1
The perfect hostess makes a point of never displaying discomposure. In
moments of trial she aims at the easy repose of manner of a Red Indian
at the stake. Nevertheless, there was a moment when, as she saw Sigsbee
H. caracole into the drawing-room with George and heard him announce in
a ringing voice that this fine young son of the western prairies had
come to take pot-luck, Mrs. Waddington indisputably reeled.
She recovered herself. All the woman in her was urging her to take
Sigsbee H. by his outstanding ears and shake him till he came unstuck,
but she fought the emotion down. Gradually her glazed eye lost its
dead-fishy look. Like Death in the poem, she 'grinned horrible a
ghastly smile.' And it was with a well-assumed graciousness that she
eventually extended to George the quivering right hand which, had she
been a less highly civilised woman, would about now have been landing
on the side of her husband's head, swung from the hip.
"Chahmed!" said Mrs. Waddington. "So very, very glad that you were able
to come, Mr.----"
She paused, and George, eyeing her mistily, gathered that she wished
to be informed of his name. He would have been glad to supply the
information, but unfortunately at the moment he had forgotten it
himself. He had a dim sort of idea that it began with an F or a G, but
beyond that his mind was a blank.
The fact was that, in the act of shaking hands with his hostess, George
Finch had caught sight of Molly, and the spectacle had been a little
too much for him.
Molly was wearing the new evening dress of which she had spoken so
feelingly to her father at their recent interview, and it seemed to
George as if the scales had fallen from his eyes and he was seeing her
for the first time. Before, in a vague way he had supposed that she
possessed arms and shoulders and hair, but it was only at this moment
that he perceived how truly these arms and those shoulders and that
hair were arms and shoulders and hair in the deepest and holiest sense
of the words. It was as if a goddess had thrown aside the veil. It
was as if a statue had come to life. It was as if ... well, the point
we are trying to make is that George Finch was impressed. His eyes
enlarged to the dimensions of saucers; the tip of his nose quivered
like a rabbit's: and unseen hands began to pour iced water down his
spine.
Mrs. Waddington, having given him a long, steady look that blistered
his forehead, turned away and began to talk to a soda-water magnate.
She had no real desire to ascertain George's name, though she would
have read it with pleasure on a tombstone.
"Dinner is served," announced Ferris, the butler, appearing noiselessly
like a Djinn summoned by the rubbing of a lamp.
George found himself swept up in the stampede of millionaires. He was
still swallowing feebly.
There are few things more embarrassing to a shy and sensitive young
man than to be present at a dinner-party where something seems to tell
him he is not really wanted. The something that seemed to tell George
Finch he was not really wanted at to-night's festive gathering was
Mrs. Waddington's eye, which kept shooting down the table at intervals
and reducing him to pulp at those very moments when he was beginning
to feel that, if treated with gentle care and kindness, he might
eventually recover.
It was an eye that, like a thermos flask, could be alternately
extremely hot and intensely cold. When George met it during the
soup course he had the feeling of having encountered a simoom while
journeying across an African desert. When, on the other hand, it
sniped him as he toyed with his fish, his sensations were those of a
searcher for the Pole who unexpectedly bumps into a blizzard. But,
whether it was cold or hot, there was always in Mrs. Waddington's gaze
one constant factor--a sort of sick loathing which nothing that he
could ever do, George felt, would have the power to allay. It was the
kind of look which Sisera might have surprised in the eye of Jael the
wife of Heber, had he chanced to catch it immediately before she began
operations with the spike. George had made one new friend that night,
but not two.
The consequence was that as regards George Finch's contribution to the
feast of wit and flow of soul at that dinner-party we have nothing to
report. He uttered no epigrams. He told no good stories. Indeed, the
only time he spoke at all was when he said 'Sherry' to the footman when
he meant 'Hock.'
Even, however, had the conditions been uniformly pleasant, it is to
be doubted whether he would have really dominated the gathering.
Mrs. Waddington, in her selection of guests, confined herself to the
extremely wealthy: and, while the conversation of the extremely wealthy
is fascinating in its way, it tends to be a little too technical for
the average man.
