definitely and emphatically, and there would have been an end. But she
was far too clever for that. She plied him with sly hints and deft
insinuation. Then, when he began to scent her purpose, she took another
tack. “Did he really admire women of the Sunday Weeks type? Did he
honestly think that the unconventional, wilful, whimsical Sunday, while
perfectly charming in the unmarried state, could be tamed to matrimony?
Was he willing to have his ideal of womanhood judged by this
disturbingly fascinating creature of the 'sober gray eyes and piquant
chin'?”
Naturally he felt called upon to endorse his heroine, to defend her.
Loyalty to his art demanded that much. Then, too, there recurred to him
thoughts of Jane Temple. He could truthfully say that Sunday was a
wholly imaginative character, that she had no “original.” And yet
subconsciously he knew that all the time he was creating her there had
been before him a vision of Jane. Not a very distinct vision, to be
sure. It had been some years since he had seen her. But that bit about
the sober gray eyes and the piquant chin Jane was responsible for. He
could never forget those eyes of Jane's. He was not so certain about the
chin. It might have been piquant; and then again, it might not. At any
rate, it had been adorable, for it was Jane's.
So, while some of his enthusiasm in the defence of Sunday Weeks was due
to artistic fervor, more of it was prompted by thoughts of Jane Temple.
He did not pretend, he declared, to speak for other men; but as for
himself, he liked Sunday--he liked her very much.
The shrewd eyes of the “lady journalist” glistened. She knew her cue
when she heard it. Throwing her first theory to the four winds, she
eagerly gripped this new and tangible fact.
“Then she really is your ideal?”
He had not thought much about it, but he presumed that in a sense she
was.
“But suppose now, Mr. Brown, just suppose you should some day run across
a young woman exactly like the Sunday Weeks you have described: would
you marry her?”
Decatur Brown laughed--a light, irresponsible, bachelor laugh. “I should
probably ask her if I might first.”
“But you _would_ ask her?”
“Oh, assuredly.”
“And would you like to find such a girl?”
Decatur gazed sentimentally over the smart little polo-hat of the “lady
journalist” and out of the window at a sky--a sky as gray as Jane's eyes
had been that last night when they had parted, she to travel abroad with
her aunt, he to become a cub reporter on a city daily.
“Yes, I would like very much to find her,” he replied.
Do you think, after this, that the interviewer waited for more? Not she.
Leaving him mixed up with his daydream, she took herself off before he
could retract, or modify, or in any way spoil the story.
Still, considering what she might have printed, she was really quite
decent about it. Leaving out the startling head-lines, hers was a nice,
readable, chatty article. It contained no bald announcement that the
author of _The Insurgent_ was hunting, with matrimonial intent, for a
gray-eyed prototype of Sunday Weeks. Yet that was the impression
conveyed. Where was there a girl with sober gray eyes and a piquant chin
who could answer to certain other specifications, duly set forth in one
of the most popular novels of the day? Whoever she might be, wherever
she was, she might know what to expect should she be discovered.
Having survived the first shock to his reticence, Decatur Brown was
inclined to dismiss the matter with a laugh. He had been cleverly
exploited, but he could not see that any great harm had been done. He
supposed that he must become used to such things. Anyway, he was
altogether too busy to give much thought to the incident, for he was in
the middle of another novel that must be ready for the public before
_The Insurgent_ was forgotten.
He was yet to learn the real meaning of publicity. First there appeared
an old friend, one who should have understood him too well to put faith
in such an absurdity.
“Say, Deck, you've simply got to dine with us Thursday night. My wife
insists. She wants you to meet a cousin of hers--Denver girl, mighty
bright, and”--this impressively--“she has gray eyes, you know.”
Decatur grinned appreciatively, but he begged off. He was really very
sorry to miss a gray-eyed girl, of course, but there was his work.
One by one his other friends had their little shy at him. Mayhew sent by
messenger a huge placard reading, “Wanted, A Wife.” Trevors called him
up by telephone to advise him to see _Jupiter Belles_ at once.
“Get a seat in A,” he chuckled, “and take a good look at the third from
the left, first row. She has gray eyes.”
By the time he received Tiddler's atrocious sketch, representing the
author of _The Insurgent_ as a Diogenes looking for gray-eyed girls, he
had ceased to smile over the thing. The joke was becoming a trifle
stale.
