The Husbands of Edith

by George Barr McCutcheon

"I suppose I'm expected to ask why," frigidly.

"Certainly. Because, if she was, I couldn't. Do you get the point?" He crossed his legs and looked insupportably sure of himself.

They reached Munich late in the afternoon and went at once to the Hotel Vier Jahretzeiten, where they were to find the Odell-Carneys.

Mr. Odell-Carney was a middle-aged Englishman of the extremely uninitiative type. He was tall and narrow and distant, far beyond what is commonly accepted as blasé; indeed, he was especially slow of speech, even for an Englishman, quite as if it were an everlasting question with him whether it was worth while to speak at all. One had the feeling when listening to Mr. Odell-Carney that he was being favoured beyond words; it took him so long to say anything, that, if one were but moderately bright, he could finish the sentence mentally some little time in advance of the speaker, and thus be prepared to properly appreciate that which otherwise might have puzzled him considerably. It could not be said, however, that Mr. Odell-Carney was ponderous; he was merely the effectual result of delay. Perhaps it is safe to agree with those who knew him best; they maintained that Odell-Carney was a pose, nothing more.

His wife was quite the opposite in nearly every particular, except height and angularity. She was bony and red-faced and opinionated. A few sallow years with a rapid, profligate nobleman had brought her, in widowhood, to a fine sense of appreciation of the slow-going though tiresomely unpractical men of the Odell-Carney type. It mattered little that he made poor investment of the money she had sequestered from his lordship; he had kept her in the foreground by associating himself with every big venture that interested the financial smart set. Notwithstanding the fact that he never was known to have any money, he was looked upon as a financier of the highest order. Which is saying a great deal in these unfeeling days of pounds and shillings.

Of course Mrs. Odell-Carney was dressed as all rangy, long-limbed Englishwomen are prone to dress,—after a model peculiarly not her own. She looked ridiculously ungraceful alongside the smart, chic American women, and yet not one of them but would have given her boots to be able to array herself as one of these. There was no denying the fact that Mrs. Odell-Carney was a "regular tip-topper," as Mr. Rodney was only too eager to say. She had the air of a born leader; that is to say, she could be gracious when occasion demanded, without being patronising.

In due course of time the Medcrofts and Miss Fowler were presented to the distinguished couple. This function was necessarily delayed until Odell-Carney had time to go into the details of a particularly annoying episode of the afternoon. He was telling the story to his friend Rodney, and of course everything was at a standstill until he got through.

It seems that Mr. Odell-Carney felt the need of a nap at three o'clock. He gave strict injunctions that there was to be no noise in the halls while he slept, and then went into his room and stretched out. Anyone who has stopped at the Hotel Four Seasons will have no difficulty in recalling the electric hall-bells which serve to attract the chambermaids to given spots. If one needs the chambermaid, he presses the button in his room and a little bell in the hall tinkles furiously until she responds and shuts it off. In that way one is sure that she has heard and is coming, a most admirable bit of German ingenuity. If she happens to be taking her lunch at the time, the bell goes on ringing until she returns; it is a faithful bell. Coming back to Odell-Carney: the maid on his floor was making up a room in close proximity when a most annoying thing happened to her. A porter who had reason to dislike her came along and turned her key from the outside, locking her in the room. She couldn't get out, and she had been warned against making a sound that might disturb the English guest. With rare intelligence, she did not scream or make an outcry, but wisely proceeded to press the button for a chambermaid. Then she evidently sat down to wait. To make the story short, she rang her own call-bell for two hours, no other maid condescending to notice the call, which speaks volumes for the almost martial system of the hotel. The bell was opposite the narrator's door. Is it, therefore, surprising that he required a great deal of time to tell all that he felt? It was not so much of what he did that he spoke at such great length, but of what he felt.

"'Pon me soul," he exploded in the end, twisting his mustache with nervous energy, "it was the demdest nap I ever had. I didn't close my eyes, c'nfend me if I did."

While Odell-Carney was studiously adjusting his eyeglass for a final glare at an unoffending 'bus boy who almost dropped his tray of plates in consequence, Mr. Rodney fussily intervened and introduced the Medcrofts. Mrs. Odell-Carney was delightfully gracious; she was sure that no nicer party could have been "got together." Her husband may have been excessively slow in most things, but he was quick to recognise and appreciate feminine beauty of face and figure. He unbent at once in the presence of the unmistakably handsome Fowler sisters; his expressive "chawmed" was in direct contrast to his ordinary manner of acknowledging an introduction.