, houses. 
 Then comes a shower, and drives the 
 gossiping clerks and the ' odd men,' 
 and the old woman with her pile of 
 oranges, and her cry, * Two a penny — all 
 sugar,' under the dark archways, or into 
 the dairy, with its shining pewter and 
 baskets of cakes, or to the little eating- 
 house, high settles, kippers, and all. 
 They wait till the bright drops trickle in 
 the sunshine down the panes, and the 
 rain water pushes over the cobbles from 
 the spout, before going back to work."
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. IO5 
 
 " A clerk's life round here can't be so 
 bad after all," said Nina, thinking of 
 how Patrick spent his days, and trying 
 to extract a grain of comfort from the 
 poet. 
 
 " Oh, but they have no idea that but 
 a stone's throw away is the most beauti- 
 ful sight in Europe — Samuel Butler says 
 so, and he is right — the view of St. 
 Paul's from Fleet Street. I was passing 
 there the other day just after a shower, 
 when the cross of the Cathedral gleamed 
 in the sunshine with wet gold, when 
 every stone and every turret stood out 
 in the quivering air as distinctly as on 
 the day they were chiselled, yet nobody 
 turned their head, or noticed the thunder 
 clouds in flight towards the north." 
 
 He subsided suddenly, suspecting that 
 every one of his hearers must be thinking 
 him egotistical, which reflection was in- 
 deed short of the truth. 
 
 Patrick hastened to the rescue. 
 
 6*
 
 I06 THE PARyVDOX CLUB. 
 
 " Every district has its charm, whether 
 it be the bustle and Hfe of IsHngton, the 
 foreign gilt and tawdry splendour of 
 Leicester Square, the haddock-curing of 
 Bethnal Green, the mysteries of Shad- 
 well, the peaceful beauties of Highgate, 
 or 
 
 " The intrigues of King Street, St. 
 James," remarked Martell, grimly. 
 
 His irony was lost on Miss Ward, 
 who declared she had had no idea it was 
 so late. " How quickly the time passes 
 when one is with dear friends, Mr. 
 Chappie ! " 
 
 "If we indulge in the pleasures of 
 congenial society. Miss Ward," he re- 
 plied, "we must pay the penalty. But 
 who would not so indulge on such an 
 exquisite night ? May I see you home ? " 
 
 The lady gladly assented, and the 
 two set off together. 
 
 "You see even you women, who go 
 in for being independent," said Patrick
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. I07 
 
 to Nina, "are only independent within 
 the recognized conventionahties." 
 
 " I don't see anything of the sort," said 
 Nina. "When has conventionaHty pre- 
 vented me from going anywhere ? " 
 
 " Even such a simple thing as staying 
 up to see the sunrise from London 
 Bridge, as we are going to do, is 
 debarred you," said he. 
 
 " Who are we ? " she inquired. 
 
 " Oh, all of us — Lofthouse, Brinton, 
 Martell, myself, and," he added, sinking 
 his voice, " I am afraid, McWhirter. You 
 see it would be out of the question for 
 you to come." 
 
 This assumption nettled Nina ex- 
 tremely. 
 
 "I should not hesitate a minute, if " 
 
 " Then why don't you come ? " cried 
 Patrick. " It's all very well in theory, 
 but you see when you come to the point 
 you " 
 
 " I will come," said Nina, a litde stiffly.
 
 ON LONDON BRIDGE,
 
 IV. 
 ON LONDON BRIDGE. 
 
 The clocks of London were striking 
 twelve when Nina and Patrick passed 
 on to the bridge. Brinton and Lofthoiise 
 were standinij watchinQf the river from 
 one of the embrasures ; McWhirter and 
 Martell were questioning a policeman on 
 the habits of suicides. 
 
 It was a dark night, but now and 
 again the moon sailed from behind the 
 clouds, and threw a silver wand along 
 the water. Down the river shone a 
 clear red light, which shot a beam 
 through the darkness till it reached the 
 moonlight ; then it faded away, shooting
 
 112 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 again over the gloomy water beyond. 
 The breeze sighed softly as it played 
 round the arches of the bridge, but 
 every now and then its sound was lost 
 in the faint roar which Ooated over the 
 water from a point of the horizon where 
 the sky was reddening with a growing 
 wave of mellow light. A fire had 
 broken out in Rotherhithe. 
 
 The tide had turned, and was ebbing 
 past the black houses, rising at the 
 water's edge, square and grim as prisons ; 
 past the silent wharves and quays lying 
 low in shadow ; and, rippling against the 
 dusky barges chained in a pack in the 
 middle of the current, the river glided 
 onward to the sea, flowing sullenly in 
 shade, but bubbling in a silver torrent 
 where the moonlight struck the water. 
 
 The six members selected a seat on 
 the east side, and leaning on the parapet 
 watched the mellow light spreading in 
 the gloom, till suddenly a tongue of fire
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. Il3 
 
 leapt upwards, and the black houses 
 stood out against a crimson sky. 
 
 The Socialist stretched his arm to- 
 wards the flames. 
 
 " 'Tis some factory burning," he said ; 
 "and yonder lie the workers asleep, un- 
 conscious of the misfortune which has 
 taken the bread from their mouths. 
 And to how many among the three 
 millions ^^ondcr is bread assured beyond 
 the day which is about to break ? Thou- 
 sands of them are utterly destitute, 
 thousands of them are fed by charity, 
 and thousands of them — women— escape 
 that charity, and live by degradation." 
 
 His rhetoric exasperated McWhirter, 
 for it had anticipated a burst of eloquence 
 on the wealth of Great Britain, suggested 
 by the dark warehouses lying beneath. 
 
 " Tut ! you forget the rich," he said, 
 " who have troubles greater than the 
 puir. 
 
 " I don't deny," returned Martell, con-
 
 114 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 temptuoLisly, " that the diseases brought 
 on by eating" and drinking too much are 
 a great affliction. I don't deny that an 
 evil conscience is very terrible to a 
 sensitive mind — a conscience that is so 
 nicely educated that it refuses to be 
 silenced by the charity which its owner 
 bestows from wealth that is not his own." 
 
 " Bide a wee, bide a wee," said 
 McWhirter, excitedly, " you are forget- 
 ting the School Board, I'm thinking, Mr. 
 Martell. Just a gran' monument to the 
 inteelectual abilities of those who would 
 raise the puir bodies a bit higher ! " 
 
 " Thank you," said the Socialist, 
 sarcastically, " the East-enders don't care 
 to be raised any higher ; they are giddy 
 enouMi. The School Board ! An 
 improved educating elevator in the 
 English hotel, bringing up ever3^body to 
 the top, and having nothing to do with 
 the majority who fall back down the 
 shaft, for there isn't room for many at
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. I I 5 
 
 the top. But to bring them up is its 
 duty, and it does it." 
 
 " You are very pessimistic to-night ! " 
 cried the Poet. 
 
 " Mine is but theory," rephed Martell, 
 who fekmuch llattered, " but you should 
 ask Brinton to tell you something of the 
 life of the poor. I believe he knows." 
 
 Brinton was leaning against the para- 
 pet, a little way off, his head buried in 
 his hands, but at the mention of his 
 name he came forward. 
 
 " I was watching the fire," he said, 
 apologetically. " It will not burn itself 
 out till the morning. Does anybody 
 want me ? " 
 
 "Yes," said Nina, lightly. " We are 
 all feeling a litde dull and commonplace, 
 Mr. Brinton, and we want you to tell us 
 a story." 
 
 Brinton thought for a minute. Then 
 raising his head, he said in a hard voice, 
 " Well, be it so. I will tell you some-
 
 Il6 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 thing I once heard that happened at 
 Chiswick ; b\it remember you must not 
 blame me if you find it serious." 
 
 " The more serious the better," said 
 Nina; "it will get us into training." 
 And she leant back in the seat, and the 
 others settled themselves as comfortably 
 as they could. 
 
 "It will seem like a story out of a 
 book," said Brinton, " but it is true as 
 surely as the broad arrow is real that is 
 cut into the stone at your feet." 
 
 He leant his elbows on the parapet, 
 and, gazing fixedly at the river beneath, 
 began : — 
 
 " One February afternoon a woman 
 stood looking out on the river from a 
 garret in Hammersmith. The sun was 
 setting, a ball of fire sinking into the 
 marshy fields ; and the river hurried by, 
 black and swollen with the melted 
 snow. 
 
 " The woman, gazing across the water,
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. TI7 
 
 saw on the further bank only the yellow 
 osiers bending in the wind, and the row 
 of stunted willows ao^ainst the sk^^ The 
 wind blew up stream, and the waves fell 
 back in anger from its strength, and set 
 in a cross current towards the shore. 
 The woman sfazinof across the water saw 
 a little boat, with a black figure seated in 
 it, struggling against the current. The 
 rower bent to his oars, but his efforts 
 only served to keep him from being 
 swept back by the racing water. Noth- 
 ing human was in sight save this solitary 
 black figure, which would soon be lost in 
 the darkness. 
 
 " Suddenly there came a knock, and 
 the woman ran to open the door. Then, 
 as she recognized the faces of the two 
 men who entered, she uttered a cry of 
 dismay, and threw herself on her mise- 
 rable bed, which was placed in the corner 
 furthest from the door. The room w^as 
 bare save for this bed, and a bundle of
 
 Il8 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 shavings and broken pieces of wood, 
 which lay in a faded Hlac apron on the 
 hearth-stone. 
 
 " The woman was one of those poor 
 creatures you see in the early morning, 
 waiting for the odds and ends of wood 
 and the sweepings which the warehouses 
 throw into the street ; one of those old 
 women who, with backs bowed under 
 sacks of paper, search in the gutter for 
 scraps of cloth to sell, for scraps of food 
 to eat, women who mutter to themselves 
 in the cold, women whose faded rags you 
 avoid touching with your sleeve when 
 you meet them in the dark alleys of the 
 City. 
 
 "This woman was a month behind 
 with her rent ; she had promised to pay 
 four successive times, and each time 
 had failed to bring the money. She had 
 been sick, but she had concealed the 
 fact, afraid of being driven to the work- 
 house. At last the landlord would wait
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. IIQ 
 
 no lonocr. Knowino- it was useless to 
 summons her, he sent two men to turn 
 her into the street. By a judicious 
 mixture of hard words and promises, 
 they hoped to get her to leave the house. 
 " But the woman refused to stir from 
 her bed. From her refuge she cursed 
 the men and bade them begone. The 
 law gave them no power to eject her by 
 force, so their perplexity drove them to 
 a last resource — to break the windows 
 and unhinge the door. 
 
