George did not delay. Always sound, Hamilton Beamish's advice appeared
to him now even sounder than usual. He rang the bell for Ferris.
"Oh, Ferris," said George, "Mr. Beamish thinks you had better stay in
the room with the wedding-presents and keep an eye on them."
"Very good, sir."
"In case somebody tries to steal them, you know."
"Just so, sir."
Relief, as it always does, had given George a craving for conversation.
He wanted to buttonhole some fellow-creature and babble. He would have
preferred this fellow-creature to have been anyone but Ferris, for he
had not forgotten the early passages of their acquaintanceship and
seemed still to sense in the butler's manner a lingering antipathy. But
Ferris was there, so he babbled to him.
"Nice day, Ferris."
"Yes, sir."
"Nice weather."
"Yes, sir."
"Nice country round here."
"No, sir."
George was somewhat taken aback.
"Did you say, No, sir?"
"Yes, sir."
"Oh, Yes, sir? I thought you said No, sir."
"Yes, sir. No, sir."
"You mean you don't like the country round here?"
"No, sir."
"Why not?"
"I disapprove of it, sir."
"Why?"
"It is not the sort of country to which I have been accustomed, sir. It
is not like the country round Little-Seeping-in-the-Wold."
"Where's that?"
"In England, sir."
"I suppose the English country's nice?"
"I believe it gives uniform satisfaction, sir."
George felt damped. In his mood of relief he had hoped that Ferris
might have brought himself to sink the butler in the friend.
"What don't you like about the country round here?"
"I disapprove of the mosquitoes, sir."
"But there are only a few."
"I disapprove of even one mosquito, sir."
George tried again.
"I suppose everybody downstairs is very excited about the wedding,
Ferris?"
"By 'everybody downstairs' you allude to...?"
"The--er--the domestic staff."
"I have not canvassed their opinions, sir. I mix very little with my
colleagues."
"I suppose you disapprove of them?" said George, nettled.
"Yes, sir."
"Why?"
The butler raised his eyebrows. He preferred the lower middle classes
not to be inquisitive. However, he stooped to explain.
"Many of them are Swedes, sir, and the rest are Irish."
"You disapprove of Swedes?"
"Yes, sir."
"Why?"
"Their heads are too square, sir."
"And you disapprove of the Irish?"
"Yes, sir."
"Why?"
"Because they are Irish, sir."
George shifted his feet uncomfortably.
"I hope you don't disapprove of weddings, Ferris?"
"Yes, sir."
"Why?"
"They seem to me melancholy occasions, sir."
"Are you married, Ferris?"
"A widower, sir."
"Well, weren't you happy when you got married?"
"No, sir."
"Was Mrs. Ferris?"
"She appeared to take a certain girlish pleasure in the ceremony, sir,
but it soon blew over."
"How do you account for that?"
"I could not say, sir."
"I'm sorry weddings depress you, Ferris. Surely when two people love
each other and mean to go on loving each other...."
"Marriage is not a process for prolonging the life of love. It merely
mummifies its corpse."
"But, Ferris, if there were no marriages, what would become of
posterity?"
"I see no necessity for posterity, sir."
"You disapprove of it?"
"Yes, sir."
George walked pensively out on to the drive in front of the house. He
was conscious of a diminution of the exuberant happiness which had led
him to engage the butler in conversation. He saw clearly now that,
Ferris's conversation being what it was, a bridegroom who engaged him
in it on his wedding-day was making a blunder. A suitable, even an
ideal, companion for a funeral, Ferris seemed out of harmony when the
joy-bells were ringing.
He looked out upon the pleasant garden with sobered gaze: and, looking,
was aware of Sigsbee H. Waddington approaching. Sigsbee's manner was
agitated. He conveyed the impression of having heard bad news or of
having made a discovery which disconcerted him.
"Say, listen!" said Sigsbee H. "What's that infernal butler doing in
the room with the wedding-presents?"
"Keeping guard over them."
"Who told him to?"
"I did."
"Hell's bells!" said Sigsbee H.
He gave George a peculiar look and shimmered off. If George had
been more in the frame of mind to analyse the looks of his future
father-in-law, he might have seen in this one a sort of shuddering
loathing. But he was not in the frame of mind. Besides, Sigsbee H.
Waddington was not the kind of man whose looks one analysed. He was one
of those negligible men whom one pushes out of sight and forgets about.
George proceeded to forget about him almost immediately. He was still
forgetting about him, when an automobile appeared round the bend of the
drive and, stopping beside him, discharged Mrs. Waddington, Molly, and
a man with a face like a horse whom, from his clerical costume, George
took correctly to be the deputy from Flushing.
"Molly!" cried George.
"Here we are, angel," said Molly.
"And mother!" said George, with less heartiness.
