 CHAPTER XI. ADVENTURES IN SEARCH OF THE POLE. Oh, by the way, Miss Frisco will not trouble you, you will be glad to hear," said Lily lightly. Indeed," said Silverdale, then she has drawn a prize after all. I cannot say as much for the young man. I hardly think she is a credit to your sex. Somehow she reminded me of a woman I used to know, and of some verses I wrote upon her. If he had given me the chance, and not gone on to read his poetry so quickly," wrote Lily in her diary that night, I might have told him that his inference about Miss Frisco was incorrect. But it is such a trifle, it is not worth telling him now, especially as he practically intimated she would have been an undesirable member, and I only saved him the trouble of trying her. Lord Silverdale read his verses without the accompaniment of the banjo, an instrument too frivolous for the tragic muse. It was fair, with a loveliness mystic, like the faces that Raphael drew, enigmatic, intense, cabalistic, but surcharged with the light of the true, such a face, such a hauntingly magic, incarnation of wistful regret, it was tenebrous, tender, and tragic, I dream of it yet. When there lives in my charmed recollection the sweet mouth with its lips cruelly curled, as with bitter ironic rejection of the gods of the frivolous world. Yet not even disdain on her features was enthroned for a heavenly peace often linked her with bright seraph creatures or statues of grease. I met her at dinners and dances, or on yachts that by moonlight went trips, and was thrilled by her marvellous glances and the sneer or repose of her lips. Never smile or her features did play light, never laughter illumined her eyes. She grew to seem sundered from daylight and sunkindled skies. Were they human at all those dusk glories of eyes and their owner was she, a Swinburne and Lady Dolores, or a sprite from some shadowy sea, a Cassandra at sea-trip and Soiree, or Proserpina visiting earth? Ah, what harpy pursued her as quarry to strangle so mirth! Ah, but now I am wiser and sadder, and my spirit can never again, at the sight of your fairness, feel gladder, O ladies who coolly obtain, our enameled and painted complexion, on conditions which really are style. You must never by day risk detection, and never more smile. I don't see where the connection with Miss Friscoe comes in, said Lily. No, why simply if she acquired an enameled complexion it might be the salvation of her, don't you see? Like Henry I she could never smile again. Lily smiled, then producing a manuscript she said, I think you will be interested in this story of another of the candidates who applied during your expedition to the clouds. It is quite unique, and for amusement I have written it from the man's point of view. May I come in? interrupted the millionaire, popping his head through the door. Are there any old maids here? Only me, said Lily. Oh, then I'll call another time. No, you may come in, father. Lord Silverdale and I have finished our business for the day. You can take that away with you and read it at your leisure, Lord Silverdale. The millionaire came in, but without express amont. That night Lord Silverdale, who was suffering from insomnia, took the manuscript to bed with him, but he could not sleep till he had finished it. I, Anton Mendoza, bachelor, born thirty years ago by the grace of the Holy Virgin, on the Fet Day of San Anton, patron of pigs and old maids, after sundry adventures by sea and land, found myself in the autumn of last year in the pestiferous atmosphere of London. I had picked up bad English and a good sum of money in South America, and by the age of the two was enabled to thread my way through the mazes of the Metropolis. I soon tired of the neighborhood of the Alhambra, in the proximity of which I had with mistaken patriotism established myself. For the wealthy quarters of all great cities have more affinities than differences, and after a few days of sightseeing I resolved to fare forth in quest of the real sights of London. Using the box of the first omnibus that came along, I threw the reins of my fortunes into the hands of the driver, and drew a blue ticket from the lottery of fate. I scanned the slip of paper curiously, and learned therefrom that I was going fast to the Angel, which I shrewdly divined to be a public house, knowing that these islanders display no poetry and imagination save in connection with beer. My intuition was correct, and though it was the forenoon I alighted amid a double stream of pedestrians, the one branch flowing into the Angel, and the other issuing therefrom. Extracating myself I looked at my compass, and following the direction of the needle soon found myself in a network of unlovely streets. For an hour I paced forwards without chancing on odd of interest, save many weary organ grinders seemingly serenading their mistresses with upward glances at their chamber windows, and I was commencing to fear that my blue ticket would prove a blank when a savory odor of garlic struck on my nostrils and apprised me that my walk had given me an appetite. Moving sideways I saw a door swinging, the same bearing in painted letters on the glass, the words, Minotti's restaurant, Ici en parler français. It looked a queer little place, and the little back street into which I had strayed seemed hardly auspicious of cleanly fare. Still the jewel of good cookery harbours often in the plainest caskets, and I set the door swinging again, and passed into a narrow room, walled with cracked mirrors, and furnished with a few little tables, a rusty waiter, and a proprietorial looking person perpetually bent over a speaking tube. As noon was barely arrived I was not surprised to find the place all but empty. At the extreme end of the restaurant I caught a glimpse of a stout dark man with iron gray whiskers. I thought I would go and lunch at the table of the solitary customer and scrape acquaintance, and thus perhaps achieve an adventure. But hardly had I seated myself opposite him than a shock transversed his face. The morsel he had just swallowed seemed to stick in his throat. He rose coughing violently, and clapping his palm over his mouth with the fingers spread out almost as if he wished to hide his face, turned his back quickly, seized his hat, threw half a crown to the waiter, and scuttled from the establishment. I was considerably surprised at his abrupt departure, as if I had brought some infection with me. The momentary glimpse I had caught of his face had convinced me that I had never seen it before, that it had no place in the photograph album of my brain, though now it would be fixed there forever. The nose hooked itself on to my memory at once. It must be that he had mistaken me for somebody else, somebody whom he had reason to fear. Perhaps he was a criminal and imagined me a detective. I called the proprietor and inquired of him in French who the man was and what was the matter with him. But he shook his head and answered, That man there puzzles me, he is a mystery behind. Why has he done anything strange before today? No, not precisely. How then? I will tell you, he comes here once a year. Once a year, I repeated. No more, this has been going on for twelve years. What are you telling me there, I murmured? It is true. But how have you remembered him from year to year? I was struck by his face and his air the very first time. He seemed anxious, ill at ease, worried. He left his chop half eaten. Ha! I murmured. Also he looks different from most of my clients. They are not of that type. Of course I forget him immediately, it is not my affair. But when he comes the second time I recall him on the instant though a year has passed. Again he looks perturbed, restless. I say to myself, Aha! Thou art not a happy man. There is something which preys on thy mind. However thy money is good and to the devil with the rest. So it goes on. After three or four visits I commence to look out for him, and I discover that it is only once a year he does me the honor to arrive. There are twelve years that I know him. I have seen him twelve times. And he has always this nervous air? Not always, that varies. Sometimes he appears calm, sometimes even happy. Perhaps it is your fair, I said, slyly. Ha! No, monsieur, that does not vary. It is always of the first oxalons. Does he always come on the same date? No, monsieur, there is the puzzle. It is never exactly a year between his visits. Sometimes it is more, sometimes it is less. There is indeed the puzzle, I agreed. If it were always the same date it would be a clue. Ah! An idea! He comes not always on the same date of the month, but he comes perhaps on the same day of the week, eh? Again the proprietor dashed me back into the depths of perplexity. No, he said decisively. Monday, Wednesday, Saturday it is all the same. The only thing that changes not is the man and his dress. Always the same broadcloth frock coat and the same high hat and the same seals at the heavy watch chain. He is a rich man, that sees itself. I wrinkled my brow and tugged the ends of my mustache in the effort to find a solution. The proprietor tugged the ends of his own mustache in sympathetic silence. Does he always slink out if anybody sits down opposite to him? I inquired again. On the contrary, he talks and chats quite freely with his neighbors when there are any. I have seen his countenance light up when a man has come to seat himself next to him. Then today is the first time he has behaved so strangely. Absolutely. Again I was silent. I looked at myself curiously in the cracked mirror. Do you see anything strange in my appearance? I asked the proprietor. Nothing in the world, said the proprietor, shaking his head vigorously. Nothing in the world, echoed the waiter emphatically. Then why does he object to me when he doesn't object to anybody else? Pardon, said the proprietor. It is, after all, but rarely that a stranger sits at his table. He comes ordinarily so early for his lunch that my clients have not yet arrived, and I have only the honor to serve an accidental customer like yourself. Ah, then is there some regularity about the time of day at least? Ah, yes, there is that, said the proprietor, reflectively. But even there there is no hard and fast line. He may be an hour earlier, he may be an hour later. What a droll of a man! I said, laughing, even as I wondered. And you have not been able to discover anything about him, though he has given it you in twelve? It is not my affair, he repeated, shrugging his shoulders. You know not his name even? How should I know it? Ah, very well, you shall see, I said, buttoning up my coat resolutely and rising to my feet. You shall see that I will find out everything in once. I, a stranger in London, who love the oceans and the forests better than the cities, I, who know only the secrets of nature, behold, I will solve you this mystery of humanity. As Monsieur pleases, said the proprietor, for me the only question is what Monsieur will have for his lunch. I want no lunch, I cried. Then seeing his downcast face and remembering the man must be out