Here was stranded the winter driftwood from the North—that peculiar flotsam and jetsam which summered in similar resorts in the North, rocked in rocking chairs on dreary rural verandas, congregated at the village post-office, awaited its men folk every week-end from the filthy and sweltering metropolis.
It was at a shabby but pretentious hostelry[119] called the Villa Hibiscus that Brown took up his quarters. Several rusty cabbage-palmettos waved above the whitish, sandy soil surrounding it; one or two discouraged orange trees fruited despondently near the veranda. And the place swarmed with human beings from all over the United States, lured from inclement climes, into the land of the orange and the palm—wistfully seeking in the land of advertised perpetual sunshine what the restless world has never yet discovered anywhere—surcease from care, from longing, from the unkindliness of its fellow seekers.
Dowdiness filled the veranda rocking chairs; unlovely hands were folded; faded eyes gazed vacantly at the white road, at the oranges; enviously at the flashing wheels and fluttering lingerie from the great Hotel Verbena.
Womanhood was there in all its ages and average phases; infancy, youth, middle age, age—all were there in the rusty villas and hotels ranged for a mile along the smooth shell road.
The region, thought Brown to himself, was rich in material. And the reflection helped him somewhat with his dinner, which needed a fillip or two.
In his faultless dinner jacket he sauntered out after the evening meal; and the idea which possessed[120] and even thrilled him aided him to forget what he had eaten.
The lagoon glimmered mysteriously in the starlight; the royal palms bordering it rustled high in the night breeze from the sea. Perfume from oleander hedges smote softly the olfactories of Brown; the southern whip-poor-wills' hurried whisper thrilled the darkness with a deeper mystery.
Here was the place to study woman. There could be no doubt about that. Here, untrammelled, uninterrupted, unvexed by the jarring of the world, he could place his model, turn her loose, and observe her.
To concentrate all his powers of analytical observation upon a single specimen of woman was his plan. Painters and sculptors used models. He meant to use one, too.
It would be simple. First, he must discover what he wanted. This accomplished, he had decided to make a plain business proposition to her. She was to go about her own affairs and her pleasure without embarrassment or self-consciousness—behave naturally; do whatever it pleased her to do. But he was to be permitted to observe her, follow her, make what notes he chose; and, as a resumé of each day, they were to meet in some[121] quiet spot in order that he might question her as he chose, concerning whatever interested him, or whatever in her movements or behaviour had seemed to him involved or inexplicable.