1
At the hour of seven-thirty, just when George Finch was trying out his
fifth tie, a woman stood pacing the floor in the Byzantine boudoir at
Number 16, Seventy-Ninth Street, East.
At first sight this statement may seem contradictory. Is it possible,
the captious critic may ask, for a person simultaneously to stand
and pace the floor? The answer is Yes, if he or she is sufficiently
agitated as to the soul. You do it by placing yourself on a given spot
and scrabbling the feet alternately like a cat kneading a hearth-rug.
It is sometimes the only method by which strong women can keep from
having hysterics.
Mrs. Sigsbee H. Waddington was a strong woman. In fact, so commanding
was her physique that a stranger might have supposed her to be one in
the technical, or circus, sense. She was not tall, but had bulged so
generously in every possible direction that, when seen for the first
time, she gave the impression of enormous size. No theatre, however
little its programme had managed to attract the public, could be said
to be "sparsely filled" if Mrs. Waddington had dropped in to look at
the show. Public speakers, when Mrs. Waddington was present, had the
illusion that they were addressing most of the population of the
United States. And when she went to Carlsbad or Aix-les-Bains to take
the waters, the authorities huddled together nervously and wondered if
there would be enough to go round.
Her growing bulk was a perpetual sorrow--one of many--to her husband.
When he had married her, she had been slim and _svelte_. But she
had also been the relict of the late P. Homer Horlick, the Cheese King,
and he had left her several million dollars. Most of the interest
accruing from this fortune she had, so it sometimes seemed to Sigsbee
H. Waddington, spent on starchy foods.
Mrs. Waddington stood and paced the floor, and presently the door
opened.
"Lord Hunstanton," announced Ferris, the butler.
The standard of male looks presented up to the present in this story
has not been high: but the man who now entered did much to raise the
average. He was tall and slight and elegant, with frank blue eyes--one
of them preceded by an eye-glass--and one of those clipped moustaches.
His clothes had been cut by an inspired tailor and pressed by a genius.
His tie was simply an ethereal white butterfly, straight from heaven,
that hovered over the collar-stud as if it were sipping pollen from
some exotic flower. (George Finch, now working away at number eight and
having just got it creased in four places, would have screamed hoarsely
with envy at the sight of that tie.)
"Well, here I am," said Lord Hunstanton. He paused for a moment, then
added, "What, what!" as if he felt that it was expected of him.
"It was so kind of you to come," said Mrs. Waddington, pivoting on her
axis and panting like a hart after the water-brooks.
"Not at all."
"I knew I could rely on you."
"You have only to command."
"You're such a true friend, though I have known you only such a short
time."
"Is anything wrong?" asked Lord Hunstanton.
He was more than a little surprised to find himself at seven-forty
in a house where he had been invited to dine at half-past eight.
His dressing had been interrupted by a telephone-call from Mrs.
Waddington's butler, begging him to come round at once: and, noting
his hostess's agitation, he hoped that nothing had gone wonky with the
dinner.
"Everything is wrong!"
Lord Hunstanton sighed inaudibly. Did this mean cold meat and a pickle?
"Sigsbee is having one of his spells!"
"You mean he has been taken ill?"
"Not ill. Fractious." Mrs. Waddington gulped. "It's so awful that
this should have occurred on the night of an important dinner-party,
after you have taken such trouble with his education. I have said a
hundred times that, since you came, Sigsbee has been a different man.
He knows all the forks now, and can even talk intelligently about
_soufflés_."
"I am only too glad if any little pointers I have been able to...."
"And when I take him out for a run he always walks on the outside
of the pavement. And here he must go, on the night of my biggest
dinner-party, and have one of his spells."
"What is the trouble? Is he violent?"
"No. Sullen."
"What about?"
Mrs. Waddington's mouth set in a hard line.
"Sigsbee is pining for the West again!"
"You don't say so?"
"Yes, sir, he's pining for the great wide open spaces of the West. He
says the East is effete and he wants to be out there among the silent
canyons where men are men. If you want to know what I think, somebody's
been feeding him Zane Grey."
"Can nothing be done?"
"Yes--in time, I can get him right if I'm given time, by stopping
his pocket-money. But I need time, and here he is, an hour before my
important dinner, with some of the most wealthy and exclusive people in
New York expected at any moment, refusing to put on his dress clothes
and saying that all a man that is a man needs is to shoot his bison and
cut off a steak and cook it by the light of the western stars. And what
I want to know is, what am I to do?"
