After an awkward pause of about three and a quarter minutes, Mr. Brewster swallowed once or twice, and finally spoke.
“Lu!”
“Yes, father?”
“Is this true?”
Lucille’s grey eyes clouded over with perplexity and apprehension.
“True?”
“Have you really inflicted this–THIS on me for a son-in-law?” Mr. Brewster swallowed a few more times, Archie the while watching with a frozen fascination the rapid shimmying of his new relative’s Adam’s-apple. “Go away! I want to have a few words alone with this– This–WASSYOURDAMNAME?” he demanded, in an overwrought manner, addressing Archie for the first time.
“I told you, father. It’s Moom.”
“Moom?”
“It’s spelt M-o-f-f-a-m, but pronounced Moom.”
“To rhyme,” said Archie, helpfully, “with Bluffinghame.”
“Lu,” said Mr. Brewster, “run away! I want to speak to-to-to–”
“You called me THIS before,” said Archie.
“You aren’t angry, father, dear?” said Lucilla
“Oh no! Oh no! I’m tickled to death!”
When his daughter had withdrawn, Mr. Brewster drew a long breath.
“Now then!” he said.
“Bit embarrassing, all this, what!” said Archie, chattily. “I mean to say, having met before in less happy circs. and what not. Rum coincidence and so forth! How would it be to bury the jolly old hatchet–start a new life–forgive and forget–learn to love each other–and all that sort of rot? I’m game if you are. How do we go? Is it a bet?”
Mr. Brewster remained entirely unsoftened by this manly appeal to his better feelings.
“What the devil do you mean by marrying my daughter?”
Archie reflected.
“Well, it sort of happened, don’t you know! You know how these things ARE! Young yourself once, and all that. I was most frightfully in love, and Lu seemed to think it wouldn’t be a bad scheme, and one thing led to another, and–well, there you are, don’t you know!”
“And I suppose you think you’ve done pretty well for yourself?”
“Oh, absolutely! As far as I’m concerned, everything’s topping! I’ve never felt so braced in my life!”
“Yes!” said Mr. Brewster, with bitterness, “I suppose, from your view-point, everything IS ‘topping.’ You haven’t a cent to your name, and you’ve managed to fool a rich man’s daughter into marrying you. I suppose you looked me up in Bradstreet before committing yourself?”
This aspect of the matter had not struck Archie until this moment.
“I say!” he observed, with dismay. “I never looked at it like that before! I can see that, from your point of view, this must look like a bit of a wash-out!”
“How do you propose to support Lucille, anyway?”
Archie ran a finger round the inside of his collar. He felt embarrassed, His father-in-law was opening up all kinds of new lines of thought.
“Well, there, old bean,” he admitted, frankly, “you rather have me!” He turned the matter over for a moment. “I had a sort of idea of, as it were, working, if you know what I mean.”
“Working at what?”
“Now, there again you stump me somewhat! The general scheme was that I should kind of look round, you know, and nose about and buzz to and fro till something turned up. That was, broadly speaking, the notion!”
“And how did you suppose my daughter was to live while you were doing all this?”
“Well, I think,” said Archie, “I THINK we rather expected YOU to rally round d bit for the nonce!”
“I see! You expected to live on me?”
“Well, you put it a bit crudely, but–as far as I had mapped anything out–that WAS what you might call the general scheme of procedure. You don’t think much of it, what? Yes? No?”
Mr. Brewster exploded.
“No! I do not think much of it! Good God! You go out of my hotel–MY hotel–calling it all the names you could think of–roasting it to beat the band–”
“Trifle hasty!” murmured Archie, apologetically. “Spoke without thinking. Dashed tap had gone DRIP-DRIP-DRIP all night–kept me awake–hadn’t had breakfast–bygones be bygones–!”
“Don’t interrupt! I say, you go out of my hotel, knocking it as no one has ever knocked it since it was built, and you sneak straight off and marry my daughter without my knowledge.”
“Did think of wiring for blessing. Slipped the old bean, somehow. You know how one forgets things!”