With the soup, some one who looked like a cartoon of Capital in a
Socialistic paper said he was glad to see that Westinghouse Common were
buoyant again. A man who might have been his brother agreed that they
had firmed up nicely at closing. Whereas Wabash Pref. A., falling to
73-7/8, caused shakings of the head. However, one rather liked the look
of Royal Dutch Oil Ordinaries at 54-3/4.
With the fish, United Beef began to tell a neat though rather long,
story about the Bolivian Land Concession, the gist of which was that
the Bolivian Oil and Land Syndicate, acquiring from the Bolivian
Government the land and prospecting concessions of Bolivia, would be
known as Bolivian Concessions, Ld, and would have a capital of one
million dollars in two hundred thousand five-dollar "A" shares and two
hundred thousand half-dollar "B" shares, and that while no cash payment
was to be made to the vendor syndicate the latter was being allotted
the whole of the "B" shares as consideration for the concession.
And--this was where the raconteur made his point--the "B" shares were
to receive half the divisible profits and to rank equal with the "A"
shares in any distribution of assets.
The story went well, and conversation became general. There was a
certain amount of good-natured chaff about the elasticity of the form
of credit handled by the Commercial Banks, and once somebody raised a
laugh with a sly retort about the Reserve against Circulation and Total
Deposits. On the question of the collateral liability of shareholders,
however, argument ran high, and it was rather a relief when, as tempers
began to get a little heated, Mrs. Waddington gave the signal and the
women left the table.
Coffee having been served and cigars lighted, the magnates drew
together at the end of the table where Mr. Waddington sat. But Mr.
Waddington, adroitly sidestepping, left them and came down to George.
"Out West," said Mr. Waddington in a rumbling undertone, malevolently
eyeing Amalgamated Tooth-Brushes, who had begun to talk about the
Mid-Continent Fiduciary Conference at St. Louis, "they would shoot at
that fellow's feet."
George agreed that such behaviour could reflect nothing but credit on
the West.
"These Easterners make me tired," said Mr. Waddington.
George confessed to a similar fatigue.
"When you think that at this very moment out in Utah and Arizona," said
Mr. Waddington, "strong men are packing their saddle-bags and making
them secure with their lassoes you kind of don't know whether to laugh
or cry, do you?"
"That was the very problem," said George.
"Say, listen," said Mr. Waddington, "I'll just push these pot-bellied
guys off upstairs, and then you and I will sneak off to my study and
have a real talk."
2
Nothing spoils a _tête-à-tête_ chat between two newly-made
friends more than a disposition towards reticence on the part of the
senior of the pair: and it was fortunate therefore, that, by the time
he found himself seated opposite to George in his study, the heady
influence of Zane Grey and the rather generous potations in which he
had indulged during dinner had brought Sigsbee H. Waddington to quite a
reasonably communicative mood. He had reached the stage when men talk
disparagingly about their wives. He tapped George on the knee, informed
him three times that he liked his face, and began.
"You married, Winch?"
"Finch," said George.
"How do you mean, Finch?" asked Mr. Waddington, puzzled.
"My name is Finch."
"What of it?"
"You called me Winch."
"Why?"
"I think you thought it was my name."
"What was?"
"Winch."
"You said just now it was Finch."
"Yes, it is. I was saying...."
Mr. Waddington tapped him on the knee once more.
"Young man," he said, "pull yourself together. If your name is Finch,
why pretend that it is Winch? I don't like this shiftiness. It does
not come well from a Westerner. Leave this petty shilly-shallying
to Easterners like that vile rabble of widow-and-orphan oppressors
upstairs, all of whom have got incipient Bright's Disease. If your
name is Pinch, admit it like a man. Let your yea be yea and your nay
be nay," said Mr. Waddington a little severely, holding a match to the
fountain-pen which, as will happen to the best of us in moments of
emotion, he had mistaken for his cigar.
"As a matter of fact, I'm not," said George.
"Not what?"
"Married."
"I never said you were."
"You asked me if I was."
"Did I?"
"Yes."
"You're sure of that?" said Mr. Waddington keenly.
"Quite. Just after we sat down, you asked me if I was married."
