1
Madame Eulalie peered into the crystal that was cupped between her
shapely hands. The face that had caused Hamilton Beamish to jettison
the principles of a lifetime was concentrated and serious.
"The mists begin to clear away!" she murmured.
"Ah!" said Mrs. Waddington. She had been hoping they would.
"There is some one very near to you...."
"A spirit?" said Mrs. Waddington nervously, casting an apprehensive
glance over her shoulder. She was never quite sure that something of
the sort might not pop out at any moment from a corner of this dim-lit,
incense-scented room.
"You misunderstand me," said Madame Eulalie gravely. "I mean that that
which is taking shape in the crystal concerns some one very near to
you, some near relative."
"Not my husband?" said Mrs. Waddington in a flat voice. A woman,
careful with her money, she did not relish the idea of handing over ten
dollars for visions about Sigsbee H.
"Does your husband's name begin with an M.?"
"No," said Mrs. Waddington, relieved.
"The letter M. seems to be forming itself among the mists."
"I have a stepdaughter, Molly."
"Is she tall and dark?"
"No. Small and fair."
"Then it is she!" said Madame Eulalie. "I see her in a wedding-dress,
walking up an aisle. Her hand is on the arm of a dark man with an
eye-glass. Do you know such a person?"
"Lord Hunstanton!"
"I do seem to sense the letter H."
"Lord Hunstanton is a great friend of mine, and devoted to Molly. Do
you really see her marrying him?"
"I see her walking up the aisle."
"It's the same thing."
"No! For she never reaches the altar."
"Why not?" asked Mrs. Waddington, justly annoyed.
"From the crowd a woman springs forth. She bars the way. She seems to
be speaking rapidly, with great emotion. And the man with the eye-glass
is shrinking back, his face working horribly. His expression is very
villainous. He raises a hand. He strikes the woman. She reels back. She
draws out a revolver. And then...."
"Yes?" cried Mrs. Waddington. "Yes?"
"The vision fades," said Madame Eulalie, rising briskly with the air of
one who has given a good ten dollars' worth.
"But it can't be! It's incredible."
"The crystal never deceives."
"But Lord Hunstanton is a most delightful man."
"No doubt the woman with the revolver found him so--to her cost."
"But you may have been mistaken. Many men are dark and wear an
eye-glass. What did this man look like?"
"What does Lord Hunstanton look like?"
"He is tall and beautifully proportioned, with clear blue eyes and a
small moustache which he twists between the finger and thumb of his
right hand."
"It was he!"
"What shall I do?"
"Well, obviously it would be criminal to allow Miss Waddington to
associate with this man."
"But he's coming to dinner to-night."
Madame Eulalie, whose impulses sometimes ran away with her, was about
to say: "Poison his soup": but contrived in time to substitute for this
remark a sober shrug of the shoulders.
"I must leave it to you, Mrs. Waddington," she said, "to decide on the
best course of action. I cannot advise. I only warn. If you want change
for a large bill, I think I can manage it for you," she added, striking
the business note.
All the way home to Seventy-Ninth Street Mrs. Waddington pondered
deeply. And, as she was not a woman who, as a rule, exercised her
brain to any great extent, by the time she reached the house she was
experiencing some of the sensations of one who has been hit on the head
by a sand-bag. What she felt that she needed above all things in the
world was complete solitude: and it was consequently with a jaundiced
eye that she looked upon her husband, Sigsbee Horatio, when, a few
moments after her return, he shuffled into the room where she had
planted herself down for further intensive meditation.
"Well, Sigsbee?" said Mrs. Waddington, wearily.
"Oh, there you are," said Sigsbee H.
"Do you want anything?"
"Well, yes and no," said Sigsbee.
Mrs. Waddington was exasperated to perceive at this point that her
grave matrimonial blunder was slithering about the parquet floor in the
manner of one trying out new dance-steps.
"Stand still!" she cried.
"I can't," said Sigsbee H. "I'm too nervous."
Mrs. Waddington pressed a hand to her throbbing brow.
"Then sit down!"
"I'll try," said Sigsbee doubtfully. He tested a chair, and sprang up
instantly as if the seat had been charged with electricity. "I can't,"
he said. "I'm all of a twitter."