Then the letters began to come in, post-marked from all over the
country. They were all from young persons who had read _The Insurgent_,
and evidently the interview; for, no matter what else was said, each
missive contained the information that the writer of it possessed gray
eyes. All save one. That was accompanied by a photograph on which an
arrow had been drawn pointing towards the eyes. Under the arrow was
naively inscribed, “Gray.”
Decatur was not flattered. His dignity suffered. He felt cheapened,
humiliated. The fact that the waning boom of his novel had received new
impetus did not console him. His mildly serious expression gave place to
a worried, injured look.
And then Mrs. Wheeler Upton swooped down on him with a demand for his
appearance at one of her Saturday nights. For Decatur there was no
choice. He was her debtor for so many helpful favors in the past that he
could not refuse so simple a request. Yet he groaned in spirit as he
viewed the prospect. Once it would have been different. Was it not in
her pleasant drawing-rooms that he had been boosted from obscurity to
shine among the other literary stars? Mrs. Upton knew them all. She made
it her business to do so, bless the kindly heart of her, and to see that
they knew each other. No wonder her library table groaned under the
weight of autographed volumes.
But to face that crowd at Mrs. Wheeler Upton's meant to run a rapid-fire
gauntlet of jokes about gray-eyed girls. However, go he must, and go he
did.
He was not a little relieved to find so few there, and that most of them
were young women. A girl often hesitates at voicing a witticism, because
she is afraid, after all, that it may not be really funny. A man never
doubts the excellence of his own humor. So, when a quarter of an hour
had passed without hint of that threadbare topic, he gradually threw off
his restraint and began to enjoy himself. He was talking Meredith to a
tall girl in soft-blue China silk, when suddenly he became aware that
they had been left entirely to themselves. Every one else seemed to have
drifted into an adjoining room. Through the doorway he could see them
about Mrs. Upton, who was evidently holding their attention.
“Why, what's up, I wonder? Why do they leave us out, I'd like to know?”
and he glanced inquiringly at the girl in soft blue. She flushed
consciously and dropped her lashes. When she looked at him again, and
rather appealingly, he saw that she had gray eyes.
It was Decatur's turn to flush. Could Mrs. Upton have done this
deliberately? He was loath to think so. The situation was awkward, and
awkwardly he got himself out of it.
“I say, let's see what they're up to in there,” he suggested, and
marched her into the other room, wondering if he showed his
embarrassment as much as she did. As he sidled away from her he
determined to pick out a girl whose eyes were not gray, and to stick to
her for the remainder of the evening. Accordingly he began his
inspection. A moment later and the whole truth blazed enlighteningly
upon him. They were all gray-eyed girls, every last one of them.
If he had been waiting for a climax, he was entirely satisfied. Of
course it was rather silly of him to take it all so seriously, but,
sitting safely in his rooms long after his panicky retreat from Mrs.
Upton's collection, he could not make light of the situation. It _was_
serious. He was losing sleep, appetite, and self-respect over it.
Not that he was vain enough to imagine that every gray-eyed girl in the
country, or any one of them, wished to marry him. No; he was fairly
modest, as men go. He suspected that the chief emotions he inspired were
curiosity and mischievousness. It was the thought of what those
uncounted thousands of gray-eyed girls must conceive as his attitude
towards them that hurt. Why, it was almost as though he had put a
matrimonial advertisement in the newspapers. When he pictured himself
looked upon as assuming to be a connoisseur of a certain type of
femininity he felt as keenly disgraced as if he had set himself up for
an Apollo.
In next morning's mail he noted an increased number of letters from
unknown gray-eyed correspondents. That settled it. Hurriedly packing a
capacious kit-bag, with the uncompleted manuscript on top, he took the
first train for Ocean Park. Where else could he find a more habitable
solitude than Ocean Park in early June? Once previously he had gone
there before the season opened, and he knew. Later on the popular big
seashore resort would seethe with vacationists. They would crowd the
hotels, over-flow the board walk, cover the sands, and polka-dot the
ocean. But in June the sands would be deserted, the board walk untrod,
the hotels empty.
And so it was. The landlord of The Empress welcomed him effusively, not
as Decatur Brown, author of _The Insurgent_ and seeker of an ideal girl
with gray eyes, but as plain, every-day Mr. Brown, whom Providence had
sent as a June guest. Decatur was thankful for it. The barren verandas
were grateful in his sight. When he had been installed in a corner
suite, spread out his writing things on a flat-topped table that faced
the sea, filled his ink-well, and lighted his pipe, he seemed to have
escaped from a threatening presence.