of sight by this time, and nothing was to be gained by haste, I ordered some broth and a veal and ham pie, and strode to the door to make sure there was no immediate chance of coming upon him. The little by-street was almost deserted, there was not a sign of my man. I returned to my seat and devoted myself to my inner man instead. Then I rebuttoned my coat afresh, though with less facility, and sauntered out joyously. Now at last I had found something to interest me in London. The confidence born of a good meal was strong in my bosom as I pushed those swinging doors open and cried, Au revoir to my host, for I designed to return and to dazzle him with my exploits. Au revoir, Monsieur, a thousand thanks! cried the proprietor, popping up from his speaking tube. But where are you going? Where do you hope to find this man? I go not to find the man, I replied, eerily. Comment! he exclaimed in his astonishment. I go to seek the woman! I said in imposing accents, and waving my hand amicably, I sailed forth into the dingy little street. But alas for human anticipations! The whole of that day I paced the dead and alive streets of north London without striking the faintest indication of a trail. After a week's futile wanderings I began to realize the immensity of the English metropolis, immense not only by its actual area, but by the multiplicity of its streets and windings, and by the indifference of each household to its neighbors, which makes every roof the cover of manifold mysterious existences and potentialities. To look for a needle in a bundle of hay were child's play to the task of finding a face in a London suburb, even assuming as I did my enigma lived in the northern district. I dared not return to the restaurant to inquire if perchance he had been seen. I was ashamed to confess myself baffled. I shifted my quarters from Leicester Square to Green Lanes, and walked every day within a four-mile radius of the restaurant. But fortune turned her face, and his, from me, and I raged at my own folly in undertaking so futile a quest. At last, patience, I cried, patience, and shuffle the cards. It was my pet proverb when off the track of anything. To cut yourself adrift from the old plan, and look at the problem with new eyes, that was my recipe. I tried it by going into the country for some stag-hunting, which I had ascertained from a farmer whom I met in a coffee-house could be obtained in some of the villages in the next county. But English field-sports I found little to my taste, for the deer had been unhorned, and was led out of a cart, and it was only playing at sport. The holy mother saved me from such bloodless make-believe. Though the hunting season was in full swing, I returned in disgust to the town, and again confiding my fortunes to a common or garden omnibus, I surveyed the street panorama from my seat on the roof till the vehicle turned round for the backward journey. This time I found myself in Canonbury, a district within the radius I had previously explored. The coincidence gave me fresh hope. It seemed a happy augury of ultimate success. The saints would guide my footsteps after all, for he who wills ought intensely cajoles providence. The dusk had fallen, and the night-lamps had been lit in the heavens and on the earth, though without imparting cheerfulness to the rigid rows of highly respectable houses. I walked through street after street of gray barracks, tall narrow structures holding themselves with the military stiffness, and ranged in serried columns, the very greenery that relieved their fronts growing sympathetically symmetrical and somber. I sighed for my native orange groves. I longed for a whiff of the blue Mediterranean. I strove to recall the breezy expanses of the South American pompous once I had come, and had it not been for the interest of my search I should have fled like St. Anthony from the Lady, though for very opposite reasons. It seemed scarcely possible that romance should brood behind those dull facades. The grosser spirit of prose seemed to shroud them as in a fog. Suddenly, as I paced with clogged footsteps in these heavy regions, I heard a voice calling somebody, and looking in the direction of the sound I could not but fancy it was myself whose attention was sought. A gentleman standing at the hall door of one of the houses, at the top of the white steps, was beckoning in my direction. I halted, and gazing on all sides, ascertained I was the sole pedestrian. Puzzled as to what he could want of me, I tried to scan his features by the rays of a street lamp which faced the house and under which I stood. They revealed a pleasant but not English-looking face, bearded and bronzed, but they revealed nothing as to the owner's designs. He stood there still beckoning, and the latent hypnotism of the appeal drew me towards the gate. I paused with my hand on the lock. What in the name of all the saints could he possibly want with me? I had sundry valuables about my person, but then they included a loaded revolver, so why refuse the adventure? Do come in, he said in English, seeing my hesitation. We are only waiting for you. The mysterious language of the invitation sealed my fate. Evidently I had again been mistaken for somebody else. Was it that I resembled someone this man knew? If so, it would probably be the same someone the other man had dreaded. I seemed to feel the end of a clue at last, the other end which was tied to him I sought. Putting my hand to my breast pocket to make sure it held my pistol, I drew back the handle of the gate and ascended the steps. There was an expression of satisfaction on the face of my inviter, and, turning his back upon me, he threw the door wide open and held it courteously as I entered. A whiff of warm stuffy air smote my nostrils as I stepped into the hall where an India rubber plant stood upon a rack heavily laden with overcoats. My host proceeded me a few paces and opened a door on the right. A confused babble of guttural speech broke upon my ear, and over his shoulder I caught a glimpse of a strange scene, a medley of swarthy men wearing their hats, a venerable looking old man who seemed their chief being prominent in a grim black skull cap. There was a strange weird wick burning in a cup of oil on the mantelpiece, and on a sofa at the extreme end of the room sat a beautiful young lady weeping silently. My heart gave a great leap. Instinct told me I had found the woman. I made the sign of the cross and entered. A strange look of relief passed over the faces of the company as I entered. Instinctively I removed my hat, but he who had summoned me deprecated the courtesy with a gesture, remarking, We are commencing at once. I stared at him more puzzled than ever, but kept silence lest speech should betray me and snatch the solution from me on the very eve of my arrival at it. It was gathering in my mind that I must strikingly resemble one of the band, that the man of the restaurant had betrayed us, and that he went in fear of our vengeance. Only thus could I account for my reception both by him and by the rest of the gang. The patriarchal looking chieftain got up and turned his back to the company, as if surveying them through the mirror. He then addressed them at great length with averted face in a strange language, the others following him attentively and accompanying his remarks with an undercurrent of murmured sympathy, occasionally breaking out into loud exclamations of ascent in the same tongue. I listened with all my ears, but could not form the least idea as to what the language was. There were gutterls in it as in German, but I can always detect German if I cannot understand it. There was never a word which had the faintest analogy with any of the European tongues. I came to the conclusion it was pattern of their own. The leader spoke hurriedly for the most part, but in his slower passages there was a rise and fall of the voice almost amounting to a musical inflection. Near the end, after an emphatic speech frequently interrupted by applause, he dropped his voice to a whisper and a hushed silence fell upon the room. The beautiful girl on the couch got up, and, holding a richly bound book in her hand, perused it quietly. Her lovely eyes were heavy with tears. I drifted upon a current of wonder into perusing her face, and it was with a start that, at the sudden resumption of the leader's speech, I woke from my dreams. The address came to a final close soon after, and then another member wound up the proceedings with a little speech which was received with great enthusiasm. While he was speaking I studied the back of the patriarch's head. He moved it, and my eyes accidentally lighted on something on the mantle-piece which sent a thrill through my whole being. It was a photograph, and unless some hallucination tricked my vision, the photograph of the man I sought. I trembled with excitement. My instinct had been correct. I had found the woman. St. Antony had guided my footsteps a right. The company was slowly dispersing, plotting as it went. Everybody took leave of the beautiful girl, who had by this time dried her eyes and resumed the queen. I should have to go with them, and without an inkling of comprehension of what had passed. What had they been plotting? What part had I been playing in these uncanny transactions? What had they been doing to bring suffering to this fair girl, before whom all bowed in mock homage? Was she the unwilling accomplice of their discreditable designs? I could not see an inch in the bewildering fog. And was I to depart like the rest, doomed to cudgel my brains till they ached like a keened school-boys? No duty was clear. A gentle creature was in trouble. It was my business to stay and succour her. Then suddenly the thought flashed upon me that she loved the man who had betrayed us, that she had pleaded with fear for his life, and that her petition had been granted. The solution seemed almost complete, yet it found me no more willing to go. Had I not still to discover for what end we were leaked together? As I stood motionless, thus musing, the minutes and the company slipped away. I was left with the man of the doorstep, the second speaker, and the beautiful girl. While I was wondering by what pretext to remain, the second speaker came up to me and said cordially, We are so much obliged to you for coming. It was very good of you. His English was that of a native, as I enviously noted. He was a young, good-looking fellow, but, as I gazed at him, a vague resemblance to the stranger of the restaurant and to the photograph on the mantelpiece forced itself on my attention. Oh, it was no trouble, no trouble at all! I remarked cheerfully. I will come again if you like. Thank you, but this is our last night, with the exception of Saturday when one can get together twenty quite easily, so there is no need to trouble you, as you perhaps do not reside in the neighborhood. Oh, but I do! I hastened to correct him. In that case we shall be very pleased to see you, he said readily. I don't remember seeing you before in the district. I presume you