A Boy and His Girl

One o’clock. Then two. Then three. In the library at the head of the stairs, through the limping hours, Mrs. Vivian sat. But now the front door opened and closed. Presently there was the sound of ascending steps.

Mrs. Vivian stood up. “Alfred!”

At the entrance, in evening clothes, a good-looking boy appeared. “Why, mother?” he surprisedly exclaimed.

Mrs. Vivian nodded. “Yes, I can sit up until two, but at three I think everybody ought to be in bed. Perhaps you will be civil enough to agree with me.”

“Certainly, mother, but⁠—”

Mrs. Vivian nodded again. “Very good then, make a soiled breast of it. Who is she?”

In speaking she looked him up and down. Though forty, she appeared twenty-eight. A widow and a rich one, she was handsome, arrogant, commanding and taller, both mentally and physically, than her son.

The boy twisted. “Suppose I tell you tomorrow.”

“It’s tomorrow now.”

“But you don’t know her, and it would take so long to explain.”

“Of course I don’t know her. If I did I would not ask, but I know at least that she is not an old woman, and I know, too, that no decent young woman would keep you up⁠—”

“Mother,” the boy got in, “we had supper and we were talking.”

Mrs. Vivian sniffed. “You had supper at twelve, I suppose, and you have been talking ever since. But no man ever talks to a girl for three hours unless he keeps saying the same thing all the time.”

She paused, half-turned and threw out: “And that thing decent young women don’t listen to.”

“She is perfectly decent,” the boy angrily protested. “She⁠—”

“She’s an angel,” Mrs. Vivian interrupted. “I know the air. But since you don’t seem to be able to tell me who she is, I assume that you can show me her picture. Probably you have it with you now⁠—next to your heart.”

At the suggestion and the sneer of it, the boy flushed, fumbled and fished out a card-case from which he produced a photograph that, for a moment, Mrs. Vivian contemptuously considered.

“A chorus girl, isn’t she?” she asked. “If not she ought to sue the photographer for libel. What’s her name? Mamie? Tottie?”

“Mother!” the boy indignantly corrected. “She is a Miss Pelham.”

“For short, no doubt. But actually Miss Pelham-Clinton or Miss Pelham-Cavendish. That’s it, isn’t it? The daughter of a hundred bankrupts. Where does she live?”

Like a goaded calf, Alfred tossed his head. “She is as good a New Yorker as any of us.”

“And she lives?”

“At The Amsterdam.”

“On eighteen a week?”

“Well, she has an uncle who is quite well off.”

Mrs. Vivian smiled. “Such uncles usually have to be. In addition to the uncle, she has a very innocent young man. How long are you to keep this up?”

Alfred straightened. “I should have told you already. Miss Pelham has consented to do me the honor to become my wife.”

Mrs. Vivian’s smile deepened. “And very condescending of her that is. Now how do you propose to support her?”

“I counted on you.”

“And she also?”

“She is above mercenary considerations.”

“With an uncle such as hers she may well be. But you need not count on me any more than you can on him.”

Boldly Alfred bluffed. “Very good then, I’ll work my fingers to the bone for her. I’ll carve out a future for us both.”

Mrs. Vivian laughed. “You had best go to bed and forget it.”

“But mother,” the boy tormentedly pleaded, “when you know her, when you see what a splendid, glorious girl she is⁠—”

“Yes, when I do. Meanwhile don’t be lyrical. Besides, if you won’t go to bed I shall. I have heard enough.”

In a moment she had gone. Alfred was alone. So also was his mother. In a room that gave on upper Fifth Avenue she locked out at the night. It was very black. For a week she had suspected. For a week she had seen her son look, not wickedly contented but ingenuously disturbed and, from other indicia, she had feared just some such stupidity as this.

Mrs. Vivian was not a snob, nor was she oppressively aristocratic. Against chorus girls as a class she had no prejudices whatever. Moreover, in other circumstances she might have been on the stage herself, and a very good actress she would have been. But her husband, in departing this life, had made her his sole legatee and, while he was at it, enormously wealthy. Since then English lords and Italian princes had competed for her. In the great matrimonial hurdle-race she was a prize. But she had not been won; and now her son was bagged⁠—almost, but as yet not quite. It was not the principle of the thing to which she objected, it was the money. At sight of the picture, at mention of the uncle, instantly she had known what it was that the creature was after.

Now, as she looked out at the night, she realized that if she opposed her son, he might take the bit in his teeth, in which case she would either have to give in or else buy the girl off, unless she could alarm her away. Yet how?

But the night, it is said, brings counsel. It brought some to her which later, at luncheon, she omitted to mention.

Instead, when the servants had gone and she and her son were alone in a great room which in Europe would have been called baronial, she patted a yawn and asked:

“This is Friday, isn’t it?”

Alfred who had been looking down, looked up, but he looked too as though he had not slept very well. His eyes were heavy and about his mouth there was a droop.

“Friday, mother? Yes, I think so. I am not quite sure.”

“No matinée then?”

“None that I know of. Why? Were you thinking of going to one?”

