Old Maids' Club — The Old Young Woman and the New
CHAPTER XIV. THE OLD YOUNG WOMAN AND THE NEW.
"Providence has granted what I dared not hope for," wrote Cecilia to the President.
"If she had hoped for it, Providence would not have granted it," interpolated the Honorary Trier.
"This is hardly the moment for jesting," said Lillie, with marked pique.
"Pardon me.
The moment for jesting is surely when you have received a blow.
In a happy crisis jesting is a waste of good jokes.
The retiring candidate does not state _what_ Providence has granted, does she?"
"No," said Lillie savagely.
"She was extremely reticent about her history--reticent almost to the point of indiscretion.
But I daresay it's a husband."
"Ah, then it can hardly be Providence that has granted it," said Silverdale.
"Providence is not always kindly," said Lillie laughing.
The gibe at Benedicts restored her good-humor and when the millionaire strolled into the Club she did not immediately expel him.
"Well, Lillie," he said, "when are you going to give the _soirée_ to celebrate the foundation of the Club?
I am staying in town expressly for it."
"As soon as possible, father.
I am only waiting for some more members."
"Why, have you any difficulty about getting enough?
I seem always to be meeting young ladies on the staircases."
"We are so exclusive."
"So it seems.
You exclude even me," grumbled the millionaire.
"I can't make out why you are so hard to please.
A more desirable lot of young ladies I never wish to see.
I should never have believed it possible that such a number of pretty girls would be anxious to remain single merely for the sake of a principle."
"You see!"
said Lillie eagerly, "we shall be a standing proof to men of how little they have understood our sex."
"Men do not need any proof of that," remarked Lord Silverdale dryly.
This time it was Lillie whom Turple the magnificent prevented from making the retort which was not on the tip of her tongue.
"A gentleman who gives his name as a lady is waiting in the ante-room," he announced.
They all stared hard at Turple the magnificent, almost tempted to believe he was joking and that the end of the world was at hand.
But the countenance of Turple the magnificent was as stolid and expressionless as a Bath bun.
He might have been beaming behind his face, possibly even the Old Maids' Club tickled him vastly, so that his mental midriff was agitated convulsively; but this could not be known by outsiders.
Lillie took the card he tendered her and read aloud: "Nelly Nimrod."
"Nelly Nimrod!"
cried the Honorary Trier.
"Why, that's the famous girl who travelled from Charing Cross to China-Tartary on an elephant and wrote a book about it under the pen-name of Wee Winnie."
"Shall I show him in?"
interposed Turple the magnificent.
"Certainly," said Lillie eagerly.
"Father, you must go."
"Oh, no!
Not if it's only a gentleman."
"It may be only no lady," murmured Silverdale.
Lillie caught the words and turned upon him the dusky splendors of her fulminant eyes.
"_Et tu, Brute!
_" she said.
"Do you too hold that false theory that womanliness consists in childishness?"
"No, nor that other false theory that it consists in manliness," retorted the Honorary Trier.
The entry of Nelly Nimrod put an end to the dispute.
In the excitement of the moment no one noticed that the millionaire was still leaning against an epigram.
"Good-morning, Miss Dulcimer.
I am charmed to make your acquaintance," said Wee Winnie, gripping the President's soft hand with painful cordiality.
She was elegantly attired in a white double-breasted waistcoat, a zouave jacket, a check-tweed skirt, gaiters, a three inch collar, a tricorner hat, a pair of tanned gloves and an eyeglass.
In her hand she carried an ebony stick.
Her hair was parted at the side.
Nelly was nothing if not original, so that when the spectator looked down for the divided skirt he was astonished not to find it.
Wee Winnie in fact considered it ungraceful and _Divide et Impera_ a contradiction in terms.
She was a tall girl, and looked handsome even under the most masculine conditions.
"I am happy to make yours," returned the President.
"Is it to join the Old Maids' Club that you have called?"
"It is.
Wherever there is a crusade you will always find me in the van.
I don't precisely know your objects yet, but any woman who strikes out anything new commands my warmest sympathies."
"Be seated, Miss Nimrod.
Allow me to introduce Lord Silverdale--an old friend of mine."
"And of mine," replied Nelly, bowing with a sweet smile.
"Indeed!"
cried Lillie flushing.
"In the spirit, only in the spirit," said Nelly.
"His lordship's 'Poems of Passion' formed my sole reading in the deserts of China-Tartary."
"In the letter, you should say then," said the peer.
"By the way, you are confusing me with a minor poet, Silverplume, and his book is not called Poems of Passion but Poems of Compassion."
