I
In the opinion of many persons competent to judge, “The Beaches” was
suffering from an invasion of wealth. Unquestionably it had been
fashionable for a generation; but the people who had established
summer homes there were inhabitants of the large neighboring city
which they forsook during five months in the year to enjoy the ocean
breezes and sylvan scenery, for The Beaches afforded both. Well-to-do
New England families of refinement and taste, they enjoyed in comfort,
without ostentation, their picturesque surroundings. Their cottages
were simple; but each had its charming outlook to sea and a sufficient
number of more or less wooded acres to command privacy and breathing
space. In the early days the land had sold for a song, but it had
risen steadily with the times, as more and more people coveted a
foothold. The last ten years had introduced many changes; the older
houses had been pulled down and replaced by lordly structures with all
the modern conveniences, including spacious stables and farm
buildings. Two clubs had been organized along the six miles of coast
to provide golf and tennis, afternoon teas and bridge whist for the
entertainment of the colony. The scale of living had become more
elaborate, and there had been many newcomers--people of large means
who offered for the finest sites sums which the owners could not
afford to refuse. The prices paid in several instances represented ten
times the original outlay. All the desirable locations were held by
proprietors fully aware of their value, and those bent on purchase
must pay what was asked or go without.
Then had occurred the invasion referred to--the coming to The Beaches
of the foreign contingent, so called: people of fabulous means,
multi-millionaires who were captains in one or another form of
industry and who sought this resort as a Mecca for the social
uplifting of their families and protection against summer heat. At
their advent prices made another jump--one which took the breath away.
Several of the most conservative owners parted with their estates
after naming a figure which they supposed beyond the danger point, and
half a dozen second-rate situations, affording but a paltry glimpse of
the ocean, were snapped up in eager competition by wealthy capitalists
from Chicago, Pittsburg, and St. Louis who had set their hearts on
securing the best there was remaining.
Among the late comers was Daniel Anderson, known as the furniture king
in the jargon of trade, many times a millionaire, and comparatively a
person of leisure through the sale of his large plants to a trust. He
hired for the season, by long-distance telephone, at an amazing
rental, one of the more desirable places which was to let on account
of the purpose of its owners to spend the summer abroad. It was one of
the newer houses, large and commodious; yet its facilities were
severely taxed by the Anderson establishment, which fairly bristled
with complexity. Horses by the score, vehicles manifold, a steam
yacht, and three automobiles were the more striking symbols of a
manifest design to curry favor by force of outdoing the neighborhood.
The family consisted of Mrs. Anderson, who was nominally an invalid,
and a son and daughter of marriageable age. If it be stated that they
were chips of the old block, meaning their father, it must not be
understood that he had reached the moribund stage. On the contrary, he
was still in the prime of his energy, and, with the exception of the
housekeeping details, set in motion and directed the machinery of the
establishment.
It had been his idea to come to The Beaches; and having found a
foothold there he was determined to make the most of the opportunity
not only for his children but himself. With his private secretary and
typewriter at his elbow he matured his scheme of carrying everything
before him socially as he had done in business. The passport to
success in this new direction he assumed to be lavish expenditure. It
was a favorite maxim of his--trite yet shrewdly entertained--that
money will buy anything, and every man has his price. So he began by
subscribing to everything, when asked, twice as much as any one else,
and seeming to regard it as a privilege. Whoever along The Beaches was
interested in charity had merely to present a subscription list to Mr.
Anderson to obtain a liberal donation. The equivalent was
acquaintance. The man or woman who asked him for money could not very
well neglect to bow the next time they met, and so by the end of the
first summer he was on speaking terms with most of the men and many of
the women. Owing to his generosity, the fund for the building of a new
Episcopal church was completed, although he belonged to a different
denomination. He gave a drinking fountain for horses and dogs, and
when the selectmen begrudged to the summer residents the cost of
rebuilding two miles of road, Daniel Anderson defrayed the expense
from his own pocket. An ardent devotee of golf, and daily on the
links, he presented toward the end of the season superb trophies for
the competition of both men and women, with the promise of others in
succeeding years. In short, he gave the society whose favor he coveted
to understand that it had merely “to press the button” and he would do
the rest.