Mrs. Vivian compressed her lips. “Don’t try to translate me. You will only fail. But now, since you know of no matinée, do you know of any rehearsal?”

“Oh!” said Alfred deeply, for he had got it. “I think not.”

Mrs. Vivian nodded. “In that case you might bring her here.”

“Why, mother!” Alfred, half-rising, exclaimed.

Mrs. Vivian gestured at him. “Don’t keep saying ‘mother’ every minute. It is so tiresome. And do sit still. You get on my nerves. Heavens! I can’t sit up until all hours and not feel it. But now since you propose to marry this er⁠—this girl, it may seem to you only becoming that I should meet her.”

“You consent then?” Alfred, almost with a whoop, got out.

Mrs. Vivian patted another yawn. “What else can I do? But I do not approve of it. You are far too young. At your age matrimony is so respectable and disillusioning. In a week you will be sick to death of her.”

“Never,” the boy proudly proclaimed.

“Well, in three months then. At your age that is the limit⁠—that is matrimony. Three months of adoration, three months of cogitation, thirty years of toleration, with the children to repeat the process. I ought to know. You will too. You are your father all over⁠—minus his brains.”

“Thank you,” said Alfred who laughed as he said it. His spirits had risen, his color too; the droop from his mouth had gone. “You are the very best mother in all the world. I knew you would give in. I told Sadie so.”

Frostily Mrs. Vivian smiled. “And Sadie agreed with you, I suppose. Well, she must be the ideal ingénue. Now run and fetch her.”

In speaking she stood up and passed into a room that was fitted gravely, with infinite taste. There, at a piano, she seated herself and began on the “Meditation” from Thais. But it did not suit her mood. It was too harmonious. She abandoned it and attacked one of Borodin’s belligerent surprises.

Before she had finished, the portieres parted and, followed by her son, there entered a young woman who had the full face of a doll and the tight mouth of a vixen.

Violently perfumed and dressed quite modishly as though for a fancy ball, the girl paused uncertainly. She had expected gold and glitter. The subdued surroundings awed her. At the moment, with suspicious defiance, she looked at Mrs. Vivian, who had risen and who was advancing to greet her.

But Mrs. Vivian’s manner was very thawing. “And this is Miss Pelham,” she said, and she said it as though she were eating nougat. At once, taking the girl’s hand, she turned to her son. “Run and play and come back in half an hour.” With a gesture she dismissed him and drawing the girl to a chair caressingly resumed: “Sit down, my dear, and let us have a nice little chat.”

Already with the one imperceptible glance with which the mondaine judges and classifies, she understood the girl, understood her possibilities, her impossibilities rather, and in her opulent corsage, her high color, her doll-like and inane face, understood too the wholly-physical attraction which she had for her son.

“The imbecile!” she thought, but she said: “Did your ears burn last night? Alfred was telling me of you. He was quite poetic. Are you fond of poetry? But you are. I can see that. And who is your favorite? Swinburne or Tennyson?”

Sadie moistened her lips. “I would not like to say.”

“No, of course not,” Mrs. Vivian with charming affability rejoined. “Any decided view seems so superficial, don’t you think? But I can see that in addition to poetry you are fond of pretty clothes. But not too many of them, of course. Did you ever hear of Miss Flora McFlimsey?”

“What is she driving at?” Sadie wondered. But she said: “There was a Flora in the ‘Ring Around the Rosie’ show, but I don’t remember her last name.”

“Well, that could hardly have been this Flora. This Flora was very unhappy because she had nothing to wear. Now instead of being unhappy she would be very fashionable. But I am forgetting myself. Won’t you let me give you a cup of tea?”

Mrs. Vivian touched a bell and added, “Or a glass of champagne?”

“Don’t wake me,” thought Sadie. But she said: “I don’t mind if I do.”

“Champagne!” Mrs. Vivian told a manservant who then appeared, and who could not credit his ears.

“Champagne, mem?” he repeated.

But Mrs. Vivian had turned again to the girl. “There’s nothing like it, is there? Particularly in the afternoon. Oh, we have so many tastes in common, or perhaps I should say so many common tastes. Alfred did not begin to tell me how famously we shall get on. It’s going to be perfectly splendid, isn’t it?”

“Pinch me,” thought Sadie, who, precisely as she had expected gold and glitter, had expected, too, airs, hostility, the disdain of a very rich woman for a working-girl. Instead of which she was being treated “like a lady.” At the consciousness and sheer satisfaction of it she laughed. “This is too easy,” she told herself.

On that, for emphasis, there came a pop! The manservant, reappearing, was filling glasses on a wonderful tray which he placed on a table that he had conjured before her. It was not only easy, it was grand, for now the man had gone, and here was this party drinking her health.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Vivian, “to you and to Alfred! But you have not told me. What are your plans? Don’t you agree with me that long engagements are a mistake? Long engagements make people sick and tired of each other, and that only ought to come afterwards.”

“She’s dotty,” thought Sadie. But she said: “You’re dead right.”

