Chapter 6

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.”

II

One summer afternoon two years later the Ripley sisters were again drinking tea in their attractive summer-house. In the interval the peaceful current of their lives had been stirred to its depths by unlooked-for happenings. Very shortly after their refusal of Mr. Anderson’s offer, their only brother, whose home was on the Hudson within easy distance of New York, had died suddenly. He was a widower; and consequently the protection of his only daughter straightway devolved on them. She was eighteen and good-looking. This they knew from personal observation at Thanksgiving Day and other family reunions; but owing to the fact that Mabel Ripley had been quarantined by scarlet fever during the summer of her sixteenth year, and in Europe the following summer, they were conscious, prior to her arrival at The Beaches, that they were very much in the dark as to her characteristics.

She proved to be the antipodes of what they had hoped for. Their traditions had depicted a delicate-appearing girl with reserved manners and a studious or artistic temperament, who would take an interest in the garden and like nothing better than to read aloud to them the new books while they did fancy-work. A certain amount of coy coquetry was to be expected--would be welcomed, in fact, for there were too many Miss Ripleys already. Proper facilities would be offered to her admirers, but they took for granted that she would keep them at a respectful distance as became a gentlewoman. She would be urged to take suitable exercise; they would provide a horse, if necessary; and doubtless some of the young people in the neighborhood would invite her occasionally to play tennis.

Mabel’s enthusiasm at the nearness of the sea took precedence over every other emotion as she stood on the piazza after the embraces were over.

“How adorably stunning! I must go out sailing the first thing,” were her words.

Meanwhile the aunts were observing that she appeared the picture of health and was tall and athletic-looking. In one hand she had carried a tennis-racket in its case, in the other, a bag of golf clubs, as she alighted from the vehicle. These evidently were her household gods. The domestic vision which they had entertained might need rectification.

“You sail, of course?” Mabel asked, noticing, doubtless, that her exclamation was received in silence.

Aunt Rebecca shook her head. “I haven’t been in a sail-boat for twenty years.”

“But whose steam yacht is that?”

“It belongs to Mr. Anderson, a wealthy neighbor.”

“Anyhow, a knockabout is more fun--a twenty-footer,” the girl continued, her gaze still fixed on the haven which the indentations of the coast afforded, along which at intervals groups of yachts, large and small, floated at their moorings picturesque as sea-gulls on a feeding-ground.

“There is an old rowboat in the barn. I daresay that Thomas, the coachman, will take you out rowing sometimes after he has finished his work,” said Aunt Carry kindly.

“Do you swim?” inquired Aunt Rebecca, failing to note her niece’s bewildered expression.

“Like a duck. I’m quite as much at home on the water as on land. I’ve had a sailboat since I was thirteen, and most of our summers have been spent at Buzzard’s Bay.”

“But you’re a young lady now,” said Aunt Rebecca.

Mabel looked from one to the other as though she were speculating as to what these new protectors were like. “Am I?” she asked with a smile. “I must remember that, I suppose; but it will be hard to change all at once.” Thereupon she stepped lightly to the edge of the cliff that she might enjoy more completely the view while she left them to digest this qualified surrender.

“‘No pent-up Utica contracts her powers,’” murmured Miss Rebecca, who was fond of classic verse.

“It is evident that we shall have our hands full,” answered Miss Carry. “But she’s fresh as a rose, and wide-awake. I’m sure the dear girl will try to please us.”

Mabel did try, and succeeded; but it was a success obtained at the cost of setting at naught all her aunts’ preconceived ideas regarding the correct deportment of marriageable girls. The knockabout was forthcoming shortly after she had demonstrated her amphibious qualities by diving from the rocks and performing water feats which dazed her anxious guardians. Indeed, she fairly lived in her bathing-dress until the novelty wore off. Thomas, the coachman, who had been a fisherman in his day, announced with a grin, after accompanying her on the trial trip of the hired cat-boat, that he could teach her nothing about sailing. Henceforth her small craft was almost daily a distant speck on the horizon, and braved the seas so successfully under her guidance that presently the aunts forbore to watch for disaster through a spyglass.