 " The woman begged and prayed for 
 mercy. 
 
 " ' Give me a little time ! ' she cried. 
 ' Only a little time, and I will pay you. 
 Give me a little time to work ; one week 
 more. Leave me alone for only one 
 week more 1 ' 
 
 *' But they did not heed her, and they 
 broke three panes out of four, thinking 
 the cold w^ould drive her to the work- 
 house,
 
 I20 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " ' Now for the door, mate ! ' said one 
 to the other. 
 
 " ' Oh, my God ! Give me a Httle 
 time ! ' cried the woman from the bed, 
 ' and I will work and pay you.' 
 
 " ' Let the damned thing be, Jack,' 
 said the other man, roughly. 
 
 "'If you want to get the bullet, I 
 don't,' answered Jack, and he began to 
 unscrew the hinsfes. 
 
 " ' Oh, God in heaven, have mercy ! ' 
 cried the old woman. * I'm perishing 
 with the cold.' 
 
 ** * Stash it up. Jack,' said the man. 
 ' I'm sick of the job ! ' With difficulty 
 he persuaded his companion to leave the 
 door alone ; and the two went downstairs 
 tofjether. 
 
 " When they had got into the street, 
 the man who had shown a little pity, 
 found he had left his chisel behind. His 
 comrade stopped to light his pipe, and 
 said that he would wait below, while the 
 other ran to fetch the tool.
 
 THE TARADOX CLUB. 121 
 
 " The man reascended the creaking 
 wooden staircase, and opened the door 
 again." 
 
 Brinton paused for a second, as though 
 he saw before him what he was describ- 
 ing 
 
 "He saw the three broken panes of 
 glass with their jagged edges ; and his 
 chisel lying on the floor, the light glanc- 
 ing on the steel from the window above. 
 He saw the discoloured wall-paper rising 
 and falling as the wind passed between 
 it and the wall ; the spark of fire in the 
 grate, and the bundle of shavings lying 
 on the hearth-stone. 
 
 "The woman lay on the bed of rags 
 with her face turned towards the wall. 
 She had not moved since the men had 
 left her ; she had not spoken, nor uttered 
 a sound. 
 
 " He approached the window, and 
 looking out saw the sun had almost set. 
 The river ran on, a mass of black and 
 
 7
 
 122 THE TARADOX CLUB. 
 
 angry water, and all colour had faded 
 from the osier-beds, and the row of wil- 
 lows. The little boat was still in sight ; 
 it had crept a little further, and the soli- 
 tary rower was still labouring at his oars, 
 his black silhouette bending to and fro in 
 the failing light. 
 
 '* The man turned away, and walked 
 towards the bed, but the woman did not 
 look round, nor even seem to be aware 
 of his presence. He stood in uncertainty 
 for a minute, looking down on her, and 
 then he said, * You'd better go to the 
 workhouse.' 
 
 " But she took no notice. 
 
 " ' You'd better go ? ' he said. ' You'll 
 be all right there,' and he stooped down 
 and put a shilling in the withered hand 
 that touched the bare floor by his feet. 
 Then he walked to the window again, 
 picked up the chisel, and left the room. 
 The wooden staircase creaked under his 
 weight, and his echoing steps came fainter 
 and fainter from below.
 
 THE PARADOX CLUi;. 1 23 
 
 " The woman lay on the floor, the sun 
 set and the river hurried by. The wind 
 rushed in through the broken window, 
 bringing the damp of the rising mists, 
 and of the marshy fields. Night fell and 
 the woman lay there still. Through the 
 darkness she moaned, ' Give me time, 
 give me a little time ! ' The wind beat 
 down the mists, and the stars smiled on 
 the earth beneath, A spear of light shot 
 through the window ; it crossed the floor 
 but left in darkness the corner where she 
 tossed. The river rushed on, black and 
 swollen, and the osiers bent and swayed 
 in the starlight. The dawn broke slowly 
 in the east, and the blackness of the 
 wintry morn changed to grey. Across 
 the sky stole the rain-clouds, huge and 
 shapeless in the niggard light. The 
 wind blew fresh from the river — the tide 
 had turned, and was flowing quietly in- 
 land ; the breeze played with the 
 woman's hair, it lifted a grey lock in
 
 124 THE TARADOX CLUB. 
 
 Sport, and then fled lest she should wake. 
 The shadows faded as the cold light 
 broke over the floor ; it stole over the 
 hearth, it penetrated to the dark corner, 
 and creeping down the bare walls it 
 reached the yellow face of the dead." 
 
 He ceased, and no one spoke. 
 
 A man passed by on the opposite side, 
 and they watched his shadow lingering 
 from lamp to lamp, as though unwilling 
 to follow its master. 
 
 The silence grew oppressive. Brinton 
 was still leaning on the parapet, with his 
 face turned away from the others, and 
 his eyes fixed on the river below. 
 
 " I wonder what became of the man 
 who went back and put the shilling into 
 her hand," said Nina, at last. 
 
 " He is alive," said Brinton, in a voice 
 that made everybody shudder. 
 
 " Are you the man ? " cried Lofthouse, 
 the first to find his voice. 
 
 " Ah, no," said Brinton, quietly. 
 ** Alas, I was the other man."
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 1 25 
 
 They started, but he kept his face 
 turned away. Nobody spoke. All felt 
 that sympathy was useless, and the 
 words died on their lips. 
 
 He misunderstood their silence, and 
 all would have given anything- in the 
 world at that moment to have explained 
 it. 
 
 He turned his face, and began to walk 
 slowly away. 
 
 " Come back," Nina tried to say, but 
 the words stuck in her throat. 
 
 They listened to his footsteps in the 
 distance, they strained their eyes to see 
 his retreating figure, but in a few mo- 
 ments the echoes had died away, and 
 he was lost in the night, swallowed up 
 in the shadows of the great city. 
 
 " I cannot bear it," said Nina. " I 
 will go after him, and speak to him. Let 
 me go by myself." And she hurried 
 away in the direction Brinton had 
 taken.
 
 126 The paradox club. 
 
 The others sat in silence for a 
 long time, each absorbed in his own 
 thoughts, each haunted by the voice of 
 the man whom they were never to see 
 again. 
 
 By and by Nina returned, and sat 
 down without saying a word. 
 
 Nobody asked her if she had found 
 him. They saw it in her eyes, and they 
 mastered their curiosity, and asked no 
 questions. 
 
 Thus they sat watching the river, till 
 their thoughts were broken by the noise 
 that a long string of market carts made 
 in passing slowly over the bridge. 
 
 Suddenly a Hush ran through the sky. 
 
 " It is the dawn," said Lofthouse. 
 
 " The dawn ! " said McWhirter, rub- 
 bing his eyes. lie had fallen into a 
 quiet doze with his head on the parapet, 
 and on awaking, was, with the logic 
 of his race, connecting the approach 
 of morning with the approach of break-
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 1 27 
 
 fast. "Eh, mon!" said he, "but that's 
 a gran' sicht for a sharp-set chiel ! " 
 
 As he spoke the air was filled with 
 light, and everything took a clear and 
 sharp outline. The hulls of the barges 
 stood out boldly from the grey water, 
 the deserted quays separated themselves 
 from the bulwark of boats, the lamps 
 grew fainter and fainter. 
 
 A bird began to call from somewhere 
 up the river. Eastwards over the 
 sleeping city stretched a broad belt of 
 smoke-coloured cloud, frayed at the 
 edges with gold, and pierced with 
 tawny fissures which were widening 
 slowly. Above the belt fioated a rosy 
 cloud ; they watched it for a long time 
 growing brighter and brighter, and the 
 light rushing towards the west. It was 
 day. 
 
 On the incoming tide moved three 
 barges with little brown sails spread 
 to catch what wind there was from the
 
 128 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 south. They stretched lazily across the 
 stream, narrowly misshig- one another, 
 and then tacked and passed under the 
 bridge, the men tugging at the clumsy 
 oars, which gave forth a monotonous 
 " creak," " creak," at every pull. 
 
 From the last of the barges, The 
 Sprightly Polly, painted pea-green with 
 a white stripe, curled a blue smoke, and 
 from the cabin there came the clatter of 
 cups, and the sound of a woman's voice. 
 
 " They are wiser than we," said 
 Patrick. " Only hear how the kettle 
 sings ! I swear I can smell the rashers 
 frizzling. Let us go and hunt for our 
 breakfast." 
 
 A coffee-stall on the Surrey side gave 
 them a warm welcome. The keen 
 morning air had given all a prodigious 
 appetite. Nina seized a slice of thick 
 bread-and-butter, Patrick a hunch of 
 cake, Lofthouse a piece of bread and 
 marmalade, and Martell a jam-tart.
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. I 29 
 
 " I always love a London egg," said 
 McWhirter, peeling one that was hard- 
 boiled ; " they are sae wholesome ! " 
 
 " Morning, Jack," said a workman, 
 glancing curiously at Nina. " How are 
 you f 
 
 " Not what you'd call grand," returned 
 the coffee-stall keeper. I've got a cold 
 in my head." 
 
 " Cold ! Why that's nothing. I've 
 had one for twenty years, off and on, 
 you know. That's a fine young man 
 you've got there ; is he married ? " said 
 the workman, winking in the direction 
 of Patrick. 
 
 " No. He's a widower," replied Jack, 
 entering into the joke. 
 
 " Ah ; I suppose he married for 
 money before, but now he'll marry for 
 looks," said the other. 
 
 But these personalities were too much 
 for Nina. The scalding coffee had 
 made the colour come back into her
 
 130 THE PARADOX CLUl?. 
 
 cheeks, she told herself ; but she knew 
 the others would search for a more 
 ridiculous reason. 
 
 " Mr. McWhirter, a hansom, please ! " 
 she said, hastily ; and indeed it was 
 time, for the early workmen who had 
 left their women-folk asleep, were troop- 
 ing over the bridge, and beginning to 
 take too lively an interest in the sleepy 
 members of the Paradox Club. 
 
 " Quickly ! " she entreated, when the 
 cab rattled up with McWhirter. " I 
 don't regret it," she said to herself, 
 as though defiantly protesting against 
 the faint voice which whispered that 
 she was foolish to have yielded to 
 Patrick's taunt ; and that this escapade 
 was going a little too far, even for Nina 
 Lindon. 
 
 Then catching sight of her white and 
 tear-stained face in the glass at her 
 elbow she sighed, " But I never will 
 again, never ! How hideous I look ! I
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. I3I 
 
 wonder what he could have thought 
 of me ! " 
 
 And when she was not musing over 
 what Brinton had told her of his history, 
 she was wondering what Patrick could 
 have thought, all the way to Kensington.
 