"And your reply was...?"
"No."
Mr. Waddington breathed a sigh of relief.
"Now we have got it straight at last," he said, "and why you beat
about the bush like that, I cannot imagine. Well, what I say to
you, Pinch--and I say it very seriously as an older, wiser, and
better-looking man--is this." Mr. Waddington drew thoughtfully at the
fountain-pen for a moment. "I say to you, Pinch, be very careful, when
you marry, that you have money of your own. And, having money of your
own, keep it. Never be dependent on your wife for the occasional little
sums which even the most prudent man requires to see him through the
day. Take my case. When I married, I was a wealthy man. I had money of
my own. Lots of it. I was beloved by all, being generous to a fault. I
bought my wife--I am speaking now of my first wife--a pearl necklace
that cost fifty thousand dollars."
He cocked a bright eye at George, and George, feeling that comment was
required, said that it did him credit.
"Not credit," said Mr. Waddington. "Cash. Cold cash. Fifty thousand
dollars of it. And what happened? Shortly after I married again I lost
all my money through unfortunate speculations on the Stock Exchange
and became absolutely dependent on my second wife. And that is why
you see me to-day, Winch, a broken man. I will tell you something,
Pinch--something no one suspects and something which I have never told
anybody else and wouldn't be telling you now if I didn't like your
face.... I am not master in my own home!"
"No?"
"No. Not master in my own home. I want to live in the great, glorious
West, and my second wife insists on remaining in the soul-destroying
East. And I'll tell you something else." Mr. Waddington paused and
scrutinised the fountain-pen with annoyance. "This darned cigar won't
draw," he said petulantly.
"I think it's a fountain-pen," said George.
"A fountain-pen?" Mr. Waddington, shutting one eye, tested this
statement and found it correct. "There!" he said, with a certain moody
satisfaction. "Isn't that typical of the East? You ask for cigars and
they sell you fountain-pens. No honesty, no sense of fair trade."
"Miss Waddington was looking very charming at dinner, I thought," said
George, timidly broaching the subject nearest his heart.
"Yes, Pinch," said Mr. Waddington, resuming his theme, "my wife
oppresses me."
"How wonderfully that bobbed hair suits Miss Waddington."
"I don't know if you noticed a pie-faced fellow with an eye-glass and
a tooth-brush moustache at dinner? That was Lord Hunstanton. He keeps
telling me things about etiquette."
"Very kind of him," hazarded George.
Mr. Waddington eyed him in a manner that convinced him that he had said
the wrong thing.
"What do you mean, kind of him? It's officious and impertinent. He is
a pest," said Mr. Waddington. "They wouldn't stand for him in Arizona.
They would put hydrophobia skunks in his bed. What does a man need with
etiquette? As long as a man is fearless and upstanding and can shoot
straight and look the world in the eye, what does it matter if he uses
the wrong fork?"
"Exactly."
"Or wears the wrong sort of hat?"
"I particularly admired the hat which Miss Waddington was wearing when
I first saw her," said George. "It was of some soft material and of a
light brown colour and...."
"My wife--I am still speaking of my second wife. My first, poor soul,
is dead--sicks this Hunstanton guy on to me, and for financial
reasons, darn it, I am unable to give him the good soak on the nose to
which all my better instincts urge me. And guess what she's got into
her head now."
"I can't imagine."
"She wants Molly to marry the fellow."
"I should not advise that," said George seriously. "No, no, I am
strongly opposed to that. So many of these Anglo-American marriages
turn out unhappily."
"I am a man of broad sympathies and a very acute sensibility," began
Mr. Waddington, apropos, apparently, of nothing.
"Besides," said George, "I did not like the man's looks."
"What man?"
"Lord Hunstanton."
"Don't talk of that guy! He gives me a pain in the neck."
"Me, too," said George. "And I was saying...."
"Shall I tell you something?" said Mr. Waddington.
"What?"
"My second wife--not my first--wants Molly to marry him. Did you notice
him at dinner?"
