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Old Maids' Club

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<h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2> THE GRAMMAR OF LOVE. The Moon-man's name was Wilkins, and he did nine-tenths of the interviews in that model of the new journalism. Wilkins was the man to catch the weasel asleep, hit off his features with a kodak, and badger him the moment he awoke as to why he popped. Wilkins lived in a flat in Chancery Lane, and had his whiskey and his feet on the table when Silverdale turned the handle of the door in the gloaming. "What do you want?" said Wilkins gruffly. "I have come to ask you a few questions," said Silverdale politely. "But I don't know you, sir," said Wilkins stiffly. "Don't you see I'm busy?" "It is true I am a stranger, but remember, sir, I shall not be so when I leave. I just want to interview you about that paragraph in the Moon, stating——" "Look here!" roared Wilkins, letting his feet slide from the table with a crash. "Let me tell you, sir, I have no time to listen to your impertinence. My leisure is scant and valuable. I am a hard-worked man. I can't be pestered with questions from inquisitive busybodies. What next, sir? What I write in the Moon is my business and nobody else's. Damn it all, sir, is there to be nothing private? Are you going to poke and pry into the concerns of the very journalist? No, sir, you have wasted your time as well as mine. We never allow the public to go behind what appears in our paper." [pg 87] "But this is a mere private curiosity—what you tell me shall never be published." "If it could be, I wouldn't tell it you. I never waste copy." "Tell me—I am willing to pay for the information—who wrote the paragraph about Clorinda Bell and the Old Maids' Club." "Go to the devil!" roared Wilkins. "I thought you would know more than he," said Silverdale, and left. Wilkins came downstairs on his heels, in a huff, and walked towards Ludgate Hill. Silverdale thought he would have another shot, and followed him unseen. The two men jumped into a train, and after an endless-seeming journey arrived at the Crystal Palace. A monster balloon was going off from the grounds. Herr Nickeldorf, the great aeronaut, was making in solitude an experimental night excursion to Calais, as if anxious to meet his fate by moonlight alone. Wilkins rushed up to Nickeldorf, who was standing among the ropes giving directions. "Go avay!" said Nickeldorf, when he saw him. "I hafe nodings to say to you. You makes me schwitzen." He jumped into the car and bade the men let go. Ordinarily Wilkins would have been satisfied with this ample material for half a column, but he was still in a bad temper, and, as the car was sailing slowly upwards, he jumped in, and the aeronaut gave himself up for pumped. In an instant, moved by an irresistible impulse, Silverdale gave a great leap and stood by the Moon-man's side. The balloon shot up and the roar of the crowd became a faint murmur as the planet flew from beneath their feet. "Good-evening, Mr. Wilkins," said Lord Silverdale. "I should just like to interview you about——" "You jackanapes!" cried the Moon-man, pale with anger, "If you don't go away at once, I'll kick you down stairs." <div class="image-center" style="max-width: 521px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/i089.jpg" width-obs="521" height-obs="700" alt="" /> <div class="caption"> Go away, or I'll kick you Down Stairs. </div> </div> [pg 88] "My dear Mr. Wilkins," suavely replied Lord Silverdale, "I will willingly go down, provided you accompany me. I am sure Herr Nickeldorf is anxious to drop both of us." "Wirklich," replied the aeronaut "Well, lend us a parachute," said Silverdale. "No, danks. Beobles never return barachutes." "Well, we won't go without one. I forgot to bring mine with me. I didn't know I was going to have such a high old time." "By what right, sir," said Mr. Wilkins, who had been struggling with an attack of speechlessness, "do you persecute me like this? You are not a member of the Fourth Estate." "No, I belong merely to the Second." "Eh? What? A Peer!" "I am Lord Silverdale." "No, indeed! Lord Silverdale!" "Lord Silverdale!" echoed the aeronaut, letting two sand-bags fall into the clouds. Most people lose their ballast in the presence of the aristocracy. "Oh, I am so glad! I have long been anxious to meet your lordship," said the Moon-man, taking out his notebook. "What is your lordship's opinion of the best fifty books for the working man's library?" "I have not yet written fifty books." "Ah!" said the Moon-man, carefully noting down the reply. "And when is your lordship's next book coming out?" "I cannot say." "Thank you," said the Moon-man, writing it down. "Will it be poetry or prose?" "That is as the critics shall decide." "Is it true that your lordship has been converted to Catholicism?" [pg 90] "I believe not." "Then how does your lordship account for the rumor?" "I have an indirect connection with a sort of new nunnery, which it is proposed to found—the Old Maids' Club." "Oh, yes, the one that Clorinda Bell is going to join." "Nonsense! who told you she was going to join?" The Moon-man winced perceptibly at the question, as he replied indignantly: "Herself!" "Thank you. That's what I wanted to know. You may contradict it on the authority of the president. She only said so to get an advertisement." "Then why give her two by contradicting it?" "That is the woman's cleverness. Let her have the advertisement, rather than that her name should be connected