Lord Hunstanton twisted his moustache thoughtfully.
"Very perplexing."
"I thought if you went and had a word with him...."
"I doubt if it would do any good. I suppose you couldn't dine without
him?"
"It would make us thirteen."
"I see." His Lordship's face brightened. "I've got it! Send Miss
Waddington to reason with him."
"Molly? You think he would listen to her?"
"He is very fond of her."
Mrs. Waddington reflected.
"It's worth trying. I'll go up and see if she is dressed. She is a dear
girl, isn't she, Lord Hunstanton?"
"Charming, charming."
"I'm sure I'm as fond of her as if she were my own daughter."
"No doubt."
"Though, of course, dearly as I love her, I am never foolishly
indulgent. So many girls to-day are spoiled by foolish indulgence."
"True."
"My great wish, Lord Hunstanton, is one day to see her happily married
to some good man."
His lordship closed the door behind Mrs. Waddington and stood for some
moments in profound thought. He may have been wondering what was the
earliest he could expect a cocktail, or he may have been musing on some
deeper subject--if there is a deeper subject.
2
Mrs. Waddington navigated upstairs, and paused before a door near the
second landing.
"Molly!"
"Yes, mother?"
Mrs. Waddington was frowning as she entered the room. How often she had
told this girl to call her "mater"!
But this was a small point, and not worth mentioning at a time like
the present. She sank into a chair with a creaking groan. Strong woman
though she was, Mrs. Sigsbee Waddington, like the chair, was near to
breaking down.
"Good heavens, mother! What's the matter?"
"Send her away," muttered Mrs. Waddington, nodding at her
stepdaughter's maid.
"All right, mother. I shan't want you any more, Julie. I can manage
now. Shall I get you a glass of water, mother?"
Molly looked at her suffering stepparent with gentle concern,
wishing that she had something stronger than water to offer. But her
late mother had brought her up in that silly, stuffy way in which
old-fashioned mothers used to bring up their daughters: and, incredible
as it may seem in these enlightened days, Molly Waddington had reached
the age of twenty without forming even a nodding acquaintance with
alcohol. Now, no doubt, as she watched her stepmother gulping before
her like a moose that has had trouble in the home, she regretted that
she was not one of those sensible modern girls who always carry a
couple of shots around with them in a jewelled flask.
But, though a defective upbringing kept her from being useful in this
crisis, nobody could deny that, as she stood there half-dressed for
dinner, Molly Waddington was extremely ornamental. If George Finch
could have seen her at that moment.... But then if George Finch had
seen her at that moment, he would immediately have shut his eyes like a
gentleman: for there was that about her costume, in its present stage
of development, which was not for the male gaze.
Still, however quickly he had shut his eyes, he could not have shut
them rapidly enough to keep from seeing that Mullett, in his recent
remarks on an absorbing subject, had shown an even nicer instinct
for the _mot juste_ than he had supposed. Beyond all chance for
evasion or doubt, Molly Waddington was cuddly. She was wearing primrose
knickers, and her silk-stockinged legs tapered away to little gold
shoes. Her pink fingers were clutching at a blue dressing-jacket with
swan's-down trimming. Her bobbed hair hung about a round little face
with a tip-tilted little nose. Her eyes were large, her teeth small
and white and even. She had a little brown mole on the back of her
neck and--in short, to sum the whole thing up, if George Finch could
have caught even the briefest glimpse of her at this juncture, he must
inevitably have fallen over sideways, yapping like a dog.
Mrs. Waddington's breathing had become easier, and she was sitting up
in her chair with something like the old imperiousness.
"Molly," said Mrs. Waddington, "have you been giving your father Zane
Grey?"
"Of course not."
"You're sure?"
"Quite. I don't think there's any Zane Grey in the house."
"Then he's been sneaking out and seeing Tom Mix again," said Mrs.
Waddington.
"You don't mean...?"
"Yes! He's got one of his spells."
"A bad one?"
"So bad that he refuses to dress for dinner. He says that if the
boys"--Mrs. Waddington shuddered--"if the boys don't like him in a
flannel shirt, he won't come in to dinner at all. And Lord Hunstanton
suggested that I should send you to reason with him."
"Lord Hunstanton? Has he arrived already?"