"I did," said George patiently. "And I did not like his looks. He
looked to me cold and sinister, the sort of man who might break the
heart of an impulsive young girl. What Miss Waddington wants, I feel
convinced, is a husband who would give up everything for her--a man who
would sacrifice his heart's desire to bring one smile to her face--a
man who would worship her, set her in a shrine, make it his only aim
in life to bring her sunshine and happiness."
"My wife," said Mr. Waddington, "is much too stout."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Much too stout."
"Miss Waddington, if I may say so, has a singularly beautiful figure."
"Too much starchy food, and no exercise--that's the trouble. What my
wife needs is a year on a ranch, riding over the prairies in God's
sunshine."
"I happened to catch sight of Miss Waddington the other day in riding
costume. I thought it suited her admirably. So many girls look awkward
in riding-breeches, but Miss Waddington was charming. The costume
seemed to accentuate what I might describe as that strange boyish
jauntiness of carriage which, to my mind, is one of Miss Waddington's
chief...."
"And I'll have her doing it before long. As a married man, Winch--twice
married, but my first wife, poor thing, passed away some years
back--let me tell you something. To assert himself with his wife,
to bend her to his will, if I may put it that way, a man needs
complete financial independence. It is no use trying to bend your
wife to your will when five minutes later you have got to try and
wheedle twenty-five cents out of her for a cigar. Complete financial
independence is essential, Pinch, and that is what I am on the eve
of achieving. Some little time back, having raised a certain sum of
money--we need not go into the methods which I employed to do so--I
bought a large block of stock in a Hollywood Motion Picture Company.
Have you ever heard of the Finer and Better Motion Picture Company of
Hollywood, Cal.? Let me tell you that you will. It is going to be big,
and I shall very shortly make an enormous fortune."
"Talking of the motion-pictures," said George, "I do not deny that many
of the women engaged in that industry are superficially attractive, but
what I do maintain is that they lack Miss Waddington's intense purity
of expression. To me Miss Waddington seems like some...."
"I shall clean up big. It is only a question of time."
"The first thing anyone would notice on seeing Miss Waddington...."
"Thousands and thousands of dollars. And then...."
"A poet has spoken of a young girl as 'standing with reluctant feet
where the brook and river meet....'"
Mr. Waddington shook his head.
"It isn't only meat. What causes the real trouble is the desserts. It
stands to reason that if a woman insists on cramming herself with rich
stuff like what we were having to-night she is bound to put on weight.
If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times...."
What Mr. Waddington was about to say for the hundred and first time
must remain one of the historic mysteries. For, even as he drew in
breath the better to say it, the door opened and a radiant vision
appeared. Mr. Waddington stopped in mid-sentence, and George's heart
did three back-somersaults and crashed against his front teeth.
"Mother sent me down to see what had become of you," said Molly.
Mr. Waddington got about half-way towards a look of dignity.
"I am not aware, my dear child," he said, "that anything has 'become of
me.' I merely snatched the opportunity of having a quiet talk with this
young friend of mine from the West."
"Well, you can't have quiet talks with your young friends when you've
got a lot of important people to dinner."
"Important people!" Mr. Waddington snorted sternly. "A bunch of
super-fatted bits of bad news! In God's country they would be lynched
on sight."
"Mr. Brewster Bodthorne has been asking for you particularly. He wants
to play checkers."
"Hell," said Mr. Waddington, with the air of quoting something out of
Dante, "is full of Brewster Bodthornes."
Molly put her arms round her father's neck and kissed him fondly--a
proceeding which drew from George a low, sharp howl of suffering like
the bubbling cry of some strong swimmer in his agony. There is a limit
to what the flesh can bear.
"Darling, you must be good. Up you go at once and be very nice to
everybody. I'll stay here and entertain Mr.----"
"His name is Pinch," said Mr. Waddington, rising reluctantly and
making for the door. "I met him out on the side-walk where men are
men. Get him to tell you all about the West. I can't remember when
I've ever heard a man talk so arrestingly. Mr. Winch has held me
spell-bound. Positively spell-bound. And my name," he concluded, a
little incoherently, groping for the door-handle, "is Sigsbee Horatio
Waddington and I don't care who knows it."
