Scandal: A Novel

by Cosmo Hamilton

And then Aunt Honoria opened the proceedings quietly, calmly and with all the dignity of which she was a mistress. "I have here," she said, "a bundle of anonymous letters and a cutting from a scurrilous paper. The first letter came addressed to me. Others are written to my brother and sister, and there are half a dozen which were sent to intimate friends of ours and placed in my hands by them. They are all in the same handwriting, which looks to me as though it were disguised. They began to arrive the morning after you left on your honeymoon, my dear, and have come every morning since. They take the form of a series of questions. This is the first one. "Have you taken the trouble to discover at which Church or registry your niece Beatrix and Pelham Franklin were married?" And then they run in this order. You will see that I have copied them out. "What will you do when you find that your daughter, who imagines herself to belong to the salt of the earth, is a common wanton and liar? What will you do to repair the damage that she has done to your prestige in society by humbugging the papers into printing the story of a marriage that never took place? How is it that sophisticated people of your type have accepted a man as a son-in-law without evidence of his legal right to call himself so? Do you think you set a good example to all the people who copy your ways and manners by allowing your daughter to go on the loose with any man she takes a fancy to? Have you a grudge against society in which you assume a leading position and have you made yourselves party to an unmoral and disgraceful transaction in order to hold it up to the ridicule of the world? Would you speak to a young girl, however well-born and wealthy, who to hide a love affair with one man bluffed a marriage with a mere acquaintance? What decent man will marry your daughter after she has been 'honeymooning' with another? Don't you know that truth will out and that already tongues are busy with the names of Vanderdyke and Franklin? Aren't you sufficiently worldly to have learned that people who condone are classed with people who commit? Why not, if you have been as gullible as press and public, set things right and make what reparation you can to the members of your class? Do you want the name of Beatrix Vanderdyke to be placed among those of notorious chorus girls? Why not at once institute a search among the registrations of marriages and force the guilty couple, now basking in the light of a mock honeymoon, to confession and penitence?"

"Don't go on, don't go on," cried Mr. Vanderdyke. "I can't stand it, I tell you. I can't stand it!" His voice was almost hysterical and his gesture almost feminine.

"These dreadful questions," said Mrs. Vanderdyke, in a low voice, "give me mental sickness."

Franklin sat quite still, with his hands clenched.

Beatrix looked as though she had been turned to stone. Had all these hideous things grown out of one impetuous moment?

"I will gladly pass over the rest," said Aunt Honoria, "and come to the cutting from the paper that was sent to me three days ago. This," she added in a voice that became suddenly sharp with anger, "calls for immediate action, Pelham, and is the reason of your being here to-night."

"Please read it," said Franklin.

Aunt Honoria read, holding the clipping as though it held contamination. It was written in the usual smart manner with the usual lascivious snigger. "There is a very precious high life scandal in the offing, so to speak,—one which will, it is said on the best authority, flutter the dovecotes of all our Best Families. Much satisfaction was recently expressed, and gallons of ink expended in fulsome congratulation, upon the marriage of a well-known amateur yachtsman to the beautiful and adventurous daughter of a multi-millionaire. No recent royal marriage was more widely commented upon. It is rumored, however, that the high-spirited young lady who, even as a débutante had shown a certain lofty disregard for the conventions, is now conducting an ultra-modern experiment with the good-looking amateur yachtsman by honeymooning with him before the legal prescription has been made out, with the view, perhaps, to ultimate marriage. This sort of thing has been perpetrated, it is true, though without any attempt to mislead the public, by persons of artistic temperament and no social position to lose, but the question is being very generally asked as to how this peculiar proceeding will presently be viewed by American Society, which still clings to one or two hard and fast standards. I shall certainly watch the outcome with immense curiosity and shall be especially interested to see how soon the matrons on and near Fifth Avenue will show how the wind is blowing in their treatment of a certain member of the girl's family who has constituted herself the guide and mentor of her set for many years."

Although he had read this cunningly offensive thing over many times, Mr. Vanderdyke squirmed in his chair and put one hand over his eyes. His fastidious and beautiful wife, usually too self-centered to be concerned with the troubles of other people, gave him a glance of very genuine sympathy. It had been the fetish of them both to regard convention as a sort of religion, and she knew, unable herself to translate her indignation and disgust into words, how deeply her husband took this utterly undeserved scurrility to heart. Like him and like Aunt Honoria she had no suspicion of there being anything in the least out of order in the marriage.

Beatrix still sat as though she had been turned to stone.