The Beauty and the Bolshevist

								

and had thought him a very fine figure of a man, so now, putting two
and two together, he said to himself, “Is he here to ask my blessing?”
Aloud he said nothing, but just nodded; it was a belief that had
translated itself into a habit—to let the other man explain first.
“I know I’m interrupting you, Mr. Cord,” Verriman began. Mr. Cord made
a lateral gesture with his hand, as if all he had were at the disposal
of his friends, even his most precious asset—time.
“It’s something very important,” Eddie went on. “I’m worried. I haven’t
slept. Mr. Cord, have you checked up Crystal’s economic beliefs
lately?”
“Lately?” said Mr. Cord. “I don’t know that I ever have. Have a cigar?”
Eddie waved the cigar aside as if his host had offered it to him in the
midst of a funeral service.
“Well, I have,” he said, as if some one had to do a parent’s duty, “and
I’ve been very much distressed—shocked. I had a long talk with her
about it at the dance last night.”
“About economics?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why, Eddie, don’t I seem to remember your telling me you were in love
with Crystal?”
“Yes, Mr. Cord, I am.”
“Then what do you want to talk economics for? Or is it done like that
nowadays?”
“I don’t want to,” answered Eddie, almost in a wail. “She does. She
gets me going and then we quarrel because she has terrible opinions.
She talks wildly. I have to point out to her that she’s wrong. And last
night she told me”—Eddie glanced about to be sure he was not
overheard—“she told me that she was a socialist.”
Mr. Cord had just lit the very cigar which Eddie had waved away, and he
took the first critical puffs at it before he answered:
“Did you ask her what that was?”
“No—no—I didn’t.”
“Missed a trick there, Eddie.”
It was impossible to accuse so masklike a magnate of frivolity, but
Eddie was often dissatisfied with Mr. Cord’s reactions to the serious
problems of life.
“But don’t you think it’s terrible,” he went on, eagerly, “for Crystal
to be a socialist? In this age of the world—civilization trembling on
the brink—chaos”—Eddie made a gesture toward the perfectly ordered
shelves containing Poor’s Manual—“staring us in the face? You say
that the half-baked opinions of an immature girl make no difference?”
“No, I shouldn’t say that—at least not to Crystal,” murmured her
father.
“But the mere fact that she picks up such ideas proves that they are in
the air about us and that terrifies me—terrifies me,” ended Eddie, his
voice rising as he saw that his host intended to remain perfectly calm.
“Which terrifies you, Eddie—Crystal or the revolution?”
“The general discontent—the fact that civilization is tr—”
“Oh yes, that,” said Mr. Cord, hastily. “Well, I wouldn’t allow that to
terrify me, Eddie. I should have more sympathy with ou if it had been