 ON BEING ANTICIPATED.
 
 V. 
 
 ON BEING ANTICIPATED. 
 
 Nearly four months had passed, and 
 the lovers had seen but Httle of one 
 another. In July, Nina, to Patrick's 
 despair, went abroad, and did not return 
 till the end of September. It was re- 
 marked at the office that Patrick's 
 temper had changed for the worse, and 
 that he took an unnatural interest in the 
 foreign mail. Through the stilling heat 
 of August he sat at his desk, apparently 
 absorbed in the secrets of a ledger, but 
 the pile of papers at his hand did not 
 diminish, whereas the floor was strewn 
 with the fragments of unfinished letters.
 
 136 THE rARADOX CLUB. 
 
 Business notes that he had formerly 
 succeeded in answering in a week now 
 took a fortnight, and he displayed a 
 command of sarcasm that astonished his 
 fellow clerks, and dismayed the head of 
 his department, who — too suspicious a 
 man ever to have fallen in love — began 
 to predict embezzlement, and long for the 
 ddnoument. 
 
 Occasionally Patrick tried verse-mak- 
 ing, but his results convinced him he 
 was wrongr to lauQ^h at Lofthouse. He 
 cursed the mixture of weakness and 
 courage that had led him to despatch 
 one little poem to Nina, and an hour 
 after post-time he would have cheerfully 
 paid a month's salary — in anticipation — 
 to have had the letter in his hands again. 
 
 When the lovers met at last, Patrick 
 instantly detected the shyness that ab- 
 sence had bred in Nina, and of course 
 put it down to coldness. Nina, on 
 her part, finding him a little distant in
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. I37 
 
 his manner, tried hard to pretend to her- 
 self that he no longer cared for her, but 
 the song of happiness that grew louder 
 day by day In her heart, convicted her 
 head of charming insincerity. 
 
 One November afternoon Nina and 
 Miss Ward arrived early by appointment 
 at the Paradox Club, and settled down 
 before the fire to a good talk. 
 
 " We have not been seeing so much 
 of Mr. Weld lately," said Miss Ward, 
 "and I for one am not sorry. I'm sure 
 you don't mind my saying so, dear Nina, 
 but I think him a most objectionable 
 youth. You know I always thought, 
 dear," she continued, " that it was most 
 imprudent of you to go about with him as 
 you did, most imprudent ! Think if any- 
 body had got to hear of it ! " 
 
 "I'll tell him," said Nina, "and you 
 mustn't mind him laughing at you, 
 Charlotte ! Why, we have known each 
 other ever since we were that high."
 
 138 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " Of course, dear, I don't suppose he'll 
 eat you," said Charlotte. " Indeed, I 
 always thought him a very mild youth, 
 and oh, so plain ! " 
 
 The odious imputation that Patrick 
 was not only a tame cat, but an ugly one, 
 galled Nina nearly as much as her friend 
 had intended. Patrick plain ! She could 
 hardly refrain from calling attention on 
 the spot to the dimple in his chin. 
 
 " He's not so intellectual looking as 
 Mr, Chappie," she said, "but you know, 
 Charlotte, you always had a partiality for 
 men with bald heads and knobby fore- 
 heads. Now, I hate a knobby fore- 
 head ! " 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Chappie has indeed the 
 expression of a thinker!" sighed Miss 
 Ward, sentimentally. 
 
 "What a marked interest he takes In 
 you, Charlotte," said Nina, who could 
 not forgive her friend for saying that 
 Patrick was " mild " when she knew
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. I39 
 
 perfectly well that he was nothing of the 
 sort. 
 
 "My dear Nina, what an idea!" said 
 Miss Ward, much fluttered at anybody's 
 giving shape to the thought which had 
 possessed her for months. " What could 
 have put such an idea into your 
 head ?" 
 
 "Of course I guessed it," said Nina, 
 maliciously. " Why how could I help it, 
 unless I had kept my eyes shut ? " 
 
 "My dear Nina," began the lady, in- 
 tensely delighted, " I " 
 
 " Anybody can see you understand 
 each other perfectly, Charlotte," said 
 Nina. "I am surprised he has not 
 spoken to you. Why here he comes ! " 
 she broke off, as Chappie entered the 
 room, and advanced towards them. 
 
 As the reader knows. Chappie had 
 already proposed to Nina a few months 
 before, and Nina was well aware that he 
 did not care in the least for Miss Ward,
 
 140 TliE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 though his sentimental cittitiide towards 
 every woman he came across favoured 
 the idea that he was ready to make a 
 fool of himself at the slightest provoca- 
 tion. In reality Nina felt she had acted 
 meanly towards her friend and Chappie 
 in hinting at a match between them ; but, 
 quick as most women are to believe 
 what she wished to believe, she decided 
 that by a little dexterity Chappie's affec- 
 tions might be transferred to Charlotte, 
 giving herself peace, and her friend 
 happiness. 
 
 Besides, had not Charlotte just called 
 Patrick a most objectionable youth ? 
 
 Now Chappie had come thus early to 
 the Club in the ho[je of seeing Nina 
 alone, and pressing his suit once more. 
 The kind and gentle way in which she 
 had rejected him, so as not to wound his 
 feelings, had whispered to his conceit 
 that she must in the long run yield to his 
 fascinations ; and he quickly seized his
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. I4I 
 
 Opportunity when McWhIrter was en- 
 gaging Miss Ward in conversation. 
 
 But Nina was obdurate. 
 
 "Is there no hope ? " he pleaded. 
 
 *' None, Mr. Chappie," she answered, 
 with great firmness. 
 
 " I would wait years," he replied, 
 sadly. "Years, Miss Lindon ! If you 
 would only give me a little hope, I would 
 wait five years." 
 
 Nina gave a start. " Five years," 
 thought she. "What an absurd thing 
 to say ! I shall be quite old then." 
 
 " Five years did I say ! " echoed 
 Chappie, who had mistaken her move- 
 ment, and thought he had been too pre- 
 cipitate. " Nay, I would wait ten, 
 willingly. Miss Lindon." 
 
 " Good heavens ! what devotion ! " 
 thought Nina. " What shall I be like 
 in ten years ? " 
 
 To put an end to the scene, and to 
 save him pain once for all, she replied :
 
 142 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " There is no use in waiting, Mr. 
 Chappie, not the faintest. I do not 
 love you." 
 
 ^ " We stand at a turning-point in our 
 lives, a crisis," he said, solemnly, deter- 
 mined to make a last effort. " Oh, Miss 
 Lindon, do not let us make a mistake ! 
 I stand awed and reverent before the 
 mysteries of your heart ; but let not my 
 inexperienced tongue put my future in 
 jeopardy." 
 
 When he understood that his inex- 
 perienced tongue did put him in some 
 jeopardy, he reluctantly subsided, pro- 
 mising himself, however, that he would 
 sound Miss Ward later on as to Nina's 
 true feelings. His vanity would not 
 yet allow him to admit that he had no 
 chance, 
 
 " Here comes Mr. Lofthouse ! " cried 
 
 ^ The author desires to express his indebted- 
 ness to the authoress of " Margaret Duninore; 
 or The Unitary Home,"
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 1 4 
 
 'y 
 
 Miss Ward, suddenly. " Now we are 
 going to hear all about the books we 
 ought to read. We really 7;nis/ belong- 
 to Mudie's, Nina dear, mustn't we ? Oh ! 
 how I wish that somebody would lend 
 me a pencil." 
 
 And while McWhirter was delibera- 
 ting- with his usual caution whether he 
 would cut his pencil before offering it to 
 her, or wait till she had returned it, and 
 then cut it, Lofthouse begran as follows ; 
 
 ^£> 
 
 *' As one on whom Literature has left 
 some mark, and as one who would fain 
 leave some mark on Literature, I compare 
 myself to a traveller standing where 
 many ways meet. The path of Tragedy 
 is too steep for me to climb, and many 
 falls await him who would descend to 
 the smiling valley of Comedy. Nor will 
 I face the nettles which choke the stony 
 road of Criticism, nor the dust of the 
 highway of Theology, nor the mists of
 
 144 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 Philosophy, nor the mazes of History. 
 But more by choice than necessity I 
 turn to the winding lane of Poetry, fenced 
 with blackberries and hazels, with here 
 and there a cluster of honeysuckle well 
 out of reach. A gap reveals the corn- 
 fields, golden brown once ; but now only 
 the white of the stubble shows. The 
 harvest is over, and the mighty reapers, 
 the great poets, have left me only the 
 gleanings of the hedges hung with the 
 wheat that the brambles pulled from the 
 cart, as it went slowly up to the granary. 
 They have left me only a few half-hidden 
 flowers which fade at my touch. I press 
 eagerly on, but everywhere find myself 
 anticipated, everywhere the barren earth 
 strikes my eye, till I come to where 
 a few tiny blades of green are pushing 
 through the clods, showing that there 
 will be a harvest for those who come 
 after me. 
 
 "But what have my contemporaries been
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 145 
 
 doing meanwhile ? Some have sung so 
 sweetly that those who have listened to 
 their melodies, have fancied they saw 
 before them the ripe ears bending in the 
 wind, and the youths and maidens of the 
 Golden Age driving their sheep home- 
 ward in the setting sun. Others have 
 sung of olden times with such fire that 
 the bystanders have turned their eyes 
 backwards, thinking they heard the clash 
 of steel and the thunder of chariot 
 wheels. One has wandered to the shore, 
 and his verses echo back to us the 
 triumph of the sea, and the confusion of 
 its victory. Others have sailed to 
 foreign lands and have brought back 
 rare and beautiful flowers, and stranee 
 seeds, but seeds that always run wild, 
 and flowers that always wither in Eng- 
 lish soil. Though many poets have 
 nourished and cherished these exotics, 
 useless is their labour, and wasted their 
 time, for the product is but a weed after all. 
 
 8
 
 146 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " But though the harvest be already 
 gathered, and the people contented with 
 the bread therefrom, still there remains to 
 all the poets the sky for beauty, and the 
 earth for truth, and the wind for melody, 
 and though they cannot rival the work 
 of the reapers who single-handed cut the 
 ripe corn, their words should cause fresh 
 seed to be sown for future generations 
 to gather fresh harvests. 
 
