The Small Bachelor

CHAPTER ONE-3

"Very possibly, sir."

"I followed her home. I don't know why I'm telling you this, Mullett."

"No, sir."

"Since then I have haunted the side-walk outside her house. Do you know East Seventy-Ninth Street?"

"Never been there, sir."

"Well, fortunately it is not a very frequented thoroughfare, or I should have been arrested for loitering. Until to-day I have never spoken to her, Mullett."

"But you did to-day, sir?"

"Yes. Or, rather, she spoke to me. She has a voice like the fluting of young birds in the springtime, Mullett."

"Very agreeable, no doubt, sir."

"Heavenly would express it better. It happened like this, Mullett. I was outside the house, when she came along leading a Scotch terrier on a leash. At that moment a gust of wind blew my hat off and it was bowling past her, when she stopped it. She trod on it, Mullett."

"Indeed, sir?"

"Yes, this hat which you see in my hand, has been trodden on by Her. This very hat."

"And then, sir?"

"In the excitement of the moment she dropped the leash, and the Scotch terrier ran off round the corner in the direction of Brooklyn. I went in pursuit, and succeeded in capturing it in Lexington Avenue. My hat dropped off again and was run over by a taxi-cab. But I retained my hold of the leash, and eventually restored the dog to its mistress. She said—and I want you to notice this very carefully, Mullett,—she said 'Oh, thank you so much!'"

"Did she, indeed, sir?"

"She did. Not merely 'Thank you!' or 'Oh, thank you!' but 'Oh, thank you so much!" George Finch fixed a penetrating stare on his employee. "I think that is significant, Mullett."

"Extremely, sir."

"If she had wished to end the acquaintance then and there, would she have spoken so warmly?"

"Impossible, sir."

"And I've not told you all. Having said 'Oh, thank you so much!' she added: 'He is a naughty dog, isn't he?' You get the extraordinary subtlety of that, Mullett? The words 'He is a naughty dog' would have been a mere statement. By adding 'Isn't he?' she invited my opinion. She gave me to understand that she would welcome discussion on the subject. Do you know what I am going to do, directly I have dressed, Mullett?"

"Dine, sir?"

"Dine!" George shuddered. "No! There are moments when the thought of food is an outrage to everything that raises Man above the level of the beasts. As soon as I have dressed—and I shall dress very carefully—I am going to return to East Seventy-Ninth Street and I am going to ring the door-bell and I am going to go straight in and inquire after the dog. Hope it is none the worse for its adventure and so on. After all, it is only the civil thing. I mean these Scotch terriers ... delicate, highly-strung animals.... Never can tell what effect unusual excitement may have on them. Yes, Mullett, that is what I propose to do. Brush my dress clothes as you have never brushed them before."

"Very good, sir."

"Put me out a selection of ties. Say, a dozen."

"Yes, sir."

"And—did the boot-legger call this morning?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then mix me a very strong whisky-and-soda, Mullett," said George Finch. "Whatever happens, I must be at my best to-night."

4

To George, sunk in a golden reverie, there entered some few minutes later, jarring him back to life, a pair of three-pound dumb-bells, which shot abruptly out of the unknown and came trundling across the roof at him with a repulsive, clumping sound that would have disconcerted Romeo. They were followed by J. Hamilton Beamish on all fours. Hamilton Beamish, who believed in the healthy body as well as the sound mind, always did half an hour's open-air work with the bells of an evening: and, not for the first time, he had tripped over the top stair.

He recovered his balance, his dumb-bells and his spectacles in three labour-saving movements: and with the aid of the last-named was enabled to perceive George.

"Oh, there you are!" said Hamilton Beamish.

"Yes," said George, "and...."

"What's all this I hear from Mullett?" asked Hamilton Beamish.

"What," inquired George simultaneously, "is all this I hear from Mullett?"

"Mullett says you're fooling about after some girl up-town."

"Mullett says you knew he was an ex-convict when you recommended him to me."

Hamilton Beamish decided to dispose of this triviality before going on to more serious business.

"Certainly," he said. "Didn't you read my series in the Yale Review on the 'Problem of the Reformed Criminal'? I point out very clearly that there is nobody with such a strong bias towards honesty as the man who has just come out of prison. It stands to reason. If you had been laid up for a year in hospital as the result of jumping off this roof, what would be the one outdoor sport in which, on emerging, you would be most reluctant to indulge? Jumping off roofs, undoubtedly."

George continued to frown in a dissatisfied way.

"That's all very well, but a fellow doesn't want ex-convicts hanging about the home."

"Nonsense! You must rid yourself of this old-fashioned prejudice against men who have been in Sing-Sing. Try to look on the place as a sort of University which fits its graduates for the problems of the world without. Morally speaking, such men are the student body. You have no fault to find with Mullett, have you?"