"Mother!" said Mrs. Waddington, with still less heartiness than George.
"This is the Reverend Gideon Voules," said Molly. "He is going to marry
us."
"This," said Mrs. Waddington, turning to the clergyman and speaking in
a voice which seemed to George's sensitive ear to contain too strong a
note of apology, "is the bridegroom."
The Reverend Gideon Voules looked at George with a dull and
poached-egg-like eye. He did not seem to the latter to be a frightfully
cheery sort of person: but, after all, when you're married, you're
married, no matter how like a poached egg the presiding minister may
look.
"How do you do?" said the Rev. Gideon.
"I'm fine," said George. "How are you?"
"I am in robust health, I thank you."
"Splendid! Nothing wrong with the ankles, eh?"
The Rev. Gideon glanced down at them and seemed satisfied with this
section of his lower limbs, even though they were draped in white socks.
"Nothing, thank you."
"So many clergymen nowadays," explained George, "are falling off chairs
and spraining them."
"I never fall off chairs."
"Then you're just the fellow I've been scouring the country for," said
George. "If all clergymen were like you...."
Mrs. Waddington came to life.
"Would you care for a glass of milk?"
"No, thank you, mother," said George.
"I was not addressing you," said Mrs. Waddington. "I was speaking to
Mr. Voules. He has had a long drive and no doubt requires refreshment."
"Of course, of course," said George. "What am I thinking about? Yes,
you must certainly stoke up and preserve your strength. We don't want
you fainting half-way through the ceremony."
"He would have every excuse," said Mrs. Waddington.
She led the way into the dining-room, where light refreshments were
laid out on a side-table--a side-table brightly decorated by the
presence of Sigsbee H. Waddington, who was sipping a small gin and
tonic and watching with lowering gaze the massive imperturbability
of Ferris, the butler. Ferris, though he obviously disapproved of
wedding-presents, was keeping a loyal eye on them.
"What are you doing here, Ferris?" asked Mrs. Waddington.
The butler raised the loyal eye.
"Guarding the gifts, madam."
"Who told you to?"
"Mr. Finch, madam."
Mrs. Waddington shot a look of disgust at George.
"There is no necessity whatever."
"Very good, madam."
"Only an imbecile would have suggested such a thing."
"Precisely, madam."
The butler retired. Sigsbee Horatio, watching him go, sighed unhappily.
What was the good of him going now? felt Sigsbee. From now on the room
would be full. Already automobiles were beginning to arrive, and a
swarm of wedding-guests had begun to settle upon the refreshments on
the side-table.
The Rev. Gideon Voules, thoughtfully lowering a milk and ham-sandwich
into the abyss, had drawn George into a corner and was endeavouring to
make his better acquaintance.
"I always like to have a little chat with the bridegroom before the
ceremony," he said. "It is agreeable to be able to feel that he is, in
a sense, a personal friend."
"Very nice of you," said George, touched.
"I married a young fellow in Flushing named Miglett the other
day--Claude R. Miglett. Perhaps you recall the name?"
"No."
"Ah! I thought you might have seen it in the papers. They were full
of the affair. I always feel that, if I had not made a point of
establishing personal relations with him before the ceremony, I should
not have been in a position to comfort him as I did after the accident
occurred."
"Accident?"
"Yes. The bride was most unfortunately killed by a motor-lorry as they
were leaving the church."
"Good heavens!"
"I have always thought it singularly unfortunate. But then it almost
seems as if there were some fatality about the weddings at which I
officiate. Only a week before, I had married a charming young couple,
and both were dead before the month was out. A girder fell on them as
they were passing a building which was under construction. In the case
of another pair whom I married earlier in the year, the bridegroom
contracted some form of low fever. A very fine young fellow. He came
out in pink spots. We were all most distressed about it." He turned to
Mrs. Waddington, whom an inrush of guests had driven into the corner.
"I was telling our young friend here of a rather singular coincidence.
In each of the last two weddings at which I officiated the bridegroom
died within a few days of the ceremony."
A wistful look came into Mrs. Waddington's face. She seemed to be
feeling that luck like that could not hold.
"I, personally," she said, "have had a presentiment right from the
beginning that this marriage would never take place."
"Now, that is very curious," said the Rev. Gideon. "I am a strong
believer in presentiments."
"So am I."
"I think they are sent to warn us--to help us to prepare ourselves for
disaster."
"In the present instance," said Mrs. Waddington, "the word disaster is
not the one I would have selected."
George tottered away. Once more there was creeping over him that grey
foreboding which had come to him earlier in the day. So reduced was
his nervous system that he actually sought comfort in the society of
Sigsbee Horatio. After all, he thought, whatever Sigsbee's shortcomings
as a man, he at least was a friend. A philosopher with the future of
the race at heart might sigh as he looked upon Sigsbee H. Waddington,
but in a bleak world George could not pick and choose his chums.