are a newcomer. Yes, that's it! I exclaimed glibly, secretly more puzzled than ever. He did not remember seeing me before, nor did the man of the doorstep vouchsafe any information as to my identity. Then I could certainly not have been mistaken for somebody else. And yet, what was the meaning of that significant invitation we are waiting only for you? I thought you were a stranger, he replied. I haven't the pleasure of knowing your name. This was the climax. But I concealed my astonishment, having always found the Neil-Admirary principle the safest in enterprises of this nature. Should I tell him my real name? Yes, why not? I was utterly unknown in London, and my real name would be as effective a disguise as a pseudonym. Mendoza, I replied. Ah! said the man of the doorstep. Any relation to the Mendozas of Highbury? I think not, I replied, with an air of reflection. Ah! well! said the second speaker. We are all brothers. And sisters! I remarked gallantly, bowing to the beautiful maiden. On second thoughts it struck me the remark was rather meaningless, but second thoughts have an awkward way of succeeding first thoughts, which sometimes interferes with their usefulness. On third thoughts I went on in my best English. May I in return be favoured with the pleasure of knowing your name? The second speaker smiled in a melancholy way and said, I beg your pardon, I forgot we were as strange to you as you to us. My name is Rodovsky, Philip Rodovsky, this is my friend Martin, and this my sister Fanny. I distributed a labyrinth boughs to the Trinity. You will have a little refreshment before you go? said Fanny, with a simple charm that would have made it impossible to refuse, even if I had been as anxious to go as I was to stay. Oh, no! I could not think of troubling you, I replied warmly, and in due course I was sipping a glass of excellent old port and crumbling a macaroon. This seemed to me the best time for putting out a feeler, and I remarked lightly, pointing to the photograph on the mantelpiece, I did not see that gentleman here tonight. Instantly a portentous expression gathered upon all the faces. I saw I had said the wrong thing. The beautiful Fanny's mouth quivered, her eyes grew wistful and pathetic. My father is dead, she said in a low tone. Dead? Her father? A great shock of horror and surprise traversed my frame. His secret had gone with him to the grave. Dead? I repeated involuntarily. Oh, forgive me, I did not know. Of course not, of course not. I understand perfectly. Put in her brother soothingly. You did not know whom it was we had lost. Yes, it was our father. Has he been dead long? He seemed a little surprised at the question, but answered, It is he we are mourning now. I knotted my head as if comprehending. Ah, he was a good man, said Martin. I wish we were all so sure of heaven. There are very few Jews like him left, said Fanny quietly. Alas, he was one of the pious old school, assented Martin, shaking his head dullfully. My heart was thumping violently as a great wave of light flooded my brain. These people then were Jews. That strange, scattered race of heretics I had often heard of, but never before came into contact with in my wild adventurous existence. The strange scene I had witnessed was not, then, a meeting of conspirators, but a religious funereal ceremonial. The sorrow of Fanny was filial grief. The address of the venerable old man, a Hebrew prayer reading. The short speech of Philip Rodofsky, probably a Psalm in the ancient language, all spoke so fluently. But what had I come to do in that galley? All these thoughts flashed upon me in the twinkling of an eye. There was scarce a pause between Martin's observation and Rodofsky's remark that followed it. He was indeed pious. It was wonderful how he withstood the influence of his English friends. You would never imagine he left Poland quite thirty years ago. So I had found the pole. But was it too late? Anyhow I had resolved to know what I had been summoned for. The saints spared me the trouble of the search. Yes, returned Martin, when you think how ready he was to go to the houses of mourners, I think it perfectly disgraceful that we had such difficulty in getting ten brother Jews for the services in his memory. But for the kindness of Mr. Mendoza I don't know what we should have done to-night. In your place, Philip, I confess I should have felt tempted to violate the law altogether. I can't see that it matters to the Almighty whether you have nine men or ten men or five men. And I don't see why Fanny couldn't count in quite as well as any man. Oh, Martin! said Fanny with a shocked look. How can you talk so irreligiously? Once we begin to break the law where are we to stop? Jews and Christians may as well intermarry at once. Her righteous indignation was beautiful to see. Two things were clear now. First, that I had been mistaken for a Jew, probably on account of my foreign appearance. Secondly, Fanny would never wed a Christian. But for the first fact I would have regretted the second. For a third thing was clear, that I loved the glorious Jewess with all the love of a child of the South. We are not tame rabbits, we Andalusians. The flash from beauty's eye fires our blood, and we love instantly and dare greatly. My heart glowed with gratitude to my patron saint for having brought about the mistake. A Jew I was, and a Jew I would remain. You are quite right, Miss Rudovsky, I said. Jew and Christian might as well intermarry at once. I am glad to hear you say so, said Fanny, turning her lovely orbs towards me. Most young men nowadays are so irreligious. Martin darted a savage glance at me. I saw at once how the land lay. He was either engaged to my darling or a fiancée in the making. I surveyed him impassively from his head to his shoes and decided to stand in them. It was impossible to permit a man of such dubious religious principles to link his life with a spiritually minded woman like Fanny. Such a union could only bring unhappiness to both. What she needed was a good pious Jew, one of the old school, with the help of the saints I vowed to supply her needs. I think modern young women are quite as irreligious as modern young men, retorted Martin as he left the room. Yes, it is so, sighed Fanny, the arrow glancing off unheeded. Then, uplifting her beautiful eyes heavenwards, she murmured, ah, if they had been blessed with fathers like mine. Martin, who had only gone out for an instant, returned with Fanny's hat and a feather boa, and observing, you must really take a walk at once, you have been confined indoors a whole week, helped her to put them on. I felt sure his zeal for her health was overbalanced by his enthusiasm for my departure. I could not very well attach myself to the walking party, especially as I only felt an attachment for one member of it. Disregarding the interruption, I remarked, in tones of fervent piety, it will be an eternal regret to me that I missed knowing your father. She gave me a grateful look. Look, she said, seating herself on the sofa for a moment, and picking up the richly bound book lying upon it. Look at the motto of exhortation he wrote in my prayer-book before he died. Our minister says it is the purest Hebrew. I went to her side and leaned over the richly bound book, which appeared to be printed backwards and scanned the inscription with an air of appreciation. Read it, she said, read it aloud, it comforts me to hear it. I coughed violently and felt myself growing pale. The eyes of Martin were upon me with an expression that seemed waiting to become sardonic. I called inwardly upon the holy mother. There seemed to be only a few words, and after a second's hesitation I murmured something in my most inarticulate manner, producing some sounds approximately like those I had heard during the service. Fanny looked up at me, puzzled. I do not understand your pronunciation, she said. I felt ready to sink into the sofa. Ah, I am not surprised, put in her brother. From Mr. Mendoza's name and appearance I should take him to be a Sephardi, like the Mendozas of Highbury. They pronounce quite differently from us, Fanny. I commended him to the grace of the Virgin. That is so, I admitted, and I found it not at all easy to follow your services. Are you an English Sephardi or a native Sephardi? asked Martin. A native, I replied readily, I was born there. Where there was I had no idea. Do you know, said Fanny, looking so sweetly into my face, I should like to see your country. Spain has always seemed to me so romantic, and I dot on Spanish olives. I was delighted to find I had spoken the truth as to my nativity. I shall be charmed to escort you, I said, smiling. She smiled in response. It is easy enough to go anywhere nowadays, said Martin surlyly. I wish you would go to the devil, I thought. That would certainly be easy enough. But it would have been premature to force my own company upon Fanny any longer. I relied upon the presence of death and her brother to hinder Martin's suit from developing beyond the point it had already reached. It remained to be seen whether the damage was irreparable. I went again on the Saturday night, following with interest the service that had seemed a council meeting. This time it began with singing, in which everybody joined, and in which I took part with hardy inarticulateness. But a little experience convinced me that my course was beset with pitfalls, that not Mary Jane aspiring to personify a duchess could glide on thinner ice than I was attempting to behave as one of these strange people, with their endless and all-embracing network of religious etiquette. To my joy I discovered that I could pursue my suit without going to synagogue, a place of dire peril, for it seems that the Spaniards are a distinct sect, mightily proud of their blood and their peculiar pronunciation, and the Radovskis, being Poles, did not expect to see me worshipping with themselves, which enabled me to continue my devotions in the holy chapel of St. Vincent. It also enabled me to skate over many awkward moments, the Poles being indifferently informed as to the etiquette of their peninsular cousins. That I should have been twice taken for one of their own race rather surprised me, for my physiognomical relationship to it seemed of the slightest. The dark complexion, the foreign air, doubtless gave me a superficial resemblance, and in the face it was the surface that tells. I read up Spanish history, and learnt that many Jews had become Christians during the persecutions of the holy Inquisition, and that many had escaped the fires of the Autodefe by feigning conversion, the wiles secretly performing their strange rites, and handing down to their descendants the traditions of secrecy and of Judaism, these unhappy people being styled moranos. Perchance I was sprung from some such source, but there was no hint of it in my genealogy so far as known to me. My name Mendoza was a good old Andalusian name, and my ancestors had for generations been good sons of the only true Church. The question has no interest for me now. For, although like