with Miss Dulcimer's." "Very well. Tell me something, please, about the Club." "It is not organized yet. It is to consist of young and beautiful women, vowed to celibacy to remove the reproach of the term 'Old Maid.'" "It is a noble idea!" said the Moon-man, enthusiastically. "Oh, what a humanitarian time we are having!" "Lord Silverdale," said Herr Nickeldorf, who had been listening with all his ears, "I hafe to you give de hospitality of my balloon. Vill you, in return, take mein frau into de Old Maids' Club?" "As a visitor? With pleasure, as she is a married woman." "Nein, nein. I mean as an old maid. Ich habe sic nicht nöthig. I do not require her any longer." "Ah, then, I am afraid we can't. You see she isn't an old maid!" "But she haf been." "Ah, yes, but we do not recognize past services." [pg 91] "Oh, warum wasn't the Club founded before I married?" groaned the old German. "Himmel, vat a terrible mistake! It is to her I owe it that I am de most celebrated aeronaut in der ganzeu welt. It is the only profession in wich I escape her gewiss. She haf de kopf too veak to rise mit me. Ah, when I come oop here, it is Himmel." "Rather taking an unfair rise out of your partner, isn't it?" queried the Moon-man with a sickly smile. "And vat vould you haf done in—was sagt man—in my shoes?" The Moon-man winced. "Not put them on." "You are not yourself married?" The Moon-man winced. "No, I'm only engaged." "Mein herr," said the old German solemnly, "I haf nodings but drouble from you. You make to me mein life von burden. But I cannot see you going to de altar widout putting out de hand to safe you. It was stupid to yourself engage at all—but, now dat you haf committed de mistake, shtick to it!" "How do you mean?" "Keep yourself engaged. Do not change your gondition any more." "What do you say, Lord Silverdale?" said the Moon-man, anxiously. "I am hardly an authority. You see I have so rarely been married. It depends on the character of your betrothed. Does she long to be of service in the world?" The Moon-man winced. "Yes, that's why she fell in love with me. Thought a Moon-man must be all noble sentiment like the Moon itself!" "She is, then, young," said Silverdale, musingly. "Is she also beautiful?" [pg 92] The Moon-man winced. "Bewitching. Why does your lordship ask?" "Because her services might be valuable as an Old Maid." "Oh, if you could only get Diana to see it in that light!" "You seem anxious to be rid of her." "I do. I confess it. It has been growing on me for some time. You see hers is a soul perpetually seeking more light. She is always asking questions. This thirst for information would be made only more raging by marriage. You know what Stevenson says:—'To marry is to domesticate the Recording Angel.' At present my occupations keep me away from her—but she answers my letters with as many queries as a 'Constant Reader.' She wants to know all I say, do, or feel, and I never see her without having to submit to a string of inquiries. It's like having to fill up a census paper once a week. If I don't see her for a fortnight she wants to know how I am the moment we meet. If this is so before marriage, what will it be after, when her opportunities of buttonholing me will be necessarily more frequent?" "But I see nothing to complain of in that!" said Lord Silverdale. "Tender solicitude for one's betrothed is the usual thing with those really in love. You wouldn't like her to be indifferent to what you were doing, saying, feeling?" The Moon-man winced. "No, that's just the dilemma of it, Lord Silverdale. I am afraid your lordship does not catch my drift. You see, with another man, it wouldn't matter; as your lordship says, he would be glad of it. But to me all that sort of thing's 'shop.' And I hate 'shop.' It's hard enough to be out interviewing all day, without being reminded of its when you get home and want to put your slippers on the fender and your feet inside them and be happy. No, [pg 93] if there's one thing in this world I can't put up with, it's 'shop' after business hours. I want to forget that I get my gold in exchange for notes of interrogation. I shudder to be reminded that there are such things in the world as questions—I tremble if I hear a person invert the subject and predicate of a sentence. I can hardly bear to read poetry because the frequent inversions make the lines look as if they were going to be inquisitive. Now you understand why I was so discourteous to your lordship, and I trust that you will pardon the curt expression of my hyper-sensitive feelings. Now, too, you understand why I shrink from the prospect of marriage, to the brink of which I once bounded so heedlessly. No, it is evident a life of solitude must be my portion. If I am ever to steep my wearied spirit in forgetfulness of my daily grind, if my nervous system is to be preserved from premature break-down, I must have no one about me who has a right of interrogation, and my housekeeper must prepare my meals without even the preliminary 'Chop or Steak, sir?' My home-life must be restful, peaceful, balsamic—it must exhale a papaverous aroma of categorical proposition." "But is there no way of getting a wife with a gift of categorical conversation?" "Please say, 'There is no way, etc.,' for unless you yourself speak categorically, the sentences grate upon my ear. I can ask questions myself, without experiencing the slightest inconvenience, but the moment I am myself interrogated, every nerve in me quivers with torture. No, I am afraid it is impossible to find a woman who will eschew the