A moment later there was forced upon him the unpleasing discovery that
in supposing that Mr. Waddington liked him he had been altogether too
optimistic. The look which his future father-in-law bestowed upon him
as he sidled up was not one of affection. It was the sort of look
which, had he been sheriff of Gory Gulch, Arizona, the elder man might
have bestowed upon a horse-thief.
"Darned officious!" rumbled Sigsbee H., in a querulous undertone.
"Officious and meddling."
"Eh?" said George.
"Telling that butler to come in here and watch the presents."
"But, good heavens, don't you realise that, if I hadn't told him, some
one might have sneaked in and stolen something?"
Mr. Waddington's expression was now that of a cow-boy who, leaping into
bed, discovers too late that a frolicsome friend has placed a cactus
between the sheets: and George, at the lowest ebb, was about to pass
on to the refreshment-table and see if a little potato-salad might not
act as a restorative, when there stepped from the crowd gathered round
the food a large and ornately dressed person chewing the remains of a
slab of caviare on toast. George had a dim recollection of having seen
him among the guests at that first dinner-party at Number 16, East
Seventy-Ninth Street. His memory had not erred. The new-comer was no
less a man than United Beef.
"Hello there, Waddington," said United Beef.
"Ur," said Sigsbee Horatio. He did not like the other, who had once
refused to lend him money and--what was more--had gone to the mean
length of quoting Shakespeare to support his refusal.
"Say, Waddington," proceeded United Beef, "don't I seem to remember you
coming to me sometime ago and asking about that motion-picture company,
the Finer and Better? You were thinking of putting some money in, if I
recollect?"
An expression of acute alarm shot into Mr. Waddington's face. He gulped
painfully.
"Not me," he said hastily. "Not me. Get it out of your nut that it was
I who wanted to buy the stuff. I just thought that if the stock was any
good my dear wife might be interested."
"Same thing."
"It is not at all the same thing."
"Do you happen to know if your wife bought any?"
"No, she didn't. I heard later that the company was no good, so I did
not mention it to her."
"Too bad," said United Beef. "Too bad."
"What do you mean, too bad?"
"Well, a rather remarkable thing has happened. Quite a romance in its
way. As a motion-picture company the thing was, as you say, no good.
Couldn't seem to do anything right. But yesterday, when a workman
started to dig a hole on the lot to put up a 'For Sale' sign, I'm
darned if he didn't strike oil."
The solid outlines of United Beef shimmered uncertainly before Mr.
Waddington's horrified eyes.
"Oil?" he gurgled.
"Yes, sir. Oil. What looks like turning out the biggest gusher in the
south-west."
"But--but--do you mean to say, then, that the shares are--are really
worth something?"
"Only millions, that's all. Merely millions. It's a pity you didn't buy
some. This caviare," said United Beef, champing meditatively, "is good.
That's what it is, Waddington--good. I think I'll have another slice."
It is difficult to arrest the progress of a millionaire who is starting
off in the direction of caviare, but Mr. Waddington, with a frenzied
clutch at the other's coat-sleeve, succeeded in doing so for a brief
instant.
"When did you hear this?"
"Just as I was starting out this morning?"
"Do you think anybody else knows about it?"
"Everybody down-town, I should say."
"But, listen," said Mr. Waddington urgently. "Say, listen!" He clung
to the caviare-maddened man's sleeve with a desperate grip. "What I am
getting at is, I know a guy--nothing to do with business--who has a
block of that stock. Do you think there's any chance of him not having
heard about this?"
"Quite likely. But, if you're thinking of getting it off him, you'd
better hurry. The story is probably in the evening papers by now."
The words acted on Sigsbee H. Waddington like an electric shock. He
released the other's sleeve, and United Beef shot off towards the
refreshment-table like a homing pigeon. Mr. Waddington felt in his
hip-pocket to make sure that he still possessed the three hundred
dollars which he had hoped that day to hand over to Fanny Welch, and
bounded out of the room, out of the house, and out of the front gate;
and, after bounding along the broad highway to the station, leaped
into a train which might have been meeting him there by appointment.
Never in his life before had Sigsbee H. Waddington caught a train so
expeditiously: and the fact seemed to him a happy omen. He looked
forward with a cheery confidence to the interview with that policeman
fellow to whom he had--in a moment of mistaken generosity--parted
with his precious stock. The policeman had seemed a simple sort of
soul, just the sort of man with whom it is so nice to do business. Mr.
Waddington began to rehearse the opening speeches of the interview.
"Say, listen," he would say. "Say, listen, my dear...."
He sat up in his seat with a jerk. He had completely forgotten the
policeman's name.