He could breathe freely here, thank goodness, and work. He was just
settling down to it when through the open transom behind him came the
sound of rustling skirts and a voice which demanded:
“But how do you suppose he found that we were here? You're certain that
it was Decatur Brown, are you?”
“Oh yes, quite certain. He has changed very little. Besides, there was
the name on the register.”
Decatur thrilled at the music of that answering voice. There was a
little quaver in it, a faint but fascinating breaking on the low notes,
such as he had never heard in any voice save Jane Temple's.
“Then Mabel must not come down to dinner to-night. She must--” The rest
was lost around the corner of a corridor.
What Mabel must do remained a mystery. Must she go without her dinner
altogether? He hoped not, for evidently his arrival had something to do
with it. Why? Decatur gave it up. Who was Mabel, anyway? The owner of
the other voice he could guess at. That must be Mrs. Philo Allen, Jane's
aunt Judith, the one who had carried her off to Europe and forbidden
them to write to each other. But Mabel? Oh yes! He had almost forgotten
that elaborately gowned miss who at sixteen had assumed such
young-ladyfied airs. Mabel was Jane's young cousin, of course, the one
to whom he used to take expensive bonbons, his intent being to
propitiate Aunt Judith.
So they were guests at The Empress, too--Jane and her aunt and the
pampered Mabel? Chiefly, however, there was Jane. The others did not
matter much. Ah, here was a gray-eyed girl that he did not dread to
meet. And she had not forgotten him!
An hour later he was waiting for her in the lower hallway. Luckily she
came down alone, so they had the hall seat to themselves for those first
few minutes. She was the same charming Jane that he had known of old.
There was an added dignity in the way she carried her shapely little
head, a deeper sweetness in the curve of her thin lips. Perhaps her
manner was a little subdued, too; but, after all those years with Mrs.
Philo Allen, why not?
“How nice of you,” she was saying, “to hunt us up and surprise us in
this fashion. Auntie has been expecting you at home for weeks, you know,
but when Mabel's rose-cold developed she decided that we must go to the
seashore, even though we did die of lonesomeness. And here we find
you--or you find us. The sea air will make Mabel presentable in a day or
so, we hope.”
“I'm sure I hope so, too,” he assented, without enthusiasm. Really, he
did not see the necessity of dragging in Mabel. Nor did he understand
why Mrs. Allen had expected him, or why Jane should assume that he had
hunted them up. Now that she had assumed it, though, he could hardly
explain that it was an accident. He asked how long they had remained
abroad.
“Oh, ages! There was an age in France, while Mabel was perfecting her
accent; then there was another age in Italy, where Mabel took
voice-culture and the old masters; and yet another age in Germany, while
Mabel struggled with the theory of music. Our year in Devon was not
quite an age; we went there for the good of Mabel's complexion.”
“Indeed! Has she kept those peaches-and-cream checks?”
“Ah, you must wait and see,” and Jane nodded mysteriously.
“But I--” protested Decatur.
“Oh, it will be only for a day or so. Rose-colds are so hard on the
eyes, you know. In the mean time perhaps you will tell us how you
happened to develop into a famous author. We are immensely proud of you,
of course. Aunt Judith goes hardly anywhere without a copy of _The
Insurgent_ in her hand. If the persons she meets have not read it, she
scolds them good. And you must hear Mabel render that chapter in which
Sunday runs away from the man she loves with the man she doesn't.”
There they were, back to Mabel again.
“But what about yourself, Jane?” suggested Decatur.
“About me! Why, I only--Oh, here is Aunt Judith.”
Yes, there was no mistaking her, nor overlooking her. She was just as
colossally commanding as ever, just as imperious. At sight of her,
Decatur understood Jane's position clearly. She was still the dependent
niece, the obscure satellite of a star of the first magnitude. Very
distinctly had Mrs. Philo Allen once explained to him this dependence of
Jane's, incidentally touching on his own unlikely prospects. That had
been just before she had swept Jane off to Europe with her.
All this Aunt Judith now seemed to have forgotten. In her own imperial
way she greeted him graciously, inspecting him with critical but
favorable eyes.
“Really, you do look quite distinguished,” was her verdict, as she took
his arm in her progress towards her dinner. “I am sure Mabel will say
so, too.”
