Short Fiction

me. I should have told you. Mrs. Effingham died yesterday. Though in her condition she has been dead so long that⁠—”

On with it he rambled. Duncan had ceased to hear, ceased rather to listen. The large fact occupied him. It overshadowed Scarlet, Europe as well, besides being just the thing. Mentally he waved it. But he said and simply enough: “And you want my daughter, is that it?”

Effingham bowed. “A year’s delay is usual I know, but in the circumstances⁠—”

Duncan, hastily swallowing something, caught him up. “Am I to understand that my daughter has already encouraged you?”

It was but a sprat for a mackerel, which at once Effingham produced.

“Not at all, sir. On the contrary. Moreover I have not been in a position to expect encouragement. But I had thought that with a divorce⁠—one which death has unexpectedly granted⁠—I might ask.”

You are a cool customer, Duncan thought. Yet the decency of it appeased him. “Well?” he threw out.

“I believe you knew my father,” Effingham resumed.

But that was coals to Newcastle. Duncan had not only known him, he knew practically to a dime how much he had left.

“I am quite able to support your daughter,” Effingham continued. “If⁠—”

There shall be no ifs, Duncan decided. But he said: “There is an if in everything. My daughter has refused many offers, some perhaps more advantageous than yours. But I do not believe in interference.”

“I have your consent then?”

Duncan stood up, took out his watch, looked at it, put it back and looked at Effingham.

“You will find my daughter in the library. But I have to go. It is after the opening and I am a business man.”

A Boy and His Girl

One o’clock. Then two. Then three. In the library at the head of the stairs, through the limping hours, Mrs. Vivian sat. But now the front door opened and closed. Presently there was the sound of ascending steps.

Mrs. Vivian stood up. “Alfred!”

At the entrance, in evening clothes, a good-looking boy appeared. “Why, mother?” he surprisedly exclaimed.

Mrs. Vivian nodded. “Yes, I can sit up until two, but at three I think everybody ought to be in bed. Perhaps you will be civil enough to agree with me.”

“Certainly, mother, but⁠—”

Mrs. Vivian nodded again. “Very good then, make a soiled breast of it. Who is she?”

In speaking she looked him up and down. Though forty, she appeared twenty-eight. A widow and a rich one, she was handsome, arrogant, commanding and taller, both mentally and physically, than her son.

The boy twisted. “Suppose I tell you tomorrow.”

“It’s tomorrow now.”

“But you don’t know her, and it would take so long to explain.”

“Of course I don’t know her. If I did I would not ask, but I know at least that she is not an old woman, and I know, too, that no decent young woman would keep you up⁠—”

“Mother,” the boy got in, “we had supper and we were talking.”

Mrs. Vivian sniffed. “You had supper at twelve, I suppose, and you have been talking ever since. But no man ever talks to a girl for three hours unless he keeps saying the same thing all the time.”

She paused, half-turned and threw out: “And that thing decent young women don’t listen to.”

“She is perfectly decent,” the boy angrily protested. “She⁠—”

“She’s an angel,” Mrs. Vivian interrupted. “I know the air. But since you don’t seem to be able to tell me who she is, I assume that you can show me her picture. Probably you have it with you now⁠—next to your heart.”

At the suggestion and the sneer of it, the boy flushed, fumbled and fished out a card-case from which he produced a photograph that, for a moment, Mrs. Vivian contemptuously considered.

“A chorus girl, isn’t she?” she asked. “If not she ought to sue the photographer for libel. What’s her name? Mamie? Tottie?”

“Mother!” the boy indignantly corrected. “She is a Miss Pelham.”

“For short, no doubt. But actually Miss Pelham-Clinton or Miss Pelham-Cavendish. That’s it, isn’t it? The daughter of a hundred bankrupts. Where does she live?”

Like a goaded calf, Alfred tossed his head. “She is as good a New Yorker as any of us.”

“And she lives?”

“At The Amsterdam.”

“On eighteen a week?”

“Well, she has an uncle who is quite well off.”

Mrs. Vivian smiled. “Such uncles usually have to be. In addition to the uncle, she has a very innocent young man. How long are you to keep this up?”

Alfred straightened. “I should have told you already. Miss Pelham has consented to do me the honor to become my wife.”

Mrs. Vivian’s smile deepened. “And very condescending of her that is. Now how do you propose to support her?”

“I counted on you.”

“And she also?”

“She is above mercenary considerations.”

“With an uncle such as hers she may well be. But you need not count on me any more than you can on him.”

Boldly Alfred bluffed. “Very good then, I’ll work my fingers to the bone for her. I’ll carve out a future for us both.”

Mrs. Vivian laughed. “You had best go to bed and forget it.”

“But mother,” the boy tormentedly pleaded, “when you know her, when you see what a splendid, glorious girl she is⁠—”

“Yes, when I do. Meanwhile don’t be lyrical. Besides, if you won’t go to bed I shall. I have heard enough.”

In a moment she had gone. Alfred was alone. So also was his mother. In a room that gave on upper Fifth Avenue she locked out at the night. It was very black. For a week she had suspected. For a week she had seen her son look, not wickedly contented but ingenuously disturbed and, from other indicia, she had feared just some such stupidity as this.

Mrs. Vivian was not a snob, nor was she oppressively aristocratic. Against chorus girls as a class she had no prejudices whatever. Moreover, in other circumstances she might have been on the stage herself, and a very good actress she would have been. But her husband, in departing this life, had made her his sole legatee and, while