"What in the world do you mean?"
"I've got something to tell you and I don't know how to begin."
"What do you wish to tell me?"
"I don't wish to tell you at all," said Sigsbee frankly. "But I
promised Molly I would. She came in a moment ago."
"Well?"
"I was in the library. She found me there and told me this."
"Do kindly get to the point, Sigsbee!"
"I promised her I would break it gently."
"Break what gently? You are driving me mad."
"Do you remember," asked Sigsbee, "a splendid young Westerner named
Pinch who dropped in to dinner the night before last? A fine,
breezy...."
"I am not likely to forget the person you mention. I have given strict
instructions that he is never again to be admitted to the house."
"Well, this splendid young Pinch...."
"I am not interested in Mr. Finch,--which is, I believe, his correct
name."
"Pinch, I thought."
"Finch! And what does his name matter, anyway?"
"Well," said Sigsbee, "it matters this much, that Molly seems to want
to make it hers. What I'm driving at, if you see what I mean, is that
Molly came in a moment ago and told me that she and this young fellow
Finch have just gone and got engaged to be married!"
2
Having uttered these words, Sigsbee Horatio stood gazing at his wife
with something of the spell-bound horror of a man who has bored a hole
in a dam and sees the water trickling through and knows that it is too
late to stop it. He had had a sort of idea all along that the news
might affect her rather powerfully, and his guess was coming true.
Nothing could make a woman of Mrs. Waddington's physique "leap from her
chair": but she had begun to rise slowly like a balloon half-filled
with gas: and her face had become so contorted and her eyes so bulging
that any competent medical man of sporting tastes would have laid seven
to four on a fit of apoplexy in the next few minutes.
But by some miracle this disaster--if you could call it that--did not
occur. For quite a considerable time the sufferer had trouble with
her vocal chords and could emit nothing but guttural croaks. Then,
mastering herself with a strong effort, she spoke.
"What did you say?"
"You heard," said Sigsbee H. sullenly, twisting his fingers and wishing
that he was out in Utah, rustling cattle.
Mrs. Waddington moistened her lips.
"Did you. I understand you to say that Molly was engaged to be married
to that Finch?"
"Yes, I did. And," added Sigsbee H., giving battle in the first line
of trenches, "it's no good saying it was all my fault, because I had
nothing to do with it."
"It was you who brought this man into the house."
"Well, yes." Sigsbee had overlooked that weak spot in his defences.
"Well, yes."
There came upon Mrs. Waddington a ghastly calm like that which comes
upon the surface of molten lava in the crater of a volcano just before
the stuff shoots out and starts doing the local villagers a bit of no
good.
"Ring the bell," she said.
Sigsbee H. rang the bell.
"Ferris," said Mrs. Waddington, "ask Miss Molly to come here."
"Very good, madam."
In the interval which elapsed between the departure of the butler and
the arrival of the erring daughter, no conversation brilliant enough to
be worth reporting took place in the room. Once Sigsbee said "Er----"
and in reply Mrs. Waddington said "Be quiet!" but that completed the
dialogue. When Molly entered, Mrs. Waddington was looking straight in
front of her and heaving gently, and Sigsbee H. had just succeeded in
breaking a valuable china figure which he had taken from an occasional
table and was trying in a preoccupied manner to balance on the end of a
paper-knife.
"Ferris says you want to see me, mother," said Molly, floating brightly
in.
She stood there, looking at the two with shining eyes. Her cheeks were
delightfully flushed: and there was about her so radiant an air of
sweet, innocent, girlish gaiety that it was all Mrs. Waddington could
do to refrain from hurling a bust of Edgar Allan Poe at her head.
"I do want to see you," said Mrs. Waddington. "Pray tell me instantly
what is all this nonsense I hear about you and...." She choked. "...
and Mr. Finch."
"To settle a bet," said Sigsbee H., "is his name Finch or Pinch?"
"Finch, of course."
"I'm bad at names," said Sigsbee. "I was in college with a fellow
called Follansbee and do you think I could get it out of my nut that
that guy's name was Ferguson? Not in a million years! I...."
