Phebe, Her Profession Part 24

"I'm sure I don't know."

"Who is he here to see?"

"n.o.body, apparently, unless his own fair face," Billy answered irreverently.

"Cousin Ted, did you say you knew him?"

"I'm not sure; but it seems to me I met him once."

"Oh, I do hope so. I want just once to meet him and hear him talk."

"Even if his voice has a falsetto crack in it?" Billy inquired.

"Even if he's--dumb!" Cicely's climax was lost in a burst of laughter, in the midst of which she fled from the table.

"Never you mind!" she proclaimed from the doorway. "I'll find a way to meet him yet. You needn't laugh at me, either, for you're every one of you hero-wors.h.i.+ppers, if you'd only own it." Then she crossed over to the piazza of Valhalla, where Phebe was drying her hair in the suns.h.i.+ne.

Phebe received the great news disdainfully.

"Oh, that man!" she said, with something that came dangerously near to being a sniff. "I saw him. After most of the people were gone, he came down and went into the water."

"Really?" Cicely's tone was rapt. "I wish I'd seen him. How did he look?"

"Atrocious. He is bow-legged, and he wore a rose-colored suit. Against the green of the waves, he looked like a huge pink wishbone."

"Did he swim beautifully?"

Phebe shook her hair back from her shoulders.

"Like a merman," she said; "a forsaken merman with the gout."

"Babe!"

"Well, if you must know the truth, the abject, literal truth, he hung his clothes on a hickory limb, as far as going near the water was concerned.

He waded in up to his ankles and stood there, s.h.i.+vering, s.h.i.+vering a day like this! Then he trotted back and forth a few times and went back to the bathhouse again without letting a wave touch him. b.o.o.by! If he played golf, he would probably get his caddie to take him around the links in a wheelbarrow. I do hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing the creature get boiled." And, with a final flirt of her hair, she marched away into the house.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

For the next week, Cicely stalked her lion patiently, warily and in vain.

Gifford Barrett had come down to Quantuck, firmly resolved that on no conditions would he consent to be lionized. His six weeks in Maine had been all that he could endure. He had at last come to the wise conclusion that his talent, if he had any, belonged to himself and his work, and was not to be spread out thin on biscuits and served up at afternoon teas. He had fled from Maine and from his admiring friends in a mood dangerously near to disgust. His nostrils were tired of incense. He wished ozone, unflavored with anything whatsoever. The symptom was a healthy one and portended good things for the future. Meanwhile, it led him to choose a resort where he knew no one, where he himself was unknown, and where he could be as independent as he liked.

During the first week of his stay, he accomplished his ends. He went his own way at his own times; he ignored the many inviting glances cast in his direction; he talked only to the bathing master, the native fishermen and the waiter at his table. With observant eyes, he took in the least details of his surroundings; but he did it in an unseeing fas.h.i.+on that completely misled the members of the summer colony who discussed him largely under their awnings and wrangled solemnly over the important question as to whether he was surly, or only shy.

On his side, Gifford Barrett was gaining considerable amus.e.m.e.nt from the morning conventions on the beach. As a general thing, he only watched the people in groups, and entertained himself with making shrewd guesses as to the probable relations.h.i.+ps existing in those groups. Only two individuals made distinct impressions upon him. One of these was the tall, lithe girl in the black suit, who walked as well as she swam; the other was also a girl, but younger and less good-looking, and Gifford Barrett found himself wondering how she could possibly be in so many places at once. He appeared to be always falling over her, always coming upon her path, on the cliff, on the moors, at the tiny post office where it seemed to him that he spent half of his time waiting for the leisurely distribution of the mails to be completed. She usually wore a grey bicycle suit, and she was invariably attended by a small grey dog who took unwarrantable liberties, in the post office, with people's trouser legs and even had been known to whet his teeth on the softer portions of umbrellas. To tell the truth, he paid more attention to the dog than he did to the girl; and he was utterly unconscious of the expression of glee that crossed Cicely's face, one day, when he exclaimed,--

"Get out, you small brute!" and accompanied the words with a pettish little kick which reduced the dog to a yelping frenzy.