"No, I can't say I have."

"Does his work well?"

"Yes."

"Not stole anything from you?"

"No."

"Then why worry? Dismiss the man from your mind. And now let me hear all about this girl of yours."

"How do you know anything about it?"

"Mullett told me."

"How did he know?"

"He followed you a couple of afternoons and saw all."

George turned pink.

"I'll go straight in and fire that man. The snake!"

"You will do nothing of the kind. He acted as he did from pure zeal and faithfulness. He saw you go out, muttering to yourself...."

"Did I mutter?" said George, startled.

"Certainly you muttered. You muttered, and you were exceedingly strange in your manner. So naturally Mullett, good zealous fellow, followed you to see that you came to no harm. He reports that you spend a large part of your leisure goggling at some girl in Seventy-Ninth Street, East."

George's pink face turned a shade pinker. A sullen look came into it.

"Well, what about it?"

"That's what I want to know—what about it?"

"Why shouldn't I goggle?"

"Why should you?"

"Because," said George Finch, looking like a stuffed frog, "I love her."

"Nonsense!"

"It isn't nonsense."

"Have you ever read my booklet on 'The Marriage Sane'?"

"No, I haven't."

"I show there that love is a reasoned emotion that springs from mutual knowledge, increasing over an extended period of time, and a community of tastes. How can you love a girl when you have never spoken to her and don't even know her name?"

"I do know her name."

"How?"

"I looked through the telephone directory till I found out who lived at Number 16, East Seventy-Ninth Street. It took me about a week, because...."

"Sixteen East Seventy-Ninth Street? You don't mean that this girl you've been staring at is little Molly Waddington?"

George started.

"Waddington is the name, certainly. That's why I was such an infernal time getting to it in the book. Waddington, Sigsbee H." George choked emotionally, and gazed at his friend with awed eyes. "Hamilton! Hammy, old man! You—you don't mean to say you actually know her? Not positively know her?"

"Of course I know her. Know her intimately. Many's the time I've seen her in her bath-tub."

George quivered from head to foot.

"It's a lie! A foul and contemptible...."

"When she was a child."

"Oh, when she was a child?" George became calmer. "Do you mean to say you've known her since she was a child? Why, then you must be in love with her yourself."

"Nothing of the kind."

"You stand there and tell me," said George incredulously, "that you have known this wonderful girl for many years and are not in love with her?"

"I do."

George regarded his friend with a gentle pity. He could only explain this extraordinary statement by supposing that there was some sort of a kink in Hamilton Beamish. Sad, for in so many ways he was such a fine fellow.

"The sight of her has never made you feel that, to win one smile, you could scale the skies and pluck out the stars and lay them at her feet?"

"Certainly not. Indeed, when you consider that the nearest star is several million...."

"All right," said George. "All right. Let it go. And now," he went on simply, "tell me all about her and her people and her house and her dog and what she was like as a child and when she first bobbed her hair and who is her favourite poet and where she went to school and what she likes for breakfast...."

Hamilton Beamish reflected.

"Well, I first knew Molly when her mother was alive."

"Her mother is alive. I've seen her. A woman who looks like Catherine of Russia."

"That's her stepmother. Sigsbee H. married again a couple of years ago."

"Tell me about Sigsbee H."

Hamilton Beamish twirled a dumb-bell thoughtfully.

"Sigsbee H. Waddington," he said, "is one of those men who must, I think, during the formative years of their boyhood have been kicked on the head by a mule. It has been well said of Sigsbee H. Waddington that, if men were dominoes, he would be the double-blank. One of the numerous things about him that rule him out of serious consideration by intelligent persons is the fact that he is a synthetic Westerner."

"A synthetic Westerner?"

"It is a little known, but growing, sub-species akin to the synthetic Southerner,—with which curious type you are doubtless familiar."

"I don't think I am."

"Nonsense. Have you never been in a restaurant where the orchestra played Dixie?"

"Of course."

"Well, then, on such occasions you will have noted that the man who gives a rebel yell and springs on his chair and waves a napkin with flashing eyes is always a suit-and-cloak salesman named Rosenthal or Bechstein who was born in Passaic, New Jersey, and has never been farther South than Far Rockaway. That is the synthetic Southerner."

"I see."

