Short Fiction

In the door through which she had come, the general stood.

“Father!” she called in her clinging voice. “We are engaged again and we are to be married shortly.”

Furiously the old gentleman turned on her.

“In all my life I have never heard of such indecency. Yes, damn me, indecency. You were engaged to that man before and he threw you over to marry another woman. The day you leave this house for him, you leave it forever. You are of age, you can do as you like, but so can I, and, damn me, I’ll disown you.”

Cursing and fuming, the general strode on.

It was their benediction. They knew it, knew, too, that it was deserved. But the ball was over, the nightmare as well. Life larger, though more lawful, was about to begin. Slowly the girl’s arms went about her lover. At their touch, in sudden retrospect, he saw again White Peacocks and the inaugural sky: the massacre on the horizon, the trooping titans, the luminous arc, the flight of the centaurs and the mirage of the archipelagoes of love.

The Splendid Lie

“This is Mr. Tatum.”

In the hall of the Athenaeum Club an introduction was being effected. A young man was actively engaged in making his uncle acquainted with his future father-in-law. The latter was Mr. Tatum. The uncle was Mr. Farquhar, and the young man Harry.

There, barring the lady, you have what I think I have seen described as the dramatis personae. The lady will appear in a moment. Though not, of course, in the hall where these three men were standing.

Two weeks previous Harry had crossed the ocean. On the way, chance, or the chief steward, had at table placed him side by side with the daughter of Mr. Tatum. The girl was pretty, she was endowed with superior health and manner, and, though reticent, could listen to anything worth listening to with glimpses of teeth as perfect as Harry remembered to have seen before. To provoke those glimpses Harry said whatever entered his head, which, I admit, was not much.

In spite of this, or, perhaps, precisely on that account, it so fell about that in the wide leisures of the voyage, companionship became pleasant to them both, so pleasant, indeed, that neither felt it could properly terminate with the journey, both concurring that it would be agreeable to take a longer trip, one in which not chance, or the chief steward, but matrimony should place them side by side.

Yet that perhaps was in the order of things. The girl was very fetching, and Harry was a nice-looking boy who came of what is known as the best people⁠—those people who are still the best, in spite of plutocratic invasion. Such things count with a girl, particularly if she have money and social aspirations.

Miss Tatum had both, but not what is perhaps pretentiously described as position. Metropolitan hostesses never thought of asking her to their entertainments, for the excellent reason that, in a city like New York, where the few are obvious and the many obscure, she was an entirely unknown quantity.

Mr. Farquhar, Harry’s uncle, was just the reverse. An old New Yorker, he had been everywhere, seen everything, known everybody. He had been interested in a number of ladies since dead and departed, and at balls and dinners related the fact to their daughters with tender calm. He was not only an old New Yorker, he was an old beau. As such he had two manners, one very gracious, the other equally remote. In the hall of the Athenaeum Club it was the latter that he was displaying.

“Uncle Reginald, this is Mr. Tatum.”

At the introduction, Mr. Tatum raised his hat, extended a hand, and smiled. Mr. Farquhar smiled also. But he did not seem to think it necessary to acknowledge the introduction in any other way. He kept his hat on his head, and his hands in his pockets.

Mr. Tatum was a large man, very stout, with a face like a brandied cherry. It was dull red all over, except on his forehead, where there was a white scar. He mumbled something about the pleasure which he was experiencing. Mr. Farquhar made no reply. Harry said something to the effect that he was glad to bring his uncle and his future father-in-law together. Mr. Farquhar did not appear to have heard. But still he smiled.

Yet in that smile of his was a gleam as chill as the point of a sword. Before it suddenly the scar on Mr. Tatum’s forehead flamed. He dropped his hand, replaced his hat, stalked to the door. Harry followed, saw him out, and returned to where his uncle stood.

“Have you lunched, Harry?” that uncle asked. “No? Very good! Then lunch with me. Your fat friend has given me an appetite.”

“In that case,” Harry angrily retorted, “I can’t say that you seemed very grateful.”

At this, Mr. Farquhar smiled as he had smiled before. Taking the nephew by the arm, he led him into what is perhaps the most elaborate breakfast room in New York.

“Suppose we sit here,” Mr. Farquhar continued, indicating, as he spoke, a table at a window. “What would you say to a ragout à la Sardanapale and a glass of Moselle? Archibald,” he added, turning to the head waiter, “will you see, please, that the ragout has saffron in it, and that the Moselle is not iced? Now,” he resumed, when the waiter had gone, “this Mr.⁠—er⁠—Tatum is quite well off, I think you told me.”

“Ten million,” snapped Harry.

“His daughter, I presume, will come in for it all. Well, ten million is just enough to entertain on. Nowadays, a penny less and you are pinched. So-and-so used to say that no one could live like a gentleman on less than a thousand dollars a day. At four percent, ten million will yield a trifle more. I can remember when twelve thousand a year was regarded as wealth. Times have changed, but not customs. Always