Part 29 (1/2)
”Thanks,” said Winifred, rather wearily, ”I am not an epicure.”
”Oh, but you can be trained to be!” Graham answered encouragingly. ”It is mainly a question of practice, though I must say that I was born with the taste,--inherited from my father, I believe; and I've heard him tell how once when I was five years old I scolded the butler for sending up the Burgundy iced.”
”How precocious!” murmured Winifred.
”Well, of course, that was unusual; but if children were taken young and had half the attention paid to their palates that folks give to their eyes and ears, with their fool drawing-teachers and music-masters in the attempt to enable them to bore somebody with their twopenny accomplishments, we should soon have a race of gourmets; and gourmets make cooks. No chef can do his best without appreciation. For the matter of that, a cook must be born,--he must have the feeling for his business. Now there was a fellow in England--My dear,” he called out to his wife at the other end of the table, ”was it Windermere or Gra.s.smere where we had those excellent breaded trout?”
”I forget,” Mrs. Graham answered; ”but I know it was the one where Wordsworth lived. Which was that, Mr. Flint?”
”Now don't interrupt us,” Miss Wabash said in her loud, unshaded tones; ”Mr. Flint has just consented to let me tell his fortune by his hand.”
Flint looked rather foolish. He was in that awkward position where it seemed equally fatuous to a.s.sent or decline; but deciding on the former course, he held out his hand, saying, ”Spare my character as far as you conscientiously can, Miss Wabash, and remember in extenuation of my shortcomings that I did not have the advantage of being brought up in Chicago.”
All tete-a-tete conversation now ceased, and the attention of the company was riveted upon Flint and his neighbor. Winifred felt herself growing intensely nervous. She had no fear of Miss Wabash's extraordinary power of divination, but she had still less confidence in the delicacy of her perceptions, and she dreaded some remark which would embarra.s.s her through Flint's embarra.s.sment.
In her present high-strung condition, her apprehension made her a little faint for a moment. The centrepiece of orchids and roses seemed a vague ma.s.s of rather oppressive color and perfume. The women's faces and necks looked like reddish blobs with flashes of light where the jewels came. The broad white expanse of the men's s.h.i.+rt fronts alone retained a certain steadiness. Hastily she grasped her gla.s.s of champagne and drained it dry. It was the first wine she had tasted that night, and it braced her nerves at once. Fortunately no one observed her paleness, for everybody's attention was fixed upon Miss Wabash as she bent over Flint's open palm.
”A surprising hand!” that young lady was saying; ”really in some ways quite the most interesting I ever came across. I must report it to Chiro. The fingers very pointed--that ought to indicate idealism, but the knots on the joints imply practical critical sense. It looks as though the mind were always grasping at some ideal and were held back by the critical faculty.”
”Don't blink your points, Mamie!” called out the host, facetiously. At this allusion to sporting reminiscences, all the men laughed, but the women rather resented the interruption, as a frivolous treatment of a serious subject.
”You have learned your profession thoroughly,” said Flint, coloring a little in spite of himself. ”I shall begin to be afraid of you in earnest, if you are so discerning.”
”Oh, I have only begun!” answered Miss Wabash, kindled by success to greater vivacity. ”That thumb shows marked firmness (see, I can scarcely bend it back at all); perhaps, if I knew you better, I should say obstinacy.”
Every one laughed.
”The fingers,” she went on, ”show more sensitiveness; and the mounds--oh, those mean a great deal! Mars is firm and prominent--what you undertake you will carry through, if it kills you and everybody else.”
”What a fellow to buy on margin!” said the broker.
”He doesn't seem to have succeeded in getting married for all his perseverance,” laughed Mr. Graham.
Winifred, in spite of her emotion, found time to reflect on the vulgarity of the phrase, and s.h.i.+vered a little. Flint colored, though he held his hand quite steady.
”Perhaps he'll buy her sixty,” chuckled the broker, pleased with his technical wit.
”He'd better hurry up,” said Miss Wabash, ”for his life-line is short.
He's had experiences though. May I tell them, Mr. Flint?”
”I give you permission.”
”Well, then, you were in love once a long time ago, but there were reasons why you couldn't marry, and so you gave up the affair and have never really cared for any one since; but two or three women have been desperately in love with you.”
”Mademoiselle, respect the seal of the confessional!” said Flint, smiling, but drawing away his hand with a quick instinctive motion which did not escape Winifred.
”Ho! ho!” called out Graham, ”perhaps there is more in palmistry than I thought. Go on, Mamie, and give us the history of the Salvation Army episode and the Hallelujah la.s.sie!”
Flint cursed inwardly, cursed everything and almost everybody, himself most of all. What was he here for? What if Graham _was_ the chief stockholder in the ”Trans-Continental,” he was a coa.r.s.e-grained sensualist, with whom no gentleman should a.s.sociate. (This estimate by no means did Graham justice, but Flint was not in a judicial mood.) Then this crack-brained girl with her foolish fake of a theory--and he had been idiot enough to fall into this trap, and now Winifred would think he had boasted of Nora Costello as a conquest, perhaps bragged about saving her life. Oh, the whole thing was past endurance!