interrogative form of proposition, and limit herself to the affirmative and negative varieties; who will, for mere love of me, invariably place the verb after the noun, and unalterably give the subject the precedence over the predicate. Often and often, when my Diana, in all her dazzling charms, looks up pleadingly into my face, [pg 94] I feel towards her as Ahasuerus felt towards the suppliant Queen Esther, and I yearn to stretch out my reporter's pencil towards her, and to say: 'Ask me what you will—even if it be half my income—so long as you do not ask me a question.'" "But isn't there—I mean there is—such a thing obtainable as a dumb wife?" "Mutes are for funerals, and not for marriages. Besides, then, everybody would be asking me why I married her. No, the more I think of it, the more I see the futility of my dream of matrimonial felicity. Why, a question lies at the very threshold of marriage—'Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife?'—and to put up the banns is to loose upon yourself an interviewer in a white-tie! No, leave me to my unhappy destiny. I must dree my weird. And anything your lordship can do in the way of enabling me to dree it by soliciting my Diana into the Old Maids' Club, shall be received with the warmest thanksgiving and will allow me to remain your lordship's most grateful and obedient servant, Daniel Wilkins." "Enough!" said Lord Silverdale, deeply moved, "I will send her a circular. But do you really think you would be happy if you lost her?" "If," said the Moon-man moodily. "It would require a great many 'ifs' to make me happy. As I once wrote: <div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> If cash were always present, And business always paid; If skies were always pleasant, And pipes were never laid; If toothache emigrated, Dyspepsia disappeared, And babies were cremated, And boys and girls were speared; If shirts were always creamy, And buttons never broke; If eyes were always beamy, And all could see a joke; [pg 95] If ladies never fumbled At railway pigeon holes; New villas never crumbled, And lawyers boasted souls; If beer was never swallowed, And cooks were never drunk, And trades were never followed, And thoughts were never thunk; If sorrow never troubled, And pleasure never cloyed, And animals were doubled, And humans all destroyed; Then—if there were no papers, And more words rhymed with "giving"— Existence would be capers, And life be worth the living. </div> </div> Your lordship might give me a poem in exchange," concluded the Moon-man conceitedly. "An advance quote from your next volume, say." "Very well," and the peer good-naturedly began to recite the first fytte of an old English romance. <div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> Ye white moon sailed o'er ye dark-blue vault, And safely steered mid ye fleet of starres, And threw down smiles to ye antient salt, While Venus flyrtede with wynkynge Mars. Along ye sea-washed slipperie slabbes Ye whelkes were stretchynge their weary limbs, While prior to going to bedde ye crabbes Were softlie chaunting their evenynge hymnes." </div> </div> At this point a sudden shock threw both bards off their feet, inverting them in a manner most disagreeable to the Moon-man. While they were dropping into poetry, the balloon had been dropping into a wood, and the aeronaut had thrown his grapnel into the branches of a tree. "What's the matter?" they cried. "Change here for London!" said the Herr, phlegmatically, "unless you want to go mit me to Calais. In five more minutes I shall be crossing de Channel." [pg 96] "No, no, put us down," said the Moon-man. "I never could cross the Channel. Oh, when are they going to make that tunnel?" Thereupon he lowered himself into the tree, and Lord Silverdale followed his example. <div class="image-center" style="max-width: 518px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/i097.jpg" width-obs="518" height-obs="700" alt="" /> <div class="caption"> Coming Down from the Clouds. </div> </div> "Guten nacht!" said the Herr. "Folkestone should be someveres about. Fordunately, de moon is out, and you may be able to find it!" "I say!" shrieked the Moon-man, as the balloon began to free itself on its upward flight, "How far off is it?" "I vill not be—was heist es?—interviewed. Guten nacht." Soon the great sphere was no bigger than a star in the heavens. "This is a nice go," said the Moon-man, when they had climbed down. "Oh, don't trouble. I know the Southeast coast well. There is sure to be a town within a four mile radius." "Then let us take a hansom," said the Moon-man. "Wilkins, are you—I mean you are—losing your head," said Lord Silverdale. And linking the interviewer's arm in his, he fared forth into the darkness. "Do you know what I thought," said Wilkins, as they undressed in the lonely roadside inn (for ballooning makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows), "when I was sliding down the trunk with you on the branches above?" "No—what did you—I mean you did think what?" "Well, I'm a bit superstitious, and I saw in the situation a forecast of my future. That tree typifies my genealogical tree, for when I have grown rich and prosperous by my trade, there will be a peer perched somewhere on the upper branches. Debrett will discover him." "Indeed I hope so," said the peer fervently, "for in the happy time when you shall have retired from business you will be able to make Diana happy." [pg 98] <hr class="hr2" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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