 " But leaving metaphor for a while, I 
 assert that mine is the most miserable 
 lot of any author ; for I am continually 
 being anticipated by the great wits of 
 the day. Do I plan some scathing 
 verses on turn-coats, and Mr. Swinburne 
 is announced to have a poem breathing 
 fire and slaughter on that subject ui the 
 press. I can assure my hearers that the 
 rough draft of ' Dr. Jekyl and Mr. liyde ' 
 was in my desk (of course the names in 
 my version were different, and Mr. Hyde 
 was eventually converted and saved by
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 1 47 
 
 the Salvation Army), when to my utter 
 confusion I picked up Mr. Stevenson's 
 work on the counter of a wx^ll-known 
 Holborn bookseller. So much was in- 
 volved in the issue that I felt it was only 
 my duty to the Public to demand an ex- 
 planation from Mr. Stevenson. But the 
 answer was not satisfactory. I am in- 
 deed continually being anticipated ! A 
 certain study of Shelley stopped the 
 publication of a burlesque of his charac- 
 ter I had undertaken as a jcn d esprit : 
 a certain translation of /Eschylus showed 
 me how ridiculous It was for more than 
 one poet to set about turning Bohn's 
 Classical Library Into verse. After 
 finishing a volume of ' Confessions of a 
 Realist,' It struck me that to be natural- 
 istic one ought properly to lose one's 
 character, which Is hardly original ; after 
 reading a Scotch tale, I saw In a flash 
 what an Important place slow summer 
 sunsets may fill In a three-volume novel.
 
 148 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " But the fate of being anticipated has 
 saved me from the vice of being popular. 
 There are so many dubious byways that 
 lead to semi-success in Literature that I 
 am thankful I have returned to the cross- 
 roads. I might have written tragedies, 
 and, purchasing one hundred copies my- 
 self, and sending one hundred for review, 
 have had a second edition called for ' in 
 less than three months.' As I have a 
 decent ear for other people's metres 
 my volume of verse might have elicited 
 an essay of four columns and a half in 
 some literary journal on the paucity of 
 double rhymes in English. But to keep 
 oneself constantly before the public needs 
 a orenius for advertisiuQf as well as con- 
 siderable agility ; and it is a ticklish 
 thing to play battledore and shuttlecock 
 with one's friends on Parnassus. ThouQfh 
 a clever lady novelist has shown us how 
 profitable it is to expose one's sex and 
 how easy it is to expose oneself, I leave
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 1 49 
 
 the field of fiction to the rival schools 
 that are acquainted with the scenery of 
 Central Ah'ica, and skilled in the dissec- 
 tion of a housemaid's heart. 
 
 " Turning to criticism I would say that 
 authors are extremely inconsiderate to 
 their reviewers. They forget that a critic 
 has generally to master in two days 
 what it takes an author years to study. 
 
 " A considerate author will therefore 
 append to his preface a list of the 
 authorities he has consulted. Such 
 thouo^htfuhiess is not thrown awav. For 
 without it how could a reviewer be 
 omniscient on every subject, from the 
 structure of the sonnet to a treatise on 
 Civil Law and the State ? Specialists as 
 critics are out of date. Such an outcry 
 has been raised about biassed critics, that 
 obviously the only course for an editor is 
 to hand the book to a man who knows 
 nothing at all about the subject. And 
 indeed there is no reason why London
 
 150 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 should not follow the example of the pro- 
 vincial press. But it Is injudicious for 
 literary men to clamour much about un- 
 f^iir reviewing, for it is rarely good policy 
 to disparage a paper you are dying to 
 contribute to. Log-rolling also has been 
 made too much of. Few critics find it 
 practicable to keep a literary friendship 
 alive ; the public are so fond of a good 
 rousinof attack. The race of reviewers 
 is indeed much malio^ned ! Which critic 
 shall we pity most, him who knows more 
 than his author, or him who knows less ? 
 While the one is annoyed by tne mis- 
 takes he finds on every page, the other 
 is irritated at finding none. Perhaps the 
 censor of Poetry is the luckiest, and the 
 censor of Theology the unluckiest; while 
 nothing is so exasperating as other 
 people's dogmas, nothing is sweeter than 
 the reflection that the repulsion you feel 
 at the sight of a fresh volume of songs 
 is balanced by the attraction your critique 
 invariably has for the songster. 
 
 ;
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. I5I 
 
 "Who envies now either author or 
 critic? Happier is the honest book- 
 malvcr, or the weary editor. And Pub- 
 lishers ? Their motto should be ' Great 
 wit to madness nearly is allied ; ' for their 
 doors are crowded with littdrateurs who to 
 demonstrate that they are possessed of 
 genius produce works which prove in- 
 sanity runs in the family. A Publisher 
 indeed is assailed by so many poets, re- 
 ceives so many novels, devises so many 
 schemes for the decent interment of still- 
 born literary infants, that he would soon 
 give up the ghost were it not for the 
 Review Book, a tonic of great strength 
 and bitterness. Some authors however 
 affirm that the book that interests him 
 the most is his Cheque Book." 
 
 ** What is the pleasantest thing you 
 know, Weld ? " asked Lofthouse, disre- 
 garding Martell's audible aside that 
 though a woman's vanity always saves
 
 152 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 her from egotism, a Poet's egotism never 
 saves him from vanity, 
 
 " To box with a man three stone 
 h'ghter than myself," answered Patrick ; 
 *' or to swim in a sea rough enouo^h to 
 make one's friends needlessly alarmed." 
 
 Nina drew mentally a picture of his 
 brown head among the waves, and 
 smiled to herself with pleasure. She, like 
 Isopel Berners, loved the sun and wind. 
 
 " What is yours, Charlotte?" she asked. 
 
 " To exchano^e confidences with a 
 friend," said Miss Ward. 
 
 "And the pleasantest thing you know, 
 Mr. McWhirter?" 
 
 " If you had asked me the nicest thing 
 I ken, I should ha' replied the leetarary 
 circle of Peebles. But as you " 
 
 " Mine," interrupted Chappie, " is a 
 man who can talk sense." 
 
 " And mine," said the Poet, " is a 
 woman who can talk nonsense." 
 
 " Yours is propaganda, I suppose.-^" 
 said Patrick, turning to the Socialist.
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 153 
 
 " Not at all," answered Martell ; " mine 
 is a Society journal. I love Satire, and 
 these papers are living satires on the 
 age. They disgust you, I suppose ?" 
 
 " I loathe a dust-bin," returned the 
 Irishman. 
 
 " You are disgusted with these papers, 
 and you read them !" exclaimed Martell. 
 
 Patrick did not know what to 
 answer. 
 
 " The Society papers," he said, after a 
 pause, " are scavengers' carts into which 
 everything unclean is thrown. Useful 
 they certainly are ; but they taint the air 
 through which they pass." 
 
 " I prefer the men who collect the 
 mud to the men who throw it," said the 
 Socialist. "Why do you condemn those 
 who, after all, give you what you like to 
 read ? " 
 
 " One loathes it becatise it has a faint 
 fascination for one," cried Nina, coming 
 to the rescue. 
 
 8*
 
 154 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " We hate scandal," said everybody in 
 a breath. 
 
 " The reason why a man hates scandal 
 is that, when he hears other people's 
 failings being discussed, he knows that 
 his turn may come next," said Martell. 
 " Scandal is the salt that keeps Society 
 from putrefying. If our friends did not 
 pry into all our affairs, and if w^e were 
 sure of not being found out, what records 
 we should all have ! What passions 
 should we not gratify if our friends were 
 as obtuse as our enemies ! " 
 
 " These papers make us take such an 
 unhealthy and low view of mankind," 
 be2fan Lofthouse. 
 
 " Since we know in our hearts how 
 much weaker and meaner, and more 
 dishonest we are than our friends thmk 
 us," replied Martell, " we may be pretty 
 sure that they are much baser than we 
 think them." 
 
 "It is impossible to form real friend-
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 155 
 
 ships with such views in one's brain," 
 interposed Lofthouse, again. 
 
 "Friendship! Utopia!" cried the 
 SociaHst. "Why should we be afraid of 
 whispering what we think is the truth 
 about our friends, for if guilty they 
 deserve to be exposed and punished, and 
 if innocent, what good can their friend- 
 ship do us, when such suspicion can 
 come between ? " 
 
 " Are these your own or Zola's prin- 
 ciples ? " asked the Poet. 
 
 " Mine," replied Martell," Zola is quite 
 optimistic at times. But Zola does 
 certainly generally destroy illusion. He 
 tears to shreds the pernicious glamour 
 which surrounds so many poets. I am 
 told that the favourite reading of 
 educated girls of nineteen or twenty is 
 the sickly sentiment of Swinburne — 
 
 I " * The lilies and languors of virtue ; 
 [ The roses and raptures of vice.' 
 
 Now I say that it is impossible for any
 
 156 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 woman who has studied Zola to be 
 injured by Swinburne." 
 
 "What zuoman could possibly read 
 Zola ! " exclaimed the Poet, in a rage. 
 
 ** What eirl could admire Swinburne ! " 
 groaned Chappie. 
 
 " Good Heavens, I have read both !" 
 whispered Nina to Patrick. 
 
 " I suppose you admire ' A Mummer's 
 Wife, Martell ? " asked Lofthouse. 
 
 " Oh I don't defend Moore," continued 
 the Socialist, " though he has drawn 
 several good portraits. Dick's,for instance, 
 cannot be surpassed. But generally he 
 mixes vulgarity with indelicacy, and he 
 is often coarse without being clever. 
 Now how different is his method from 
 Sterne's ! " 
 
 " Sterne who first taught the English 
 to refine coarseness, and enjoy indeli- 
 cacy ! " said Lofthouse. 
 
 "Just so. True views of Literature 
 are rapidly gaining ground. Psycholo-
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 1 57 
 
 gical truth and fidelity to detail are now 
 given their right place, and Daudet, 
 Maupassant, and the rest are treading in 
 the footsteps of Swift and Balzac." 
 
 " Maupassant disgusts me," said Nina. 
 
 " That is because your point of view 
 is not the scientific one." 
 
 "And pray," burst out Lofthouse, who 
 had been simmering with indignation, 
 " what is your scientific point of view, 
 and what, after all, is this great realistic 
 school of Literature? Its masters con- 
 demn it ; its pupils condemn it ; its results 
 condemn it. Its whole beo;innina' and 
 end is one long condemnation. The 
 difference between the antagonistic 
 schools is simply one of health. When 
 people are diseased in mind or body, 
 or crossed in love, or afflicted with 
 black bile they naturally exclaim, ' How 
 truthful is Balzac, how realistic is 
 Zola, how faithful is Swift ! ' When 
 people are pure in mind and body
 
 158 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 they delight in Borrow and Jefferies, 
 Wordsworth, or Whitman if you will." 
 