"I telephoned for him. I am coming to rely on Lord Hunstanton more and
more every day. What a dear fellow he is!"
"Yes," said Molly, a little dubiously. She was not fond of his lordship.
"So handsome."
"Yes."
"Such breeding."
"I suppose so."
"I should be very happy," said Mrs. Waddington, "if a man like Lord
Hunstanton asked you to be his wife."
Molly fiddled with the trimming of her dressing-jacket. This was not
the first time the subject had come up between her stepmother and
herself. A remark like the one just recorded was Mrs. Waddington's idea
of letting fall a quiet hint.
"Well...." said Molly.
"What do you mean, well?"
"Well, don't you think he's rather stiff?"
"Stiff!"
"Don't you find him a little starchy?"
"If you mean that Lord Hunstanton's manners are perfect, I agree with
you."
"I'm not sure that I like a man's manners to be too perfect,"
said Molly meditatively. "Don't you think a shy man can be rather
attractive?" She scraped the toe of one gold shoe against the heel of
the other. "The sort of man I think I should rather like," she said,
a dreamy look in her eyes, "would be a sort of slimmish, smallish man
with nice brown eyes and rather gold-y, chestnutty hair, who kind of
looks at you from a distance because he's too shy to speak to you and,
when he does get a chance to speak to you, sort of chokes and turns
pink and twists his fingers and makes funny noises and trips over his
feet and looks rather a lamb and...."
Mrs. Waddington had risen from her chair like a storm-cloud brooding
over a country-side.
"Molly!" she cried. "Who is this young man?"
"Why, nobody of course! Just some one I sort of imagined."
"Oh!" said Mrs. Waddington, relieved. "You spoke as if you knew him."
"What a strange idea!"
"If any young man ever does look at you and make funny noises, you will
ignore him."
"Of course."
Mrs. Waddington started.
"All this nonsense you have been talking has made me forget about your
father. Put on your dress and go down to him at once. Reason with him!
If he refuses to come in to dinner, we shall be thirteen, and my party
will be ruined."
"I'll be ready in a couple of minutes. Where is he?"
"In the library."
"I'll be right down."
"And, when you have seen him, go into the drawing-room and talk to
Lord Hunstanton. He is all alone."
"Very well, mother."
"Mater."
"Mater," said Molly.
She was one of those nice, dutiful girls.
3
In addition to being a nice, dutiful girl, Molly Waddington was also a
persuasive, wheedling girl. Better proof of this statement can hardly
be afforded than by the fact that, as the clocks were pointing to ten
minutes past eight, a red-faced little man with stiff grey hair and a
sulky face shambled down the stairs of Number 16, East Seventy-Ninth
Street, and, pausing in the hall, subjected Ferris, the butler, to an
offensive glare. It was Sigsbee H. Waddington, fully, if sloppily,
dressed in the accepted mode of gentlemen of social standing about to
dine.
The details of any record performance are always interesting, so it may
be mentioned that Molly had reached the library at seven minutes to
eight. She had started wheedling at exactly six minutes and forty-five
seconds to the hour. At seven fifty-four Sigsbee Waddington had begun
to weaken. At seven fifty-seven he was fighting in the last ditch: and
at seven fifty-nine, vowing he would ne'er consent, he consented.
Into the arguments used by Molly we need not enter fully. It is enough
to say that, if a man loves his daughter dearly, and if she comes to
him and says that she has been looking forward to a certain party
and is wearing a new dress for that party, and if, finally, she adds
that, should he absent himself from that party, the party and her
pleasure will be ruined,--then, unless the man has a heart of stone,
he will give in. Sigsbee Waddington had not a heart of stone. Many
good judges considered that he had a head of concrete, but nobody had
ever disparaged his heart. At eight precisely he was in his bedroom,
shovelling on his dress clothes: and now, at ten minutes past, he stood
in the hall and looked disparagingly at Ferris.
Sigsbee Waddington thought Ferris was an over-fed wart.
Ferris thought Sigsbee Waddington ought to be ashamed to appear in
public in a tie like that.
But thoughts are not words. What Ferris actually said was:
"A cocktail, sir?"
And what Sigsbee Waddington actually said was:
"Yup! Gimme!"
There was a pause. Mr. Waddington still unsoothed, continued to
glower. Ferris, resuming his marmoreal calm, had begun to muse
once more, as was his habit when in thought, on Brangmarley Hall,
Little-Seeping-in-the-Wold, Salop, Eng., where he had spent the early,
happy days of his butlerhood.
