The Old Maids' Club. Israel Zangwill

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CHAPTER IV.

       Table of Contents

      THE CLUB GETS ADVERTISED.

      "I see you have disregarded my ruling, Miss Dulcimer!" said Lord Silverdale, pointing to the paragraph in the Moon. "What is the use of my trying the candidates if you're going to admit the plucked?"

      "I am surprised at you, Lord Silverdale. I thought you had more wisdom than to base a reproach on a Moon paragraph. You might have known it was not true."

      "That is not my experience, Miss Dulcimer. I do not think a statement is necessarily false because it appears in the newspapers. There is hardly a paper in which I have not, at some time or other, come across a true piece of news. Even the Moon is not all made of green cheese."

      "But you surely do not think I would accept Clorinda Bell after your warning. Not but that I am astonished. She assured me she was ice."

      "Precisely. And so I marked her 'Dangerous.' Are there any more candidates to-day?"

      "Heaps and heaps! From all parts of the kingdom letters have come from ladies anxious to become Old Maids. There is even one application from Paris. Ought I to entertain that?"

      "Certainly. Candidates may hail from anywhere—excepting naturally the United States.

       "But what, I wonder, has caused this tide of applications?"

      "The Moon, of course. The fiction that Clorinda Bell intended to take the secular veil has attracted all these imitators. She has given the Club a good advertisement in endeavoring merely to give herself one."

      "You suspect her, then, of being herself responsible for the statement that she was going to join the Club?"

      "No. I am sure of it. Who but herself knew that she was not?"

      "I can hardly imagine that she would employ such base arts."

      "Higher arts are out of employment nowadays."

      "Is there any way of finding out?"

      "I am afraid not. She has no bosom friends. Stay—there is her mother!"

      "Mothers do not tell their daughters' secrets. They do not know them."

      "Well, there's her brother. I was introduced to him the other day at Mrs. Leo Hunter's. But he seems such a reticent chap. Only opens his mouth twice an hour, and then merely to show his teeth. Oh, I know! I'll get at the Moon man. My aunt, the philanthropist, who is quite a journalist (sends so many paragraphs round about herself, you know), will tell me who invents that sort of news, and I'll interview the beggar."

      "Yes, won't it be fun to run her to earth?" said Lillie gleefully.

      Silverdale took advantage of her good-humor.

      "I hope the discovery of the baseness of your sex will turn you again to mine." There was a pleading tenderness in his eyes.

      "What! to your baseness? I thought you were so good."

      "I am no good without you," he said boldly.

       "Oh, that is too rich! Suppose I had never been born?"

      "I should have wished I hadn't."

      "But you wouldn't have known I hadn't."

      "You're getting too metaphysical for my limited understanding."

      "Nonsense, you understand metaphysics as well as I do."

      "Do not disparage yourself. You know I cannot endure metaphysics."

      "Why not?"

      "Because they are mostly made in Germany. And all Germans write as if their aim was to be misunderstood. Listen to my simple English lay."

      "Another love-song to Chloe?"

      "No, a really great poem, suggested by the number of papers and poems I have already seen this Moon paragraph in."

      He took down the banjo, thrummed it, and sang:

      THE GRAND PARAGRAPHIC TOUR.

      I composed a little story

       About a cockatoo,

       With no desire of glory,

       To see what would ensue.

      It took the public liking

       From China to Peru.

       The point of it was striking,

       Though perfectly untrue.

      It began in a morning journal

       When gooseberries were due,

       The subject seemed eternal,

       So many scribes it drew.

      And in every evening column

       It made a great to-do,

       Sub-editors so solemn

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