 "A most misleading- distinction ! " said 
 Martell. 
 
 " Balzac who kept himself up till 
 four o'clock every morning with black 
 coffee, and Swift who was diseased, 
 naturally had a contempt for men who 
 spent their days in the woods and fields 
 and bathed in the open sea. The man 
 who gets up when the sun sets always 
 despises him who gets up when it 
 rises. 
 
 " The Idealists can never bear dissec- 
 tion, whether it be of a rabbit or human 
 nature," rejoined Martell. 
 
 "The Realists dissect their fellows 
 through the microscope of self," said 
 Lofthouse. " Zola's books are photo- 
 graphs it is true, but photographs of 
 himself. I object to have that eternal 
 face of his peeping from each fresh 
 costume."
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 1 59 
 
 " Nonsense, my dear fellow," said 
 Martell. " It's very evident that you 
 only know Balzac and Zola from hear- 
 say. Everybody who hasn't your simple 
 tastes isn't therefore diseased. Milk and 
 honey was all very well for the Golden 
 Age, but it palls on the Nineteenth 
 Century." 
 
 " But seriously," returned Lofthouse, 
 " what is this cloud that all the Realists 
 are under ? " 
 
 "It is the cloud of existence," said the 
 Socialist. " In youth it perplexes us, in 
 manhood it threatens us, in old age it 
 crushes us. Disillusion underlies every- 
 thing. Science has shown that indi- 
 vidual man has no more to do with his 
 character than with his coming into the 
 world. For the majority life has more 
 pain than pleasure." 
 
 " Nonsense," cried Patrick and Loft- 
 house, in a breath. 
 
 " ' A little sweet doth kill much bitter-
 
 l6o THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 ness,'" thought Nina, as she ghmced at 
 Patrick. 
 
 " ' Where the wicked cease from troub- 
 ling, and the weary are at rest,' " quoted 
 Miss Ward. 
 
 " His stomach is a bit wrang," said 
 McWhirter to Chappie. 
 
 " I fear, Mr. McWhirter, we must 
 seek for a deeper and more mysterious 
 concatenation of circumstances," 
 
 " Even supposing you are right, and 
 the majority experience more pleasure 
 than pain, we Socialists object to the 
 cruelty of the minority writhing, while 
 the rest look on and laugh. We realize 
 that we do not know why we are here, 
 and that we are merely puppets in 
 Nature's hands. It is not so much that 
 we object to our own suffering, as we 
 object to being the instruments for tor- 
 turing our fellows. We are continually, 
 consciously or unconsciously, harming 
 others. Thus women often die in child-
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. l6l 
 
 birth ; and there are hundreds of paral- 
 lel cases." 
 
 " It certainly is very cruel," said Loft- 
 house, thoughtfully, " when somebody 
 falls in love with you, and you cannot 
 reciprocate." 
 
 " Most terrible, most terrible," sighed 
 Chappie. "It makes one feel so much 
 to blame." 
 
 " Oh, in love there is not much 
 cruelty," remarked Martell. " He who 
 desires and cannot have, is at least spared 
 havinof and not desirinof. But to return 
 to my argument. I believe that out of 
 every hundred people, eighty wish in their 
 hearts that they had never been born." 
 
 " Only conform to Nature and you 
 will be content," said Lofthouse. " You 
 say that your creed teaches that life is 
 an evil. Why not adopt another which 
 finds in Childhood Innocence, in Youth 
 Power, in Old Age Content ? When 
 you see the barren fields of your school,
 
 1 62 THE PARADOX CLUtS. 
 
 and our fruitful meadows, don't you sus- 
 pect that there must be a serious flaw in 
 your system of tillage ? It seems to me 
 that where the Idealists reap Happiness, 
 the Naturalists gather Unhappiness. 
 Adopt our plan, and surely the end will 
 justify the means." 
 
 " We might be dupes," said the Social- 
 ist ; " but the age of Disenchantment has 
 set In. But do not turn away with the 
 idea that we find no pleasure in Life, for 
 we cannot help ourselves. The world is 
 indeed a stage, and all the actors, enjoy 
 tastinij or touchincj or seeinof. But 
 whereas you, Lofthouse, fancy that you 
 eat and drink and love by choice, we see 
 that you are forced to do what you do, 
 say what you say, and play the part you 
 are cast for." 
 
 " Well, then, play your part and be 
 happy." 
 
 " Our knowledge takes away much of 
 our interest in life."
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. I 63 
 
 " But you must have some compen- 
 sation." 
 
 " Well," replied Martell, " we are pro- 
 foundly interested in ourselves." 
 
 " There is one thing you have totally 
 overlooked," replied Lofthouse, " and 
 that is doing good. You blame Nature 
 for everything, blame yourself for much. 
 It is man who torments man, robs, cheats, 
 and murders him, and then sits down and 
 sheds crocodile tears. If all strove to do 
 good, the world would be happy to- 
 morrow." 
 
 " You beg the question altogether ! " 
 exclaimed Martell. " I tell you we are 
 Determinists, What on earth is the use 
 of telling the murderer whose parents 
 were vicious to be good ! His brain is 
 as diseased as the drunkard's body." 
 
 " But do you ever try ? " persisted the 
 Poet. " You never do. As Jefferies 
 says, if you sit down and argue you 
 can't walk to a place, you can't walk
 
 164 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 there, but if you start off you will arrive 
 all right." 
 
 Everybody laughed at his lack of 
 logic. 
 
 "It is you Fatalists who are under 
 delusion," he explained. " When a man 
 makes a fool of himself in public, do you 
 mean to say that he really believes he 
 couldn't have helped it ? " 
 
 " What do you think, Chappie ?" said 
 Martell. 
 
 " I fear that too often the unhappy 
 individual deserves severe reprehension," 
 replied Chappie. 
 
 " There you are ! " cried Lofthouse. 
 " You see the evidence is on my side. 
 Well, the long and the short of it is, 
 Martell, that when you sit down to break- 
 fast you contend that you must eat 
 salmon and not herrings, whereas I con- 
 tend you need not appropriate all the 
 marmalade." 
 
 " Well, if you like to put it that way,
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB, 1 65 
 
 I don't mind. The present and future 
 are contained in the past." 
 
 " So that is Determinism in a nut- 
 shell," concluded the Poet. " You Fatal- 
 ists are simply men who are muddled at 
 the bare idea of an alternative." 
 
 " We shall very soon get muddled if 
 we keep on going- round in a circle," 
 said Martell. " We had better drop the 
 subject." 
 
 " Before we do," replied the Poet, 
 " let me quote one of the most beauti- 
 ful truths ever written : I mean that 
 of Borrow : ' Life is sweet, brother. 
 There's night and day, brother, both 
 sweet things ; sun, moon, and stars, 
 brother, all sweet things ; there's like- 
 wise a wind on the heath. Life is very 
 sweet, brother.' " 
 
 " I was talking of the poor," persisted 
 Martell. " How many of them have 
 the wind on the heath ? When you are 
 working sixteen hours a day you don't
 
 1 66 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 see much sun, and you are too tired 
 ever to notice the moon and the stars." 
 
 Lofthouse saw that he could make no 
 impression, and lie looked towards Pat- 
 rick for aid. Very soon the three were 
 quarrelling about Ireland. 
 
 " Union versus Home Rule is the 
 struggle of Sense with Sentiment," 
 said Martell. "Our aim should be to 
 unite the two, in which lies the secret of 
 successful government." 
 
 " English doctors will never cure Ire- 
 land," said Patrick, " by persisting in 
 their useless steel pills, and iron for 
 tonics." 
 
 " Better than the homoeopathy of 
 Home Rule, and such like quackery," 
 said Martell. " The arrows of the 
 Parnellites lly very wide of the mark." 
 
 " But the boomerang of Coercion re- 
 coils on the user," rejoined Patrick, hotly. 
 
 Miss Ward had paid very little atten-
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 1 67 
 
 tlon to either the paper or the conver- 
 sation that evening, for Nina's words 
 about Chappie's marked attentions to her 
 came back again and again. Every 
 Httle courtesy that he paid her that even- 
 ing, the way in which he agreed with 
 everything she said, the sympathetic 
 looks he threw at her from time to time, 
 all confirmed the suspicion she had 
 harboured so long of his being in love 
 with her. While Lofthouse and Martell 
 were still debating on Determinism, he 
 rose and gently drew her aside. His 
 manner was mysterious, his words still 
 more so. To her agitated mind every 
 sentence showed that iine cerlaine tension 
 existed between them. 
 
 "Miss Ward," he at last said, solemnly, 
 " I have something to say that I trust 
 will please you. I have long loved " 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Chappie ! " replied the lady, 
 with modest confusion. " This is so un- 
 expected, so unlooked for."
 
 1 68 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " Then you know ? " asked Chappie, 
 surprised ; " you know how dear -" 
 
 " Hush ! " she broke in. " Speak 
 lower, please, or some one will hear." 
 
 " Miss Ward," said he, earnestly, sink- 
 ing his voice to a whisper, " I have long 
 loved " 
 
 " Long ? " said she, softly. " Then 
 
 dear Nina " She stopped herself 
 
 from adding, " was right." 
 
 " She told me there was no hope for 
 me," said Chappie, a trille sadly. 
 
 " No hope ! " said the lady, indignant 
 at such feminine double-faccdness. " No 
 hope ! Why, over and over again she 
 assured me " 
 
 " Dear Miss Ward," interrupted 
 Chappie. '* Thank you so much, so 
 very much. My heart is now at rest. 
 But a simple, innocent girl may have 
 depths that a man can never fathom ! I 
 thought all alonof it would be better to 
 speak straight out to you, but at first
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB, 1 69 
 
 I was afraid of being repulsed. ' I will 
 speak to her dearest friend/ I said to 
 myself." 
 
 " I thought once she was my friend," 
 said Miss Ward, surprised at Chappie 
 still pursuing the subject ; " but after 
 what you say, I will never speak to her 
 agam ! 
 
 " Come," said Chappie, astonished at 
 the warmth he thought she was display- 
 ing on his behalf. " Nina was naturally 
 modest. Dear girl ! she did not like to 
 avow it at first, she who has lived wholly 
 in sensations and emotions." 
 
 " Modest ! " cried the lady, thoroughly 
 aroused. " Modest ! " I call such modesty 
 false modesty. Why, she told me this 
 evening that nothing could have pleased 
 her more." 
 
 " It does seem a little odd," he mused, 
 " when she said so decidedly just now 
 that it could never be a question of love 
 between us." 
 
