The Old Maids' Club

by Israel Zangwill

  CHAPTER XII.

  THE ARITHMETIC AND PHYSIOLOGY OF LOVE.

  "Well, have you seen this Fanny Radowski?" said Lord Silverdale, when hereturned 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, thoughI have put it into Mendoza's?"

  "Ah, yes, I remember now. It certainly is funny, her refusing a goodCatholic on the ground that he was a bad Jew. But then according to thestory she doesn't know he's a Catholic?"

  "No, it was I who divined the joke of the situation. Lookers-on alwayssee more of the game. I saw at once that if Mendoza were really a Jew,he would never have been such an ass as to make the slip he did; and sofrom this and several other things she told me about her lover, Iconstructed deductively the history you have read. She says she firstmet him at a mourning service in memory of her father, and that it is acustom among her people when they have not enough men to form areligious quorum (the number is the mystical ten) to invite any brotherJew who may be passing to step in, whether he is an acquaintance ornot."

  "I gathered that from the narrative," said Lord Silverdale. "And so shewishes to be an object lesson in female celibacy, does she?"

  "She is most anxious to enlist in the Cause."

  "Is she really beautiful, et cetera?"

  "She is magnificent."

  "Then I should say the very member we are looking for. A Jewess will bean extremely valuable element of the Club, for her race exalts marriageeven above happiness, and an old maid is even more despised than amongus. The lovely Miss Radowski will be an eloquent protest against theprejudices of her people."

  Lillie Dulcimer shook her head quietly. "The racial accident which makesher seem a desirable member to you, makes me regard her as impossible."

  "How so?" cried Silverdale in amazement. "You surely are not going todegrade your Club by anti-Semitism."

  "Heaven forefend! 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 OldMaid fractionally. An Old Maid must make 'the grand refusal!'--she mustrefuse mankind at large. Now Miss Radowski, being cut off by her creedfrom marrying into any but an insignificant percentage of mankind, isproportionately less valuable as an object-lesson; she is unfitted forthe functions of Old Maidenhood in their full potentiality. Already byher religion she is condemned to almost total celibacy. She cannotrenounce what she never possessed. There are in the world, roughlyspeaking, eight million Jews among a population of a thousand millions.The force of the example, in other words, her value as an Old Maid, maytherefore 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 seemscorrect. As a mathematical wrangler you are terrible. So I shall notneed to try Miss Radowski?"

  "No; we cannot entertain her application," said Lillie peremptorily, thethunder-cloud no bigger than a man's hand gathering on her brow at thesuspicion that Silverdale did not take her mathematics seriously.Considering that in keeping him at arm's length her motive were merelymathematical (though Lord Silverdale was not aware of this) she waspeculiarly sensitive on the point. She changed the subject quickly byasking 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 farragoof religions that figured in your last human document. It is a paean onthe growing hospitality of the people towards the gods of other nations.There was a time when free trade in divinities was tabu, each nationprotecting, and protected by, its own. Now foreign gods are all therage."

  "THE END OF THE CENTURY" CATHOLIC CREDO.

  I'm a Christo-Jewish Quaker, Moslem, Atheist and Shaker, Auld Licht Church of England Fakir, Antinomian Baptist, Deist, Gnostic, Neo-Pagan Theist, Presbyterianish Papist, Comtist, Mormon, Darwin-apist, Trappist, High Church Unitarian, Sandemanian Sabbatarian, Plymouth Brother, Walworth Jumper, Southcote South-Place Bible-Thumper, Christadelphian, Platonic, Old Moravian, Masonic, Corybantic Christi-antic, Ethic-Culture-Transatlantic, Anabaptist, Neo-Buddhist, Zoroastrian Talmudist, Laotsean, Theosophic, Table-rapping, Philosophic, Mediaeval, Monkish, Mystic, Modern, Mephistophelistic, Hellenistic, Calvinistic, Brahministic, Cabbalistic, Humanistic, Tolstoistic, Rather Robert Elsmeristic, Altruistic, Hedonistic And Agnostic Manichaean, Worshipping the Galilean.

  For with equal zeal I follow Sivah, Allah, Zeus, Apollo, Mumbo Jumbo, Dagon, Brahma, Buddha _alias_ Gautama, Jahve, Juggernaut and 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 mode in 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, Rousseau, Goethe, Zola, Whitman, Renan (priest of Paris), Transcendental Prophet Harris, Ibsen, Carlyle, Huxley, Pater Each than all the others greater. And I read the Zend-Avesta, Koran, Bible, Roman Gesta, Ind's Upanischads and Spencer With affection e'er 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," saidLillie.

