slapping hispockets--a gesture which in some subconscious way he hoped would makeEddie go home. "She's always so keen to meet new people. If she heardthat the editor of _Liberty_ had been here while she was asleep andthat I had not tried to keep him for her to see--whew!--she would makea scene."
"But she oughtn't to see people like that," protested Eddie, as ifhe were trying to talk sense in a madhouse. "That was what I was justexplaining to you, Mr. Cord, when--"
"So you were, Eddie, so you were," said Mr. Cord. "Stay to lunch andtell Crystal. Or, rather," he added, hastily glancing at the clock,"come back to lunch in an hour. I have to go now and see--" Mr. Cordhesitated for the fraction of a second--"the gardener. If you don'tsee gardeners now and then and let them scold you about the weatherand the Lord's arrangement of the seasons, they go mad and beat theirwives. See you later, Eddie," and Mr. Cord stepped out through theFrench window. It was only great crises like these that led him tooffer himself up to the attacks of his employees.
A severe elderly man with a long, flat upper lip and side whiskersimmediately sprang apparently from the earth and approached him. Hehad exactly the manner of resolute gloom that a small boy has whensomething has gone wrong at school and he wants his mother to drag itout of him.
"Good morning, sir," he said.
"Morning, McKellar," said Cord, gayly. "Everything's all right, Isuppose."
McKellar shook his head. Everything was about as far from all right asit well could be. The cook was a violent maniac who required peas tobe picked so young that they weren't worth the picking. Tomes and hisfootman were a band of malicious pirates who took pleasure in cuttingfor the table the very buds which McKellar was cherishing for thehorticultural show. And as for the season--McKellar could not remembersuch a devastatingly dry August since he was a lad at home.
"Why, McKellar, we had rain two days ago."
"You wouldn't call that little mist rain, sir."
"And last week a perfect downpour."
"Ah, that's the kind doesn't sink into the soil." Looking upcritically at the heavens, McKellar expressed his settled convictionthat in two weeks' time hardly a blade or a shrub would be alive inthe island at Newport.
"Well, that will save us all a lot of trouble, McKellar," said Mr.Cord, and presently left his gloomy gardener. He had attained hisobject. When he went back into the house, Eddie had gone, and he couldgo back to his new driver in peace.
He was not interrupted until ten minutes past one, when Crystal cameinto the room, her eyes shining with exactly the same color that,beyond the lawn, the sea was displaying. Unlike Eddie, she lookedbetter than in her fancy dress. She had on flat tennis shoes, a cottonblouse and a duck skirt, and a russet-colored sweater. Miss Cox wouldhave rejected every item of her costume except the row of pearls,which just showed at her throat.
She kissed her father rapidly, and said:
"Good morning, dear. Are you ready for breakfast--lunch I mean?"
She was a little bit flustered for the reason that it seemed to heras if any one would be able to see that she was an entirely differentCrystal from the one of the evening before, and she was not quite surewhat she was going to answer when her father said, as she felt certainhe must say at any moment, "My dear child, what has come over you?"
He did not say this, however. He held out his golf-club and said, "Gota new driver."
"Yes, yes, dear, very nice," said Crystal. "But I want to have lunchpunctually, to-day."
Mr. Cord sighed. Crystal wasn't always very sympathetic. "I'm ready,"he said, "only Eddie's coming."
"_Eddie!_" exclaimed Crystal, drawing her shoulders up, as if at thesight of a cobra in her path. "Why is Eddie coming to lunch? I did notask him."
"No, my dear, I took that liberty," replied her father. "It seemed theonly way of getting rid of him."
"Well, I sha'n't wait for him," said Crystal, ringing the bell. "Ihave an engagement at a quarter past two."
"At the golf club?" asked her father, his eye lighting a little. "Youmight drive me out, you know."
"No, dear; quite in the other direction--with a man who was at theparty last night."
"You enjoyed the party?"
"No, not a bit."