 9
 
 170 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " It's really too bad," said Miss Ward, 
 extremely angry at the base way in 
 which she thought Chappie had been 
 kept from proposing to her. 
 
 " Ah, but now we understand each 
 other," he pursued, leaning forward con- 
 fidentially, and bringing his head nearer. 
 To his surprise, he found Miss Ward's 
 head on his shoulder. " What an ex- 
 traordinary girl ! Is she ill ? " he said 
 to himself, growing alarmed. " Shall I 
 bring you a glass of water ? " he added, 
 kindly. " Perhaps it is the heat that 
 has overcome you ! " 
 
 " Oh, no, no," murmured she, with 
 her eyes shut. " How easily they might 
 have parted us ! " 
 
 A cold shudder ran through Chappie's 
 frame. Could she think he was in love 
 with /^^rf Impossible! 
 
 " Miss Ward," he said, stiffly, " I must 
 beg you, I really must, to remember 
 that " '
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. I /I 
 
 One glance at his face showed the 
 lady the unspeakable error she had 
 ccmmitted. 
 
 But a step and a voice close behind 
 them changed the hatred in their hearts 
 to a feeling of self-preservation. " Not a 
 word ! " they had barely time to whisper 
 to one another before Nina stood before 
 them. 
 
 " Will you not come and play to us, 
 Charlotte ? " she said, in a matter-of-fact 
 voice that made the victims writhe. 
 
 "A Little Summer Shower" was given, 
 to the delight of the audience. Chappie, 
 while listening to the music, had re- 
 covered his equanimity. A desire to 
 be magnanimous stole into his breast. 
 After all, he reliected, she is not the first 
 who has fallen in love with me. Nor 
 indeed the last, he added, for he began 
 to feel sure that Nina, too, had a 
 flame for him. The music stopped, and 
 he hastened to Miss Ward's side to show 
 that he bore her no ill-feeling.
 
 172 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " It recalls Nature so admirably," he 
 said. " One actually hears the patter 
 of the raindrops on the leaves, the songs 
 of the birds, and the wind, sad presage 
 of autumn, as it sighs round the trees. 
 Then comes a lull, and lifting one's head 
 to the sunshine, one is delighted to 
 find the ' Little Summer Shower ' is 
 over." 
 
 A little shock of admiration ran through 
 the company that he should have ex- 
 pressed so boldly the mind of all. But 
 Chappie settled his spectacles firmly, and 
 continued, unconscious of the surprise 
 he had created. " After hearing such a 
 gem of modern thought and musical 
 setting, one is tempted to risk a disap- 
 pointment in other branches of the Arts. 
 Mr. Lofthouse, what, may I ask, are 
 your views on Art ? " 
 
 " Art for Art's sake ! " said Lofthouse. 
 "Art is my mistress." 
 
 " His mistress could do very well
 
 THE TARADOX CLUB. I 7 
 
 1 
 
 without a good many of her lovers," 
 whispered Martell, aside. 
 
 "When I was young" — he was twenty- 
 two— "and foolish," continued the Poet, 
 " I joined a Society whose object was to 
 raise both classes and masses to its own 
 level. Our main theory was that what- 
 ever you want done in Art you should 
 do yourself. Thus the artist who designs 
 a mantelpiece should cast it himself, so 
 that the work may have ' feeling.' It is 
 better, we said, that the shovel should be a 
 failure than that it should be mechanical, 
 and lack individuality. One of us made 
 a design and engraved it himself on 
 wood for The Soul String. It was cer- 
 tainly full of feeling. I never saw any- 
 thing like it before or since. It was a 
 triumph of individuality. But the subject 
 — a tea-kettle, in black and white, with 
 the lid off — pleased the critics even less 
 than the execution. (This was of course 
 a great triumph.) And not one of them 
 saw the allegory ! "
 
 1/4 'i*illi TARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " But the masses still decorate their 
 sprigged wall-paper with chromos from 
 Landseer," said Martell. 
 
 "We started an upholsterer's shop," 
 explained the Poet, " but we found the 
 people were too enthusiastically de- 
 graded. Some friends who bought the 
 Pisan chairs said they didn't mind the 
 high price, but they must have comfort ; 
 while others declared that they couldn't 
 understand why a chair that had three 
 legs should be twice as dear as one that 
 had four ! But at last we died. You 
 see we were heavily handicapped by the 
 fact of several of our members having 
 had all the disadvantages of a university 
 education." 
 
 " Can you not repeat," said Chappie, 
 persistently, " some of your efforts in 
 Art, so that I may have an idea of your 
 school ? " 
 
 " I remember one poem," said Loft- 
 house, " but I must tell you it will give
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 1 75 
 
 you no idea of our productions, be- 
 cause " 
 
 " It is far better," said Martell. 
 
 But Lofthouse paid no heed to tlie 
 taunt, and began : 
 
 " TJie fire bums bright : the amber flickering 
 tongues 
 Chase through the rooni^ and on thy fair 
 white throat 
 The slanting sJiadoivs wake. 
 Ah I I could zuatch each breath that thou dost 
 
 take, 
 Till, through the lotu-banked clouds the red 
 
 morn break. 
 Far must I be by daiun, far Jience by day, 
 ' Tis the last nigJU I 
 
 " The fire burns low : the smothered embers 
 faint. 
 Glimmer on rusty ash, and poivdery flake. 
 
 That fell so quietly. 
 Ah I I could list thy voice till faded be 
 The sorrowing dusk zvhich nozv enfoldeth 
 
 thee. 
 Far must I be by dazun, far hence by day, 
 ' Tis the last night ! "
 
 176 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 Patrick and Nina passed into the 
 quiet street, and began to walk home- 
 ward. They talked of the most trivial 
 things, but each remark carried a secret 
 and a sweeter meaning. Each sentence 
 twisted itself into something different, 
 each word that was lost to the head 
 found an echo in the heart. " Does 
 she love me ? " said Patrick, a thousand 
 times to himself. " Does he love me 
 still .'*" wondered Nina. 
 
 Never had she seemed so charming 
 to him as on that night. Her soft voice, 
 her profile in shadow, the rustle of her 
 dress, all revealing how much was 
 hidden, how much lay beneath her 
 tantalizing indifference, were as the 
 waving curtain, past which steal light 
 and music. Yet at a single word from 
 him the picture might fade away, as it 
 had done before. The love that he 
 fancied he read in her eyes might be 
 but the reflection from his own, and to
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. I 77 
 
 Stretch forth his hand might be to de- 
 stroy the illusion he had created. Did 
 she love him ? Her voice said Yes, his 
 experience, No. He knew the lines: 
 
 "When maidens innocently young 
 Say aften what they never mean, 
 Ne'er mind their pretty, lying tongue 
 But tent the language o' their een." 
 
 And he was sure they applied to every 
 one except her. 
 
 Meanwhile Nina was puzzling over 
 what her heart had told her a thousand 
 times. Why was he so odd to-night .'* 
 Why did he change so quickly when 
 he must know that she only appeared 
 cold to avoid helpless embarrassment ? 
 Why was everything so vague and 
 
 shadowy when, when — ? Why did 
 
 he keep on talking of the same thing ? 
 He did not really care for her, he was 
 merely amusing himself; and now she 
 remembered that when she had been 
 
 9*
 
 178 THE TARADOX CLUB. 
 
 abroad he had not written to her for a 
 whole week. 
 
 " You don't forget," said he, " that 
 you said you wanted to see the Mile- 
 End Road on a Saturday night ? " 
 
 ** No, I want to go, for I am beginning 
 to take your view of London ; and, after 
 all, why should we not be content where 
 we are ? " 
 
 The word " content " jarred on Pat- 
 rick. He wished to see Nina as dis- 
 contented as himself. 
 
 " I am sick of London," he said, with 
 considerable energy. " I don't mind 
 where I go, so long as I get out of it. 
 Then I should feel less restless." 
 
 " Why would you feel less restless ? " 
 said Nina. 
 
 Directly afterwards she blushed that 
 she should have asked, but she strained 
 her ears for the answer. 
 
 "Ah, you know why, Nina?" he 
 said.
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. I 79 
 
 Her heart beat fast as she tried to 
 answer carelessly : 
 
 " Patrick, are we not friends ? " 
 
 " I want love," he said. 
 
 He braced himself for the disillusion- 
 ment. He fancied it must come, and 
 perhaps in the effort to meet it his 
 voice had grown hard. 
 
 Why was he so cold, she said to 
 herself. The avowal had come at last, 
 but oh, so differently to what she had 
 expected. He must have seen all along 
 how much she loved him, and now he 
 spoke in a voice as though of an every- 
 day thing. But he loved her. What 
 could she answer ? How could she tell 
 him when he made it so difficult ? 
 
 " I think you are a little ungrateful." 
 
 She did not know whether she was 
 reproaching him for not having broken 
 the silence on the subject before, or for 
 having broken it at all. 
 
 But Patrick could not see into the
 
 l8o THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 subtleties of a woman's heart, subtleties 
 that a woman raises in mere self-defence 
 against disappointment, subtleties that 
 are swept away at the first touch of 
 love. The words were spoken, and he 
 repeated them mechanically to himself 
 without looking for any meaning behind 
 them. He realized that there was no 
 hope, and that was all. 
 
 " Ungrateful ! " he repeated, bitterly ; 
 " Well, yes, perhaps I am ungrateful, 
 when I have your friendship," 
 
 He said no more, and they walked 
 on in silence. Nina's heart sank at 
 every step. What did it all mean, she 
 asked herself piteously ? Why had this 
 cruel thing happened ? It was like 
 awakening in the cold night after a 
 dream of sunshine. She did not realize 
 how many times the things she had 
 said in jest he had taken in earnest. 
 She had taught him to dread her wit, 
 and this was the result.
 
 THE rARADOX CLUB. l8l 
 
 At length they reached her liome, and 
 they separated. 
 
 Nina sat alone, long after he had left 
 her. He must come back, she thought ; 
 he must come back. He cannot leave 
 me without a word. He must come 
 back. 
 
 Patrick strode homewards in tragic 
 wrath. He damned the whole affair. 
 He consigned the whole sex to oblivion, 
 with the exception of Nina. " Of course, 
 I knew she didn't love me," he said, 
 bitterly. " Why did I persist ? Hasn't 
 she told me, or as good as told me, 
 twice before it's of not the slightest 
 use ? It's the same as at Porlock. 
 Friends ! Curse that word — friendship ! 
 Why was her voice so soft ? Oh, but 
 she says she is fond of me. She is in 
 love with some one else ! " 
 
 And while he was seeking to excuse 
 Nina's behaviour, she was reading over 
 the letters he had addressed to the
 
 1 82 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 Continent ; and now, for the first time, 
 the passages of studied indifference that 
 he had carefully inserted through the 
 remote fear of being laughed at, struck 
 her in their untrue light.
 
