The Old Maids' Club. Israel Zangwill
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introduced, fondled me and addressed me as 'Petsie-tootsie-wootsie.' It appears that she is my mother, but this hardly justifies her in degrading the language of Milton and Shakespeare. Later on a man came in and kissed her. I could not help thinking that they might respect my presence; and, if they must carry on, continue to do so out of my sight as before. I understood later that I must call the stranger 'Poppy,' and that I was not to resent his familiarities, as he was very much attached to my mother by Act of Parliament. Both the man and the woman seem to arrogate to themselves a certain authority over me. How strange that two persons you have never seen before in your life should claim such rights of interference! There must be something rotten in the constitution of Society. It shall be one of my life-tasks to discover what it is. I made a light lunch off milk, but do not care for the beverage. The day passed slowly. I was dreadfully bored by the conversation in the bedroom—it was so petty. I was glad when night came. O, the intolerable ennui of an English Sunday! I divine already that I am destined to go through life perpetually craving for I know not what, and that I shan't be happy till I get it."
Lillie was a born heroine, being young and beautiful from her birth. In her fourth year she conceived a Platonic affection for the boy who brought the telegrams. His manners had such repose. This was followed by a hopeless passion for a French cavalry officer with spurs. Every one feared she would grow up to be a suicide or a poetess; for her earliest nursery rhyme was an impromptu distich discovered by the nursery-maid, running:
Woonded i crawl out from the battel,
Life is as hollo as my rattel.
And her twelfth year was almost entirely devoted to literary composition of a hopeless character, so far as publishers were concerned. It was only the success of "Woman as a Waste Force," in her fourteenth year, that induced them to compete for her early manuscripts and to give the world the celebrated compilations, "Ibsen for Infants," "Browning for Babies," "Carlyle for the Cradle," "Newman for the Nursery," "Leopardi for the Little Ones," and "The Schoolgirl's Schopenhauer," which, together with "Tracts for the Tots," make up the main productions of her First Period. After the loss of the French cavalry officer she remained blasée till she was more than seven, when her second grand passion took her. It was a very grand passion indeed this time—and it lasted a full week. These things did not matter while Lillie had not yet arrived at years of indiscretion; but when she got into her teens, her father began to look about for a husband for her. He was a millionaire and had always kept her supplied with every luxury. But Lillie did not care for her father's selections, and sent them all away with fleas in their ears instead of kind words. And her father was as unhappy as his selections. In her sixteenth year her mother, who had been ailing for sixteen years, breathed her last, and Lillie more freely. She had grown quite to like Mrs. Dulcimer, and it prevented her having her own way. The situation was now very simple. Mr. Dulcimer managed his immense affairs and Lillie managed Mr. Dulcimer.
He made one last effort to get her to manage another man. He discovered a young nobleman who seemed fond of her society and who was in the habit of meeting her accidentally at the Academy. The gunpowder being thus presumably laid, he set to work to strike the match. But the explosion was not such as he expected. Lillie told him that no man was further from her thoughts as a possible husband.
"But, Lillie," pleaded the millionaire, "not one of the objections you have impressed upon me applies to Lord Silverdale. He is young, rich, handsome——"
"Yes, yes, yes," answered Lillie, "I know."
"He is rich and cannot be after your money."
"True."
"He has a title, which you consider an advantage."
"I do."
"He is a man of taste and culture."
"He is."
"Well, what is it you don't like? Doesn't he ride or dance well?"
"He dances like an angel and rides like the devil."
"Well, what in the name of angels or devils is your objection then?"
"Father," said Lillie very solemnly, "he is all you claim, but——." The little delicate cheek flushed modestly. She could not say it.
"But——" said the millionaire impatiently.
Lillie hid her face in her hands.
"But——" said the millionaire brutally.
"But I love him!"
"You what?" roared the millionaire.
"Yes, father, do not be angry with me. I love him dearly. Oh, do not spurn me from you, but I love him with my whole heart and soul, and I shall never marry any other man but him." The poor little girl burst into a paroxysm of weeping.
"Then you will marry him?" gasped the millionaire.
"No, father," she sobbed solemnly, "that is an illegitimate deduction from my proposition. He is the one man on this earth I could never bring myself to marry."
"You are mad!"
"No, father. I am only mathematical. I will never marry a man who does not love me. And don't you see that, as I love him, the odds are that he doesn't love me?"
"But he tells me he does!"
"What is his bare assertion—weighed against the doctrine of probability! How many girls do you suppose Silverdale has met in his varied career?"
"A thousand, I dare say."
"Ah, that's only reckoning English Society (and theatres). And then he has seen Society (and theatres) in Paris, Berlin, Rome, Boston, a hundred places! If we put the figure at three thousand it will be moderate. Here am I, a single girl——"
"Who oughtn't to remain so," growled the millionaire.
"One single girl. How wildly improbable that out of three thousand girls, Silverdale should just fall in love with me. It is 2999 to 1 against. Then there is the probability that he is not in love at all—which makes the odds 5999 to 1. The problem is exactly analogous to one which you will find in any Algebra. Out of a sack containing three thousand coins, what are the odds that a man will draw the one marked coin?"
"The comparison of yourself to a marked coin is correct enough," said the millionaire, thinking of the files of fortune-hunters to whom he had given the sack. "Otherwise you are talking nonsense."
"Then Pascal, Laplace, Lagrange, De Moivre talked nonsense," said Lillie hotly; "but I have not finished. We must also leave open the possibility that the man will not be tempted to draw out any coin whatsoever. The odds against the marked coin being drawn out are thus 5999 to 1. The odds against Silverdale returning my affection are 6000 to 1. As Butler rightly points out, probability is the only guide to conduct, which is, we know from Matthew Arnold, three-fourths of life. Am I to risk ruining three-fourths of my life, in defiance of the unerring dogmas of the Doctrine of Chances? No, father, do not exact this sacrifice from me. Ask me anything you please, and I will grant it—oh! so gladly—but do not, oh, do not ask me to marry the man I love!"
The millionaire stroked her hair, and soothed her in piteous silence. He had made his pile in pig-iron, and had not science enough to grapple with the situation.
"Do you mean to say," he said at last, "that because you love a man, he can't love you?"
"He can. But in all human probability he won't. Suppose you put on a fur waistcoat and went out into the street, determined to invite to dinner the first man in a straw hat, and supposing he replied that you had just forestalled him, as he had gone out with a similar intention to look for the first man in a fur waistcoat.—What would you say?"
The millionaire hesitated. "Well, I shouldn't like to insult the man," he said slowly.
"You see!" cried Lillie triumphantly.
"Well, then, dear," said he, after much pondering, "the only thing for it is to marry a man you don't love."
"Father!" said Lillie in terrible tones.