“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 counterattack.
“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 Michelangelo.”
“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