3
The chief drawback to being a shy man is that in the actual crises
of real life you are a very different person from the dashing and
resourceful individual whom you have pictured in your solitary
day-dreams. George Finch, finding himself in the position in which he
had so often yearned to be--alone with the girl he loved, felt as if
his true self had been suddenly withdrawn and an incompetent understudy
substituted at the last moment.
The George with whom he was familiar in day-dreams was a splendid
fellow--graceful, thoroughly at his ease, and full of the neatest sort
of ingratiating conversation. He looked nice, and you could tell by the
way he spoke that he was nice. Clever, beyond a doubt--you knew that at
once by his epigrams--but not clever in that repellant, cold-hearted
modern fashion: for, no matter how brilliantly his talk sparkled, it
was plain all the while that his heart was in the right place and that,
despite his wonderful gifts, there was not an atom of conceit in his
composition. His eyes had an attractive twinkle: his mouth curved from
time to time in an alluring smile: his hands were cool and artistic:
and his shirt-front did not bulge. George, in short, as he had imagined
himself in his day-dreams, was practically the answer to the Maiden's
Prayer.
How different was this loathly changeling who now stood on one leg in
the library of Number 16, Seventy-Ninth Street, East. In the first
place, the fellow had obviously not brushed his hair for several days.
Also, he had omitted to wash his hands, and something had caused them
to swell up and turn scarlet. Furthermore, his trousers bagged at the
knees: his tie was moving up towards his left ear: and his shirt-front
protruded hideously like the chest of a pouter pigeon. A noisome sight.
Still, looks are not everything: and if this wretched creature had
been able to talk one-tenth as well as the George of the day-dreams,
something might yet have been saved out of the wreck. But the poor
blister was inarticulate as well. All he seemed able to do was clear
his throat. And what nice girl's heart has ever been won by a series of
roopy coughs?
And he could not even achieve a reasonable satisfactory expression.
When he tried to relax his features (such as they were) into a charming
smile, he merely grinned weakly. When he forced himself not to grin,
his face froze into a murderous scowl.
But it was his inability to speak that was searing George's soul.
Actually, since the departure of Mr. Waddington, the silence had lasted
for perhaps six seconds: but to George Finch it seemed like a good
hour. He goaded himself to utterance.
"My name," said George, speaking in a low, husky voice, "is not Pinch."
"Isn't it?" said the girl. "How jolly!"
"Nor Winch."
"Better still."
"It is Finch. George Finch."
"Splendid!"
She seemed genuinely pleased. She beamed upon him as if he had brought
her good news from a distant land.
"Your father," proceeded George, not having anything to add by way of
development of the theme but unable to abandon it, "thought it was
Pinch. Or Winch. But it is not. It is Finch."
His eye, roaming nervously about the room, caught hers for an instant:
and he was amazed to perceive that there was in it nothing of that
stunned abhorrence which he felt his appearance and behaviour should
rightly have aroused in any nice-minded girl. Astounding though it
seemed, she appeared to be looking at him in a sort of pleased,
maternal way, as if he were a child she was rather fond of. For the
first time a faint far-off glimmer of light shone upon George's
darkness. It would be too much to say that he was encouraged, but out
of the night that covered him, black as the pit from pole to pole,
there did seem to sparkle for an instant a solitary star.
"How did you come to know father?"
George could answer that. He was all right if you asked him questions.
It was the having to invent topics of conversation that baffled him.
"I met him outside the house: and when he found that I came from the
West he asked me in to dinner."
"Do you mean he rushed at you and grabbed you as you were walking by?"
"Oh, no. I wasn't walking by. I was--er--sort of standing on the
door-step. At least...."
"Standing on the door-step? Why?"
George's ears turned a riper red.
"Well, I was--er--coming as it were, to pay a call."
"A call?"
"Yes."
"On mother?"
"On you."
The girl's eyes widened.
"On me?"
"To make inquiries."
"What about?"
"Your dog."
"I don't understand."
"Well, I thought--result of the excitement--and nerve-strain--I thought
he might be upset."
"Because he ran away, do you mean?"
"Yes."
"You thought he would have a nervous break-down because he ran away?"
"Dangerous traffic," explained George. "Might have been run over.