"Ferris!" said Mr. Waddington at length.
"Sir?"
"You ever been out West, Ferris?"
"No, sir."
"Ever want to go?"
"No, sir."
"Why not?" demanded Mr. Waddington belligerently.
"I understand that in the Western States of America, sir, there is a
certain lack of comfort, and the social amenities are not rigorously
observed."
"Gangway!" said Mr. Waddington, making for the front door.
He felt stifled. He wanted air. He yearned, if only for a few brief
instants, to be alone with the silent stars.
It would be idle to deny that, at this particular moment, Sigsbee H.
Waddington was in a dangerous mood. The history of nations shows that
the wildest upheavals come from those peoples that have been most
rigorously oppressed: and it is so with individuals. There is no man
so terrible in his spasmodic fury as the hen-pecked husband during his
short spasms of revolt. Even Mrs. Waddington recognised that, no matter
how complete her control normally, Sigsbee H., when having one of his
spells, practically amounted to a rogue elephant. Her policy was to
keep out of his way till the fever passed, and then to discipline him
severely.
As Sigsbee Waddington stood on the pavement outside his house, drinking
in the dust-and-gasolene mixture which passes for air in New York and
scanning the weak imitation stars which are the best the East provides,
he was grim and squiggle-eyed and ripe for murders, stratagems and
spoils. Molly's statement that there was no Zane Grey in the house had
been very far from the truth. Sigsbee Waddington had his private store,
locked away in a secret cupboard, and since early morning "Riders of
the Purple Sage" had hardly ever been out of his hand. During the
afternoon, moreover, he had managed to steal away to a motion-picture
house on Sixth Avenue where they were presenting Henderson Hoover
and Sara Svelte in "That L'il Gal from the Bar B. Ranch." Sigsbee
Waddington, as he stood on the pavement, was clad in dress clothes and
looked like a stage waiter, but at heart he was wearing chaps and a
Stetson hat and people spoke of him as Two-Gun Thomas.
A Rolls-Royce drew up at the kerb, and Mr. Waddington moved a step
or two away. A fat man alighted and helped his fatter wife out. Mr.
Waddington recognised them. B. and Mrs. Brewster Bodthorne. B. Brewster
was the first vice-president of Amalgamated Tooth-Brushes, and rolled
in money.
"Pah!" muttered Mr. Waddington, sickened to the core.
The pair vanished into the house, and presently another Rolls-Royce
arrived, followed by a Hispano-Suiza. Consolidated Pop-corn and wife
emerged, and then United Beef and daughter. A consignment worth on the
hoof between eighty and a hundred million.
"How long?" moaned Mr. Waddington. "How long?"
And then, as the door closed, he was aware of a young man behaving
strangely on the pavement some few feet away from him.
4
The reason why George Finch--for it was he--was behaving strangely
was that he was a shy young man and consequently unable to govern
his movements by the light of pure reason. The ordinary tough-skinned
everyday young fellow with a face of brass and the placid gall of an
Army mule would, of course, if he had decided to pay a call upon a girl
in order to make inquiries about her dog, have gone right ahead and
done it. He would have shot his cuffs and straightened his tie, and
then trotted up the steps and punched the front-door bell. Not so the
diffident George.
George's methods were different. Graceful and, in their way, pretty to
watch, but different. First, he stood for some moments on one foot,
staring at the house. Then, as if some friendly hand had dug three
inches of a meat-skewer into the flesh of his leg, he shot forward in
a spasmodic bound. Checking this as he reached the steps, he retreated
a pace or two and once more became immobile. A few moments later, the
meat-skewer had got to work again and he had sprung up the steps, only
to leap backwards once more on to the side-walk.
When Mr. Waddington first made up his mind to accost him, he had begun
to walk round in little circles, mumbling to himself.
Sigsbee Waddington was in no mood for this sort of thing. It was the
sort of thing, he felt bitterly, which could happen only in this
degraded East. Out West, men are men and do not dance tangoes by
themselves on front door-steps. Venters, the hero of "Riders of the
Purple Sage," he recalled, had been described by the author as standing
"tall and straight, his wide shoulders flung back, with the muscles
of his arms rippling and a blue flame of defiance in his gaze." How
different, felt Mr. Waddington, from this imbecile young man who seemed
content to waste life's springtime playing solitary round-games in the
public streets.