"Ah well, there isn't much difference," said Nelly.
"No, according to the proverb Compassion _is_ akin to Passion," admitted Silverdale.
"Well, Miss Nimrod," put in Lillie, "our object is easily defined.
We are an association of young and beautiful girls devoted to celibacy in order to modify the meaning of the term 'Old Maid.'
" Nelly Nimrod started up enthusiastically.
"Bravo, old girl!"
she cried, slapping the President on the back.
"Put me down for a flag.
I catch the conception of the campaign.
It is magnificent."
"But it is not war," said Lillie.
"Our methods are peaceful, unaggressive.
Our platform is merely metaphorical.
Our lesson is the self-sufficiency of spinsterhood.
We preach it by existing."
"Not exist by preaching it," added Silverdale.
"This is not one of the cliques of the shrieking sisterhood?"
"What do you mean by the term shrieking sisterhood," said Nelly.
"I use it to denote the mice-fearing classes."
"Hear, hear," said Lillie.
"It is true, Miss Nimrod, that our members are required not to exhibit in public, but only because that is a part of the old unhappy signification of 'Old Maid.'
" "I quite understand.
You would not call a book a public exhibition of oneself, I suppose."
"Certainly not--if it is an autobiography," said Silverdale.
"That's all right then.
My book _is_ autobiographical."
"I knew a celebrity once," said Silverdale, "a dreadfully shy person.
All his life he lived retired from the world, and even after his death he concealed himself behind an autobiography."
Lillie frowned at these ironical insinuations, though Miss Nimrod appeared impervious to them.
"I have not concealed myself," she said simply.
"All I thought and did is written in my book."
"I liked that part about the fleas," murmured the millionaire.
"What's that?
Didn't catch that," said Nelly, looking round in the direction of the voice.
"Good gracious, father, haven't you gone?"
cried Lillie, no less startled.
"It's too bad.
You are spoiling one of my best epigrams.
Couldn't you lean against something else?"
Before the millionaire could be got rid of, Turple the magnificent reappeared.
"A lady who gives the name of a gentleman," he said.
The assemblage pricked up its ears.
"What name?"
asked Lillie.
"Miss Jack, she said."
"That's her surname," said Lillie, in a disappointed tone.
Turple the magnificent stood reproved a moment, then he went out to fetch the lady.
The gathering was already so large that Lillie thought there was nothing to be gained by keeping her waiting.
Miss Jack proved to be an extremely eligible candidate so far as appearances went.
She bowed stiffly on being introduced to Miss Nimrod.
"May I ask if that is to be the uniform of the Old Maids' Club?"
she inquired of the President.
"Because if so I am afraid I have made a mistaken journey.
It is as a protest against unconventional females that I designed to join you."
[Illustration: "_Is that the uniform of the Old Maids' Club?
_"] "Is it to me you are referring as an unconventional female?"
asked Miss Nimrod, bridling up.
"Certainly," replied Miss Jack, with exquisite politeness.
"I lay stress upon your sex, merely because it is not obvious."
"Well, I _am_ an unconventional female, and I glory in it," said Nelly Nimrod, seating herself astride the sofa.
"I did not expect to hear the provincial suburban note struck within these walls.
I claim the right of every woman to lead her own life in her own toilettes."
"And a pretty life you have led!"
"I have, indeed!"
cried Miss Nimrod, goaded almost to oratory by Miss Jack's taunts.
"Not the ugly, unlovely life of the average woman.
I have exhausted all the sensations which are the common guerdon of youth and health and high spirits, and which have for the most part been selfishly monopolized by man.
The splendid audacity of youth has burnt in my veins and fired me to burst my swaddling clothes and strike for the emancipation of my sex.
I have not merely played cricket in a white shirt and lawn tennis in a blue serge skirt, I have not only skated in low-heeled boots and fenced in corduroy knickerbockers, but I have sailed the seas in an oil-skin jacket and a sou'-wester and swum them in nothing and walked beneath them in the diver's mail.
I have waded after salmon in long boots and caught trout in tweed knickerbockers and spats.
Nay, more!
I have proclaimed the dignity of womanhood upon the moors, and have shot grouse in brown leather gaiters and a sweet Norfolk jacket with half-inch tucks.
But this is not the climax, I have----" [Illustration: _Wee Winnie on her Travels.
_] "Yes, I know.
You are Wee Winnie.
You travelled alone from Charing Cross to China-Tartary.
I have not read your book, but I have heard of it."
"And what have you heard of it?"
"That it is in bad taste."
"Your remark is in worse," interposed Lillie severely.
"Ladies, ladies!"
murmured Silverdale.
