“The chit may be right, she may be right,” conceded Mr. Montague sadly.
Later, while the ladies were again in the kitchen, Mr. Montague, after suggesting, “Something in the nature of an after-dinner cordial,” quaffed one for himself and followed it with the one he had poured out for a declining guest who still treasured the flavour of his one aperitif.
He then led the way to the small parlour where he placed in action on the phonograph a record said to contain the ravings of John McCullough in his last hours. He listened to this emotionally.
“That’s the sort of technique,” he said, “that the so—called silver screen has made but a memory.” He lighted his pipe, and identified various framed photographs that enlivened the walls of the little room. Many of them were of himself at an earlier age.
“My dear mother-in-law,” he said, pointing to another. “A sterling artist, and in her time an ornament of the speaking stage. I was on tour when her last days came. She idolized me, and passed away with my name on her lips. Her last request was that a photograph of me should be placed in her casket before it went to its final resting place.”
He paused, his emotion threatening to overcome him. Presently he brushed a hand across his eyes and continued, “I discovered later that they had picked out the most wretched of all my photographs—an atrocious thing I had supposed was destroyed. Can you imagine it?”
Apparently it was but the entrance of his daughter that saved him from an affecting collapse. His daughter removed the record of John McCullough’s ravings, sniffed at it, and put a fox-trot in its place.
“He’s got to learn to dance,” she explained, laying hands upon the guest.
“Dancing—dancing!” murmured Mr. Montague, as if the very word recalled bitter memories.
With brimming eyes he sat beating time to the fox-trot measure while Merton Gill proved to all observers that his mastery of this dance would, if ever at all achieved, be only after long and discouraging effort.