Whereupon they reverted once more to Mabel. The maid was bathing Mabel's
eyes with witch-hazel and trying to persuade her to eat a little hot
soup. Such details about Mabel seemed to be regarded as of first
importance. By some mysterious reasoning, too, Mrs. Allen appeared to
connect them with Decatur Brown and his presence at Ocean Park.
“To-morrow night, if all goes well, you shall see her,” she whispered,
exultantly, in his ear, as they left the dining-hall.
Decatur was puzzled. What if he _could_ see Mabel the next night? Or
what if he could not? He should survive, even if the event were
indefinitely postponed. What he desired just then was that Jane should
accompany him on an early-evening tramp down the board walk.
“Wouldn't it be better to wait until to-morrow evening?” asked Jane.
“Perhaps Mabel can go then.”
“The deuce take Mabel!” He half smothered the exclamation, and Jane
appeared not to hear, yielding at last to his insistence that they start
at once. But it was not the kind of a talk he had hoped to have with
Jane Temple. The intimate and personal ground of conversation towards
which he sought to draw her she avoided as carefully as if it had been
stuck with the “No Trespassing” notices. When they returned to the
hotel, Decatur felt scarcely better acquainted with her than before he
had found her again.
Next evening, according to schedule, Mabel appeared. She was an
exquisite young woman, there was no doubt about that. She carried
herself with an almost royal air which impressed even the head waiter.
Her perfect figure, perfectly encased, was graceful in every long curve.
Her Devon-repaired complexion was of dazzling purity, all snowy white
and sea-shell pink. One could hardly imagine how even so aristocratic a
malady as a rose-cold could have dared to redden slightly the tip of
that classic nose.
Turning to Decatur with languid interest she murmured:
“Ah, you see I have not forgotten you, although I often do forget faces.
You may sit here, if you please, and talk to me.”
It was quite like being received by a sovereign, Decatur imagined. He
did his best to talk, and talk entertainingly, for no other reason than
that it was expected of him. At last he said something which struck the
right chord. The perfect Mabel smiled approvingly at him, and he noticed
for the first time that her eyes were gray. Suspiciously he glanced
across the table at Jane. Was that a mocking smile on her thinly curved
lips, or was it meant for kindly encouragement?
Little by little during the succeeding two days he pieced out the
situation. It was not a plot exactly, unless you could dignify Mrs.
Philo Allen's confident plans by such a name. But, starting with what
basis Heaven only knew, she had reached the conclusion that when the
author of _The Insurgent_ had described Sunday Weeks he could have had
in mind but one person, the one gray-eyed girl worthy of such
distinction, the girl to whom he had shown such devotion but a few years
before--her daughter Mabel. Then she had begun expecting him to appear.
And when he had seemingly followed them to the seaside--well, what would
any one naturally think? Flutteringly she had doubtless put the question
to Jane, who had probably replied as she was expected to reply.
The peerless Mabel, of course, was the only one not in the secret.
Anyway, she would have taken no interest in it. Her amazing egoism would
have prevented that. Nothing interested Mabel acutely unless it
pertained to some attribute of her own loveliness.
As for Jane Temple's view of this business, that remained an enigma. Had
she grown so accustomed to her aunt Judith's estimate of Mabel that she
could accept it? That was hardly possible, for Jane had a keen sense of
humor. Then why should she help to throw Mabel at his head, or him at
Mabel's?
Meanwhile he walked at Mabel's side, carrying her wraps, while her
mother and Jane trailed judiciously in the rear. He drove out with
Mabel, Mabel's mother sitting opposite and smiling at him with an air of
complacent proprietorship. He stood by the piano and turned the music
while Mabel executed sonatas and other things for which he had not the
least appreciation. He listened to solos from _Lucia_, which Mabel sang
at Jane's suggestion. Also, Jane brought forth Mabel's sketch-books and
then ostentatiously left them alone with each other.
There was much meekness in Decatur. When handled just right he was
wonderfully complaisant. But after a whole week of Mabel he decided that
the limit had been reached. Seizing an occasion when Mabel was in the
hands of the hairdresser and manicurist, he led her mother to a secluded
veranda corner and boldly plunged into an explanation.
“I have no doubt you thought it a little strange, Mrs. Allen,” he began,
“my appearing to follow you down here, but really--”
“There, there, Decatur, it isn't at all necessary. It was all perfectly
natural and entirely proper. In fact, I quite understood.”