"Sigsbee!"
"Hello?"
"Be quiet." Mrs. Waddington concentrated her attention on Molly once
more. "Your father says that you told him some absurd story about
being...."
"Engaged to George?" said Molly. "Yes, it's quite true. I am. By a most
extraordinary chance we met this afternoon in Central Park near the
Zoo...."
"A place," said Sigsbee H., "I've meant to go to a hundred times and
never seen yet."
"Sigsbee!"
"All right, all right! I was only saying...."
"We were both tremendously surprised, of course," said Molly. "I said
'Fancy meeting you here!' and he said...."
"I have no wish to hear what Mr. Finch said."
"Well, anyway, we walked round for awhile, looking at the animals, and
suddenly he asked me to marry him outside the cage of the Siberian yak."
"No, sir!" exclaimed Sigsbee H. with a sudden strange firmness, the
indulgent father who for once in his life asserts himself. "When you
get married, you'll be married in St. Thomas's like any other nice
girl."
"I mean it was outside the cage of the Siberian yak that he asked me to
marry him."
"Oh, ah!" said Sigsbee H.
A dreamy look had crept into Molly's eyes. Her lips were curved in
a tender smile, as if she were reliving that wonderful moment in a
girl's life, when the man she loves beckons to her to follow him into
Paradise.
"You ought to have seen his ears!" she said. "They were absolutely
crimson."
"You don't say!" chuckled Sigsbee H.
"Scarlet! And, when he tried to speak, he gargled."
"The poor simp!"
Molly turned on her father with flaming eyes.
"How dare you call my dear darling Georgie a simp?"
"How dare you call that simp your dear darling Georgie?" demanded Mrs.
Waddington.
"Because he is my dear darling Georgie. I love him with all my heart,
the precious lamb, and I'm going to marry him."
"You are going to do nothing of the kind!" Mrs. Waddington quivered
with outraged indignation. "Do you imagine I intend to allow you to
ruin your life by marrying a despicable fortune-hunter?"
"He isn't a despicable fortune-hunter."
"He is a penniless artist."
"Well, I'm sure he is frightfully clever and will be able to sell his
pictures for ever so much."
"Tchah!"
"Besides," said Molly defiantly, "when I marry I get that pearl
necklace which father gave mother. I can sell that, and it will keep us
going for years."
Mrs. Waddington was about to reply--and there is little reason to doubt
that that reply would have been about as red-hot a come-back as any
hundred and eighty pound woman had ever spoken--when she was checked
by a sudden exclamation of agony that proceeded from the lips of her
husband.
"Whatever is the matter, Sigsbee?" she said, annoyed.
Sigsbee H. seemed to be wrestling with acute mental agitation. He was
staring at his daughter with protruding eyes.
"Did you say you were going to sell that necklace?" he stammered.
"Oh, be quiet, Sigsbee!" said Mrs. Waddington. "What does it matter
whether she sells the necklace or not? It has nothing to do with the
argument. The point is that this misguided girl is proposing to throw
herself away on a miserable, paint-daubing, ukulele-playing artist...."
"He doesn't play the ukulele. He told me so."
"... when she might, if she chose, marry a delightful man with a fine
old English title who would...."
Mrs. Waddington broke off. There had come back to her the memory of
that scene in Madame Eulalie's office.
Molly seized the opportunity afforded by her unexpected silence to make
a counter-attack.
"I wouldn't marry Lord Hunstanton if he were the last man in the world."
"Honey," said Sigsbee H. in a low, pleading voice, "I don't think I'd
sell that necklace if I were you."
"Of course I shall sell it. We shall need the money when we are
married."
"You are not going to be married," said Mrs. Waddington, recovering.
"I should have thought any right-minded girl would have despised this
wretched Finch. Why, the man appears to be so poor-spirited that he
didn't even dare to come here and tell me this awful news. He left it
to you...."
"George was not able to come here. The poor pet has been arrested by a
policeman."
"Ha!" cried Mrs. Waddington triumphantly. "And that is the sort of man
you propose to marry! A gaol-bird!"