 THE MILE-END ROAD.
 
 VI. 
 
 THE MILE- END ROAD. 
 
 The last Saturday night in November 
 saw the Mile-End Road white with 
 snow. Snow lay thick on the booths 
 that had been rigged up for the market 
 night ; on the tarpaulins of the hay 
 waggons that were moving slowly to- 
 wards Stratford, the carters plodding, 
 with downcast eyes, at their horses' 
 heads ; on the red lamps and gilded 
 balcony of " The Blind Beggar," the 
 inn that defies its near rivals " The 
 Vine Tavern " and " The White Hart." 
 Light, the fierce light of paraffin, 
 flared throucrh the darkness from hun-
 
 1 86 THE PARADOX CLUl3. 
 
 dreds of stalls, and fell on a broad 
 sheet of snow, through which a black 
 river (the track worn by the horses' 
 hoofs) wound its narrow way. Light, 
 quivering light, fell everywhere. The 
 paraffin burst in orange flames from 
 the sugar-loaf tin lamps of the booths, 
 or spent itself in streamers of blue 
 fire, hissing when the wind caught it. 
 Light darted in wavering strips over 
 the broad roadway to the dark side 
 beyond, falling suddenly on the face 
 of the countryman and his three white 
 horses, who had just emerged from the 
 gloom. It danced over the roped heads 
 of the horses, and gleamed on the straw- 
 plait which tied their tails in a hard knot, 
 showing that they were for sale ; and 
 then it fell elsewhere, leaving the 
 countryman and his beasts but in- 
 distinct figures. 
 
 On the broad white footpath, beaten 
 hard by thousands of feet, a torrent of
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 1 87 
 
 people was pouring eastwards, past 
 the ballad-singer who, standing on a 
 rough platform of boards, with flaming 
 jet dropping liquid fire to the ground 
 below, sang his verses to a ring of 
 boys whose shadows lengthened and 
 shot out over the snow ; past the 
 baskets of rusty iron, over which bent 
 old women whose shadows mocked their 
 owners, jumping on and off the canvas 
 walls of the booths, and waving gigantic 
 fingers across the ceiling. Past the 
 tempting stalls streamed the crowd, 
 past the yellow piles of early oranges, 
 past barrows of oil-cloth and shell- 
 fish, artificial flowers, and nuts, books, 
 sweets, oysters, sparrows, and oleo- 
 graphs. 
 
 In the dark and narrow streets, in 
 the dimly-lighted alleys that lie round 
 Brick Lane, the women crouch in 
 their doorways, each waiting for her 
 man's return ; but on Saturday nights
 
 1 88 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 the younger women ihrow their shawls 
 aside, and parade up and down the 
 Whitechapel Road, attracted by the Hfe 
 and bustle. 
 
 Factory girls, bareheaded and bare- 
 armed, some dressed in gaudy red and 
 blue, marched down the pavement over 
 the snow. Shop-girls, with wonderful 
 curling feathers, and large hollow silver 
 lockets, sauntered along in twos, the 
 baggages ! in search of lovers. Girls 
 with happy faces, baggages who had 
 captured lovers, hung on manly arms, 
 and peeped with conscious pride at 
 their companions, with expressions that 
 said that the long-expected hour of 
 the week had come. A dozen young 
 men passed by with the swinging White- 
 chapel gait. As they moved rapidly on, 
 now making a dart at some knot ot 
 laughing damsels, now recognizing and 
 calling to some mate in the crowd, as 
 pale-faced and hollow-eyed as them-
 
 THE PARADOX CLUIJ. 1 89 
 
 selves, they sang, in derision of the 
 Salvation Army, the chorus : 
 
 " To be there ! To be there ! 
 
 Oh wc know what it is to be there ! 
 We will come along with you to your sweet 
 Salvation home, 
 For we know what it is to be there." 
 
 Where the road widens into the shape 
 of a racecourse and sends a slanting 
 arm to Hackney, " The Vine Tavern " 
 rises square and bluff, an island off a 
 reef of houses. Patrick and Nina were 
 standing in the shadow of the doorway, 
 and looking down the narrow stone 
 passage, lit by a single naked gas-light. 
 From a room, opening at the further 
 end, came the voices of men in dispute, 
 and the clatter of glass and pewter. 
 Standing in the snow, just without the 
 threshold, the lovers could watch the 
 shadows of the people in the room inside 
 flittinof over the red curtain that screened 
 the window close at hand.
 
 I90 THE I'ARADOX CLUB. 
 
 A few paces from the inn a blood- red 
 shaft rose tall and heavy in the light of 
 its hanging oil-lamps. Round this beam, 
 sinister as a guillotine, clustered a 
 crowd of men, engaged in a "try your 
 strength " contest, eager to distinguish 
 themselves before the little knot of 
 sweethearts. Man after man took up 
 the heavy wooden hammer and smote 
 with all his might on the peg that 
 sent the wire rattling up to the mark. 
 " One hundred and ninety ! " called 
 the proprietor, " that's the way to 
 do it, boys ! Have another try. Penny 
 for three trys ! Penny for three 
 trys ! " 
 
 "Why don't ye go and thry, Pat?" 
 said a voice, and Patrick, starting at 
 the sound of his name, saw a pretty, 
 fair-skinned girl urging a red-haired 
 Irishman to go in and win. " Shure, 
 ye can bate all the other bhoys ! " Pat, 
 thus implored, took off his coat and
 
 THE TARADOX CLUB. I9I 
 
 aimed a left-handed blow at the peg. 
 " Two hundred and sixty ! " cried the 
 marker. Again the Irishman tried, but 
 this time only scored two hundred and 
 forty. " Show them what you can do, 
 sir," suggested the proprietor. Then Pat 
 braced himself so that the muscles of 
 his powerful limbs and chest swelled 
 under his dress, and swinging the heavy 
 hammer round his head as though it 
 were a toy, he threw all his weight into 
 a mighty blow. Nina saw his green 
 eyes light up, and his red hair flash 
 in the light, and then the wire sped 
 up the beam. " Two hundred and 
 ninety," called the proprietor. " Ten 
 more, and you could ha got no farder." 
 Pat drew on his coat again, and the 
 fair-skinned girl bore him off, bub- 
 bling over with simple pride and de- 
 light. 
 
 Nina and Patrick turned away from 
 the inn and walked westward, passing
 
 192 THE TARADOX CLUB. 
 
 the old women who sell pigs' trotters 
 from tiny little tables, dimly illuminated 
 by candles set in glass chimneys, and 
 resisting all the temptations that the 
 owners of shooting-stands and cocoa- 
 nut pitches, painted sparrows and cower- 
 ing rabbits offer to the moneyed man. 
 They scorned the tragedy of " Little Jim, 
 the Collier's dying Child," and they fled 
 from the attractions of the Marvel of 
 the Age, the Boy born with the Head 
 of a Bull-dog and the Feet of a Frog. 
 They succumbed, however, to the fas- 
 cinating rhetoric of a quack medicine 
 vendor. Round this worthy's white and 
 steady flame stood a crowd of solemn- 
 faced men, drinking in and gravely be- 
 lieving all the assurances he offered 
 them. " I do not offer you these pills, 
 working men of London," said he, 
 " without a full knowledge that they 
 will restore all Wrecks of Humanity to 
 their usual health ! Working men of
 
 THE TARADOX CLUB. 1 93 
 
 London, if you are ashamed to step 
 forward before all these gentlemen and 
 take these pills and this box of ointment 
 for sixpence, come round to my house 
 this evening, and you shall have them 
 for double the money." 
 
 Suddenly Nina drew Patrick's atten- 
 tion away from the working men of 
 London. 
 
 " Look at that little tot," said she, 
 and Patrick noticed a tiny little girl 
 trotting along by herself, hugging a loaf 
 of bread in her arms. She was keeping 
 close to the shops so as to avoid being 
 swept away by the streaming crowd. 
 The little creature was absorbed in 
 getting home and in not letting the loaf 
 slip out of her arms. Behind her, in 
 the snow which lay soft and white for a 
 narrow breadth against the houses, could 
 be traced the prints of her feet, four of 
 her wee steps falling within the stride of 
 some man who had gone before her. 
 
 to
 
 194 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 " What woman could have the heart 
 to send such a httle thing so far in the 
 snow to fetch a loaf!" said Nina. " She 
 cannot be more than five." 
 
 She took up the little girl in her arms, 
 and kissed her. The flour from the 
 bottom of the crusty loaf whitened 
 Nina's bosom and filled her fur with 
 dust. The child looked in her face 
 without speaking, and kept a tight hold 
 of the loaf. Her large dark eyes were 
 filled with wonder : " What did the 
 pretty lady want ? " 
 
 " Look ! you baby bunting," said 
 Nina, showing her the ring on her 
 fino-er. 
 
 Then the child gave a faint, shy smile, 
 and putting a little finger between her 
 own faded dress and soft, slender neck, 
 searched for something anxiously. 
 At last she pulled out a string of 
 small blue and white glass beads. It 
 was her little secret, the little secret she
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 1 95 
 
 kept from the world, and now she smiled 
 triumphantly in the pretty lady's face. 
 
 " Oh, you little puss," said Nina. " Let 
 me count ! " 
 
 But the child looked towards the 
 flaring paraffin of the shooting-stand 
 opposite. The light fell on her tired 
 face, and the bow of her pouting lips, 
 and on her rough brown hair tied with 
 a scrap of orange ribbon. Her wistful 
 look said that somebody was expecting 
 her at home, and that it was time for 
 bed, where, before she fell asleep, with 
 one hand clasping her beloved blue 
 beads, she would think in the darkness 
 of the pretty lady with the fur like a 
 bunny's, and the shining ring. 
 
 Nina kissed her wondering eyes, and 
 put her down on the ground, and the 
 child trotted off away into the darkness, 
 hugging the loaf, and keeping close to 
 the wall. Once she looked back towards 
 them, and then making her way through
 
 196 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 the snow she was lost to sight in the 
 hurrying crowd. 
 
 " What a sweet mother }'ou would 
 make, Nina," said Patrick, after a little 
 pause. 
 
 She blushed in the darkness, but her 
 heart was glad within her. 
 
 " I shall always remember to-night," 
 she said, for the sake of saying some- 
 thing ; " it seems very strange, but the 
 roar of the voices here somehow or 
 other brincrs back the sound of the sea." 
 