"This is the first time we have had two of them in the room together," he thought.
"I suppose when the thing is once started we shall change the name to the Kilkenny Cats' Club."
"In bad taste, is it?"
said Miss Nimrod, promptly whipping a book out of her skirt pocket.
"Well, here is the book.
If you can find one passage in bad taste I'll--I'll delete it in the next edition.
There!"
She pushed the book into the hands of Miss Jack, who took it rather reluctantly.
"What's this?"
asked Miss Jack, pointing to a weird illustration.
"That's a picture of me on my elephant, sketched by myself.
Do you mean to say there's any bad taste about that?"
"Oh, no; I merely asked for information.
I didn't know what animal it was."
"You astonish me," said the artist.
"Have you never been to a circus?
Yes, this is Mumbo Jumbo himself."
"Surely, Miss Jack," said Lord Silverdale gravely.
"You must have heard, if you have not read, how Miss Nimrod chartered an elephant, packed up her Kodak and a few bonnet-boxes and rode him on the curb through Central Asia.
But may I ask, Miss Nimrod, why you did not enrich the book with more sketches?
There is only this one.
All the rest are Kodaks."
"Well, you see, Lord Silverdale, it's simpler to photograph."
"Perhaps, but your readers miss the artistic quality that pervades this sketch.
I am glad you made an exception in its favor."
"Oh, only because one can't Kodak oneself.
Everything else I caught as I flew past."
"Did you catch any Tartars?"
"Hundreds.
I destroyed most of them."
"By the way, you did not come across Mr. Fladpick in Tartary?"
"The English Shakespeare?
Oh, yes!
I lunched with him.
He is charm----" "Ah, here are the fleas!"
interrupted Miss Jack.
The millionaire started as if he had been stung.
"I won't have them taken apart from the context, I warn you.
That wouldn't be fair," said Miss Nimrod.
"Very well, I will read the whole passage," said Miss Jack.
"'Mumbo Jumbo bucked violently (_see illustration_) but I settled myself tightly on the saddle and gave myself up to meditations on the vanity of Life-guardsmen.
Mumbo Jumbo seemed, however, determined to have his fling, and bounded about with the agility of an india-rubber ball.
At last his convulsions became so terrific that I grew quite nervous about my fragile bonnet-boxes.
They might easily dash one another to bits.
I
determined to have leather hat-boxes the next time I travelled in untrodden paths.
"Steady, my beauty, steady!"
I cried.
Recognizing my familiar accents, my pet easied a little.
To pacify him entirely I whistled 'Ba, ba, ba, boodle-dee,' to him, but his contortions recommenced and became quite grotesque.
First he lifted one paw high in the air, then he twirled his trunk round the corner, then the first paw came down with a thud that shook the desert, while the other three paws flew up towards the sky.
It suddenly occurred to me that he was dancing to the air of 'Ba, ba, ba, boodle-dee,' and I laughed so loud and long, that any stray Mahatma who happened to be smoking at the door of his cave in the cool of the evening must have thought me mad.
But while I was laughing, Mumbo Jumbo continued to stand upon his tail, so that I saw it could not be 'Ba, ba, ba, boodle-dee' he was suffering from.
I
wondered whether perhaps he could be teething--or should I say, tusking?
I do not know whether elephants get a second set, or whether they cut their wisdom tusks, but, as they are so sagacious, I suppose they do.
Suddenly the consciousness of what was really the matter with him flashed sharply upon my brain.
I looked down upon my hand, and there, poised lightly yet firmly, like a butterfly on a lily, was a giant flea.
Instantly, without uttering a single cry or reeling in my saddle, I grasped the situation; and coolly seizing the noxious insect with my other hand, I choked the life out of him, while Mumbo Jumbo cantered along in restored calm.
The sensitive beast had evidently been suffering untold agonies.'
" "Now, Lord Silverdale," said Miss Nimrod, "I appeal to you.
Is there anything in that passage in the least calculated to bring a blush to the cheek of the young person?"
"No, there is not," said his lordship emphatically.
"Only I wish you had caught that flea with your Kodak."
"Why?"
said Miss Nimrod.
"Because I have always longed to see him.
A flea that could penetrate the pachydermatous hide of an elephant must have been, indeed, a monster.
In England we only see that sort under microscopes.
They seem to thrive nowhere else.
Yours must have been one that had escaped from under the lens.
He was magnified three thousand diameters and he never recovered from it.
You probably took him over in your trunk."
"Oh, no, I'm sure I didn't," protested Miss Nimrod.
"Well, then, Mumbo Jumbo did in his."