On one other occasion Cicely had been conscious of penetrating to the nerve centres of her hero; although, fortunately for her peace of mind, she did not know the exact way in which she had accomplished the feat.

Early one morning, Mr. Barrett had been strolling along the road nearest the edge of the cliff when as if by chance, there had floated down upon his astonished ears, a high girlish voice singing the second theme of his _Alan Breck Overture_. For a moment, his lips had curled into a complacent little smile; the next minute, he had sucked in his breath sharply between his clenched teeth. In her excitement, Cicely had mistaken her distance; she had flatted by a full half-tone the final upper note, reducing the tonal climax of the overture to the level of a comic song.

A few days later, however, Cicely was destined to make an impression upon something besides the nerve centres of her hero. As a rule, Mr.

Barrett took his baths at odd hours, either going to the beach in the early morning, or else delaying until the rest of the world was at the noon dinner which it sought ravenously, the moment it left the beach.

On this particular day, however, his watch apparently had played him false, and he came down upon the sand just as the throng of bathers was at its height. In the eyes of Dragons' Row, he immediately became an object of derision, for it was as Phebe had said, there was certainly no doubt whatever of his being extremely bow-legged, and, strong and powerful as he looked, he kept himself well away from the shock of the breaking waves.

After his wonted fas.h.i.+on, he paddled about in the edge of the water for a few moments, then turned to walk back to the sh.o.r.e. The next moment proved to be his undoing. Unconscious for the once of his appearing, Cicely had been swimming back and forth just outside the line of surf; then borne on the crest of a wave higher by far than any of its fellows had been, she came floating towards the beach. She landed on her feet as usual; but the wave, heavier than she expected, swept her off her balance and sent her sliding up the sand, straight against the retreating heels of her hero. There were two hurried exclamations, there was a splash; then the backward flow caught them, pulled them down and they reached the line of breakers again just in time to be boiled sociably together in the next in coming wave.

Gifford Barrett shook the water from his eyes and rubbed his right arm a little anxiously, as he staggered to his feet again. Cicely had fled to Allyn's side, and the young man nodded curtly to her as he stalked back to the sh.o.r.e. At the water's edge, he was greeted with a voice which sounded strangely familiar to his ears.

"How do you do? Vat was ve time you got boiled; wasn't it?"

No childish voice ever fell unheeded on Gifford Barrett's ears. The stoutest spot in his mental armor yielded to the touch of small fingers, and some of his best comrades.h.i.+ps had been with tiny boys and girls. Now, in an instant, all his sense of injured dignity fell away from him, and the watchers under the awnings wondered at the sudden kindliness in his face, as he grasped Mac's pudgy fist.

"Why, Mac, who ever dreamed of seeing you here, old man!"

"I live here now," Mac said gravely; "me and my mamma and everybody, only papa."

"I thought you lived in Helena."

"Not now. We like it better here; it's so funny to sit in ve sand and build pies. Can you build pies?"

"Yes, and forts."

Mac fell to prancing delightedly, quite regardless of the havoc his small shoes were creating among the bare toes of his companion.

"Oh, can you? Truly, no joking? Make me one now."

"Mac!" The call came from the nearest awning.

"Vat's mamma," Mac said. "She wants us. Come." And he tugged at Gifford Barrett's hand.

"Not just now, old man."

"Come. Aunt Teddy's vere, and all ve rest. Come."

"Mac!" This time, the voice was more decided.

"Yes, mamma; but he won't come."

"Mac, come here at once."

There was a brief skirmish; then as usual, Mac conquered, and Gifford Barrett was led, an unwilling victim, to the awning where sat Mac's mother, beyond her a serried rank of Mac's relatives and, beyond them all, a tall girl in a black suit who watched him with dancing eyes.

The situation was not an easy one. It was Theodora who relieved it.

"Isn't this Mr. Gifford Barrett?" she asked, rising to meet him with the easy dignity which she a.s.sumed at times and which made her husband feel so proud of her. "You may not remember me, Mrs. Farrington; but I think I met you in New York, two years ago, at a dinner that Mrs. Goodyear gave."

And, as she spoke, Theodora was distinctly grateful for the accident which had left a dozen old letters in the tray of her trunk.