The Beauty and the Bolshevist Part 7

"Is he as good-looking as David, father? What does he look like?"

Mr. Cord hesitated. "Well, a little like my engraving of Thomas Jefferson as a young man."

"He looks as if he might have a bomb in his pocket."

"Oh, Eddie, do keep quiet, there's a dear, and let father give me one of his long, wonderful accounts. Go ahead, father."

"Well," said Mr. Cord, helping himself from a dish that Tomes was presenting to him, "as I told you, Eddie had dropped in very kindly to scold me about you, when Tomes announced Mr. Moreton. Tomes thought he ought to be put straight out of the house. Didn't you, Tomes?"

"No, sir," said Tomes, who was getting used to his employer, although he did not encourage this sort of thing, particularly before the footmen.

"Well, Moreton came in and said, very simply--"

"Has he good manners, father?"

"He has no manners at all," roared Eddie.

"Oh, how nice," said Crystal, of whom it might be a.s.serted without flattery that she now understood in perfection the art of irritating Eddie.

"He is very direct and natural," her father continued. "He has a lot more punch than your brother-in-law, my dear. In fact, I was rather impressed with the young fellow until he and Eddie fell to quarreling.

Things did not go so well, then."

"You mean," said Crystal, the gossip rather getting the best of the reformer in her, "that he lost his temper horribly?"

"I should say he did," said Eddie.

"Well, Eddie, you know you were not perfectly calm," answered Cord.

"Let us say that they both lost their tempers, which is strange, for as far as I could see they were agreed on many essentials. They both believe that one cla.s.s in the community ought to govern the other.

They both believe the world is in a very bad way; only, according to Eddie, we are going to have chaos if capital loses its control of the situation; and according to Moreton we are going to have chaos if labor doesn't get control. So, as one or the other seems bound to happen, we ought to be able to adjust ourselves to chaos. In fact, Crystal, I have been interviewing McKellar about having a chaos cellar built in the garden."

Eddie pushed back his plate; it was empty, but the gesture suggested that he could not go on choking down the food of a man who joked about such serious matters.

"I must say, Mr. Cord," he began, "I really must say--" He paused, surprised to find that he really hadn't anything that he must say, and Crystal turned to her father:

"But you haven't told me why he came. To see Eugenia, I suppose?"

"No; he hadn't heard of the marriage. He came to talk to his brother."

"For you must know," put in Eddie, hastily, "that Mr. Ben Moreton does not approve of the marriage--oh, dear, no. He would consider such a connection quite beneath his family. He disapproves of Eugenia as a sister-in-law."

"How could any one disapprove of her?" asked her sister, hotly.

"Jevver hear such nerve?" said Eddie.

"It's not Eugenia; it's capital Moreton disapproves of," Mr. Cord went on, patiently explaining. "You see it never crossed our minds that the Moretons might object, but of course they do. They regard us as a very degrading connection. Doubtless it will hurt Ben Moreton with his readers to be connected with a financial pirate like myself, quite as much as it will hurt me in the eyes of most of my fellow board members when it becomes known that my son-in-law's brother is the editor of _Liberty_."

"The Moretons disapprove," repeated Crystal, to whom the idea was not at all agreeable.

"Disapprove, nonsense!" said Eddie. "I believe he came to blackmail you. To see what he could get out of you if he offered to stop the marriage. Well, why not? If these fellows believe all the money ought to be taken away from the capitalists, why should they care how it's done? I can't see much difference between robbing a man, and legislating his fortune out of--"

"Well, I must tell you, father dear," said Crystal, exactly as if Eddie had not been speaking, "that I think it was horrid of you not to have me called when you must have known--"

"Crystal, you're scolding me," wailed her father. "And most unjustly.

I did ask him to lunch just for your sake, although I saw Eddie was shocked, and I was afraid Tomes would give warning. But I did ask him, only he wouldn't stay."

Crystal rose from the table with her eye on the clock, and they began to make their way back to Mr. Cord's study, as she asked:

"Why wouldn't he stay?"

"I gathered because he didn't want to. Perhaps he was afraid he'd have to argue with Eddie about capital and labor all through lunch. And of course he did not know that I had another beautiful daughter sleeping off the effects of a late party, or very likely he would have accepted."

Very likely he would.

Just as they entered the study, the telephone rang. Crystal sprang to the instrument, brus.h.i.+ng away her father's hand, which had moved toward it.

"It's for me, dear," she said, and continued, speaking into the mouthpiece: "Yes, it's I." (A pause.) "Where are you?... Oh, yes, I know the place. I'll be there in five minutes, in a little blue car."

She hung up the receiver, sprang up, and looked very much surprised to see Eddie and her father still there just as before. "Good-by, Eddie,"

she said, "I'm sorry, but I have an engagement. Good-by, father."

"You don't want to run me out to the golf club first?"

"Not possible, dear. The chauffeur can take you in the big car."

"Yes, but he'll scold me all the way about there not being room enough in the garage."

Crystal was firm. "I'm sorry, but I can't, dear. This is important. I may take a job. I'll tell you all about it this evening." And she left the room, with a smile that kept getting entirely beyond her control.

"What's this? What's this?" cried Eddie as the door shut. "A job. You wouldn't let Crystal take a job, would you, Mr. Cord?"

"I haven't been consulted," said Mr. Cord, taking out his new driver again.

"But didn't you notice how excited she was. I'm sure it's decided."

"Yes, I noticed, Eddie; but it looked to me more like a man than a job. How do you think we'd come out if I gave you a stroke and a half a hole?"

Eddie was too perturbed even to answer.

In the meantime, Crystal was spinning along Bellevue Avenue, forgetting to bow to her friends, and wondering why the car was going so badly until, her eye falling on the speedometer, she noticed that she was doing a mild thirty-five miles an hour. Sooner, therefore, than the law allowed, she reached a small park that surrounds a statue of Perry, and there she picked up a pa.s.senger.

Ben got in and shut the little door almost before she brought the car to a standstill.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I'll be there in five minutes, in a little blue car"]

"When you were little," he said, "did you ever imagine something wonderful that might happen--like the door's opening and a delegation coming to elect you captain of the baseball team, or whatever is a little girl's equivalent of that--and keep on imagining it and imagining it, until it seemed as if it really were going to happen?

Well, I have been standing here saying to myself, Wouldn't it be wonderful if Crystal should come in a little blue car and take me to drive? And, by Heaven! you'll never believe me, but she actually did."

"Tell me everything you've done since I saw you," she answered.

"I haven't done anything but think about you. Oh yes, I have, too.