"Well, I think it shows what a sweet nature he has. He was so happy
at being engaged that he suddenly stopped at Fifty-Ninth Street and
Fifth Avenue and started giving away dollar-bills to everybody who came
by. In about two minutes there was a crowd stretching right across to
Madison Avenue, and the traffic was blocked for miles, and they called
out the police-reserves, and George was taken away in a patrol-wagon,
and I telephoned to Hamilton Beamish to go and bail him out and bring
him along here. They ought to arrive at any moment."
"Mr. Hamilton Beamish and Mr. George Finch," said Ferris in the
doorway. And the nicely-graduated way in which he spoke the two names
would have conveyed at once to any intelligent listener that Hamilton
Beamish was an honoured guest but that he had been forced to admit
George Finch--against all the promptings of his better nature--because
Mr. Beamish had told him to and he had been quelled by the man's cold,
spectacled eye.
"Here we are," said Hamilton Beamish heartily. "Just in time, I
perceive, to join in a jolly family discussion."
Mrs. Waddington looked bleachingly at George, who was trying to hide
behind a gate-leg table. For George Finch was conscious of not looking
his best. Nothing so disorders the outer man as the process of being
arrested and hauled to the coop by a _posse_ of New York gendarmes.
George's collar was hanging loose from its stud: his waistcoat lacked
three buttons: and his right eye was oddly discoloured where a
high-minded officer, piqued by the fact that he should have collected
crowds by scattering dollar-bills and even more incensed by the
discovery that he had scattered all he possessed and had none left, had
given him a hearty buffet during the ride in the patrol-wagon.
"There is no discussion," said Mrs. Waddington. "You do not suppose I
am going to allow my daughter to marry a man like that."
"Tut-tut!" said Hamilton Beamish. "George is not looking his best just
now, but a wash and brush-up will do wonders.... What is your objection
to George?"
Mrs. Waddington was at a momentary loss for a reply. Anybody, suddenly
questioned as to why they disliked a slug or a snake or a black-beetle,
might find it difficult on the spur of the moment to analyse and
dissect their prejudice. Mrs. Waddington looked on her antipathy to
George Finch as one of those deep, natural, fundamental impulses which
the sensible person takes for granted. Broadly speaking, she objected
to George because he was George. It was, as it were, his essential
Georgeness that offended her. But, seeing that she was expected to be
analytical, she forced her mind to the task.
"He is an artist."
"So was Michael Angelo."
"I never met him."
"He was a very great man."
Mrs. Waddington raised her eyebrows.
"I completely fail to understand, Mr. Beamish, why, when we are
discussing this young man here with the black eye and the dirty collar,
you should persist in diverting the conversation to the subject of a
perfect stranger like this Mr. Angelo."
"I merely wished to point out," said Hamilton Beamish stiffly, "that
the fact that he is an artist does not necessarily damn a man."
"There is no need," retorted Mrs. Waddington with even greater
stiffness, "to use bad language."
"Besides, George is a rotten artist."
"Rotten to the core, no doubt."
"I mean," said Hamilton Beamish, flushing slightly at the lapse from
the English Pure into which emotion had led him, "he paints so badly
that you can hardly call him an artist at all."
"Is that so?" said George, speaking for the first time and speaking
nastily.
"I am sure George is one of the cleverest artists living," cried Molly.
"He is not," thundered Hamilton Beamish. "He is an incompetent amateur."
"Exactly!" said Mrs. Waddington. "And consequently can never hope to
make money."
Hamilton Beamish's eyes lit up behind their spectacles.
"Is that your chief objection?" he asked.
"Is what my chief objection?"
"That George has no money?"
"But...." began George.
"Shut up!" said Hamilton Beamish. "I ask you, Mrs. Waddington, would
you give your consent to this marriage if my friend George Finch were a
wealthy man?"
"It is a waste of time to discuss such...."
"Would you?"
"Possibly I would."
"Then allow me to inform you," said Hamilton Beamish, triumphantly,
"that George Finch is an exceedingly wealthy man. His uncle Thomas,
whose entire fortune he inherited two years ago, was Finch, Finch,
Finch, Butterfield and Finch, the well-known Corporation Law firm.
