Part 24 (1/2)
”I'm sure I don't know.”
”Who is he here to see?”
”n.o.body, 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-wors.h.i.+ppers, if you'd only own it.” Then she crossed over to the piazza of Valhalla, where Phebe was drying her hair in the suns.h.i.+ne.
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, s.h.i.+vering, s.h.i.+vering 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. b.o.o.by! 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.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
For the next week, Cicely stalked her lion patiently, warily and in vain.
Gifford Barrett had come down to Quantuck, firmly resolved that on no conditions would he consent to be lionized. His six weeks in Maine had been all that he could endure. He had at last come to the wise conclusion that his talent, if he had any, belonged to himself and his work, and was not to be spread out thin on biscuits and served up at afternoon teas. He had fled from Maine and from his admiring friends in a mood dangerously near to disgust. His nostrils were tired of incense. He wished ozone, unflavored with anything whatsoever. The symptom was a healthy one and portended good things for the future. Meanwhile, it led him to choose a resort where he knew no one, where he himself was unknown, and where he could be as independent as he liked.
During the first week of his stay, he accomplished his ends. He went his own way at his own times; he ignored the many inviting glances cast in his direction; he talked only to the bathing master, the native fishermen and the waiter at his table. With observant eyes, he took in the least details of his surroundings; but he did it in an unseeing fas.h.i.+on that completely misled the members of the summer colony who discussed him largely under their awnings and wrangled solemnly over the important question as to whether he was surly, or only shy.
On his side, Gifford Barrett was gaining considerable amus.e.m.e.nt from the morning conventions on the beach. As a general thing, he only watched the people in groups, and entertained himself with making shrewd guesses as to the probable relations.h.i.+ps existing in those groups. Only two individuals made distinct impressions upon him. One of these was the tall, lithe girl in the black suit, who walked as well as she swam; the other was also a girl, but younger and less good-looking, and Gifford Barrett found himself wondering how she could possibly be in so many places at once. He appeared to be always falling over her, always coming upon her path, on the cliff, on the moors, at the tiny post office where it seemed to him that he spent half of his time waiting for the leisurely distribution of the mails to be completed. She usually wore a grey bicycle suit, and she was invariably attended by a small grey dog who took unwarrantable liberties, in the post office, with people's trouser legs and even had been known to whet his teeth on the softer portions of umbrellas. To tell the truth, he paid more attention to the dog than he did to the girl; and he was utterly unconscious of the expression of glee that crossed Cicely's face, one day, when he exclaimed,--
”Get out, you small brute!” and accompanied the words with a pettish little kick which reduced the dog to a yelping frenzy.
On one other occasion Cicely had been conscious of penetrating to the nerve centres of her hero; although, fortunately for her peace of mind, she did not know the exact way in which she had accomplished the feat.
Early one morning, Mr. Barrett had been strolling along the road nearest the edge of the cliff when as if by chance, there had floated down upon his astonished ears, a high girlish voice singing the second theme of his _Alan Breck Overture_. For a moment, his lips had curled into a complacent little smile; the next minute, he had sucked in his breath sharply between his clenched teeth. In her excitement, Cicely had mistaken her distance; she had flatted by a full half-tone the final upper note, reducing the tonal climax of the overture to the level of a comic song.