"Hey!" he said sharply.
The exclamation took George amidships just as he had returned to the
standing-on-one-leg position. It caused him to lose his balance, and
if he had not adroitly clutched Mr. Waddington by the left ear, it is
probable that he would have fallen.
"Sorry," said George, having sorted himself out.
"What's the use of being sorry?" growled the injured man, tenderly
feeling his ear. "And what the devil are you doing anyway?"
"Just paying a call," explained George.
"Doing a what?"
"I'm paying a formal call at this house."
"Which house?"
"This one. Number sixteen. Waddington, Sigsbee H."
Mr. Waddington regarded him with unconcealed hostility.
"Oh, you are, are you? Well, it may interest you to learn that I am
Sigsbee H. Waddington, and I don't know you from Adam. So now!"
George gasped.
"You are Sigsbee H. Waddington?" he said reverently.
"I am."
George was gazing at Molly's father as at some beautiful work of art--a
superb painting, let us say--the sort of thing which connoisseurs
fight for and which finally gets knocked down to Dr. Rosenbach for
three hundred thousand dollars. Which will give the reader a rough idea
of what love can do: for, considered in a calm and unbiased spirit,
Sigsbee Waddington was little, if anything, to look at.
"Mr. Waddington," said George, "I am proud to meet you."
"You're what?"
"Proud to meet you."
"What of it?" said Sigsbee Waddington churlishly.
"Mr. Waddington," said George, "I was born in Idaho."
Much has been written of the sedative effect of pouring oil on the
raging waters of the ocean, and it is on record that the vision of the
Holy Grail, sliding athwart a rainbow, was generally sufficient to
still the most fiercely warring passions of young knights in the Middle
Ages. But never since history began can there have been so sudden a
change from red-eyed hostility to smiling benevolence as occurred now
in Sigsbee H. Waddington. As George's words, like some magic spell,
fell upon his ears, he forgot that one of those ears was smarting
badly as the result of the impulsive clutch of this young man before
him. Wrath melted from his soul like dew from a flower beneath the sun.
He beamed on George. He pawed George's sleeve with a paternal hand.
"You really come from the West?" he cried.
"I do."
"From God's own country? From the great wonderful West with its wide
open spaces where a red-blooded man can fill his lungs with the breath
of freedom?"
It was not precisely the way George would have described East Gilead,
which was a stuffy little hamlet with a poorish water-supply and one of
the worst soda-fountains in Idaho, but he nodded amiably.
Mr. Waddington dashed a hand across his eyes.
"The West! Why, it's like a mother to me! I love every flower that
blooms on the broad bosom of its sweeping plains, every sun-kissed peak
of its everlasting hills."
George said he did, too.
"Its beautiful valleys, mystic in their transparent, luminous gloom,
weird in the quivering, golden haze of the lightning that flickers over
them."
"Ah!" said George.
"The dark spruces tipped with glimmering lights! The aspens bent low in
the wind, like waves in a tempest at sea!"
"Can you beat them!" said George.
"The forest of oaks tossing wildly and shining with gleams of fire!"
"What could be sweeter?" said George.
"Say, listen," said Mr. Waddington, "you and I must see more of each
other. Come and have a bite of dinner!"
"Now?"
"Right this very minute. We've got a few of these puny-souled Eastern
millionaires putting on the nose-bag with us to-night, but you won't
mind them. We'll just look at 'em and despise 'em. And after dinner,
you and I will slip off to my study and have a good chat."
"But won't Mrs. Waddington object to an unexpected guest at the last
moment?"
Mr. Waddington expanded his chest, and tapped it spaciously.
"Say, listen--what's your name?--Finch?--Say, listen, Finch, do I look
like the sort of man who's bossed by his wife?"
It was precisely the sort of man that George thought he did look like,
but this was not the moment to say so.
"It's very kind of you," he said.
"Kind? Say, listen, if I was riding along those illimitable prairies
and got storm-bound outside your ranch at East Gilead, you wouldn't
worry about whether you were being kind when you asked me in for a
bite, would you? You'd say, 'Step right in, pardner! The place is
yours.' Very well, then!"
Mr. Waddington produced a latch-key.
"Ferris," said Mr. Waddington in the hall, "tell those galoots down in
the kitchen to set another place at table. A pard of mine from the West
has happened in for a snack."