Mr. Andersen’s nearest neighbors were the Misses Ripley--Miss Rebecca
and Miss Caroline, or Carry, as she was invariably called. They were
among the oldest summer residents, for their father had been among the
first to recognize the attractions of The Beaches, and their childhood
had been passed there. Now they were middle-aged women and their
father was dead; but they continued to occupy season after season
their cottage, the location of which was one of the most picturesque
on the whole shore. The estate commanded a wide ocean view and
included some charming woods on one side and a small, sandy, curving
beach on the other. The only view of the water which the Andersons
possessed was at an angle across this beach. The house they occupied,
though twice the size of the Ripley cottage, was virtually in the rear
of the Ripley domain, which lay tantalizingly between them and a free
sweep of the landscape.
One morning, early in October of the year of Mr. Anderson’s advent to
The Beaches, the Ripley sisters, who were sitting on the piazza
enjoying the mellow haze of the autumn sunshine, saw, with some
surprise, Mr. David Walker, the real-estate broker, approaching across
the lawn--surprise because it was late in the year for holidays, and
Mr. Walker invariably went to town by the half-past eight train. Yet a
visit from one of their neighbors was always agreeable to them, and
the one in question lived not more than a quarter of a mile away and
sometimes did drop in at afternoon tea-time. Certain women might have
attempted an apology for their appearance, but Miss Rebecca seemed
rather to glory in the shears which dangled down from her
apron-strings as she rose to greet her visitor; they told so
unmistakably that she had been enjoying herself trimming vines. Miss
Carry--who was still kittenish in spite of her forty years--as she
gave one of her hands to Mr. Walker held out with the other a basket
of seckel pears she had been gathering, and said:
“Have one--do.”
Mr. Walker complied, and, having completed the preliminary
commonplaces, said, as he hurled the core with an energetic sweep of
his arm into the ocean at the base of the little bluff on which the
cottage stood:
“There is no place on the shore which quite compares with this.”
“We agree with you,” said Miss Rebecca with dogged urbanity. “Is any
one of a different opinion?”
“On the contrary, I have come to make you an offer for it. It isn’t
usual for real-estate men to crack up the properties they wish to
purchase, but I am not afraid of doing so in this case.” He spoke
buoyantly, as though he felt confident that he was in a position to
carry his point.
“An offer?” said Miss Rebecca. “For our place? You know that we have
no wish to sell. We have been invited several times to part with it,
and declined. It was you yourself who brought the last invitation. We
are still in the same frame of mind, aren’t we, Carry?”
“Yes, indeed. Where should we get another which we like so well?”
“My principal invites you to name your own figure.”
“That is very good of him, I’m sure. Who is he, by the way?”
“I don’t mind telling you; it’s your neighbor, Daniel Anderson.” David
Walker smiled significantly. “He is ready to pay whatever you choose
to ask.”
“Our horses are afraid of his automobiles, and his liveried grooms
have turned the head of one of our maids. Our little place is not in
the market, thank you, Mr. Walker.”
The broker’s beaming countenance showed no sign of discouragement. He
rearranged the gay blue flower which had almost detached itself from
the lapel of his coat, then said laconically:
“I am authorized by Mr. Anderson to offer you $500,000 for your
property.”
“What?” exclaimed Miss Rebecca.
“Half a million dollars for six acres,” he added.
“The man must be crazy.” Miss Rebecca stepped to the honeysuckle vine
with a detached air and snipped off a straggling tendril with her
shears. “That is a large sum of money,” she added.
David Walker enjoyed the effect of his announcement; it was clear that
he had produced an impression.
“Money is no object to him. I told him that you did not wish to sell,
and he said that he would make it worth your while.”
“Half a million dollars! We should be nearly rich,” let fall Miss
Carry, upon whom the full import of the offer was breaking.
“Yes; and think what good you two ladies could do with all that
money--practical good,” continued the broker, pressing his opportunity
and availing himself of his knowledge of their aspirations. “You could
buy elsewhere and have enough left over to endow a professorship at
Bryn Mawr, Miss Rebecca; and you, Miss Carry, would be able to revel
in charitable donations.”
Those who knew the Ripley sisters well were aware that plain speaking
never vexed them. Beating about the bush from artificiality or
ignoring a plain issue was the sort of thing they resented.
Consequently, the directness of David Walker’s sally did not appear to
them a liberty, but merely a legitimate summing up of the situation.
Miss Rebecca was the spokesman as usual, though her choice was always
governed by what she conceived to be the welfare of her sister, whom
she still looked on as almost a very young person. Sitting upright and
clasping her elbows, as she was apt to do in moments of stress, she
replied:
“Money is money, Mr. Walker, and half a million dollars is not to be
discarded lightly. We should be able, as you suggest, to do some good
with so much wealth. But, on the other hand, we don’t need it, and we
have no one dependent on us for support. My brother is doing well and
is likely to leave his only child all that is good for her. We love
this place. Caroline may marry some day” (Miss Carry laughed
protestingly at the suggestion and ejaculated, “Not very likely”),
“but I never shall. I expect to come here as long as I live. We love
every inch of the place--the woods, the beach, the sea. Our garden,
which we made ourselves, is our delight. Why should we give up all
this because some one offers us five times what we supposed it to be
worth? My sister is here to speak for herself, but so far as I am
concerned you may tell Mr. Anderson that if our place is worth so much
as that we cannot afford to part with it.”
