PERSONAL. The rejected suitors of the late Miss Eleanor Stevens may hear something to their advantage by communicating with Willard Pratt, Counsellor at Law, International Trust Building.
Now, Eleanor Stevens had been by no means either the crotchety old maid or the rattle-brained young one that these remarks might imply. On the contrary, she had been a rarely charming and gifted young woman, well born, well bred, the heiress to an enormous fortune, in fact, the possessor of beauty, brains, and money, sufficient to equip half a dozen so-called society belles. But in spite of these endowments, or, perhaps, because of them, Eleanor Stevens had been an eccentric, and with every year since her début her eccentricity had become more marked. At times, for example, she would dance and golf, pour at teas, and talk small talk to eligible young men with a persistency and success that made her for the time the sun of society’s solar system. Then, suddenly, and with no excuse whatever, she would withdraw into herself, refuse all invitations, and spend a month or more in studying Buddhism or in inquiring into the condition of the poor in great cities. As to her suitors, the most remarkable reports had existed concerning Miss Stevens’ treatment of those gentlemen. It had been said by some that each in turn underwent a period of suspense hung, like Mahomet’s coffin, between earth and heaven, at the end of which time he was always lowered to the former element by Miss Stevens’ unqualified refusal. Certain malicious rivals had even claimed that at times these proposals were so numerous that Miss Stevens used printed forms of rejection,—like those sent by publishers with unavailable manuscript,—with space left blank for the name and date. There were others who had declared that her drawing-room was always as crowded with suitors as a fashionable doctor’s waiting-room with patients. Occasionally, it had occurred to an exceptionally keen-witted person to connect the girl’s periods of self-exile with her reputed refusal of some specially manly lover. But each of these reports was, after all, founded only on surmise. For it was cited as a crowning instance of Miss Stevens’ eccentricity that she had looked upon the subject of love and marriage with an old-fashioned romanticism, and that while she had never found her special ideal, she yet believed too thoroughly in the honor of her would-be lovers ever to betray their confidence. In the end, society had concluded to accept the girl’s vagaries as simply “Eleanor Stevens’ way.” And this formula had been made to cover a multitude of oddities, ranging from the wearing of high crowns when low ones were the fashion, to Miss Stevens’ sudden and mysterious departure for Europe exactly two days after she had taken apartments for the summer with a party of friends at a watering-place hotel. Indeed, when, six months after her abrupt departure, the notice came of the young heiress’ sudden death—unattended except by her maid and companion—in some obscure village in the Black Forest, even her friends could find no phrase that so well expressed their shocked surprise as: “Well, that was just like Eleanor Stevens. She couldn’t even die like other people.”
And now, following upon the news of her strange death, had appeared this still stranger notice.
Eleanor Stevens’ rejected suitors! Who were they? Would they present themselves according to directions? What were the advantages they would gain by so doing?
To the last of these questions the public had not long to wait for an answer. Three days after the extraordinary “personal” had made its appearance, the announcement was made that Eleanor Stevens had left a will, and that this will had been probated. Before this news was twelve hours old, the sensation caused by the advertisement was completely overshadowed by that produced by the following clause with which it was discovered the will ended:
“To each one of my rejected suitors I give and bequeath twenty-five thousand dollars, to be paid subject to certain sealed conditions, exactly one year from my death, in the library of my residence in Beechwood Street, Philadelphia.”
Decidedly, society had never found a more tantalizing subject for gossip than was furnished by this mysterious will. The latest scandal, the approaching wedding at St. Peter’s, and the forthcoming private ball all faded into nothingness beside this all-absorbing sensation. In the newspapers long accounts of the dead woman’s life and character, of her house and gowns, ways of wearing her hair, and such light-throwing investigations were published daily. A popular preacher referred to the subject veiledly in his Sunday night sermon. Men who had never seen Eleanor Stevens quizzed one another about the wide swath they would cut when they claimed the money due them under her will. While every masculine being, from an office boy to a gray-haired clergyman, that rode up in the elevator in the International Trust Building, where Willard Pratt had his office, was regarded as a possible applicant, bent on further informing himself concerning the curious legacy’s conditions. One man only knew the facts in the case, and that was Eleanor Stevens’ lawyer, Willard Pratt; but from him neither hints, nor bribes, nor open question could drag a syllable. As for Mr. Pratt’s office boy, he reaped a harvest of retainers for worthless tips on the “approaching race.”
In the end, people decided that the legacy had some connection with the late Miss Stevens’ romantic ideas concerning her rejected suitors; and accepted, grudgingly, the necessity of awaiting the slow coming and going of three hundred and sixty-five days before they could find out who those suitors had been.