Caesar I am entitled to say that I came, saw, and conquered, conquering not only Fanny, but my rival, yet am I still a bachelor. I had driven Martin on one side as easily as a steamer bearing down upon a skiff, yet my own lips betrayed me. It was the desire to penetrate the mystery of the restaurant that undid me, for if a woman cannot keep a secret, a man cannot refrain from fathoming one. The rose gardens of love were open for my walking, when the demon in possession prompted me to speech that silvered the red roses with whorefrost and ice. One day I sat holding her dear hand in mine. She permitted me no more complex caresses being still in black. Such was the sense of duty of this beautiful warm-blooded oriental creature that she was as cold as her father's tombstone and equally eulogistic of his virtues. She spoke of them now, though I would faint have diverted the talk to hers. Failing that, I ceased the opportunity to solve the haunting puzzle. Do you know, I fancy I once saw your father, I said earnestly. Indeed, she observed with much interest. Where? In a restaurant not many miles from here, it was before noon. In a restaurant? she repeated. Hardly very likely. There isn't any restaurant near here he would be likely to go to, and certainly not at the time you mention, when he would be in the city. You must be mistaken. I shook my head. I don't think so. I remember his face so well. When I saw his photograph I recognized him at once. How long ago was it? I can tell you exactly, I said. The date is graven on my heart. It was the twenty-fourth of October. This year? This year. The twenty-fourth of October. She repeated musingly. Only a few weeks before he died. Poor father, peace be upon him. The twenty-fourth of October, did you say? She added suddenly. What is the matter? I asked. You are agitated. No, it is nothing. It cannot be. She added more calmly. Of course not. She smiled faintly. I thought. She paused. You thought what? Oh, well, I'll show you I was mistaken. She rose, went to the bookcase, drew out a little brown paper-covered volume, and turned over the pages scrutinizingly. Suddenly a change came over the beautiful face. She stood motionless, pale as a statue. A chill shadow fell across my heart, distracted between tense curiosity and dread of a tragic solution. My dear Fanny, what in heaven's name is it? I breathed. Don't speak of heaven, said Fanny in strange harsh tones, when you libel the dead thus. Libel the dead? How? Why the twenty-fourth of October was young Kapoor. Well, I said, unimpressed and uncomprehending, and what of it? She stared at me, staggered, and clutched the bookcase for support. What of it? She cried in passionate emotion. Do you dare to say that you saw my poor father, who was righteousness itself, breaking his fast in a restaurant on the day of atonement? Thus you will insinuate next that his speedy death was heaven's punishment on him for his blasphemy. In the same instant I saw the truth of my terrible blunder. This fast day must be of awful solemnity, and Fanny's father must have gone systematically to a surreptitious breakfast in that queer out of the way restaurant. His nervousness, his want of ease, his terror at the sight of me when he must took me for a brother Jew, all were accounted for. Once a year, the discrepancy in the date being explained by the discord between Jewish and Christian chronology, he hide his way furtively to this unholy meal, enjoying it and a reputation for sanctity at the same time. But to expose her father's hypocrisy to the trusting innocent girl would be hardly the way to advance love matters. It might be difficult even to repair the mischief I had already done. I beg your pardon, I said humbly. You were right. I was misled by some chance resemblance. If your father was the pious Jew you paint him, it is impossible he could have been the man I saw. Yes, and now I think of it, the eyebrows were bushier and the chin plumper than those of the photograph. A sigh of satisfaction escaped her lips. Then her face grew rigid again as she turned it upon me, and asked in low tones that cut through me like an icy blast. Yes, but what were you doing in the restaurant on the day of atonement? I... I... I stammered. Her look was terrible. I... I was only having a cup of chocolate, I replied with a burst of inspiration. As everybody knows, since the pronunzamento of Pope Paul V, chocolate may be imbibed by good Catholics without breaking the fasts of the church. But alas, it seems these fanatical eastern flagellants allow not even a drop of cold water to pass their lips for over twenty-four hours. I am glad you confess it, said Fanny, witheringly. It shows you have still one redeeming trait, and I am glad you spoke ill of my poor father, for it has led to the revelation of your true character before it was too late. You will, of course, understand, Mr. Mendoza, that our acquaintance is at an end. Fanny, I cried frantically. Spare me a scene, I beg of you, she said coldly. You, you the man who pretended to such ardent piety, to such enthusiasm for our holy religion, are an apostate from the faith into which you were born, a blasphemer, an atheist. I stared at her in dumb horror. I had entangled myself inextricably. How could I now explain that it was her father who was the renegade, not I? Good-bye, said Fanny. Heaven make you a better Jew! I moved desperately toward her, but she waved me back. Don't touch me, she cried. Go, go! But is there no hope for me? I exclaimed, looking wildly into the cold, statue-like face that seemed more beautiful than ever now it was fading from my vision. None, she said. Then in a breaking voice she murmured, neither for you nor for me. Ah, you love me still, I cried, striving to embrace her. You will be my wife. She struggled away from me. No, no! she said with a gesture of horror. It would be sacrilege to my dead father's memory. Rather would I marry a Christian, yes, even a Catholic, than an apostate Jew like you. Leave me, I pray you, or must I ring the bell? I went, a sadder and wiser man. But even my wisdom availed me not, for when I repaired to the restaurant to impart it to the proprietor, the last consolation was denied me. He had sold his business and returned to Italy. Tomorrow I start for Turkestan. End of CHAPTER XI. CHAPTER XII. The Arithmetic and Physiology of Love. Well, have you seen this Fanny Rodowski? said Lord Silverdale when he returned the manuscript to the president of the Old Maids Club. Of course! Didn't I tell you I had the story from her own mouth, though I have put it into Mendozas? Ah, yes, I remember now. It certainly is funny, her refusing a good Catholic on the ground that he was a bad Jew. But then, according to the story, she doesn't know he's a Catholic? No, it is I who divined the joke of the situation. Lookers on always see more of the game. I saw it once that if Mendoza were really a Jew, he would never have been such an ass as to make the slip he did. And so from this and several other things she told me about her lover, I constructed deductively the history you have read. She says she first met him at a morning service in memory of her father, and that it is a custom among her people when they have not enough men to form a religious quorum, the number is the mystical ten, to invite any brother Jew who may be passing to step in, whether he is an acquaintance or not. I gathered that from the narrative, said Lord Silverdale. And so she wishes to be an object lesson in female celibacy, does she? She is most anxious to enlist in the cause. Is she really beautiful, etc.? She is magnificent. Then I should say the very member we are looking for, a Jewess will be an extremely valuable element of the club, for her race exalts marriage even above happiness, and an old maid is even more despised than among us. The lovely Miss Radowski will be an eloquent protest against the prejudices of her people. Lily Dulsamer shook her head quietly. The racial accident, which makes her seem a desirable member to you, makes me regard her as impossible. How so? cried Silverdale in amazement. You surely are not going to degrade your club by anti-Semitism. Heaven forfend, but a Jewess can never be a whole old maid. I don't understand. Look at it mathematically a moment. Silverdale made a grimace. Consider, a Jewess, orthodox like Miss Radowski, can only be an old maid fractionally. An old maid must make the grand refusal. She must refuse mankind at large. Now Miss Radowski, being cut off by her creed from marrying into any but an insignificant percentage of mankind, is proportionately less valuable as an object lesson. She is unfitted for the functions of old maidenhood in their full potentiality. Already, by her religion, she is condemned to almost total celibacy. She cannot renounce what she has never possessed. There are in the world, roughly speaking, eight million Jews among a population of a thousand millions. The force of the example, in other words, her value as an old maid, may therefore be represented by .008. I am glad you express her as a decimal rather than a vulgar fraction, said Lord Silverdale, laughing. But I must own your reckoning seems correct. As a mathematical wrangler, you are terrible. So I shall not need to try Miss Radowski? No, we cannot entertain her application, said Lily, peremptorily, the thunder cloud no bigger than a man's hand gathering on her brow at the suspicion that Silverdale did not take her mathematics seriously. Considering that in keeping him at arm's length her motive were merely mathematical, though Lord Silverdale was not aware of this, she was peculiarly sensitive on the point. She changed the subject quickly by asking what poem he had brought her. Do not call them poems, he answered. It is only between ourselves, there are no critics about. Thank you so much. I have brought one suggested by the strange ferrago of religions that figured in your last human document. It is a peon on the growing hospitality of the people towards the gods of other nations. There was a time when free trade in divinities was taboo, each nation protecting and protected by its own. Now foreign gods are all the rage. The End of the Century Catholic Credo I am a Christo-Jewish Quaker, Muslim, Atheist, and Shaker, Old Licked Church of England Faker, Antinomian Baptist, Deist, Gnostic, Neo-Pagan Theist, Presbyterian-ish Papist, Comtist, Mormon, Darwin-apist, Trappist, High Church Unitarian, Sandomanian-sabotarian, Plymouth-Brother, Walworth-Jumper, Southcote Southplace Bible Thumper, Christodelfian-Platonic, Old Moravian-Masonic, Corabantic-Christiantic, Ethic-Culture-Transatlantic, Anabaptist-Neobuddist, Zoroastrian-Talmudist, Laotian Theosophic, Bible-Wrapping-Philosophic, Medieval-Monkish-Mystic, Modern-Mephistophilistic, Hellenistic-Calvinistic, Braham-Mystic-Cabilistic, Humanistic-Tolstoyistic, Rather-Robert-Elsmaristic, Altruistic-Hedonistic, and Agnostic-Manichean, Worshiping-The-Galilean, For with equal zeal I follow, Siva-Alla-Zeus-Apollo, Mumbo-Jumbo-Degan-Brahma, Buddha-Alias-Gautama, Jave-Juggernaut-Juno, Plus