“Oh, no, it wouldn’t do at all! Our heartstrings are round the roots
of these trees, Mr. Walker,” added the younger sister in gentle echo
of this determination.
“Don’t be in a hurry to decide; think it over. It will bear
reflection,” said the broker briskly.
“There’s nothing to think over. It becomes clearer every minute,” said
Miss Rebecca a little tartly. Then she added: “I dare say it will do
him good to find that some one has something which he cannot buy.”
“He will be immensely disappointed, for his heart was set on it,” said
David Walker gloomily. His emotions were not untinged by personal
dismay, for his commission would have been a large one.
He returned forthwith to his client, who was expecting him, and who
met him at the door.
“Well, Walker, what did the maiden ladies say? Have one of these,” he
exclaimed, exhibiting some large cigars elaborately wrapped in gold
foil. “They’re something peculiarly choice which a friend of mine--a
Cuban--obtained for me.”
“They won’t sell, Mr. Anderson.”
The furniture king frowned. He was a heavily built but compact man who
looked as though he were accustomed to butt his way through life and
sweep away opposition, yet affable and easy-going withal.
“They won’t sell? You offered them my price?”
“It struck them as prodigious, but they were not tempted.”
“I’ve got to have it somehow. With this land added to theirs I should
have the finest place on the shore.”
The broker disregarded this flamboyant remark, which was merely a
repetition of what he had heard several times already. “I warned you,”
he said, “that they might possibly refuse even this munificent offer.
They told me to tell you that if it was worth so much they could not
afford to sell.”
“Is it not enough? They’re poor, you told me--poor as church mice.”
“Compared with you. But they have enough to live on simply, and--and
to be able to maintain such an establishment as yours, for instance,
would not add in the least degree to their happiness. On the contrary,
it is because they delight in the view and the woods and their little
garden just as they see them that they can’t afford to let you have
the place.” Now that the chances of a commission were slipping away
David Walker was not averse to convey in delicate language the truth
which Miss Rebecca had set forth.
Mr. Anderson felt his chin meditatively. “I seem to be up against it,”
he murmured. “You think they are not holding out for a higher figure?”
he asked shrewdly.
David shook his head. Yet he added, with the instinct of a business
man ready to nurse a forlorn hope, “There would be no harm in trying.
I don’t believe, though, that you have the ghost of a chance.”
The furniture king reflected a moment. “I’ll walk down there this
afternoon and make their acquaintance.”
“A good idea,” said Walker, contented to shift the responsibility of a
second offer. “You’ll find them charming--real thoroughbreds,” he saw
fit to add.
“A bit top-lofty?” queried the millionaire.
“Not in the least. But they have their own standards, Mr. Anderson.”
The furniture king’s progress at The Beaches had been so uninterrupted
on the surface and so apparently satisfactory to himself that no one
would have guessed that he was not altogether content with it. With
all his easy-going optimism, it had not escaped his shrewd
intelligence that his family still lacked the social recognition he
desired. People were civil enough, but there were houses into which
they were never asked in spite of all his spending; and he was
conscious that they were kept at arm’s length by polite processes too
subtle to be openly resented. Yet he did resent in his heart the check
to his ambitions, and at the same time he sought eagerly the cause
with an open mind. It had already dawned on him that when he was
interested in a topic his voice was louder than the voices of his new
acquaintances. He had already given orders to his chauffeur that the
automobiles should be driven with some regard for the public safety.
Lately the idea had come to him, and he had imparted it to his son,
that the habit of ignoring impediments did not justify them in driving
golf balls on the links when, the players in front of them were slower
than they liked.
On the way to visit the Misses Ripley later in the day the broker’s
remark that they had standards of their own still lingered in his
mind. He preferred to think of them and others along the shore as
stiff and what he called top lofty; yet he intended to observe what he
saw. He had been given to understand that these ladies were almost
paupers from his point of view; and, though when he had asked who they
were, David Walker had described them as representatives of one of the
oldest and most respected families, he knew that they took no active
part in the social life of the colony as he beheld it; they played
neither golf, tennis, nor bridge at the club; they owned no
automobile, and their stable was limited to two horses; they certainly
cut no such figure as seemed to him to become people in their
position, who could afford to refuse $500,000 for six acres.