Reaction. Nervous collapse."
Woman's intuition is a wonderful thing. There was probably not an
alienist in the land who, having listened so far, would not have sprung
at George and held him down with one hand while with the other he
signed the necessary certificate of lunacy. But Molly Waddington saw
deeper into the matter. She was touched. As she realised that this
young man thought so highly of her that, despite his painful shyness,
he was prepared to try to worm his way into her house on an excuse
which even he must have recognised as pure banana-oil, her heart warmed
to him. More than ever, she became convinced that George was a lamb
and that she wanted to stroke his head and straighten his tie and make
cooing noises to him.
"How very sweet of you," she said.
"Fond of dogs," mumbled George.
"You must be fond of dogs."
"Are you fond of dogs?"
"Yes, I'm very fond of dogs."
"So am I. Very fond of dogs."
"Yes?"
"Yes. Very fond of dogs. Some people are not fond of dogs, but I am."
And suddenly eloquence descended upon George Finch. With gleaming
eyes he broke out into a sort of Litany. He began to talk easily and
fluently.
"I am fond of Airedales and wire-haired terriers and bull-dogs and
Pekingese and Sealyhams and Alsations and fox-terriers and greyhounds
and Aberdeens and West Highlands and Cairns and Pomeranians and
spaniels and schipperkes and pugs and Maltese and Yorkshires and
borzois and bloodhounds and Bedlingtons and pointers and setters
and mastiffs and Newfoundlands and St. Bernards and Great Danes and
dachshunds and collies and chows and poodles and...."
"I see," said Molly. "You're fond of dogs."
"Yes," said George. "Very fond of dogs."
"So am I. There's something about dogs."
"Yes," said George. "Of course, there's something about cats, too."
"Yes, isn't there?"
"But, still, cats aren't dogs."
"No, I've noticed that."
There was a pause. With a sinking of the heart, for the topic was one
on which he felt he could rather spread himself, George perceived that
the girl regarded the subject of dogs as fully threshed out. He stood
for a while licking his lips in thoughtful silence.
"So you come from the West?" said Molly.
"Yes."
"It must be nice out there."
"Yes."
"Prairies and all that sort of thing."
"Yes."
"You aren't a cow-boy, are you?"
"No. I am an artist," said George proudly.
"An artist? Paint pictures, you mean?"
"Yes."
"Have you a studio?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Yes. I mean, near Washington Square. In a place called the Sheridan."
"The Sheridan? Really? Then perhaps you know Mr. Beamish?"
"Yes. Oh, yes. Yes."
"He's a dear, isn't he? I've known him all my life."
"Yes."
"It must be jolly to be an artist."
"Yes."
"I'd love to see some of your pictures."
Warm thrills permeated George's system.
"May I send you one of them?" he bleated.
"That's awfully sweet of you."
So uplifted was George Finch by this wholly unexpected development
that there is no saying what heights of eloquence he might not now
have reached, had he been given another ten minutes of the girl's
uninterrupted society. The fact that she was prepared to accept one of
his pictures seemed to bring them very close together. He had never yet
met anybody who would. For the first time since their interview had
begun he felt almost at his ease.
Unfortunately, at this moment the door opened: and like a sharp attack
of poison-gas Mrs. Waddington floated into the room.
"What are you doing down here, Molly?" she said.
She gave George one of those looks of hers, and his newly-born
sang-froid immediately turned blue at the roots.
"I've been talking to Mr. Finch, mother. Isn't it interesting--Mr.
Finch is an artist. He paints pictures."
Mrs. Waddington did not reply: for she had been struck suddenly dumb
by a hideous discovery. Until this moment she had not examined George
with any real closeness. When she had looked at him before it had been
merely with the almost impersonal horror and disgust with which any
hostess looks at an excrescence who at the eleventh hour horns in on
one of her carefully planned dinners. His face, though revolting, had
had no personal message for her.
But now it was different. Suddenly this young man's foul features had
become fraught with a dreadful significance. Sub-consciously, Mrs.
