CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Down on the shore, Dragons' Row was holding high carnival. It was the bathing hour, when those who had much energy plunged through and through the breakers, those who had little floundered in the edge of the foam, and those who had none sat upright under the awnings, lorgnette in hand, and passed judgment upon their fellows. The tall, sinewy bathing master sat on the shore, his yellow collie beside him, enjoying an interval of well-earned leisure, for at this season he was the most conspicuous and the most popular figure on Quantuck beach. Just now, he was looking on in manifest pride at the skill of his latest pupil, Phebe McAlister. Even Dragons' Row fell silent, when Phebe took to the water for her noon bath. It was good to see her free, firm step as she came down the board walk, dressed in the plain black suit which set off her fresh, clear skin and her bright hair. Phebe scorned caps entirely, and no sunburn could roughen her cheeks. Her suit fitted her, and she was as trim and comely in it as in her more conventional raiment. Once on the beach, she had a trick of standing for a moment, looking out at the distant water with an unconsciousness which was not feigned, then rapidly measuring the incoming wave, she chose the exact moment of its rising to curl over and break, plunged through it and, after an interval when the onlookers waited breathlessly, she reappeared on the farther side and swam tranquilly away up the shore. Hope might cling to the lifeline and be boiled to her heart's content, and Theodora was welcome to paddle about in the thick of the crowd, with Hubert and Billy beside her. To Phebe, there was something fairly intoxicating in the knowledge of her strength, in feeling the free, firm play of her muscles and in conquering the power of the sea.
The wind had been blowing strongly, all the morning, and the waves were rolling in heavily. Their green tops were crested with white foam which rose high and higher, curved over as softly as a rose petal, balanced for a brief second, then fell with a crash and went flowing up the bank of the beach, circling and twisting in countless eddies that now and then crept to the very awnings and caused a stampede among their inhabitants. A dozen portly matrons sat in the sand, rocking to and fro as the wave came up about them and receded; and children innumerable pranced around them, playing tag with the tricky surf that often caught them unawares.
"Grandma," Mac said, trudging up to the McAlister awning with a pail of sand under his arm; "isn't vat sky just lovely? I'd like to fly up vere, and maybe God would let me work ve sun."
"Do you think you could work it, Mac?"
"Yes, it goes just like ve clock. He winds it up wiv a key, and ven it goes all right. Grandma!"
"Well?"
Mac dropped his sand into her lap, and then plumped himself down by her side.
"Did you see vat funny man in ve pinky suit? Well, he's Mrs.
Benson's boy."
"Hush, dear!" Mrs. McAlister said hastily, for Mrs. Benson's awning was next her own.
"What for should I hush? He is funny; just you look at him and see."
"Mac is earning his right to a place in Dragons' Row," Hubert observed from the spot, ten feet away, where he was taking a sunbath between plunges. "Why don't you come in, mother?"
"I dare not face the critics," she answered laughingly, while she emptied Mac's sand from her lap. "I shouldn't come out of it as well as Babe does."
Hubert raised himself on his elbow and looked after his sister with evident satisfaction.
"She's the best swimmer on the beach, except Mr. Drayton," he said, as he dropped back again and burrowed his brown arms into the sand. "If he gives her many more lessons, she'll beat him at his own trade, and that's saying a good deal."
Phebe, meanwhile, had been swimming with the tide and was now far up the shore. There she landed herself through the breakers as craftily as a fisherman lands his dory, and came tramping back toward the awning onto more. Not even the deep sand could hamper her light step, as she came striding along with a perfect disregard of the buzz which passed along the line of awnings parallel with her coming.
"Miss Phebe McAlister, Dr. McAlister's daughter, splendid looking girl, but rather eccentric, they say." "A perfect snob; but I don't know as I blame her. Sister to Mrs. Farrington, that tall woman with the handsome husband." "Sister to Mrs. Theodora McAlister Farrington, the novelist. Isn't she superb? But I hear she doesn't care a fig for society."
So the buzz ran on, and Phebe passed by, heedless of it, heedless, too, of the gaze of a young man who stood alone, a little back of the line of awnings. It was evident that he was a stranger, for he spoke to no one, although it is not easy to be unsocial at Quantuck. For the rest, he was tall, strongly built, with a fresh, boyish face; he wore a little pointed beard, and he carried himself with an indescribable air of being somebody at whom it was worth while to look twice.
"Did you see the new man on the beach, this morning?" Allyn asked, at dinner, that noon.
"The new man, when there are new men here, every day in the week!"
Theodora's tone was one of amusement.
"Evidently you didn't see him, or you'd speak with more respect. He was a duke in disguise, at the very least."
"Do you mean the man with the Frenchy beard, and his nose in the air?"
Cicely asked, with scant respect for the stranger's ducal appearance.
"Yes. Who was he?"
"I don't know. He acted as if he did the beach a favor in even looking at it."
"He didn't look that way at Babe," Allyn remarked, with a chuckle. "I thought sure he was going to applaud her, when she came stalking down the beach."
"Babe does take the beach a good deal after the manner of Lady Macbeth," Lilly observed. "Where was your man, Allyn? I didn't see any titled strangers of my acquaintance."
"He was just back of the Whitmans' awning for a long time. After that, he came down to Mr. Drayton and talked to him. I didn't see him speak to anybody else, though."
"Oh," Hubert said suddenly; "I know the man you mean, Allyn. There is a good deal of him, too. Sam Asquith told me he had just come to the hotel. He is a composer and hails from New York."
"What is his name?" Theodora asked rather indifferently.
"Gifford Barrett."
"Oh!" There was a clatter, as Cicely dropped her knife and fork and clasped her hands in ecstasy. "Really?"
"Is it so painful as all that, Cis?" Allyn inquired.
"Pain! It's utter rapture. I've always felt that, if I could just once look at Gifford Barrett, I could die happy. Do you know who he is, you ignorant ones?"
The others owned up to their mental darkness; but Theodora said vaguely,—
"Seems to me I met him once. The name is half-way familiar."
Cicely groaned.
"Half-way familiar! I should rather say it was."
"Who is he, anyway?" Allyn demanded.
"Who? Why, he wrote the Alan Breck Overture."
"What's that?"
"Allyn! When I have played it on an average of twice a day, ever since I came here! Haven't you any ears?"
"Not for your kind of music," Allyn returned bluntly. "I want a little tune in mine."
"Who is the man?" Billy asked. "Is he really of any account, Cis?"
"I should think he was. Mr. Paulson, my teacher in New York, said he is the greatest American composer," she returned triumphantly.
"A genuine lion, not a duke," Hubert observed. "But I thought composers always wore their hair in flowing ringlets, Cicely. This man is too well groomed to be really inspired."
Theodora laughed suddenly.
"Hu, you remind me of Mrs. Benson. The day after I came, she asked me whether Miss Greenway didn't write books; she thought all people who wrote books were generally a little untidy."
"Did you enlighten her?"
"I couldn't, for I had just ripped my jacket sleeve open for more than two inches. 'Twas made with one of those insidious one-thread machines, and I tried to pull out a loose stitch. Since then, she has avoided the subject of Miss Greenway, and I have spent a good share of my energy in mending the more visible portions of my attire. I didn't know before that the eyes of the world were upon us, as upon a peculiar people."
But Cicely had returned to the charge.
"Cousin Hubert, how long is he going to be here?"
"I'm sure I don't know."
"Who is he here to see?"
"Nobody, 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-worshippers, if you'd only own it." Then she crossed over to the piazza of Valhalla, where Phebe was drying her hair in the sunshine. 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, shivering, shivering 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. Booby! 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.