"But you stayed till morning."
"I stopped and took a swim."
"You enjoyed that, I suppose?"
His daughter glanced at him and turned crimson; but she did not haveto answer, for at that moment Tomes came, in response to her ring, andshe said:
"We won't wait lunch for Mr. Verriman, Tomes." Then, as he went away,she asked, "And what was Eddie doing here this morning, anyhow?"
"He was scolding me," replied Mr. Cord. "Have you noticed, Crystal,what a lot of scolding is going on in the world at present? I believethat that is why no one is getting any work done--everyone is sobusy scolding everybody else. The politicians are scolding, and thenewspapers are scolding, and most of the fellows I know are scolding.I believe I've got hold of a great truth--"
"And may I ask what Eddie was scolding about?" asked Crystal, no moreinterested in great truths than most of us.
"About you."
Crystal moved her head about as if things had now reached a pointwhere it wasn't even worth while to be angry. "About me?"
"It seems you're a socialist, my dear. Eddie asked me how long it wassince I had taken an inventory of your economic beliefs. I could notremember that I ever had, but perhaps you will tell them to menow. That is," Mr. Cord added, "if you can do it without scoldingme--probably an impossible condition to impose nowadays."
"It's a pity about Eddie," said Crystal, fiercely. "If only stupidpeople would be content to be stupid, instead of trying to run theworld--"
"Ah, my dear, it's only stupid people who are under the impressionthat they can. Good morning again, Eddie, we were just speaking ofyou."
Mr. Cord added the last sentence without the slightest change of toneor expression as his guest was ushered in by Tomes, who, catchingCrystal's eyes for a more important fact than Eddie's arrival,murmured that luncheon was served.
"Well, Eddie," said Crystal, and there was a sort of gay vibration inher whole figure, and her tone was like a bright banner of war, "andso you came round to complain to my father, did you?"
Mr. Cord laid his hand on her shoulder. "Do you think you coulddemolish Eddie just as well at table, my dear?" he said. "If so,there's no use in letting the food get cold."
"Oh, she can do it anywhere," replied Eddie, bitterly, and then,striking his habitual note of warning, he went on, "but, honestly,Crystal, if you had heard what your father and I heard this morning--"
"I had a visit from David's brother this morning," put in Mr. Cord,"the editor of your favorite morning paper."
"Ben Moreton, here! Oh, _father_, why didn't you call me? Yes, Iknow," she added, as her father opened his mouth to say that she hadleft most particular instructions that she was to be allowed to sleepas late as she could, "I know, but you must have known I should havewanted to look David's brother over. Has he long hair? Does he wear asoft tie? Did you hate him?"
"Eddie didn't take much of a fancy to him."
"I should say not. A damned, hollow-eyed fanatic."
"Is he as good-looking as David, father? What does he look like?"
Mr. Cord hesitated. "Well, a little like my engraving of ThomasJefferson as a young man."
"He looks as if he might have a bomb in his pocket."
"Oh, Eddie, do keep quiet, there's a dear, and let father give me oneof his long, wonderful accounts. Go ahead, father."
"Well," said Mr. Cord, helping himself from a dish that Tomes waspresenting to him, "as I told you, Eddie had dropped in very kindly toscold me about you, when Tomes announced Mr. Moreton. Tomes thought heought to be put straight out of the house. Didn't you, Tomes?"
"No, sir," said Tomes, who was getting used to his employer, althoughhe did not encourage this sort of thing, particularly before thefootmen.
"Well, Moreton came in and said, very simply--"
/> "Has he good manners, father?"
"He has no manners at all," roared Eddie.
"Oh, how nice," said Crystal, of whom it might be asserted withoutflattery that she now understood in perfection the art of irritatingEddie.
"He is very direct and natural," her father continued. "He has a lotmore punch than your brother-in-law, my dear. In fact, I was ratherimpressed with the young fellow until he and
The Beauty and the Bolshevist Page 7