“But I'm afraid that you--”
“Oh, but I do comprehend. We old folks are not blind. When it was a
matter of those foreign gentlemen, German barons, Italian counts,
Austrian princes, and so on, I was extremely particular, perhaps
overparticular. Their titles are so often shoddy. But I know all about
you. You come from almost as good New England stock as we do. You are
talented, almost famous. Besides, your attachment is of no sudden
growth. It has stood the test of years. Yes, my dear Decatur, I heartily
approve of you. However”--here she rested a plump forefinger simperingly
on the first of her two chins, “your fate rests with Mabel, you know.”
Once or twice he had gaspingly tried to stop her, but smilingly she had
waved him aside. When she ended he was speechless. Could he tell her,
after all that, what a precious bore her exquisite Mabel was to him? It
had been difficult enough when the situation was only a tacit one, but
now that it had been definitely expressed--well, it was proving to be a
good deal like those net snares which hunters of circus animals use, the
more he struggled to free himself the more he became entangled.
Abruptly, silently, he took his leave of Mrs. Allen. He feared that if
he said more she might construe it as a request, that she should
immediately lay his proposal before Mabel. With a despairing, haunted
look he sought the board walk.
Carpenters were hammering and sawing, painters were busy in the booths,
a few old ladies sat about in the sun, here and there a happy youngster
dug in the sand with a tin shovel. Decatur envied them all. They were
sane, rational persons, who were not likely to be interviewed and
trapped into saying fool things. Their acts were not liable to be
misconstrued.
Seeing a pier jutting out, he heedlessly followed it to the very end.
And there, on one of the seats built for summer guests, he found Jane.
“Where is Mabel?” she asked, anxiously.
“She is having her hair done and her nails polished, I believe,” said
Decatur, gloomily, dropping down beside Jane. “She is being prepared, as
nearly as I can gather, to receive a proposal of marriage.”
“Ah! Then you--” She turned to him inquiringly.
“It appears so now,” he admitted. “I have been talking to her mother.”
“Oh, I see.” She said it quietly, gently, in a tone of submission.
“But you don't see,” he protested. “No one sees; that is, no one sees
things as they really are. Do you think, Jane, that you could listen to
me for a few moments without jumping at conclusions, without assuming
that you know exactly what I am going to say before I have said it?”
She said that she would try.
“Then I would like to make a confession to you.”
“Wouldn't it be better to--to make it first to Mabel?”
“No, it would not,” he declared, doggedly. “It concerns that interview
in which I was quoted as saying things about gray-eyed girls.”
“Yes, I read it. We all read it.”
“I guessed that much. Well, I said those things, just as I was quoted as
saying them, but I did not mean all that I was credited with meaning. I
want you to believe, Jane, that when I admitted my preference for gray
eyes and--and all that, I was thinking of one gray-eyed girl in
particular. Can you believe that?”
“Oh, I did from the very first; that is, I did as soon as Aunt Judith--”
“Never mind about Aunt Judith,” interrupted Decatur, firmly. “We will
get to her in time. We are talking now about that interview. You must
admit, Jane, that there are many gray-eyed girls in the country; I don't
know just how many, thank Heaven, but there are a lot of them. And most
of them seem not only to have read that interview, but to have made a
personal application of my remarks. Have you any idea what that means to
me?”
“Then you think that they are all in--”
“No, no! I don't imagine there's a single one that cares a bone button
for me. But each and every one of them thinks that I am in love with
her, or willing to be. If she doesn't think so, her friends do. They
expect me to propose on sight, simply because of what I have said about
gray eyes. You doubt that? Let me tell you what occurred just before I
left town: A person whom I had counted as a friend got together a whole
houseful of gray-eyed girls, and then sent for me to come and make my
choice. That is what drove me from the city. That is why I came to Ocean
Park in June.”
“But the one particular gray-eyed girl that you mentioned? How was it
that you happened to--”
“It was sheer good fortune, Jane, that I found you here.”
Decatur had slipped a tentative arm along the seat-back. He was leaning
towards Jane, regarding her with melancholy tenderness.
“That you found me?” she said, wonderingly. “Oh, you mean that it was
fortunate you found _us_ here?”
“No, I don't. I mean you--y-o-u, second person singular. Haven't you
guessed by this time who was the particular gray-eyed girl I had in
mind?”
“Of course I have; it was Mabel, wasn't it?”
“Mabel! Oh, hang Mabel! Jane, it was you.”
“Me! Why, Decatur Brown!” Either surprise or indignation rang in her
tone. He concluded that it must be the latter.