II
Mrs. Waddington navigated upstairs, and paused before a door near the second landing.
“Molly!”
“Yes, mother?”
Mrs. Waddington was frowning as she entered the room. How often she had told this girl to call her “mater”!
But this was a small point, and not worth mentioning at a time like the present. She sank into a chair with a creaking groan. Strong woman though she was, Mrs. Sigsbee Waddington, like the chair, was near to breaking down.
“Good heavens, mother! What’s the matter?”
“Send her away,” muttered Mrs. Waddington, nodding at her stepdaughter’s maid.
“All right, mother. I shan’t want you any more, Julie. I can manage now. Shall I get you a glass of water, mother?”
Molly looked at her suffering stepparent with gentle concern, wishing that she had something stronger than water to offer. But her late mother had brought her up in that silly, stuffy way in which old-fashioned mothers used to bring up their daughters: and, incredible as it may seem in these enlightened days, Molly Waddington had reached the age of twenty without forming even a nodding acquaintance with alcohol. Now, no doubt, as she watched her stepmother gulping before her like a moose that has had trouble in the home, she regretted that she was not one of those sensible modern girls who always carry a couple of shots around with them in a jewelled flask.
But, though a defective upbringing kept her from being useful in this crisis, nobody could deny that, as she stood there half-dressed for dinner, Molly Waddington was extremely ornamental. If George Finch could have seen her at that moment. … But then if George Finch had seen her at that moment, he would immediately have shut his eyes like a gentleman: for there was that about her costume, in its present stage of development, which was not for the male gaze.
Still, however quickly he had shut his eyes, he could not have shut them rapidly enough to keep from seeing that Mullett, in his recent remarks on an absorbing subject, had shown an even nicer instinct for the mot juste than he had supposed. Beyond all chance for evasion or doubt, Molly Waddington was cuddly. She was wearing primrose knickers, and her silk-stockinged legs tapered away to little gold shoes. Her pink fingers were clutching at a blue dressing-jacket with swan’s-down trimming. Her bobbed hair hung about a round little face with a tip-tilted little nose. Her eyes were large, her teeth small and white and even. She had a little brown mole on the back of her neck and—in short, to sum the whole thing up, if George Finch could have caught even the briefest glimpse of her at this juncture, he must inevitably have fallen over sideways, yapping like a dog.
Mrs. Waddington’s breathing had become easier, and she was sitting up in her chair with something like the old imperiousness.
“Molly,” said Mrs. Waddington, “have you been giving your father Zane Grey?”
“Of course not.”
“You’re sure?”
“Quite. I don’t think there’s any Zane Grey in the house.”
“Then he’s been sneaking out and seeing Tom Mix again,” said Mrs. Waddington.
“You don’t mean … ?”
“Yes! He’s got one of his spells.”
“A bad one?”
“So bad that he refuses to dress for dinner. He says that if the boys”—Mrs. Waddington shuddered—“if the boys don’t like him in a flannel shirt, he won’t come in to dinner at all. And Lord Hunstanton suggested that I should send you to reason with him.”
“Lord Hunstanton? Has he arrived already?”
“I telephoned for him. I am coming to rely on Lord Hunstanton more and more every day. What a dear fellow he is!”
“Yes,” said Molly, a little dubiously. She was not fond of his lordship.
“So handsome.”
“Yes.”
“Such breeding.”
“I suppose so.”
“I should be very happy,” said Mrs. Waddington, “if a man like Lord Hunstanton asked you to be his wife.”
Molly fiddled with the trimming of her dressing-jacket. This was not the first time the subject had come up between her stepmother and herself. A remark like the one just recorded was Mrs. Waddington’s idea of letting fall a quiet hint.
“Well. …” said Molly.
“What do you mean, well?”
“Well, don’t you think he’s rather stiff?”
“Stiff!”
“Don’t you find him a little starchy?”
“If you mean that Lord Hunstanton’s manners are perfect, I agree with you.”
“I’m not sure that I like a man’s manners to be too perfect,” said Molly meditatively. “Don’t you think a shy man can be rather attractive?” She scraped the toe of one gold shoe against the heel of the other. “The sort of man I think I should rather like,” she said, a dreamy look in her eyes, “would be a sort of slimmish, smallish man with nice brown eyes and rather gold-y, chestnutty hair, who kind of looks at you from a distance because he’s too shy to speak to you and, when he does get a chance to speak to you, sort of chokes and turns pink and twists his fingers and makes funny noises and trips over his feet and looks rather a lamb and. …”
Mrs. Waddington had risen from her chair like a storm-cloud brooding over a countryside.
“Molly!” she cried. “Who is this young man?”
“Why, nobody of course! Just someone I sort of imagined.”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Waddington, relieved. “You spoke as if you knew him.”
“What a strange idea!”
“If any young man ever does look at you and make funny noises, you will ignore him.”
“Of course.”
Mrs. Waddington started.
“All this nonsense you have been talking has made me forget about your father. Put on your dress and go down to him at once. Reason with him! If he refuses to come in to dinner, we shall be thirteen, and my party will be ruined.”
“I’ll be ready in a couple of minutes. Where is he?”
“In the library.”
“I’ll be right down.”
“And, when you have seen him, go into the drawing-room and talk to Lord Hunstanton. He is all alone.”
“Very well, mother.”
“Mater.”
“Mater,” said Molly.
She was one of those nice, dutiful girls.