Now, as she looked out at the night, she realized that if she opposed her son, he might take the bit in his teeth, in which case she would either have to give in or else buy the girl off, unless she could alarm her away. Yet how?
But the night, it is said, brings counsel. It brought some to her which later, at luncheon, she omitted to mention.
Instead, when the servants had gone and she and her son were alone in a great room which in Europe would have been called baronial, she patted a yawn and asked:
“This is Friday, isn’t it?”
Alfred who had been looking down, looked up, but he looked too as though he had not slept very well. His eyes were heavy and about his mouth there was a droop.
“Friday, mother? Yes, I think so. I am not quite sure.”
“No matinée then?”
“None that I know of. Why? Were you thinking of going to one?”
Mrs. Vivian compressed her lips. “Don’t try to translate me. You will only fail. But now, since you know of no matinée, do you know of any rehearsal?”
“Oh!” said Alfred deeply, for he had got it. “I think not.”
Mrs. Vivian nodded. “In that case you might bring her here.”
“Why, mother!” Alfred, half-rising, exclaimed.
Mrs. Vivian gestured at him. “Don’t keep saying ‘mother’ every minute. It is so tiresome. And do sit still. You get on my nerves. Heavens! I can’t sit up until all hours and not feel it. But now since you propose to marry this er—this girl, it may seem to you only becoming that I should meet her.”
“You consent then?” Alfred, almost with a whoop, got out.
Mrs. Vivian patted another yawn. “What else can I do? But I do not approve of it. You are far too young. At your age matrimony is so respectable and disillusioning. In a week you will be sick to death of her.”
“Never,” the boy proudly proclaimed.
“Well, in three months then. At your age that is the limit—that is matrimony. Three months of adoration, three months of cogitation, thirty years of toleration, with the children to repeat the process. I ought to know. You will too. You are your father all over—minus his brains.”
“Thank you,” said Alfred who laughed as he said it. His spirits had risen, his color too; the droop from his mouth had gone. “You are the very best mother in all the world. I knew you would give in. I told Sadie so.”
Frostily Mrs. Vivian smiled. “And Sadie agreed with you, I suppose. Well, she must be the ideal ingénue. Now run and fetch her.”
In speaking she stood up and passed into a room that was fitted gravely, with infinite taste. There, at a piano, she seated herself and began on the “Meditation” from Thais. But it did not suit her mood. It was too harmonious. She abandoned it and attacked one of Borodin’s belligerent surprises.
Before she had finished, the portieres parted and, followed by her son, there entered a young woman who had the full face of a doll and the tight mouth of a vixen.
Violently perfumed and dressed quite modishly as though for a fancy ball, the girl paused uncertainly. She had expected gold and glitter. The subdued surroundings awed her. At the moment, with suspicious defiance, she looked at Mrs. Vivian, who had risen and who was advancing to greet her.
But Mrs. Vivian’s manner was very thawing. “And this is Miss Pelham,” she said, and she said it as though she were eating nougat. At once, taking the girl’s hand, she turned to her son. “Run and play and come back in half an hour.” With a gesture she dismissed him and drawing the girl to a chair caressingly resumed: “Sit down, my dear, and let us have a nice little chat.”
Already with the one imperceptible glance with which the mondaine judges and classifies, she understood the girl, understood her possibilities, her impossibilities rather, and in her opulent corsage, her high color, her doll-like and inane face, understood too the wholly-physical attraction which she had for her son.
“The imbecile!” she thought, but she said: “Did your ears burn last night? Alfred was telling me of you. He was quite poetic. Are you fond of poetry? But you are. I can see that. And who is your favorite? Swinburne or Tennyson?”
Sadie moistened her lips. “I would not like to say.”
“No, of course not,” Mrs. Vivian with charming affability rejoined. “Any decided view seems so superficial, don’t you think? But I can see that in addition to poetry you are fond of pretty clothes. But not too many of them, of course. Did you ever hear of Miss Flora McFlimsey?”
“What is she driving at?” Sadie wondered. But she said: “There was a Flora in the ‘Ring Around the Rosie’ show, but I don’t remember her last name.”
“Well, that could hardly have been this Flora. This Flora was very unhappy because she had nothing to wear. Now instead of being unhappy she would be very fashionable. But I am forgetting myself. Won’t you let me give you a cup of tea?”
Mrs. Vivian touched a bell and added, “Or a glass of champagne?”
“Don’t wake me,” thought Sadie. But she said: “I don’t mind if I do.”
“Champagne!” Mrs. Vivian told a manservant who then appeared, and who could not credit his ears.
“Champagne, mem?” he repeated.
But Mrs. Vivian had turned again to the girl. “There’s nothing like it, is there? Particularly in the afternoon. Oh, we have so many tastes in common,
