“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, someone might have sneaked in and stolen something?”
Mr. Waddington’s expression was now that of a cowboy 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 caviar 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 newcomer 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