George, my boy, let me congratulate you. All is well. Mrs. Waddington
has withdrawn her objections."
Mrs. Waddington snorted, but it was the snort of a beaten woman,
outgeneralled by a superior intelligence.
"But...."
"No." Hamilton Beamish raised his hand. "You cannot go back on what you
said. You stated in distinct terms that, if George had money, you would
consent to the marriage."
"And, anyway, I don't know what all the fuss is about," said Molly.
"Because I am going to marry him, no matter what anybody says."
Mrs. Waddington capitulated.
"Very well! I am nobody, I see. What I say does not matter in the
slightest."
"Mother!" said George reproachfully.
"Mother?" echoed Mrs. Waddington, starting violently.
"Now that everything is so happily settled, of course I regard you in
that light."
"Oh, do you?" said Mrs. Waddington.
"Oh, I do," said George.
Mrs. Waddington sniffed unpleasantly.
"I have been overwhelmed and forced into consenting to a marriage of
which I strongly disapprove," she said, "but I may be permitted to say
one word. I have a feeling that this wedding will never take place."
"What do you mean?" said Molly. "Of course it will take place. Why
shouldn't it?"
Mrs. Waddington sniffed again.
"Mr. Finch," she said, "though a very incompetent artist, has lived for
a considerable time in the heart of Greenwich Village and mingled daily
with Bohemians of both sexes and questionable morals...."
"What are you hinting?" demanded Molly.
"I am not hinting," replied Mrs. Waddington with dignity. "I am saying.
And what I am saying is this. Do not come to _me_ for sympathy if
this Finch of yours turns out to have the sort of moral code which you
might expect in one who deliberately and of his own free-will goes and
lives near Washington Square. I say again, that I have a presentiment
that this marriage will never take place. I had a similar presentiment
regarding the wedding of my sister-in-law and a young man named John
Porter. I said, 'I feel that this wedding will never take place.' And
events proved me right. John Porter, at the very moment when he was
about to enter the church, was arrested on a charge of bigamy."
George uttered protesting noises.
"But my morals are above reproach."
"So you say."
"I assure you that, as far as women are concerned, I can scarcely tell
one from another."
"Precisely," replied Mrs. Waddington, "what John Porter said when they
asked him why he had married six different girls."
Hamilton Beamish looked at his watch.
"Well, now that everything is satisfactorily settled...."
"For the moment," said Mrs. Waddington.
"Now that everything is satisfactorily settled," proceeded Hamilton
Beamish, "I will be leaving you. I have to get back and dress. I am
speaking at a dinner of the Great Neck Social and Literary Society
to-night."
The silence that followed his departure was followed by a question from
Sigsbee H. Waddington.
"Molly, my dear," said Sigsbee H., "touching on that necklace. Now that
this splendid young fellow turns out to be very rich, you will not want
to sell it, of course?"
Molly reflected.
"Yes, I think I will. I never liked it much. It's too showy. I shall
sell it and buy something very nice with the money for George. A lot of
diamond pins or watches or motor-cars or something. And, whenever we
look at them we will think of you, daddy dear."
"Thanks," said Mr. Waddington huskily. "Thanks."
"Seldom in my life," observed Mrs. Waddington, coming abruptly out of
the brooding coma into which she had sunk, "have I ever had a stronger
presentiment than the one to which I alluded just now."
"Oh, mother!" said George.
Hamilton Beamish, gathering up his hat in the hall, became aware that
something was pawing at his sleeve. He looked down and perceived
Sigsbee H. Waddington.
"Say!" said Sigsbee H. in a hushed undertone. "Say, listen!"
"Is anything the matter?"
"You bet your tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles something's the matter,"
whispered Sigsbee H. urgently. "Say, listen. Can I have a word with
you? I want your advice."
"I'm in a hurry."
"How long will you be before you start out for this Hoboken Clam-Bake
of yours?"
"The dinner of the Great Neck Social and Literary Society, to which I
imagine you to allude, is at eight o'clock. I shall motor down, leaving
my apartment at twenty minutes past seven."
"Then it's no good trying to see you to-night. Say, listen. Will you be
home to-morrow?"
"Yes."
"Right!" said Sigsbee H.