He was informed by the middle-aged, respectable-looking maid that the
ladies were in the garden behind the house. A narrow gravelled path
bordered with fragrant box led him to this. Its expanse was not large,
but the luxuriance and variety of the old-fashioned summer flowers
attested the devotion bestowed upon them. At the farther end was a
trellised summer-house in which he perceived that the maiden ladies
were taking afternoon tea. There was no sign of hothouse roses or rare
exotic plants, but he noticed a beehive, a quaint sundial with an
inscription, and along the middle path down which he walked were at
intervals little dilapidated busts or figures of stone on
pedestals--some of them lacking tips of noses or ears. It did not
occur to Mr. Anderson that antiquity rather than poverty was
responsible for these ravages. Their existence gave him fresh hope.
“Who can this be?” said Miss Carry with a gentle flutter. An unknown,
middle-aged man was still an object of curiosity to her.
Miss Rebecca raised her eyeglass. “I do believe, my dear, that
it’s--yes, it is.”
“But who?” queried Miss Carry.
Miss Rebecca rose instead of answering. The stranger was upon them,
walking briskly and hat in hand. His manner was distinctly
breezy--more so than a first meeting would ordinarily seem to her to
justify.
“Good afternoon, ladies. Daniel Anderson is my name. My wife wasn’t
lucky enough to find you at home when she returned your call, so I
thought I’d be neighborly.”
“It’s very good of you to come to see us,” said Miss Rebecca,
relenting at once. She liked characters--being something of one
herself--and her neighbor’s heartiness was taking. “This is my sister,
Miss Caroline Ripley,” she added to cement the introduction, “and I am
Rebecca. Sit down, Mr. Anderson; and may I give you a cup of tea?”
Four people were apt to be cosily crowded in the summer-house. Being
only a third person, the furniture king was able to settle himself in
his seat and look around him without fear that his legs would molest
any one. He gripped the arms of his chair and inhaled the fragrance of
the garden.
“This is a lovely place, ladies,” he asserted.
“Those hollyhocks and morning-glories and mignonettes take me back to
old times. Up to my place it’s all roses and orchids. But my wife told
me last week that she heard old-fashioned flowers are coming in again.
Seems she was right.”
“Oh, but we’ve had old-fashioned flowers for years! Our garden has
been always just like this--only becoming a little prettier all the
time, we venture to hope,” said Miss Carry.
“I want to know!” said Mr. Anderson; and almost immediately he
remembered that both his son and daughter had cautioned him against
the use of this phrase at The Beaches. He received the dainty but
evidently ancient cup from Miss Rebecca, and seeing that the subject
was, so to speak, before the house, he tasted his tea and said:
“It’s all pretty here--garden, view, and beach. And I hear you decline
to sell, ladies.”
Miss Rebecca had been musing on the subject all day, and a heartfelt
response rose promptly to her lips--spoken with the simple grace of a
self-respecting gentlewoman:
“Why should we sell, Mr. Anderson?”
The question was rather a poser to answer categorically; yet the
would-be purchaser felt that he sufficiently conveyed his meaning when
he said:
“I thought I might have made it worth your while.”
“We are people of small means in the modern sense of the word,” Miss
Rebecca continued, thereby expressing more concretely his idea; “yet
we have sufficient for our needs. Our tastes are very simple. The sum
which you offered us is a fortune in itself--but we have no ambition
for great wealth or to change our mode of life. Our associations with
this place are so intimate and tender that money could not induce us
to desecrate them by a sale.”
“I see,” said Mr. Anderson. Light was indeed breaking on him. At the
same time his appreciation of the merits of the property had been
growing every minute. It was an exquisite autumn afternoon. From where
they sat he could behold the line of shore on either side with its
background of dark green woods. Below the wavelets lapped the shingle
with melodious rhythm. As far as the eye could see lay the bosom of
the ocean unruffled, and lustrous with the sheen of the dying day.
Accustomed to prevail in buying his way, he could not resist saying,
after a moment of silence:
“If I were to increase my offer to a million would it make any
difference in your attitude?”
A suppressed gurgle of mingled surprise and amusement escaped Miss
Carry.
Miss Rebecca paused a moment by way of politeness to one so generous.
But her tone when she spoke was unequivocal, and a shade sardonic.
“Not the least, Mr. Anderson. To tell the truth, we should scarcely
understand the difference.”