"Sigsbee H. Waddington is a synthetic Westerner. His whole life, with the exception of one summer vacation when he went to Maine, has been spent in New York State: and yet, to listen to him, you would think he was an exiled cow-boy. I fancy it must be the effect of seeing too many Westerns in the movies. Sigsbee Waddington has been a keen supporter of the motion-pictures from their inception: and was, I believe, one of the first men in this city to hiss the villain. Whether it was Tom Mix who caused the trouble, or whether his weak intellect was gradually sapped by seeing William H. Hart kiss his horse I cannot say: but the fact remains that he now yearns for the great open spaces and, if you want to ingratiate yourself with him, all you have to do is to mention that you were born in Idaho,—a fact which I hope that, as a rule, you carefully conceal."

"I will," said George enthusiastically. "I can't tell you how grateful I am to you, Hamilton, for giving me this information."

"You needn't be. It will do you no good whatever. When Sigsbee Waddington married for the second time, he to all intents and purposes sold himself down the river. To call him a cipher in the home would be to give a too glowing picture of his importance. He does what his wife tells him—that and nothing more. She is the one with whom you want to ingratiate yourself."

"How can this be done?"

"It can't be done. Mrs. Sigsbee Waddington is not an easy woman to conciliate."

"A tough baby?" inquired George anxiously.

Hamilton Beamish frowned.

"I dislike the expression. It is the sort of expression Mullett would use: and I know few things more calculated to make a thinking man shudder than Mullett's vocabulary. Nevertheless, in a certain crude, horrible way it does describe Mrs. Waddington. There is an ancient belief in Tibet that mankind is descended from a demoness named Drasrinmo and a monkey. Both Sigsbee H. and Mrs. Waddington do much to bear out this theory. I am loath to speak ill of a woman, but it is no use trying to conceal the fact that Mrs. Waddington is a bounder and a snob and has a soul like the under-side of a flat stone. She worships wealth and importance. She likes only the rich and the titled. As a matter of fact, I happen to know that there is an English lord hanging about the place whom she wants Molly to marry."

"Over my dead body," said George.

"That could no doubt be arranged. My poor George," said Hamilton Beamish, laying a dumb-bell affectionately on his friend's head, "you are taking on too big a contract. You are going out of your class. It is not as if you were one of these dashing, young Lochinvar fellows. You are mild and shy. You are diffident and timid. I class you among Nature's white mice. It would take a woman like Mrs. Sigsbee Waddington about two and a quarter minutes to knock you for a row of Portuguese ash-cans,—er, as Mullett would say," added Hamilton Beamish with a touch of confusion.

"She couldn't eat me," said George valiantly.

"I don't know so much. She is not a vegetarian."

"I was thinking," said George, "that you might take me round and introduce me...."

"And have your blood on my head? No, no."

"What do you mean, my blood? You talk as if this woman were a syndicate of gunmen. I'm not afraid of her. To get to know Molly"—George gulped—"I would fight a mad bull."

Hamilton Beamish was touched. This great man was human.

"These are brave words, George. You extort my admiration. I disapprove of the reckless, unconsidered way you are approaching this matter, and I still think you would be well advised to read 'The Marriage Sane' and get a proper estimate of Love: but I cannot but like your spirit. If you really wish it, therefore, I will take you round and introduce you to Mrs. Sigsbee H. Waddington. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul."

"Hamilton! To-night?"

"Not to-night. I am lecturing to the West Orange Daughters of Minerva to-night on The Modern Drama. Some other time."

"Then to-night," said George, blushing faintly. "I think I may as well just stroll round Seventy-Ninth Street way and—er—well, just stroll round."

"What is the good of that?"

"Well, I can look at the house, can't I?"

"Young blood!" said Hamilton Beamish indulgently. "Young blood!"

He poised himself firmly on his No-Jars, and swung the dumb-bell in a forceful arc.

5

"Mullett," said George.

"Sir?"

"Have you pressed my dress clothes?"

"Yes, sir."

"And brushed them?"

"Yes, sir."

"My ties—are they laid out?"

"In a neat row, sir."

George coughed.

"Mullett!"

"Sir?"

"You recollect the little chat we were having just now?"

"Sir?"

"About the young lady I—er...."

"Oh, yes, sir."

"I understand you have seen her."

"Just a glimpse, sir."

George coughed again.

"Ah—rather attractive, Mullett, didn't you think?"

"Extremely, sir. Very cuddly."

"The exact adjective I would have used myself, Mullett!"

"Indeed, sir?"

"Cuddly! A beautiful word."

"I think so, sir."

George coughed for the third time.

"A lozenge, sir?" said Mullett solicitously.

"No, thank you."

"Very good, sir."

"Mullett!"

"Sir?"

"I find that Mr. Beamish is an intimate friend of this young lady."

"Fancy that, sir!"

"He is going to introduce me."

"Very gratifying, I am sure, sir."

George sighed dreamily.

"Life is very sweet, Mullett."

"For those that like it, sir,—yes, sir."

"Lead me to the ties," said George.