"She plays the piano, and is going to be a professional."
For a moment Mrs. De Peyster"s horror was inarticulate. Then it began to regain its power of speech.
"What--you throw away--Ethel Quintard--for a little pianist! You compare a girl like--like that--to Ethel Quintard!"
"Compare them? Not for one little minute, mother, dear! For Mary has brains and--"
"Stop!" exploded Mrs. De Peyster, in majestic rage. "Young man, have you considered the social disgrace you are plunging us all into?
But--but surely you cannot be in earnest!"
He looked imperturbably up into her face. "Not in earnest, mother? I"m as earnest as a preacher on Sunday."
"Then--then--"
She choked with her words. Before she could get them out, Jack was on his feet and had an arm around her shoulders.
"Come, mother, don"t be angry--please!" he cried with warm boyish eagerness. "Before you say another word, let me bring Mary to see you.
I can get her here before you go on board. The sight of her will show you how right I am. She is the dearest, sweetest--"
"Stop!" She caught his arm. "I shall not see this--this Mary person!"
"No?"
She was the perfect figure of wrath and pride and confident power of domination. "I shall never see her! Never! And what is more,"
she continued, with the energy of one who believes her will to be equivalent to the accomplished fact, "you are going to give up, yes, and entirely forget, all those foolish things you have just been speaking of!"
He gazed squarely back into her flashing eyes. His face had tightened, and at that moment there was a remarkable likeness between the two faces, usually so dissimilar.
"Pardon me, mother; you are mistaken," he said quietly. "I am going to give up nothing."
"What, you defy me?" she gasped.
"I am not defying you. I tried to tell you in as pleasant a way as I could what my plans are. But everything I said, I am going to do."
"Then--then--" At first the words would not come forth; she stood trembling, clutching the back of her chair. "Then I beg to inform you," she was saying thickly in her outraged majesty, when Matilda opened the hall door and ushered in an erect, slender man of youngish middle age and with graying hair and dark mustache, and with a pleasant, distinguished face.
"I beg pardon; I fear I come inopportunely," he said, as he sighted Mrs. De Peyster"s militant att.i.tude. "But I was told to come right up.
I"ll just wait--"
"Do not go, Judge Harvey," Mrs. De Peyster commanded, as he started to withdraw. "On the other hand, your arrival is most opportune. Please come here."
"Good-morning, Uncle Bob," Jack said cheerfully. "Excuse me for not shaking hands. Just a little automobile accident."
"Jack, you home!" cried the Judge. "My boy, but you have given us all a scare!" And then in affectionate concern, noticing his hands: "Nothing serious, I hope?"
"Nothing serious about the accident," said Jack, glancing at his mother.
Mrs. De Peyster glared at her son, then crossed to the safe, larger and more formidable than the one above from which she had been removing her jewels, took out a doc.u.ment and returned to the two men. She had something of the ominous air of a tragedy queen who is foreshadowing an approaching climax.
"Judge Harvey, I do not care to go into explanations," said she. "But I desire to give you an order and to have you be a witness to my act."
"Of course, I am at your service, Caroline."
"In the first place," she said, striving to speak calmly, "I beg to request my son to move such of his things as he may wish out of this house--and within the hour."
"Certainly, mother," Jack said pleasantly.
"And to you, Judge Harvey,--I wish my son"s allowance, which is paid through your office, to be discontinued from this moment."
"Why--of course--just as you say," said the astonished Judge. "But perhaps if the case were--"
"This paper is my will," interrupted Mrs. De Peyster, holding up the doc.u.ment she had taken from the safe. "As my man of affairs, I believe you are acquainted with its contents."
"I am."
"It gives the bulk of my fortune to my son here."
"Why, yes," admitted the Judge with increasing bewilderment.
"His share amounts to two millions, or thereabouts."
"Thereabouts."
Mrs. De Peyster took two rustling, majestic steps toward her fireplace. "Until my son gives me very definite a.s.surance that his conduct will be more suitable to me and my position, he is no longer my son." And so saying she tossed the will upon the fire. She allowed a moment of effective silence to elapse. "That is all, Jack. You are excused."
Jack stood and watched the flaming will flicker down to a glowing ash.
One bandaged hand slowly smoothed his blond hair.
"Gee! I"ve seen people burning up money, and I"ve burnt up quite a bit myself, but I never saw two millions go as quick! Well, mother," he sighed, shaking his head, "I never suspected I"d end in such a little blaze. With such a pile I could have made a bigger bonfire than that."
CHAPTER IV
A SLIGHT PREDICAMENT
For several moments after Jack had withdrawn, Mrs. De Peyster stood in majestic silence beside the mantelpiece.
"We will forget this incident, Judge Harvey," she said at length. "Be seated, if you please."
Judge Harvey took a chair, as ordered. Out in the world, Judge Harvey was a disconcerting personality, though a respected one; a judge who had resigned his judgeship, with the bold announcement that law-courts were in the main theaters for farces; a thinker who rejected all labels, who was daring enough to perceive and applaud what was good even in the conventional.
"But, Caroline," he began hesitantly, "weren"t you perhaps a little too stern with Jack?"
"As I said, Judge Harvey, I do not care to explain the situation."
"I understood it--a little--anyhow. See here, you don"t want Jack to grow up to be a member of that geranium-cheeked, leather-chair brigade that stare out of Fifth Avenue Club windows, their heaviest labor lifting a whiskey-and-soda all the way up to their mouths?"