The glass which Mrs. Vivian held and which she had barely touched, she put down. “There! I was sure you would think so. Now why don’t you and Alfred get married at once?”

“Hurray for Sadie!” thought the girl, who answered: “That’s what Mr. Vivian says.”

“And how natural that is! But in the circumstances is not ‘Mr. Vivian’ a bit formal?”

Comfortably the girl drained her glass. The uncertainty, the awe, the stabbing fear that she had of this fool of a woman, where were they now? Then roguishly she smiled. “Between you and me and the bedpost, I call him Fredikins.”

“Fredikins!” Mrs. Vivian with an enraptured air repeated. “Why that was his pet name when he was a baby! So amusing he was, too. Since then he has become very tedious. But tedious men make such excellent husbands, and that brings me back to what I was talking about. Why don’t you and he get married at once? If you will let me, I will give you the wedding.”

“I should worry,” thought Sadie, who said: “That will be elegant.”

“And every wish for your happiness.”

“That suits yours truly,” thought the girl, and she said it.

“And then, as Fredikins expressed it, and very manly he was⁠—but then he is his father all over⁠—he can carve out a future for you both.”

“Eh?” Sadie whinnied.

“Yes, wasn’t it manly of him? Reared as he has been in what I think I have seen described as the lap of luxury, isn’t it noble? It made me so proud. But that is not all. Without the slightest trace of conceit, but in a quiet, resolute way he has that way, you know, he got it from his father⁠—he said that for you he would work his fingers to the bone.”

Sadie was bristling. Her tight mouth tightened. Had the champagne, she wondered, gone to the old cat’s head?

“And here is something else,” Mrs. Vivian, dropping her voice as though imparting a great confidence, continued. “When I die he will have six hundred a year. He won’t need it, of course, He will make millions. But, in case of a rainy day, there it will be for you both.”

“But⁠—” Sadie fiercely exploded. At the moment her thoughts stammered. The monosyllable was all that she could get out.

Yet Mrs. Vivian seemed to appreciate, for enthusiastically, as though very much pleased with everybody and everything, she ran on; “And meanwhile, there is your ability and profession for him to fall back on.”

“Well, of all the gall!” thought Sadie. “See here⁠—”

“My dear, I am an old woman,” interrupted Mrs. Vivian, who at the moment looked younger than the girl. “It is a month of Sundays since I have been to the theater, where, I am sure, you are as much of a success as that young French lady who was here last year⁠—what was her name? Ah, yes, I have it and a quotation, too. ‘Consider the lilies of the field!’ Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like Gaby des Lys.”

“Gaby nothing,” Sadie furiously cut in. “See here⁠—”

Apologetically Mrs. Vivian half-raised a hand. “But it is not for her that my boy is to work his fingers to the bone; it’s for you, yet with such an admirable example as hers before you⁠—I am told that when under our flag she just Stars and Strips, and that I think shows so much tact⁠—I am sure the dear boy won’t have to.”

“You can bet your life on that,” said Sadie, who not only thought it but meant it, and who in saying it stood up, shook herself and glared. “See here. Your son told me he had your consent.”

Ingratiatingly Mrs. Vivian smiled and nodded. “So he has.”

“And what else?” Sadie, stamping a foot, threw at her.

With an air of surprise that succeeded in being both infinite and sympathetic, Mrs. Vivian took it up. “But what more did you expect?”

“What?” Sadie snapped. “Why with him letting himself go like a prince of the blood, and everybody saying how rich you are, whatever I expected it wasn’t false pretenses, for that’s what it is.”

Mrs. Vivian arose. “But, my dear child, except the prince part it is all of it true.”

At that Sadie faced her. “You want this marriage?”

“But don’t you know,” Mrs. Vivian in a voice of gentle reproach replied, “don’t you know that it is my dearest wish?”

Mentally Sadie fanned herself. “I have you now,” she thought. But she said: “Then you’ve got to divvy up.”

Mrs. Vivian smiled her sweetest. “I would just love to. But Fredikin’s father wanted him to make his own way, and with a dear child like you he is sure to.”

“Do you hear that!” Sadie gnashed. “Then listen to this. Unless a man can support me in style, it’s another dear child for him.”

“There he is now!” Mrs. Vivian, with the same sweet smile, exclaimed. “Alfred,” she called, “you are just in time to take Miss Pelham home.”

But that young lady’s lip had lifted like a dog’s when about to bite. “Not on your life,” she cried. “We’ll finish this right here.” Twisting, she fronted the boy. “I have been giving your mother the straight goods, and watch out now for the jolt for you.”

“Dearest!” the wretched youth protested. “What do you mean?”

But with great dignity Sadie now was making her exit. “I mean that I’m done with you, you little shrimp. Get out of my way.”

She passed, the hall engulfed her, the outer door closed, and furiously Alfred turned on his mother.

“You must have been taking things with a very high hand.”

Mrs. Vivian gave a shrug. “Probably. I have to take them from where I am.”

But the piano was before her. Seating herself she began anew on the harmonious “Meditation.” She felt in the mood for it then. She felt that definitely and decisively she had settled the boy and his girl.