some gods that but the few know. Though I reverence the Mishna, I can bend the knee to Vishna, I obey the latest modan recognizing Thor and Odin, Just as freely as the Virgin, For the Pope and Mr. Spurgeon, Moses, Paul, and Zoroaster, each to me is seer and master. I consider Heine, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Shelley, Schlegel, Diderot, Savonarola, Dante, Russo, Gotta, Zola, Whitman, Renan, Priest of Paris, Transcendental Prophet Harris, Ibsen, Carlisle, Huxley, Peter, each than all the others greater. And I read the Zendavesta, Koran, Bible, Roman Jesta, Inns, Upanishads, and Spencer, with affection error-intenser. For these many appellations of the gods of different nations, I believe, from Baal to Sun God, all at bottom cover one God. Him I worship, dropping gammon, and His mighty name is Mammon. You are very hard upon the century, or rather upon the end of it, said Lily. The century is dying unshriven, said the satirist solemnly. Its conscience must be stirred. Truly was there ever an age which had so much light and so little sweetness? In the reckless fight for gold society has become a mutual swindling association. Cupidity has ousted Cupid, and everything is bought and sold. Except your poems, Lord Silverdale, laughed Lily. It was tit for the tat of his railery of her mathematics. Before his lordship had time to make the clever retort the thought of next day, Turple the Magnificent brought in a card. Miss Winifred Woodpecker, said Lily queryingly, I suppose it's another candidate, show her in. Miss Woodpecker was a tall, stately girl, of the kind that pass for lilies in the flowery language of the novelists. Have I the pleasure of speaking to Miss Dalsamer? Yes, I am Miss Dalsamer, said Lily. And where is the old maid's club? Further inquired Miss Woodpecker, looking around curiously. Here! replied Lily, indicating the epigrammatic antimicassers with a sweeping gesture. No, don't go, Lord Silverdale. Miss Woodpecker, this is my friend, Lord Silverdale. He knows all about the club, so you needn't mind speaking before him. Well, you know, I read the leader in the hurry-graph about your club this morning. Oh, is there a leader? said Lily feverishly. Have you seen it, Lord Silverdale? I am not sure. At first I fancied it referred to the club, but there was such a lot about Ptolemy, Rosa Bonner's animals, and the Suez Canal, that I can hardly venture to say what the leader itself was about. And so, Miss Woodpecker, have you thought about joining our institution for elevating female celibacy into a fine art? I wish to join at once. Is there any entrance fee? There is! Experience! Have you had a desirable proposal of marriage? Eminently desirable. And still you do not intend to marry? Not while I live. Ah, that is all the guarantee we want, said Lord Silverdale, smiling. Afterwards in heaven there is no marrying nor giving in marriage. That is what makes it heaven, added Lily, but tell us your story. It was in this way. I was staying at a boarding-house in Brighton with a female cousin, and a handsome young man in the house fell in love with me and we were engaged. Then my mother came down. Immediately afterwards my lover disappeared. He left a note for me containing nothing but the following verses. She handed a double tear-stained sheet of letter paper to the President, who read aloud as follows. A vision of the future. Well is it for man that he knoweth not what the future will bring forth. She had a sweetly spiritual face, touched with a noble stately grace, poetic heritage of race. Her form was graceful, slim and sweet. Her frock was exquisitely neat. With airy tread she paced the street. She seemed some fantasy of dream, a flash of loveliness supreme, a poet's visionary gleam. And yet she was of mortal birth, a lovely child of lovely earth, for kisses made, and joy and mirth. Sweet whirling thoughts my bosom throng, to link her life with mine I long, and shrine her in immortal song. I steal another glance, and lo! Dread shudders through my being-flow. My veins are filled with liquid snow. Another form beside her wax, of servants and expenses tox, her nose is not unlike a hoax. Her face is plump, her figure fat, she's prose embodied, stout gone flat, a comfortable Persian cat. Her life is full of petty fuss, she wobbles like an omnibus, and yet it was not always thus. Alas for perishable grace, how unmistakably I trace the daughters in the mother's face. Beneath the beak I see the nose, the poetry beneath the prose, the figure beneath the adipose. And so I sadly turn away. How can I love a clot of clay doomed to grow earthlier day by day? Vein, vein the hope from fate to flee, what special providence for me? I know that which hath been will be. Lily and Lord Silverdale looked at each other. Well, but, said Lily at last, according to this he refused you, not you him, our rules, you mistake me, interrupted Winifred Woodpecker. When the first fit of anguish was over, I saw my frank was right, and I have refused all the offers I have had since, five in all. It would not be fair to a lover to chain him to a beauty so transient. In ten or twenty years from now I shall go the way of all flesh. Under such circumstances is not marriage a contract entered into under false pretenses? There is no chance of the law of this country allowing a time limit to be placed in the contract. Celebesi is the only honest policy for a woman. Involuntarily, Lily's hand seized the candidates, and gripped it sympathetically. She divined a sister's soul. You teach me a new point of view, she said, a finer shade of ethical feeling. Silverdale groaned inwardly. He saw a new weapon going into the anti-hymenial armory, and the old maid's club on the point of being strengthened by the accession of its first member. The law will have to accommodate itself to these finer shades, pursued Lily energetically. It is a rusty machine out of harmony with the age. Science has discovered that the entire physical organism is renewed every seven years, and yet the law calmly goes on assuming that the new man and the new woman are still bound by the contract of their predecessors, and still possess the goodwill of the original partnership. It seems to me if the short lease principle demanded by physiology is not to be conceded, there should at any rate be provincial and American rights in marriage, as well as London rights. In the Metropolis, the metromonial contract should hold good with A in the country with B, neither party infringing the other's privileges, in accordance with theatrical analogy. That is the literal latitudinarianism in morals you will never get the world to agree to, laughed Lord Silverdale, at least not in theory, we cannot formally sanction theatrical practice. Do not laugh, said Lily, law must be brought more in touch with life. Isn't it rather vice versa? Life must be brought more in touch with law. However, if Miss Woodpecker feels these fine ethical shades, won't she be ineligible? How so? said the President in indignant surprise. By our second rule every candidate must be beautiful and undertake to continue so. Poor little Lily drooped her head. And now it befalls to reveal to the world the jealously guarded secret of the English Shakespeare, for how else can the tale be told of how the old maid's club was within an ace of robbing him of his bride? CHAPTER XIII OF THE OLD MAID'S CLUB BY ISRAEL ZANGUIL By a thorough knowledge of the natural laws which govern the operations of human nature, and by a careful application of the fine properties of well-selected men, and a judicious use of every available instrument of log-rolling, the Mutual Depreciation Society gradually built up a constitution strong enough to defy every tendency to disintegration. Hundreds of subtle malcontents floated round, ready to attack wherever there was a weak point, but foiled by ignorance of the society's existence, and the members escaped many a fatal shift by keeping themselves entirely to themselves. The idea of the Mutual Depreciation Society was that every member should say what he thought of the others. The founders, who all took equal shares in it, were Tom Brown, Dick Jones, Harry Robinson. Their object in founding the Mutual Depreciation Society was, of course, to achieve literary success, but they soon perceived that their phalanx was too small for this, and as they had no power to add to their number except by inviting strangers from without, they took steps to induce three other gentlemen to solicit the privileges of membership. The second batch comprised Taffy Owen, Andrew McKay, Patrick Boyle. These six gentlemen being all blessed with youth, health, and incompetence resolved to capture the town. Their tactics were very simple, though their first operations were hampered by their ignorance of one another's. Thus it was some time before it was discovered that Andrew McKay, who had been deployed to seize the Saturday slasher, had no real acquaintance with the editor's fencing master, while Dick Jones, who had undertaken to bombard the Acadium, had started under the impression that the eminent critic to whom he had dedicated his poems, by permission, was still connected with the staff. But these difficulties were eliminated as soon as the society got into working order. Everything comes to him who will not wait, and almost before they had time to wink, our six gentlemen had secured the makings of an influence. Each had loyally done his best for himself and the rest, and the first spoils of the campaign, as announced amid applause by the Secretary at the monthly dinner, were two morning papers, two evening papers, two weekly papers. They were not the most influential, nor even the best circulated, still it was not a bad beginning, though of course only a nucleus. By putting out tentacles in every direction, by undertaking to write even on subjects with which they were acquainted, they gradually secured a more or less tenacious connection with the majority of the better journals and magazines. On taking stock they found that the account stood thus. Three morning papers, four evening papers, eleven weekly papers, thirteen London letters, seven dramatic columns, six monthly magazines, thirteen influences on advertisements, nine friendships with eminent editors, seventeen ditto with eminent sub-editors, six ditto with lady journalists, fifty-three loans at two and six each to press men, one hundred and nine mentions of editors' women kind at fashionable receptions. It showed what could be achieved by six men working together shoulder to shoulder for the highest aims in a spirit of mutual goodwill and brotherhood. They were undoubtedly greatly helped by having all been to Oxford or Cambridge, but still much was the legitimate result of their own maneuvers. By the time the secret campaign had reached this stage, many well-meaning, unsuspecting men, not included in the above inventory, had been pressed into the service of the society, with the members of which they were connected by the thousand and one ties which spring up naturally in the