  "The century is dying unshriven," said the satirist solemnly. "Itsconscience must be stirred. Truly, was there ever an age which had somuch light and so little sweetness? In the reckless fight for goldSociety has become a mutual swindling association. Cupidity has oustedCupid, and everything is bought and sold."

  "Except your poems, Lord Silverdale," laughed Lillie.

  It was tit for the tat of his raillery of her mathematics.

  Before his lordship had time to make the clever retort the thought ofnext day, Turple the magnificent brought in a card.

  "Miss Winifred Woodpecker?" said Lillie queryingly. "I suppose it'sanother candidate. Show her in."

  Miss Woodpecker was a tall stately girl, of the kind that pass forlilies in the flowery language of the novelists.

  "Have I the pleasure of speaking to Miss Dulcimer?"

  "Yes, I am Miss Dulcimer," said Lillie.

  "And where is the Old Maids' Club?" further inquired Miss Woodpecker,looking around curiously.

  "Here," replied Lillie, indicating the epigrammatic antimacassars with asweeping gesture. "No, don't go, Lord Silverdale. Miss Woodpecker, thisis my friend Lord Silverdale. He knows all about the Club, so youneedn't mind speaking before him."

  "Well, you know, I read the leader in the _Hurrygraph_ about your Clubthis morning."

  "Oh, is there a leader?" said Lillie feverishly. "Have you seen it, LordSilverdale?"

  "I am not sure. At first I fancied it referred to the Club, but therewas such a lot about Ptolemy, Rosa Bonheur's animals and the Suez Canalthat I can hardly venture to say what the leader itself was about. Andso, Miss Woodpecker, you have thought about joining our institution forelevating 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 Lillie. "
But tell us your story."

  "It was in this way. I was staying at a boarding-house in Brighton witha female cousin, and a handsome young man in the house fell in love withme and we were engaged. Then my mother came down. Immediately afterwardsmy lover disappeared. He left a note for me containing nothing but thefollowing 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 bringforth."

  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 walks, Of servants and expenses talks, Her nose is not unlike a hawk's.

  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 daughter's in the mother's face.

  Beneath the beak I see the nose, The poetry beneath the prose, The figure 'neath the adipose.

  And so I sadly turn away: How _can_ I love a clod of clay, Doomed to grow earthlier day by day?

  Vain, vain the hope from Fate to flee, What special Providence for me? I know that what hath been will be.

  _The Present and the Future._]

  Lillie and Silverdale looked at each other.

  "Well, but," said Lillie at last, "according to this he refused you, notyou him. Our rules----"

  "You mistake me," interrupted Winifred Woodpecker. "When the first fitof anguish was over, I saw my Frank was right, and I have refused allthe offers I have had since--five in all. It would not be fair to alover to chain him to a beauty so transient. In ten or twenty years fromnow I shall go the way of all flesh. Under such circumstances is notmarriage a contract entered into under false pretences? There is nochance of the law of this country allowing a time-limit to be placed inthe contract; celibacy is the only honest policy for a woman."

  Involuntarily Lillie's hand seized the candidate's and gripped itsympathetically. She divined a sister soul.

  "You teach me a new point of view," she said, "a finer shade of ethicalfeeling."

  Silverdale groaned inwardly; he saw a new weapon going into theanti-hymeneal armory, and the Old Maids' Club on the point of beingstrengthened by the accession of its first member.

  "The law will have to accommodate itself to these finer shades," pursuedLillie energetically. "It is a rusty machine out of harmony with theage. Science has discovered that the entire physical organism is renewedevery seven years, and yet the law calmly goes on assuming that the newman and the new woman are still bound by the contract of theirpredecessors and still possess the good-will of the originalpartnership. It seems to me if the short lease principle demanded byphysiology is not to be conceded, there should at any rate be provincialand American rights in marriage as well as London rights. In themetropolis the matrimonial contract should hold good with A, in thecountry with B, neither party infringing the other's privileges, inaccordance with theatrical analogy."

  "That is a literal latitudinarianism in morals you will never get theworld to agree to," laughed Lord Silverdale. "At least not in theory; wecannot formally sanction theatrical practice."

  "Do not laugh," said Lillie. "Law must be brought more in touch withlife."

  "Isn't it rather _vice versa_? Life must be brought more in touch withlaw. However, if Miss Woodpecker feels these fine ethical shades, won'tshe be ineligible?"

  "How so?" said the President in indignant surprise.

  "By our second rule every candidate must be beautiful and undertake tocontinue so."

  Poor little Lillie drooped her head.

  And now it befalls to reveal to the world the jealously-guarded secretof the English Shakespeare, for how else can the tale be told of how theOld Maids' Club was within an ace of robbing him of his bride?