"Excuse me," interposed Miss Jack.
"We are getting off the point.
I did not say the passage was calculated to raise a blush, I said it was a grave error of taste."
"It is a mere flea-bite," broke in the millionaire, impatiently.
"I liked it when I first read it, and I like it now I hear it again.
It is a touch of nature that brings the Tartary traveller home to every fireside."
"Besides," added Lord Silverdale.
"The introduction of the butterfly and the lily makes it quite poetical."
"Ladies and gentlemen," interposed the President, at last, "we are not here to discuss entomology or æsthetics.
You stated, Miss Jack, that you thought of joining us as a protest against female unconventionally."
"I said unconventional females," persisted Miss Jack.
"Even so, I do not follow you," said Lillie.
"It is extremely simple.
I am unable to marry because I have a frank nature, not given to feigning or fawning.
I cannot bring a husband what he expects nowadays in a wife."
"What is that?"
inquired Lillie curiously.
"A chum," answered Miss Jack.
"Formerly a man wanted a wife, now he wants a woman to sympathize with his intellectual interests, to talk with him intelligently about his business, discuss politics with him--nay, almost to smoke with him.
Tobacco for two is destined to be the ideal of the immediate future.
The girls he favors are those who flatter him by imitating him.
It is women like Wee Winnie who have depraved his taste.
There is nothing the natural man craves less for than a clever, learned wife.
Only he has been talked over into believing that he needs intellectual companionship, and now he won't be happy till he gets it.
I have escaped politics and affairs all my life, and I am determined not to marry into them."
"What a humiliating confession!"
sneered Miss Nimrod.
"It is a pity you don't wear doll's-clothes."
"I claim for every woman the right to live her own life in her own toilettes," retorted Miss Jack.
"The sneers about dolls are threadbare.
I have watched these intellectual camaraderies, and I say they are a worse injustice to woman than any you decry."
"That sounds a promising paradox," muttered Lord Silverdale.
"The man expects the woman to talk politics--but he refuses to take a reciprocal interest in the woman's sphere of work.
He will not talk nursery or servants.
He will preach economy, but he will not talk it."
"That is true," said Lillie impressed.
"What reply would you make to that, Miss Nimrod?"
"There is no possible reply," said Miss Jack hurriedly.
"So much for the mock equality which is the cant of the new husbandry.
How stands the account with the new young womanhood?
The young ladies who are clamoring for equality with men want to eat their cake and to have it too.
They want to wear masculine hats, yet to keep them on in the presence of gentlemen; to compete with men in the market-place, yet to take their seats inside omnibuses on wet days and outside them on sunny; to be 'pals' with men in theatres and restaurants and shirk their share of the expenses.
I once knew a girl named Miss Friscoe who cultivated Platonic relations with young men, but never once did she pay her half of the hansom."
"Pardon me," interrupted Wee Winnie.
"My whole life gives the lie to your superficial sarcasm.
In my anxiety to escape these obvious objurgations I have even, I admit it, gone to the opposite extreme.
I
have made it a point to do unto men as they would have done unto me, if I had not anticipated them.
I always defray the bill at the restaurants, buy the stalls at the box-office and receive the curses of the cabman.
If I see a young gentleman to the train, I always get his ticket for him and help him into the carriage.
If I convey him to a ball, I bring him a button-hole, compliment him upon his costume and say soft nothings about his moustache, while if I go to a dance alone I stroll in about one in the morning, survey mankind through my eyeglass, loll a few minutes in the doorway, then go downstairs to interview the supper, and having sated myself with chicken, champagne and trifle return to my club."
"To your club!"
exclaimed the millionaire.
"Yes--do you think the Old Maids' is the only one in London?
Mine is the Lady Travellers'--do you know it, Miss Dulcimer?"
"No--o," said Lillie shamefacedly.
"I only know the Writers'."
"Why, are you a member of that?
I'm a member, too.
It's getting a great club now, what with Ellaline Rand (Andrew Dibdin, you know) and Frank Maddox and Lillie Dulcimer.
I wonder we haven't met there."
"I'm so taken up with my own club," explained Lillie.
"Naturally.
But you must come and dine with me some evening at the Lady Travellers'--snug little club--much cosier than the Junior Widows', and they give you a better bottle of wine, and then the decorations are so sweetly pretty.
The only advantage the Junior Widows' has over the Lady Travellers' is the lovely smoking-room lined with mirrors, which makes it much nicer when you have men to dinner.
I always ask them there."
"Why, are you allowed to have men?"
asked Miss Jack.
"Certainly--in the dining and smoking rooms.
