"f.a.n.n.y! How could you? He might have offered to pay them."
"If he had only offered to owe them!" f.a.n.n.y laughed as she spoke and patted her perfect skirt.
"But he has other fish to fry. Do you know the other day I saw him--"
But what f.a.n.n.y had seen was never told, or at least not then.
Annandale was invading the parlor.
"Conquering hero!" cried f.a.n.n.y. "I am here congratulating Sylvia."
"I congratulate myself that you are. I have a motor at the door, and I propose to take you both to Sherry"s, afterward, if you like, to the races. There you may congratulate me."
"What is this about Sherry"s?" Again the parlor was invaded. This time by Sylvia"s mother. She had bright cheeks, bright eyes, bright hair.
In her voice was indulgence, in her manner ease. She gave a hand to f.a.n.n.y, the other to Annandale.
"In my day," she resumed, "girls did not go lunching without someone to look after them."
"They certainly did not go to Sherry"s," said Annandale. "There was no Sherry"s to go to. But why won"t you come with us?"
"Thank you, Arthur. It is not because f.a.n.n.y or Sylvia needs looking after. But when I was their age anything of the sort would have been thought so common. Yet then, what was common at that time seems to have been accepted since. Now, there is a chance to call me old-fashioned."
"I can do better than that," said Annandale, "I can call you grande dame."
"Yes," f.a.n.n.y threw in, "and that, don"t you think, is so superior to being merely--ahem--demned grand."
"Why, f.a.n.n.y!" And Mrs. Waldron, at once amused at the jest and startled at the expression, shook her finger at her.
But Annandale hastened to her rescue. "f.a.n.n.y is quite right, Mrs.
Waldron. You meet women nowadays whose grandfathers, if they had any, were paving the streets while your own were governing the country and who, just because they happen to be beastly rich, put on airs that would be comical in an empress. Now, won"t you change your mind and come with us? At Sherry"s there are always some choice selections on view."
"You are not very tempting, Arthur. But if the girls think otherwise, take them. And don"t forget. You dine with us tonight."
Thereat, presently, after a scurry through sunshine and streets, Sherry"s was reached.
There Annandale wanted to order a chateaubriand. The girls rebelled.
A maitre d"hotel suggested melons and a supreme with a bombe to follow.
Annandale turned to him severely. "Ferdinand, I object to your telling me what you want me to eat."
"Let me order," said Sylvia. "f.a.n.n.y, what would you like?"
"Cuc.u.mbers, asparagus, strawberries."
"Chicken?"
f.a.n.n.y nodded.
"Yes," said Annandale to the chastened waiter, "order that and some moselle, and I want a Scotch and soda. There"s Orr," he interrupted himself to announce. "I wonder what he is doing uptown? And there"s Loftus."
At the mention of Orr, f.a.n.n.y, who had been eying an adjacent gown, evinced no interest. But at the mention of Loftus she glanced about the room.
It was large, high-ceiled, peopled with actresses and men-about-town, smart women and stupid boys, young girls and old beaux. From a balcony there dripped the tw.a.n.g of mandolins. In the air was the savor of pineapple, the smell of orris, the odor of food and flowers.
On entering Sylvia had stopped to say a word at one table, f.a.n.n.y had loitered at another. Then in their trip to a table already reserved, a trip conducted by the maitre d"hotel whom Annandale had rebuked, murmurs trailed after them, the echo of their names, observations profoundly a.n.a.lytical. "That"s f.a.n.n.y Price, the great beauty." "That"s Miss Waldron, who is engaged to Arthur Annandale." "That is Annandale there"--the usual subtleties of the small people of a big city. Now, at the entrance, Orr and Loftus appeared.
"Shall I ask them to join us?" Annandale asked.
"Yes, do," said f.a.n.n.y. "I like Mr. Orr so much."
But Loftus, who, with his hands in his pockets, a monocle in his eye, had been looking about with an air of great contempt for everybody, already with Orr was approaching. On reaching the table very little urging was required to induce them to sit, and, when seated they were, Loftus was next to f.a.n.n.y.
"What are you doing uptown at this hour?" Annandale asked Orr, who had got between Loftus and Sylvia. "I thought you lawyers were all so infernally busy."
"Everybody ought to be," Orr replied. "Although an anarchist who had managed to get himself locked up, and whom I succeeded in getting out, confided to me that only imbeciles work. By way of exchange I had to confide to him that it is only imbeciles that do not."
"Now that," said Annandale, who had never done a stroke of work in his life, "is what I call a very dangerous theory."
"A theory that is not dangerous," Orr retorted, "can hardly be called a theory at all."
With superior tact Sylvia intervened. "But what is anarchy, Melanchthon? Socialism I know about, but anarchy--?"
"To put it vulgarly, I drink and you pay."
"But suppose I am an anarchist?"
"Then Sherry pays."
"But supposing he is an anarchist?"
"Then there is a row. And there will be one. The country is drifting that way. It will, I think, be b.l.o.o.d.y, but I think, too, it will be brief. Anarchists, you know, maintain that of all prejudices capital and matrimony are the stupidest. What they demand is the free circulation of money and women. As a nation, we are great at entertaining, but we will never entertain that."
"Why, then, did you not let the beggar rot where he was?" Annandale swiftly and severely inquired.
"Oh, you know, if I had not got him out someone else would have, and I thought it better that the circulation of money should proceed directly from his pocket to mine."
"You haven"t any stupid prejudices yourself, that"s clear," said Annandale, helping himself as he spoke to more Scotch. "Sylvia," he continued, "if I am ever up for murder I will retain Melanchthon Orr."
Orr laughed. "That retainer will never reach me. You would not hurt a fly."
"Wouldn"t I?" And Annandale a.s.sumed an expression of great ferocity.
"You don"t know me. I can imagine circ.u.mstances in which I could wade in gore. By the way, I have ordered a revolver."
"What!"
"Yes, a burglar got in my place the night before last and woke me up.
If he comes back and wakes me up again I"ll blow his head off."
Sylvia looked at him much as she might at a boastful child. "Yes, yes, Arthur, but please don"t take so much of that whisky."