When the real season opened, you might have thought that the whole
venture was Mr. Sam Langham's and that he had risked the whole of his
money in it. Without being officious, he had words of anxious advice for
the Darlings, severally and collectively. His early breakfasts in Smoke
House with Mary, the chef beaming upon the efficient and friendly pair,
lost something of their free and easy social quality, and became
opportunities for the gravest discussions of ways and means.
The opening day would see every spare room in the place occupied--by a
man. To Mary it seemed a little curious that so few women, so few
families, and so many bachelors had applied for rooms. But to Sam
Langham the reasons for this were clear and definite.
"It was the picture in the first issues of your advertisement that did
it. I only compliment and felicitate you when I say that every bachelor
who saw that picture must have made up his mind to come here if he
possibly could. And that every woman who saw it must have felt that she
could spend a happier summer somewhere else. Now, if you had circulated
a picture of half a dozen men, each as good-looking as your brother
Arthur, the results would have been just the opposite."
"Women aren't such idiots about other women's looks as you think they
are," said Mary.
"I didn't say they were idiots; I intimated that they were sensible. The
prettiest woman at a summer resort always has a good time--not the best,
necessarily, but very good. Now, no woman could look at that picture of
you and your sisters and expect to be considered the prettiest woman
_here_. Could she, Chef?"
Chef laughed a loud, scornful, defiant, gesticulant, Gallic laugh. His
good-natured features focussed into a scathing Parisian sneer; he turned
a delicate omelette over in the air and said, "Lala!"
"There are," continued Mr. Langham, "only half a dozen women in the
world who can compare in looks with you and your sisters. There's the
Princess Oducalchi--your mother. There's the Countess of Kingston, Mrs.
Waring, Miss Virginia Clark--but these merely compare. They don't
compete."
Mr. Langham tried to look very sly and wicked, and he sang in a humming
voice: "Oh, to be a Mussulman, now that spring is here."
"Coffee?" said Mary.
"Please."
"Well," said she, as she poured, "the whys and wherefores don't matter.
It's to be a bachelor resort--that seems definitely settled. But I think
we had better send the triplets away. I don't want the Pritchard and
Herring episodes repeated while my nerves are in this present state. And
there's Lee--if she isn't leading Renier into one folly after another, I
don't know what she is doing. They seem to think that keeping an inn is
a mere excuse for flirtation."
"Don't send them away," said Langham. "If you sent those three girls to
a place where there weren't any men at all--they'd flirt with their
shadows. Better have 'em flirting where you can watch 'em than where you
can't. And besides--are you quite sure that the Pritchard and Herring
episodes were mere flirtations? Day before yesterday I came upon Miss
Gay by accident; she was practising casting."
"That's how she spends half her time."
"But she was practising with Pritchard's rod! Yesterday I came upon her
in the same place----"
"By accident?" smiled Mary.
"By design," he said honestly. "And this time she wasn't casting. She
had the rod lying across her knees, and her eyes were turned dreamily
toward the bluest and most distant mountain-top."
"'Why do you look at that mountain?' I said.
"'Because it's blue, too,' said she.
"'And what makes you blue?' I asked.
"'The same cause that makes the mountain blue,' said she.
"'Hum,' said I. 'Then it must be distance.'
"'Something like that,' she said. 'I sometimes think I'm the most distant
person in the world.'
"'You're probably not the only person who thinks that!' said I.
"And she said, 'No? Really?' And that was all I could get out of her.
Except that, just as I was walking away, I heard a sharp whistling sound
and my cap--my new plaid cap--was suddenly tweaked from the top of my
head and hung in a tree. She must have practised a lot with that rod of
Pritchard's. It was a beautiful cast----"
"She might have put your eye out!" exclaimed Mary.
"She hung the apple of my eye in a tree," said he dolefully. "You know
that one with the green and brown? And last night it rained."
"I hope she expressed sorrow," said Mary.
"She was going to, but I got laughing and then she did."
"What a dear you are!" exclaimed Mary. "And so you think she's making
herself mournful over Mr. Pritchard? And what are the reasons for
thinking that Phyllis is serious about Mr. Herring?"
"He's sent for blue-prints of his property outside Boston, and they are
busy with plans for landscaping it. Narrow escape that! I didn't let on;
but the second day I thought he was a goner. I did."
Mary sighed.
"We might just as well have called it a matrimonial agency in the first
place instead of an inn."
Mr. Langham rose reluctantly.
"I have an engagement with Miss Maud," he explained.
The faintest ripple of disappointment flitted across Mary's forehead.
"I've promised to help her with her books," said he. "Some of the
journal entries puzzle her; and she has an idea that The Inn ought to
have more capital. And we are going into that, too."