course of the world, so that there was hardly any journal in the three kingdoms on which the society could not, by some hook or the other, fasten a paragraph if we accept such publications as the Newgate calendar and Lloyd's shopping list, which record history rather than make it. Indeed, the success of the society in this department was such as to suggest the advisability of having themselves formally incorporated under the company's acts for the manufacture and distribution of paragraphs for which they had unequalled facilities and had obtained valuable concessions, and it was only the publicity required by law which debarred them from enlarging their home trade to a profitable industry for the benefit of non-members. For, by the peculiar nature of the machinery, it could only be worked if people were unaware of its existence. They resolved, however, that when they had made their pile, they would start the newspaper of the future, which any philosopher with an eye to the trend of things can see will be a journal written by advertisers for gentlemen, and will contain nothing calculated to bring a blush to the cheek of the young person, except cosmetics. Contemporaneously, with the execution of one side of the plan of campaign, the society was working the supplementary side. Day and night, week days and Sundays, in season and out, these six gentlemen praised themselves and one another, or got themselves and one another praised by non-members. There are many ways in which you can praise an author from blame downwards. There is the puff categorical and the puff elusive, the lie direct and the eulogy insinuative, the downright abuse and the subtle innuendo, the exaltation of your man or the depression of his rival. The attacking method of log-rolling must not be confounded with depreciation. In their outside campaign the members used every variety of puff, but depreciation was strictly reserved for their private gatherings. For this was the wisdom of the club, and herein lay its immense superiority over every other log-rolling club, that whereas in these childish clicks every man is expected to admire every other, or to say so, in the mutual depreciation society the obligation was all the other way. Every man was bound by the rules to sneer at the work of his fellow-members, and if he should happen to admire any of it, at least to have the grace to keep his feelings to himself. In practice, however, the letter contingency never arose, and each was able honestly to express all he thought, for it is impossible for men to work together for a common object without discovering that they do not deserve to get it. Needless to point out how this sagacious provision strengthened them in their campaign, for not having to keep up the tension of mutual admiration and being able to relax and breathe and express themselves freely at their monthly symposia, as well as to slang one another in the street, they were able to write one another up with a clear conscience. It is well to found on human nature. Every other basis proves shifting sand. The success of the mutual depreciation society justified their belief in human nature. Not only did they depreciate one another, but they made reparation to the non-members they were always trying to write down during business hours by eulogizing them in the most generous manner in those blessed hours of leisure when knife answers fork and soul speaks to soul. At such times even popular authors are allowed to have a little merit. It was at one of these periods of soul expansion, when the most petty souled feels inclined to loosen the last two buttons of his waistcoat, that the idea of the English Shakespeare was first mooted. But we are anticipating, which is imprudent, as anticipations are seldom realized. One of the worst features of prosperity is that it is cloying, and when the first gloss of novelty and adventure had worn off, the free lances of the mutual depreciation society began to bore one another. You can get tired even of hearing your own dispraises, and the members were compelled to spice their mutual adverse criticism in the highest manner, so as to compensate for its staleness. The jaded appetite must needs be pampered if it is to experience anything of that relish which a natural healthy hunger for adverse criticism can command so easily. This was the sort of thing that went on at the dinners. I say, Tom, said Andrew McKay. What in heaven's name made you publish your waste paper basket under the name of stray thoughts? For utter and incomprehensible idiocy they are only surpassed by Dick's last volume of poems. I shouldn't have thought such things could come out even of a lunatic asylum. Certainly not without a keeper. Really, you fellows ought to consider me a little. We do. We consider you as little as they make them, they interrupted simultaneously. It isn't fair to throw all the work on me, he went on. How can I go on saying that Tom Brown is the supreme thinker of the time, the deepest intellect since Hegel, with a gift of style that rivals Berkley's, if you go on turning out twaddle that a copy book would bog a lad? How can I keep repeating that for sure and consummate art, for unfailing certainty of insight, for unerring visualization, for objective subjectivity and for subjective objectivity, for swinburny and sweep of music and Shakespearean depth of suggestiveness, Dick Jones can have forty in a hundred, spot stroke barred, to all other contemporary poets, if you continue to spew out rhymes as false as your teeth, rhythms as musical as your voice when you read them, and words that would drive a drying room composer mad with envy to set them. I maintain it is not sticking to the bargain to expose me to the danger of being found out. You ought at least to have the decency to wrap up your fatuousness in longer words or more abstruse themes. You're both so beastly intelligible that a child can understand you are asses. Tut, tut, Andrew, said Taffy Owen. It's all very well of you to talk, who've only got to do the criticism. And I think it's doost ungrateful of you after we've written you up into the position of leading English critic, to want us to give you straw for your bricks. Do we ever complain when you call us cataclysmic, creative, as simplistic, or even episcene? We know it's rot, but we put up with it. When you said that Robinson's last novel had all the glow and genius of Dickon's without his humor, all the ripe wisdom of Thackeray without his social knowingness, all the imaginativeness of Shakespeare without his definiteness of characterization. We all saw at once that you were unconsciously allowing the donkey's ears to protrude too obviously from beneath the lion's skin. But did anyone grumble? Did Robinson, though the addition was sold out the day after? Did I, though you had just called me a modern Buddhist with the soul of an ancient Greek and the radiant fragrance of a single leaf tea-planter? I know these phrases take the public and I try to be patient. Owen is right, Harry Robinson put in emphatically. When you said I was a cross between a Scandinavian scald and a Dutch painter, I bore my cross in silence. Yes, but what else can a fellow say when you give the public such heterogeneous and formless balderdash that there is nothing for it but to pretend it's a new style, an epoch making work, the foundation of a new era in literary art? Really, I think you others have out in a way the best of it. It's much easier to write bad books than to eulogize their merits in an adequately plausible manner. I think it's playing it too low upon a chap the way you fellows are going on. It's taking a mean advantage of my position. And who put you in that position I should like to know? yelled Dick Jones, becoming poetically excited. Didn't we lift you up into it on the point of our pens? Fortunately they were not very pointed, ejaculated the great critic, wriggling uncomfortably at the suggestion. I don't deny that, of course. All I say is you're giving me away now. You give yourself away, shrieked Owen vehemently, with a pound of that singly's tea. How is it Boyle managed to crack up our plays without being driven to any of this newfangled nonsense? Plays, said Patrick, looking up moodily. Anything is good enough for plays. You see, I can always fall back on the acting and crack up that. I had to do that with Owen's thing at the lie market. My notice read like a gushing account of the play. In reality it was all devoted to the players. The trick of it is not easy. Those who can read between the lines could see that there were only three of them about the piece itself. And yet the outside public would never dream I was shirking the expression of an opinion about the merits of the play, or the pinning myself to any definite statement. The only time, Owen, I dare say, that your plays are literature is when they are a frost, for that both explains the failure and justifies you. But, and you love me taffy, or if you have any care for my reputation, do not I beg of you be enticed into the new folly of printing your plays. But things have come to that stage I must do it, said Owen, or incur the suspicion of illiterateness. No, no! pleaded Patrick in horror. Sooner than that I will dam all the other printed plays and block, and say that the real literary playwrights, conscious of their position, are too dignified to resort to this cheap method of self-assertion. But you will not carry out your threat. Remember how dangerously near you came to exposing me over your naquette. The club laughed, everyone knew the incident, for it was Patrick's stock grievance against the dramatist. Patrick, being out of town, had written his eulogy of this play of Owens from his inner consciousness. On the fourth night, in deference to Owen's persuasions, he had gone to see naquette. After the tragedy, Owen found him seated moodily in the stalls, long after the audience had filed out. Knocked you, old man, this time, eh? queried Owen, laughing complacently. Yes, all to pieces, snarled Patrick savagely. I shall never believe in my critical judgment again. I dare not look my notice in the face. When I wrote naquette was a masterpiece, I thought at least there would be some merit in it. I didn't bargain for such rod as this. In this wise things would have gone on, from bad to worse, had Heaven not created Cecilia nineteen years before. Cecilia was a tall, fair girl with dreamy eyes and unpronounced opinions, who longed for the ineffable with an unspeakable yearning. Frank Gray loved her. He always knew he was going to, and one day he did it. After that it was impossible to drop the habit. And at last he went so far as to propose. He was a young lawyer, with a fondness for manly sports, and a wealth of blonde mustache. Cecilia, he said, I love you, will you be mine? He had a habit of using unconventional phrases. No, Frank, she said gently, and there was a world and several satellites of tenderness in her tremulous tones. It cannot be. Ah, do not decide so quickly, he pleaded. I will not press you for an answer. I would