Mr. and Mrs. Sên

by Louise Jordan Miln

“Of course I will, dear.” The wife was delighted. Charlie did not often back up her social activities, or much care who came to dinner or who did not, so long as his dinner was good and he was not expected to interrupt it with too much small talk, though he certainly preferred the did-nots to the dids. Lady Snow was very pleased.

Ivy Gilbert was not.

“I think,” she said clearly, “I’d wait first, and see if Mr. Sên did call, Emma.”

Husband and wife looked at her in blank surprise, and they crossed a question to each other’s eyes. Never before had any one heard Ivy Gilbert veto any wish or command of her cousin Charles.

“He promised to call,” Emma Snow said haltingly.

“Then he will call!” Sir Charles pronounced. “A Chinese word is the best bond on earth. I’d take it before A-1 at Lloyd’s any day of the week.”

Reginald Hamilton said nothing—though his big black-brown eyes sulked, and, to Lady Snow’s relief, the subject did drop then.

Reginald de Courcy Seymour Hamilton sounds an English (not to say aristocratic) name—but it wasn’t. At least its supporter was neither. He did not even hail from Boston or—to drop down the social and intellectual ladder very far—not even from New York. San Francisco could not claim him, and New Orleans would not have owned him. He had been born in Chicago and still ornamented that village-city of inordinate mixtures when he was at home. What he was doing in Washington nobody knew, unless he did, which was improbable—for no one had ever known him to do anything anywhere except to take the very greatest care of his person and clothes, and to spend as much money as he could contrive to wrench from relatives—and others. He was very handsome; a little too plump, a little too smiling; but undeniably handsome, and his clothes were many, costly and very beautiful. He spoke with what he flattered himself (or perhaps one should say flattered it) was an English accent—when he remembered to do so—which was a matter of fits and starts, that made the prettiest patchwork of his speech. A sentence that started off with the broadest of a’s often ended off with a few pronounced as the alphabet’s first letter is in rain and in bank. No one had ever seen him without a flower in his coat—except at funerals—and oftenest it was an orchid. There was little harm in the fellow—unless intense love and over-valuation of self be evil. The worst thing about him was his parents. That is true of many of us. He hadn’t a penny capital—of his own—but he had a sybarite income (though it fluctuated) and large prospects.

His father was a sensational Baptist clergyman who had made, and contrived to hold, a meteoric “hit” in Chicago. Chicago likes character—even pseudo-character. Of the latter the Rev. Joseph Hamilton had and to spare. There were Chicagoans who thought him an abomination, some who held him both a fraud and a nuisance, many who thought him a joke—and Chicago loves its joke. But his congregation adored him—more than perhaps men should a man—a congregation of shrewd business folk—wealthy, most of them, many of them with heads as hard as the shell of their adamant creed. To catch and to keep the affection and the respect of such men would seem an accomplishment of nothing less than genius. If that is true, Mr. Joseph Hamilton had a touch of genius—of a sort. He was as thin as Reginald de Courcy Seymour promised to be plump. His voice was as sharp and hard as Reggie’s was soft and creamy. His delivery was wonderful—more “dramatic” than would have been tolerated on the Surrey side of the London stage. He fancied his sermons. And those who carped at their quality could not gainsay their quantity. He fancied his “letters” even more. His people gloated over both. Old men who had burned and shivered over night at his diatribes, went downstairs in their pyjamas (or more old-fashioned sleeping raiment) on Monday morning to snatch the Times, Inter-Ocean or Tribune before any one else could, and to reread the wonderful discourse before they shaved and descended to cornbeef hash or fish-cakes or spareribs and buckwheat cakes and maple syrup. He had been convicted of plagiarism more than once. His congregation didn’t accept the proven fact. Gage him, sum him up any way you will, he must have had magnetism—a magnetism that only some felt—others it repelled. The wife of his bosom (the word is but a figure of speech—they both were more than flat-chested, each was concave-breasted—Mrs. Hamilton the more so. She scooped in alarmingly, for her hips were wide and her bones were big, and she did not pad. She was far too proud and far too moral to do that) was less popular than her husband—even in their own church. Beyond it she was little known and less courted than known.

Mr. Hamilton earned—that is, received—a very large salary, and earned almost as much more with his pen, or, as some nastily said, the pens of others, and not a little by lecturing and publication in book form of both sermons and lectures. Mrs. Hamilton had a very rich and not ungenerous bachelor brother, a Chicago publisher, a straightforward, sterling man who had ability, if you like, for his country school-going had been brief and scant, and from a business start as clerk at two dollars a week in a Peoria bookstore he now was secure in a fortune of seven figures. Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton had two children—Reginald and Emmeline—and no one made any doubt—unless the millionaire publisher did—that Reginald and Emmeline Hamilton would prove their uncle’s sole heirs. Certainly it never occurred to his sister that her brother might rob them by leaving anything to her over their dear heads. The Hamiltons were devoted to their children and admired them intensely. To be fair, both Emmeline and Reggie loved their parents very much, and were proud of their father.