Waddington had been troubled ever since she had heard them by the
words Molly had spoken in her bedroom: and now they shot to the surface
of her mind like gruesome things from the dark depths of some sinister
pool. "The sort of man I think I should rather like," Molly had said,
"would be a sort of slimmish, smallish man with nice brown eyes and
rather gold-y, chestnutty hair." She stared at George. Yes! He was
slimmish. He was also smallish. His eyes, though far from nice, were
brown: and his hair was undeniably of a chestnut hue.
"Who sort of chokes and turns pink and twists his fingers and makes
funny noises and trips over his feet...." Thus had the description
continued, and precisely thus was the young man before her now
behaving. For her gaze had had the worst effect on George Finch, and
seldom in his career had he choked more throatily, turned a brighter
pink, twisted his fingers into a more intricate pattern, made funnier
noises and tripped more heartily over his feet than he was doing now.
Mrs. Waddington was convinced. It had been no mere imaginary figure
that Molly had described, but a living, breathing pestilence--and this
was he.
And he was an artist! Mrs. Waddington shuddered. Of all the myriad
individuals that went to make up the kaleidoscopic life of New York,
she disliked artists most. They never had any money. They were
dissolute and feckless. They attended dances at Webster Hall in strange
costumes, and frequently played the ukulele. And this man was one of
them.
"I suppose," said Molly, "we'd better go upstairs?"
Mrs. Waddington came out of her trance.
"You had better go upstairs," she said, emphasising the pronoun in a
manner that would have impressed itself upon the least sensitive of
men. George got it nicely.
"I--er--think, perhaps," he mumbled, "as it is--er--getting late...."
"You aren't going?" said Molly concerned.
"Certainly Mr. Finch is going," said Mrs. Waddington: and there was
that in her demeanour which suggested that at any moment she might
place one hand on the scruff of his neck and the other on the seat of
his trousers and heave. "If Mr. Finch has appointments that call him
elsewhere, we must not detain him. Good night, Mr. Finch."
"Good night. Thank you for a--er--very pleasant evening."
"It was most kay-eend of you to come," said Mrs. Waddington.
"Do come again," said Molly.
"Mr. Finch," said Mrs. Waddington, "is no doubt a very ba-husy man.
Please go upstairs immediately, Molly. _Good_ na'eet, Mr. Finch."
She continued to regard him in a manner hardly in keeping with the fine
old traditions of American hospitality.
"Ferris," she said, as the door closed.
"Madam?"
"On no pretext whatever, Ferris, is that person who has just left to be
admitted to the house again."
"Very good, madam," said the butler.
4
It was a fair sunny morning next day when George Finch trotted up the
steps of Number 16, Seventy-Ninth Street, East, and pressed the bell.
He was wearing his dove-grey suit, and under his arm was an enormous
canvas wrapped in brown paper. After much thought he had decided
to present Molly with his favourite work, Hail, Jocund Spring!--a
picture representing a young woman, scantily draped and obviously
suffering from an advanced form of chorea, dancing with lambs in a
flower-speckled field. At the moment which George had selected for her
portrayal, she had--to judge from her expression--just stepped rather
hard on a sharp stone. Still, she was George's master-piece, and he
intended to present her to Molly.
The door opened. Ferris, the butler, appeared.
"All goods," said Ferris, regarding George dispassionately, "must be
delivered in the rear."
George blinked.
"I want to see Miss Waddington."
"Miss Waddington is not at home."
"Can I see Mr. Waddington?" asked George, accepting the second-best.
"Mr. Waddington is not at home."
George hesitated a moment before he spoke again. But love conquers all.
"Can I see Mrs. Waddington?"
"Mrs. Waddington is not at home."
As the butler spoke, there proceeded from the upper regions of the
house a commanding female voice that inquired of an unseen Sigsbee how
many times the speaker had told him not to smoke in the drawing-room.
"But I can hear her," George pointed out.
The butler shrugged his shoulders with an aloof gesture, as if
disclaiming all desire to go into these mysteries. His look suggested
that he thought George might possibly be psychic.
"Mrs. Waddington is not at home," he said once more.
There was a pause.
"Nice morning," said George.
"The weather appears to be clement," agreed Ferris.
George then tumbled backwards down the steps, and the interview
concluded.