press you for an answer if I could, replied Cecilia, but I do not love you. Why not? he demanded desperately. Because you are not what I should like you to be. And what would you like me to be? he demanded eagerly. If I told you, you would try to become it? I would, he said enthusiastically. Be it what it may, I would leave no stone unturned. I would work, strive, study, reform, anything, everything. I feared so, she said despondently. That is why I will not tell you. Don't you understand that your charm to me is your being just yourself, your simple, honest, manly self? I will not have my enjoyment of your individuality, spoiled by your transmogrification into some unnatural product of the forcing house. No, Frank, let us be true to ourselves, not to each other. I shall always remain your friend, looking up to you as to something staunch, sturdy, stalwart, coming to consult you, unprofessionally, in all my difficulties. I will tell you all my secrets, Frank, so that you will know more of me than if I married you. Dear friend, let it remain as I say. It is for the best. So Frank went away, broken-hearted, and joined the mutual depreciation society. He did not care what became of him. How they came to let him in was this. He was the one man in the world, outside, who knew all about them, having been engaged as the society's legal advisor. It was he who made their publishers and managers sit in an erect position. In applying for a more intimate connection, he stated that he had met with a misfortune, and a little monthly abuse would enliven him. The society decided that, as he was already half one of themselves, and as he had never written a line in his life, and so could not diminish their takings, nothing but good could ensue from the infusion of new blood. In fact, they wanted it badly. Their mutual recriminations had degenerated into mere platitudes. With a new man to insult and be insulted by, something of the old animation would be restored to their proceedings. The wisdom of the policy was early seen, for the first fruit of it was the English Shakespeare, who, for a whole year, daily opened out new and exciting perspectives of sensation and amusement to a blasé society. Andrew McKay had written an enthusiastic article in the so-called 19th Century on The Cochin China Shakespeare, and set all tongues wagging about the new literary phenomenon, with whose verses the boatmen of the Irawadi rocked their children to sleep on the cradle of the river, and whose dramas were played in eight hours' slices in the strolling booths of Shanghai. Andrew had already arranged with any man to bring out a translation from the original Cochin Chinese, for there was no language he could not translate from, provided it were sufficiently unknown. Cochin Chinese Shakespeare, indeed, said Dick Jones at the next symposium. Why, judging from the copious extracts you gave from his greatest drama, Baby Bantam, it is the most tedious drivel. You might have written it yourself. Where is the Shakespearean quality of this, which is, you say, the whole of Act XIII? Hang-ho! Out, Fusia! Does your mother know you are? Fusia! I have no mother, but I have a child. Where is the Shakespearean quality, repeated Andrew? Do you not feel the perfect pathos of those two lines, the infiniteness of incisive significance? To me, they paint the whole scene in two strokes of matchless simplicity, strophy and anti-strophe. Fusia, the repentant outcast, and Hang-ho, whose honest love she rejected, stand out as in a flash of lightning. Nay, Shakespeare himself never wrote an act of such tragic brevity, packed so full of the sense of ananke. Why, so far from it being tedious drivel, a lady in whose opinion I have great confidence, and to whom I sent my article, told me afterwards that she couldn't sleep till she had read it. The mutual depreciation society burst into a roar of laughter, and Andrew realized that he had put his foot into it. Don't you think it a shame, broken Frank Gray, that we English are debarred from having a Shakespeare? There's been one discovered lately in Belgium, and we have already a Dutch Shakespeare, a French Shakespeare, a German Shakespeare, and an American Shakespeare. English is the only language in which we can't get one. It seems cruel that we should be just the one nation in the world, to be cut off from having a nineteenth-century Shakespeare. Every patriotic Britain must surely desire that we could discover an English Shakespeare to be put aside these vaunted foreign phenomena. But an English Shakespeare is a bull, said Patrick Boyle, who had a keen eye for such. Precisely, eh, John Bull, replied Frank. Peace, peace, I would willingly look out for one, said Andrew McKay thoughtfully, but I cannot venture to insinuate yet that Shakespeare did not write English. The time is scarcely ripe, though it is maturing fast, otherwise the idea is tempting. But why take the words in their natural meaning? demanded Tom Brown, the philosopher, in astonishment. Is it not unapparent that an English Shakespeare would be a great writer more saturated with Anglo-Saxon spirit than Shakespeare? Who was cosmic and for all time and for every place? Hamlet, Othello, Lady Macbeth, these are world types, not English characters. Our English Shakespeare must be more autochthontic, more chauvinist, or more provincial and more borneille, if you like to put it that way. His scenes must be rooted in English life, and his personages must smack of British soil. There was much table-thumping when the philosopher ceased. Excellent, said Andrew, he must be found. It will be the greatest boom of the century, but whom can we discover? There is John P. Smith, said Tom Brown. No, why John P. Smith? He has merit, objected Taffy Owen, and then he has never been in our set. And besides, he would not be satisfied, said Patrick Boyle. That is true, said Andrew McKay, reflectively. I know, Owen, you would like to be the subject of the discovery, but I am afraid it is too late. I have taken your measurements and laid down the chart of your genius too definitely to alter now. You are permanently established in business as the dainty neo-Helenik Buddhist who has chosen to express himself through farcical comedy. If you were just starting life, I could work you into this English Shakespeare dumb. I am always happy to put a good thing in the way of a friend, but at your age it is not easy to go into a new line. Well, but, put in Harry Robinson, if none of us is to be the English Shakespeare, why should we give over the appointment to an outsider? Charity begins at home. That is a difficulty, admitted Andrew, puckering his brow. It brings us to a stand still, seductive, therefore, as the idea is, I am afraid it has occurred to us too late. They sat in thoughtful silence. Then suddenly Frank Gray flashed in with a suggestion that took their breath away for a moment and restored it to them, charged with bravos the moment after. But why should he exist at all? Why, indeed, the more they pondered the matter, the less necessity they saw for it. Pon my word, Gray, you are right, said Andrew, right as Talleyrand when he told the thief who insisted that he must live. My monsieur, je n'en vois pas la necessité. It's an inspiration, said Tom Brown, moved out of his usual apathy. We all remember how weightily proved that the Emperor Napoleon never existed, and the plausible way he did it. How few persons actually saw the Emperor. How did even these know that what they saw was the Emperor? Conversely, it should be as easy as possible for us six to put a non-existent English Shakespeare on the market. You remember what Voltaire said of God, that if there were none it would be necessary to invent him. In like manner patriotism calls upon us to invent the English Shakespeare. Yes, won't it be awful fun? said Patrick Boyle. The idea was taken up eagerly, the modus operandi was discussed, and the members parted, effervescing with enthusiasm and anxious to start the campaign immediately. The English Shakespeare was to be named Flatpick, a cognamen which once seen would hook itself onto the memory. The very next day a leading article in the Daily Herald casually quoted Flatpick's famous line, Coffin'd in English you, he sleeps in peace. And throughout the next month, in the most out of the way and unlikely quarters, the word Flatpick lurked and sprang upon the reader. Lines and phrases from Flatpick were quoted. Gradually the thing worked up, gathering momentum on its way, and going more and more of itself, like an ever-swelling snowball which needs but the first push down the mountain side. Soon a leprosy of Flatpick broke out over the journalism of the day. The very office boys caught the infection, and in their book reviews they dragged in Flatpick with an air of antediluvian acquaintance. Writers were said not to possess Flatpick's imagination, though they might have more sense of style, or they were said not to possess Flatpick's sense of style, though they might have more imagination. Certain epithets and tricks of manner were described as quite Flatpickian, while others were mentioned as extravagant and as disdained by writers like, say, Flatpick. Young authors were paternally invited to mold themselves on Flatpick, while others were contemptuously dismissed as mere imitators of Flatpick. By this time Flatpick's poetic dramas began to be asked for at the libraries, and the libraries said they were all out. This increased the demand so much, that the libraries told their subscribers they must wait till the new edition, which was being hurried through the press, was published. When things had reached this stage, queries about Flatpick appeared in the literary and professionally inquisitive papers, and answers were given with reference to the editions of Flatpick's book. It began to leak out that he was a young Englishman who had lived all his life in Tartary, and that his book had been published by a local firm and enjoyed no inconsiderable reputation among the English Tartars there, but that the copies which had found their way to England were extremely scarce, and had come into the hands of only a few cognoscenti, who, being such, were enabled to create for him the reputation he so thoroughly deserved. The next step was to contradict this, and the press teamed with biographies and counterbiographies. Dazzler also wired numerous interviews, but an authoritative statement was inserted in the Acadium, signed by Andrew McKay, stating that they were unfounded, and paragraphs began to appear detailing how Flatpick spent his life in dodging the interviewers. Anecdotes of Flatpick were highly valued by editors of newspapers, and very plenty as they were, for Flatpick was known to be a cosmopolitan, always sailing from pole to pole, and carrying little for residents in the country of which he yet bade fair to be the laureate. These anecdotes girdled the globe even more quickly than their hero, and they returned from foreign parts, bronzed and almost unrecognizable, to set out immediately on fresh journeys in their new