"Seemed to me a fine young fellow," said Mr. Cord.
"Asking him to lunch," said Eddie.
"I did that for Crystal," replied Cord, getting up and slapping his pockets--a gesture which in some subconscious way he hoped would make Eddie go home. "She"s always so keen to meet new people. If she heard that the editor of _Liberty_ had been here while she was asleep and that I had not tried to keep him for her to see--whew!--she would make a scene."
"But she oughtn"t to see people like that," protested Eddie, as if he were trying to talk sense in a madhouse. "That was what I was just explaining to you, Mr. Cord, when--"
"So you were, Eddie, so you were," said Mr. Cord. "Stay to lunch and tell 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. Cord hesitated for the fraction of a second--"the gardener. If you don"t see gardeners now and then and let them scold you about the weather and the Lord"s arrangement of the seasons, they go mad and beat their wives. See you later, Eddie," and Mr. Cord stepped out through the French window. It was only great crises like these that led him to offer himself up to the attacks of his employees.
A severe elderly man with a long, flat upper lip and side whiskers immediately sprang apparently from the earth and approached him. He had exactly the manner of resolute gloom that a small boy has when something has gone wrong at school and he wants his mother to drag it out of him.
"Good morning, sir," he said.
"Morning, McKellar," said Cord, gayly. "Everything"s all right, I suppose."
McKellar shook his head. Everything was about as far from all right as it well could be. The cook was a violent maniac who required peas to be picked so young that they weren"t worth the picking. Tomes and his footman were a band of malicious pirates who took pleasure in cutting for the table the very buds which McKellar was cherishing for the horticultural show. And as for the season--McKellar could not remember such 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 up critically at the heavens, McKellar expressed his settled conviction that in two weeks" time hardly a blade or a shrub would be alive in the 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 his object. When he went back into the house, Eddie had gone, and he could go back to his new driver in peace.
He was not interrupted until ten minutes past one, when Crystal came into the room, her eyes shining with exactly the same color that, beyond the lawn, the sea was displaying. Unlike Eddie, she looked better than in her fancy dress. She had on flat tennis shoes, a cotton blouse and a duck skirt, and a russet-colored sweater. Miss c.o.x would have 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 fl.u.s.tered for the reason that it seemed to her as if any one would be able to see that she was an entirely different Crystal from the one of the evening before, and she was not quite sure what she was going to answer when her father said, as she felt certain he 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, "Got a new driver."
"Yes, yes, dear, very nice," said Crystal. "But I want to have lunch punctually, 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 the sight of a cobra in her path. "Why is Eddie coming to lunch? I did not ask him."
"No, my dear, I took that liberty," replied her father. "It seemed the only way of getting rid of him."
"Well, I sha"n"t wait for him," said Crystal, ringing the bell. "I have an engagement at a quarter past two."
"At the golf club?" asked her father, his eye lighting a little. "You might drive me out, you know."
"No, dear; quite in the other direction--with a man who was at the party 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 have to answer, for at that moment Tomes came, in response to her ring, and she 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 believe that that is why no one is getting any work done--everyone is so busy scolding everybody else. The politicians are scolding, and the newspapers 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 more interested in great truths than most of us.
"About you."
Crystal moved her head about as if things had now reached a point where 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 was since I had taken an inventory of your economic beliefs. I could not remember that I ever had, but perhaps you will tell them to me now. That is," Mr. Cord added, "if you can do it without scolding me--probably an impossible condition to impose nowadays."
"It"s a pity about Eddie," said Crystal, fiercely. "If only stupid people would be content to be stupid, instead of trying to run the world--"
"Ah, my dear, it"s only stupid people who are under the impression that they can. Good morning again, Eddie, we were just speaking of you."
Mr. Cord added the last sentence without the slightest change of tone or expression as his guest was ushered in by Tomes, who, catching Crystal"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 in her whole figure, and her tone was like a bright banner of war, "and so you came round to complain to my father, did you?"
Mr. Cord laid his hand on her shoulder. "Do you think you could demolish 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, I know," she added, as her father opened his mouth to say that she had left most particular instructions that she was to be allowed to sleep as late as she could, "I know, but you must have known I should have wanted to look David"s brother over. Has he long hair? Does he wear a soft tie? Did you hate him?"
"Eddie didn"t take much of a fancy to him."
"I should say not. A d.a.m.ned, hollow-eyed fanatic."