 " Do you remember that last day we 
 spent at Gixie's Cove," said Patrick, 
 " when we were tired of lying in the 
 deep, cool grass among those silent 
 pines, and we came out of the wood on 
 the hillside furthest from home ? " 
 
 " How dazzling the sunshine was that 
 afternoon," said Nina. " When we saw 
 the rock standing like marble against 
 that deep blue sky you said in a breath, 
 ' How Greek ! ' and I, * How Italian !' "
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 1 97 
 
 " And we disputed over which was 
 right ; and I said you had never been to 
 Italy ; and you said that my Gre^k was 
 from translations." 
 
 " What babies we were ! " said Nina. 
 " Still, how we enjoyed the sun, and the 
 air, and the heather." 
 
 " And the gorse," added Patrick ; 
 *' for a mile we plunged knee-deep 
 through the sheet of crimson and yellow 
 slanting away towards the sea. The 
 bees flew out at every step ; their low 
 dreamy hum wearied you at last. I 
 believe that was why you wanted to go 
 back." 
 
 "It was a little bit their stings," she 
 explained, " but I was thinking of my 
 torn dress half the time. That beautiful 
 furze ruined it, and I would have turned 
 back long before, only I could not bear 
 you to laugh at me again." 
 
 Somehow or other Nina was not so 
 much bored with the picturesque as she 
 had been at "The Windsor Castle."
 
 198 THE PARADOX CLUC. 
 
 " I wonder if we shall ever see Porlock 
 again," said Patrick. " Let us forget 
 the Mile-End Road for a little, and 
 fancy ourselves back in the deep 
 coombes." 
 
 Nina did not speak. 
 
 " Shall we ? " he asked, eagerly. 
 
 '* Yes," murmured she, closing her 
 eyes for a moment, and shutting out 
 the black night, and the shadows 
 dancing over the snow, and the end- 
 less faces, each so alike, yet each so 
 different. 
 
 "At last we left the heather behind," 
 he began, "and ran down the hillside 
 waist-deep in bracken till we came to 
 the short, bare turf with the rock break- 
 ing through. The wiry grass was so 
 slippery there that we had to put our 
 feet sideways, and catch at the little 
 hawthorns ; and then at the steepest 
 place of all we took off our shoes, and 
 found it quite easy."
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 1 99 
 
 " But how clumsy the sheep thought 
 us," she broke in. " They bounded 
 along the narrow runs they had made in 
 the turf, and jumped from ledge to 
 ledge, stopping again, and turning back 
 their stupid white faces to watch us. 
 When you threw stones at them they 
 vanished among the fern, but they 
 always reappeared on some rock higher 
 up the hill." 
 
 "At last we came to the bottom of 
 the coombe," he said, doing his best to 
 bring back to her mind the hot August 
 day, and all that had happened, " where 
 the little stream ran down to the sea. 
 At the foot of the slope was a bed of 
 dark green grass which the hill shadow 
 had saved from the sun. There we lay 
 on our faces and drank the water that 
 swirled down in a long, narrow channel 
 over the rushes. There was not a cloud 
 in the sky, though the steep sides of the 
 gorge before and behind shut out so
 
 200 TIIIC PARADOX CLUJ3. 
 
 much of it, that we could not be certain; 
 and there was not a single white horse 
 on the sea, which stretched far below 
 us on our right, (lashing in the sun till it 
 reached the misty horizon." 
 
 He knew that this time she would not 
 say that she always felt a little senti- 
 mental on Saturday night, for something 
 in her face told him that he might 
 describe nearly every foot of the cliff 
 they had trodden to Gixie's Cove that 
 clay, and yet not weary her. 
 
 •' The sea looked so near, but we 
 could never get down to it," said Nina. 
 " 1 think that you might have managed 
 it somehow or other, for I longed to 
 touch the waves." 
 
 " I did my very best," said Patrick, 
 piqued ; for, in truth, he had climbed down 
 the cliff at that very spot one day when he 
 had not been encumbered with a woman. 
 " I said the only way to manage it was 
 to follow the stream, but we were both
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 20I 
 
 wrone. It was all ricrht till we came to 
 the oaks where the sunshine came slant- 
 ing through the boughs, and flecked the 
 moss on the boulders. It grew darker 
 and darker lower down, and when we 
 swune ourselves over that fallen tree 
 covered with tiny leaved ivy you were 
 almost afraid to go on. You wouldn't 
 walk in the water, though it was only a 
 few inches deep over the slab of rock, 
 so we climbed the bank again, and came 
 out clear of the oaks. The sea seemed 
 just beneath us, and the hill sloped quite 
 gently for some way till suddenly it 
 broke off short into the steep cliff. We 
 tried the stream again, but the brambles 
 stopped us : those long, yellow flowers, 
 too, hid the water from us, and when I 
 trod on them I got wet up to the knee." 
 " We could not reach the sea, do what 
 we would," said Nina. " It seemed so 
 strange to hear it murmuring beneath 
 us, and then to be forced to go all that
 
 202 THE PARADOX CLtli. 
 
 way back again. If we could only have 
 got on to the green slope below, the rest 
 would have been easy. 
 
 *' That slope was hundreds of feet 
 beneath," he answered. *' Don't you 
 remember I threw a stone as high and 
 far as I could, and you watched it, 
 thinking it would drop into the sea ? 
 You said it fell half-way down the first 
 slope." 
 
 " Well, never mind," said Nina. 
 " What did we do next ? I forget." 
 
 " You forget ! " echoed Patrick, " I 
 shall never forget it. You must re- 
 member how instead of going back up 
 the coombe we tried to climb the 
 opposite side, and when we reached those 
 white masses of stones half-way up the 
 hill, we found that though they looked 
 so small from beneath, we could hardly 
 spring from one to the other. I would 
 go on though they got looser and looser, 
 and threatened to slip and crush us, and
 
 The paradox club. 20;^ 
 
 when we dived under the spreading 
 branches of that oak, we stepped ankle- 
 deep in dead leaves and sticks. How 
 dark it was ! You were quite glad to 
 get into the light again." 
 
 " Never mind that part," said Nina, 
 quickly. " I know that we went back 
 aeain ; but tell me how we found the 
 way at last." 
 
 " Don't you remember how we jumped 
 back across the stream, and though I 
 held out a hand you got one foot soaked 
 with the water ? " he asked, lingering on 
 every little detail, because they brought 
 back a thousand sweet memories to him, 
 the sound of her voice, the turn of her 
 head, the mischief in her blue eyes. 
 " And we followed along the bank, past 
 the rushes, and the purple loosestrife till 
 we came to the stone wall. 
 
 " And there we saw a black dog come 
 down to drink at the little plank bridge," 
 added Nina. " How it startled me !
 
 204 THE TARADOX CLUB. 
 
 I thounfht we were cilone, and so we had 
 been for nearly two hours." 
 
 "Curse the dog," muttered Patrick, 
 half to himself. " It was when I " 
 
 " We were quite alone, really," she 
 continued, pretending not to hear him. 
 " The dog was out hunting on its own 
 account, and the farm from which it 
 came was a mile up the valley." 
 
 *' Well " said Patrick, vying with her as 
 to who could remember thescene the most 
 minutely, " the wall zig-zagged up the hill, 
 and I had to go first to hold back the 
 brambles, for there was only a narrow 
 grassy footpath between the blackberries 
 on the one hand, and the furze on the 
 other. Your dress got so torn that you 
 helped me to knock a stone out of the 
 wall so that you might climb it easily, 
 and get into the cornfield on the other 
 side." 
 
 " And it was that which tore it worse 
 than anything else ! " said Nina, with a
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 2O5 
 
 faint laugh. " It was easy to reach the 
 top after once leaving the furze ; and we 
 lay on the sunken earthwork, and we 
 watched the sun sinking into the sea." 
 
 •' That is not all," said Patrick. 
 
 " Oh, there was the mist," said Nina, 
 hurriedly. " There was the mist, of 
 course. It rolled up from the valley 
 beneath, directly the sun set, and we 
 could only see a few yards before us. 
 When we had gone a little way, we 
 could not tell where the sea lay, though 
 we smelt its salt. And then there was 
 the walk home that night along the Mine- 
 head road." 
 
 *' I wasn't thinking of that," said 
 Patrick, " I was thinking of the two 
 lines from the old Epictetus I read to you 
 in the failing light : — 
 
 " ' Some things must he to onr dear selves denied 
 For a sliort space, some lu holly laid aside ^ " 
 
 " But that is all past, and we are good
 
 2o6 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 friends now," she said, with a Httlc tremor 
 in her voice. Then, as Patrick did not 
 speak, and the silence became too 
 embarassing. " That is long ago ; it 
 seems so far away now." Her mind was 
 full of his unaccountable treatment of 
 her the other night, and she kept repeat- 
 ing to herself that he had only called 
 back the past to wound her after all. 
 Almost unconscious of what she said, 
 
 she added — 
 
 " I think it is a little cruel " 
 
 " Nina ! " cried Patrick, as he saw in 
 a flash what had been eluding him under 
 a thousand disguises all the evening, 
 ''Nina!" 
 
 Then desperately striving to stave off 
 the passionate words she was dying to 
 hear, she added, " But I have forgotten 
 to tell you the news — Miss Ward is 
 engaged to Mr. McWhirter. Don't you 
 hope they'll be happy ? " 
 
 '* What have they to do with us ? "
 
 THE PARADOX CLUB. 20/ 
 
 cried Patrick. " Nina " and at his 
 
 words everything and everybody else 
 were forgotten. One thought ecHpsed 
 the rest ; one word re-echoed in her 
 heart — the world and all that had 
 interested her faded into a background 
 for his love. 
 
 By this time the end of the White- 
 chapel Road was reached, and looking 
 back for an instant through the gloom 
 towards the deep orange lights, they 
 heard the hoarse voices of the hawkers, 
 and saw the indistinct masses of figures, 
 passing to and fro before the booths. 
 Then the lovers set their faces westward, 
 and, lost in one another, passed into the 
 darkness towards the silent and deserted 
 streets of the City. 
 
 Soon the tired people turned home- 
 wards, and the lights died out one by one, 
 leaving the thickly falling snow to cover 
 up the track beaten hard by so many 
 feet, the tiny steps of the little child who
 
 208 THE PARADOX CLUB. 
 
 had struggled on with the loaf, and the 
 footprints of the unknown man who had 
 gone before. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS, PRINTERS, CHILWORTIl AND LONDON. 
 
 jy
 
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