"I hope," said Mary, "that you aren't going to lend us money without
consulting me."
Chef was in a distant corner, quite out of ear-shot. And Mr. Langham,
emboldened by one of the most delicious breakfasts he had ever eaten,
shot an arch glance at Miss Darling.
"I wouldn't consult you about lending money," he said; "I wouldn't
consult you about giving money. But any time you'll let me consult you
about _sharing_ money----"
Panic overtook him, and he turned and fled. But upon Mary's brow was no
longer any ripple of disappointment--only the unbroken alabaster of
smooth serenity. She reached for the household keys and said to herself:
"Maud is a steady girl--even if the rest of us aren't."
She caught a glimpse of herself in the bottom of a highly polished
copper utensil and couldn't help being pleased with what she saw.
On the way to the office Mr. Langham fell in with Arthur. This one,
Uncas scolding and chatting upon his shoulder, was starting off for a
day's botanizing--or dreaming maybe.
"Arthur--one moment, please," said Langham. "As the head of the family
I want to consult you about something."
"Yes?" said Arthur sweetly. "Of course, Uncas, you are too noisy." And
he put the offended little beast into his green collecting case.
"I never would have come here," said Mr. Langham, "if it hadn't been for
that advertisement."
Arthur frowned slightly.
"You mean----"
"Yes. But I came," said Mr. Langham, "not as a pagan Turk but as a
Christian gentleman. I was just about to take passage for Liverpool when
I saw your sister Mary looking out at me from _The Four Seasons_. And so
I wrote to ask if I could come here. I have lived well, but I am not
disappointed. I am very rich----"
"My dear Sam," said Arthur, "you are the best fellow in the world. What
do you want of me?"
"To know that you think I'd try my best to make a girl happy if she'd
let me."
"A girl?" smiled Arthur. "_Any_ girl?"
"In all the world," said Mr. Langham, "there is only one girl."
"If I were you," said Arthur, "I'd ask her what _she_ thought about
it."
Langham assumed a look of terrible gloom.
"If she didn't think well of it I'd want to cut my throat. I'd rather
keep on living in blissful uncertainty, but I wanted _you_ to
know--_why_ I am here, and _why_ I want to stay on and on."
"Why, I'm very glad to know," said Arthur, "but surely it's your own
affair."
Mr. Langham shook his head.
"Last night," said he, "I was dozing on my little piazza. Who should row
by at a distance but Miss Gay and Miss Lee. You know how sounds carry
through an Adirondack night? Miss Lee said to Miss Gay: 'I tell you he
doesn't. Not _really_. He's just a male flirt.' 'A butterfly,' said Miss
Gay."
"But how do you know they were referring to you?"
"By the way the blessed young things laughed at the word '_butterfly_'.
So I wanted you to know that my intentions are tragically serious, no
matter what others may say. Whatever I may be, and I have been insulted
more than once about my figure and my habits, I am _not_ a flirt. I am
just as romantic as if I was a living skeleton."
Here Arthur's head went back, and he laughed till the tears came. And
Mr. Langham couldn't help laughing, too.
A few moments later he was going over The Inn books with Maud Darling
and displaying for her edification an astonishing knowledge of entries
and a truly magical facility in figuring. Suddenly, apropos of something
not in the least germane, he said:
"Miss Maud, when in your opinion is the most opportune time for a man to
propose to a girl?"
"When he's got her alone," said she promptly, "and has just been
dazzling her with a display of his erudition and understanding."
And she, whom Mary had described as the one steady sister in the lot,
flung him a melting and piercing glance. But Mr. Langham was not
deceived.
"I ask you an academic question," he said, "and you give me an
absolutely cradle-snatching answer. I may _look_ easy, Miss Maud, but
there are people who will protect me."
"The best time to propose to a girl? You really want to know? I thought
you were just starting one of your jokes."
"If I am," said he, "the joke will be on me. But I _really_ want to
know."
"The best moment," said she, "is that moment in which she learns that
one of her friends or one of her sisters younger than she is engaged to
be married. When an unengaged girl hears of another girl's engagement
she has a momentary panic, during which she is helpless and defenseless.
That is my best judgment, Mr. Sam Langham. And the older the girl the
greater the panic. And now I've betrayed my sex. In fact, I have told
you absolutely all that is definitely known about girls."
Just outside the office he met Gay.
"Halloo!" she said.
He only made signs at her and flapped his arms up and down.
"_They_ can't talk," he said.
"Who can't talk?"
He held her with a stern glance, and if the word had been hissable,
would have hissed it.
"Butterflies," he said.
Then Miss Gay turned the color of a scarlet maple in the fall of the
year. Then she squealed and ran.