guise. A parody of one of his plays was inserted in a comic paper, and it was brooded abroad that Andrew McKay was collaborating with him in preparing one of his dramas for representation at the Independent Theatre. This set the older critics by the ears, and they protested vehemently in their theatrical columns against the infamous ethics propagated by the new writer, quoting largely from the specimens of his work given in McKay's article in the Fortnightly Review. Patrick, who wrote the dramatic criticism for seven papers, led the attack upon the audacious iconoclast. Journalisia was convulsed by the quarrel, and even young ladies asked their partners in the giddy waltz whether they were flatpickyots or anti-flatpickyots. You could never be certain of escaping Flatpick at dinner, for the lady you took down was apt to take you down by her contempt of your ignorance of Flatpick's awfully sweet writings. Any amount of people promised one another introductions to Flatpick, and those who had met him enjoyed quite a reflected reputation in Belgraveian circles. As to the flatpicky in parties, which brother geniuses like Dick Jones and Harry Robinson gave to the great writer, it was next to impossible to secure an invitation to them, and comparatively few boasted of the privilege. Flatpick reaped a good deal of kudos from refusing to be lionized and preferring the society of men of letters like himself during his rare halting moments in England. Long before this stage McKay had seen his way to introducing the catchword of the conspiracy, the English Shakespeare. He defended vehemently the ethics of the great writer, claiming that they were at core essentially at one with those of the great nation from whence he sprang and whose very lifeblood had passed into his work. This brought about a reaction, and all over the country the Scribblers hastened to do justice to the maligned writer, and an elaborate analysis of his most subtle characters was announced as having been undertaken by Mr. Patrick Boyle. And when it was stated that he was to be included in the Contemporary Men of Letters series, the advance orders for the work were far in advance of the demand for Flatpick's actual writings. Shakespearean, the English Shakespeare, was now constantly used in connection with his work, and even the most hard-hearted reviewers promised themselves to skim his book in their next summer holidays. About this time too, Dazzler unconsciously helped the society by announcing that Flatpick was dying of consumption in a snow hut in Greenland, and it was felt that he must either die or go to a warmer climate, if not both. The news of his pathetic weakness put the seal upon his genius, and the great heart of the nation went out to him in his lonely snow hut, but returned on learning that the report was a canard. Still, the danger he had passed through endeared him to his country, and within a few months Flatpick, the English Shakespeare, was definitely added to the glories of the national literature, founding a whole school of writers in his own country, attracting considerable attention on the continent, and being universally regarded as the centre of the Victorian Renaissance. But this was the final stage. A little before it was reached, Cecilia came to Frank Gray to pour her latest trouble into his ear, for she had carefully kept her promise of bothering him with her most intimate details, and the lovesick young lawyer had listened to her petty psychology with a patience which would have brought him inconsiderable fees if invested in the usual way. But this time the worry was genuine. Frank, she said, I am in love. The young man turned as white as a sheet, the sort of Damocles had fallen at last, sundering them forever. With whom, he gasped, with Mr. Flatpick, the English Shakespeare, the same. But you have never seen him. I have seen his soul. I have divined him from his writings. I have studied Andrew McKay's essays on him. I feel that he and I are in rapport. But this is madness. I know it is. I have tried to fight against it. I have applied for permission to the old maids' club, so as to stifle my hopeless passion. Once I have joined Miss Delcimer's society, I shall perhaps find peace again. Great heavens, think, think before you take this terrible step. Are you sure it is love you feel, not admiration? No, it is love. At first I thought it was admiration, and probably it was, for I was not likely to be mistaken in the analysis of my feelings, in which I have had much practice. But gradually I felt it efflorescing in sending forth tender shoots, clad in delicate green buds, and a sweet wonder came upon me, and I knew that love was struggling to get itself born in my soul. Then suddenly the news came that he I loved was ill, dying in that lonely snow hut in grim Greenland. And then in the tempest of grief that shook me, I knew that my life was bound up with his. Watered by my hot tears, the love in my heart burgeoned and blossomed like some strange tropical passion-flower. And when the reassuring message that he was strong and well flashed through the world, I felt that if he lived not for me, the universe were a blank, and next year's daisies would grow over my early grave. She burst into tears. A great writer has always been the ideal which I would not tell you of. It is the one thing I have kept from you. But, oh, Frank, Frank, he can never be mine. He will probably never know of my existence, and the most I can ever hope for is his autograph. Tomorrow I shall join the Old Maid's Club, and then all will be over. A proxism of hopeless sobs punctuated her remarks. It was a terrible position, Frank groaned inwardly. How was he to explain to this very young thing that she loved nobody and could never hope to marry him? There was no doubt that with her intense nature and her dreamy blue eyes she would pine away and die. Or worse, she would live to be an Old Maid. He made an effort to laugh it off. Tush, he said, all this is mere imagination. I don't believe you really love anybody. Frank, she drew herself up, stony and rigid, the warm tears on her poor white face frozen to eyes. Have you nothing better than this to say to me after I have shown you my inmost soul? The wretched young lawyer's face returned from white to red. He could have faced a football team in open combat, but these complex, psychical positions were beyond the healthy young Philistine. For—for—for—give me— he stammered. I—I am—I—that is to say—Fledpick—oh, how can I explain what I mean? Cecilia sobbed on. Every sob seemed to stick in Frank's own throat. His impotence maddened him. Was he to let the woman he loved fret herself to death for a shadow? And yet to un-deceive her were scarcely less fatal. He could have cut out the tongue that first invented Fledpick. Verily his sin was finding him out. Why can you not explain what you mean? wept, Cecilia. Because I—oh, hang it all, because I am the cause of your grief. You, she said, a strange wonderful look came into her eyes. The thought shot from her eyes to his, and dazzled them. Yes, why not? Why should he not sacrifice himself to save this delicate creature from a premature tomb? Why should he not become the English Shakespeare? True, it was a heavy burden to sustain. But what will a man not dare or suffer for the woman he loves? Moreover, was he not responsible for Fledpick's being, and thus for all the evil done by his Frankenstein? He had employed Fledpick for his own amusement, and the Employer's Liability Act was heavy upon him. The path of abnegation of duty was clear. He saw it, and he went for it then and there, went like a brave young Englishman to meet his marriage. Yes, he said, I am glad you love Mr. Fledpick. Why, she murmured breathlessly, because I love you. But I do not love you, she said slowly. You will when I tell you it is I who have provoked your love. Frank, is this true? On my word of honor is an Englishman. Are you, Fledpick? If I am not, he does not exist. There is no such person. Oh, Frank, this is no cruel jest. Cecilia, it is the sacred truth. Fledpick is nobody if he is not Frank Gray. But you never lived in Tartary? Of course not. All that about Fledpick is the various poetry. But I did not mind it, for nobody suspected me. I'll introduce you to Andrew McKay himself, and you will hear from his own lips how the newspapers have lied about Fledpick. My noble, modest boy! So this was why you were so embarrassed before. But why not have told me that you were Fledpick? Because I wanted you to love me for myself alone. She fell into his arms. Frank, Frank, Fledpick, my own, my English Shakespeare! She sobbed ecstatically. At the next meeting of the Mutual Depreciation Society, a bombshell in a stamped envelope was handed to Mr. Andrew McKay. He tore open the envelope, and the explosion followed as follows. Gentlemen, I hereby beg to tender the resignation of my membership in your valued society, as well as to anticipate your objections to my retaining the post of legal adviser, I have the honour to hold. I am about to marry. The cynic will say I am laying the foundation of a Mutual Depreciation Society of my own. But this is not the reason of my retirement. That is to be sought in my having accepted the position of the English Shakespeare, which you were good enough to open up for me. It would be a pity to let the pedestal stand empty. From the various excerpts you were kind enough to invent, especially from the copious extracts in Mr. McKay's articles, I have been able to piece together a considerable body of poetic work, and by carefully collecting every existing fragment and studying the most authoritative expositions of my aims and methods, I have constructed several dramas, much as Professor Owen reconstructed the mastodon from the bones that were extant. As you know I had never written a line in my life before, but by the copious aid of your excellent and genuinely helpful criticism I was enabled to get along without much difficulty. I find that to write blank verse you have only to invert the order of the words and keep on your guard against rhyme. You may be interested to know that the last line in the last tragedy is, Coffin'd in English you, he sleeps in peace. When written I got my dramas privately printed with a tardary trademark, after which I smudged the book and sold the copyright to make million in company for ten thousand pounds. Needless to say I shall never write another book. In taking leave of you I cannot help feeling that, if I owe you some gratitude for the lofty pinnacle to which you have raised me, you are also not unended to me for finally removing the shadow of apprehension that must have dogged you in your sober moments. I mean the fear of being found out. Mr. Andrew McKay in particular, as the most deeply committed, I feel owes me what he can never hope to repay for my gallantry in fitting the mantle designed by him whose emptiness might one day have been exposed to his immediate downfall. I am, gentlemen, your most sincere and humbled depreciator, the English Shakespeare. End of chapter 13