Chapter I.

The Wiles of Womankind

Archibald Rushford, tall, lean, the embodiment of energy, stood at the window, hands in pockets, and stared disgustedly out at the dreary vista of sand-dunes and bathing-machines, closed in the distance by a stretch of gray sea mounting toward a horizon scarcely discernible through the drifting mist which hung above the water.

"Though why you wanted to come here at all,"he continued, presumably addressing two young ladies in the room behind him,"or why you want to stay, now you are here, passes my comprehension. One might as well be buried alive, and be done with it. The sensations, I should imagine, are about the same."

"Oh, come, dad!"protested one of the girls, laughing,"you know it isn't so bad as that! The re's plenty of life—not just at this hour of the morning, perhaps,"—with a fleeting glance at the empty landscape,—"but the hour is unfashionable."

"As everything seasonable and sensible seems to be here,"put in her father, grimly.

"And such interesting life, too,"added the other girl.

"Interesting! Bah! When I want to see monkeys and peacocks, I'll go to a menagerie."

"But you never do go to the menagerie, at home, you know, dad."

"No—because I don't care for monkeys or peacocks—in fact, I particularly detest them!"

"But lions, dad! The re are lions—"

"In the menagerie at home, perhaps."

"Yes, and in this one—bigger lions than you ever dreamed of, dad!—perfect monsters of lions!"

"Oh, no, there aren't, Susie,"dissented Rushford."You don't know the species. You've mistaken a bray for a roar, just as a lot of people always do, if the bray is only loud enough. Come, now, let me know the worst. How much longer do you propose to stay here?"

"We ll, dad, you see the season won't be at its height for fully a month yet—"

"A month!"echoed Rushford, in dismay."We ll, Susie, you and Nell may be able to stand it for a month, but long ere that I'll be dead—ossified, fossilised, dried up, and blown away! Maybe you girls enjoy it, though I didn't think it of you—but what can I do? I'm tired of reading day-before-yesterday's newspaper and of being two days behind the market. Two days! Think what may have happened to steel since I've heard from it! It's enough to drive a man mad!"

He got out a cigar, lighted it, and stood puffing it nervously, appalled at the vision his own words had conjured up.

"But, dad,"Sue pointed out, coming to his side and taking his arm coaxingly,"you know it was just to get away from all that worry—from those horrid stocks and things—that you consented to come with us."

"Don't call the stocks hard names, Susie. Don't go back on your best friends!"protested Rushford."Don't forget what they've done for you!"

"But, dear, you remember how strongly Doctor Samuels insisted on your taking a rest; how necessary he said it was?"

"Oh, perfectly!"responded Rushford, drily."I've suspected right along that Samuels took his orders from you."

"From me, dad!"cried Sue, indignantly, but her eyes were shining in a most suspicious manner."A man of his standing—"

"It doesn't matter,"broke in her father, with a wave of his arm."I'm willing to grant, for the sake of argument, that Samuels was perfectly sincere. But I still protest that there is no reason why we should conceal ourselves here. We haven't done anything—the police aren't after us—I can speak for myself, at least."

"This seemed to be such a nice, quiet place for you, dad,"explained Nell, perching herself upon a table near the window and gazing pensively out at the shimmering water, which told that the sun was winning a decisive victory over the mist, and that the day would be a fine one.

"For me!"repeated her father, turning and staring at her."You don't mean to say you chose this place on my account!"

Nell nodded, but she winked at Susie.

"And then, you know,"she added,"we have always wanted to get a glimpse of a real Dutch watering-place."

"I don't believe this is a real Dutch watering-place. Nobody here speaks anything but French. Why, it's even got a French name!"

"Only two-thirds French, dad,"Sue corrected.

"And everything is priced in francs."

"That is true of all Europe,"asserted Nell, with superb aplomb.

"We ll, Dutch, French, or Hindoo, you've had your glimpse, haven't you?

Suppose we move on and get a glimpse or two of something worth seeing."

"Oh, but we've seen it all only from the outside! We've been like the audience at a show—we haven't had any part in it. And it's so much more interesting behind the scenes!"

"It's dull enough from in front, heaven knows!"agreed Rushford."If I

had my way, I'd ring down the curtain and close the show up this minute.

It's the worst I ever saw! And I very much doubt if a respectable

American family has any business behind the scenes!"

"You're jaundiced, dad,"laughed Sue."You're looking at the place through a yellow film of prejudice. One must enter into the spirit of the thing!"

Rushford groaned.

"I'm afraid I'm too set in my ways, Susie,"he said, dismally."I've lived in America too long. You might as well ask me to dance the can-can, and be done with it!"

"Besides,"continued Sue,"it's just as Nell says. We're on the outside—we haven't got a foothold. The re's something the matter."

"Maybe they think I'm that Chicago cashier who got away with a million, not long ago. On second thought, though, I don't believe that would make any difference. That fellow would find a very congenial circle here. He wouldn't have any difficulty in getting behind the scenes!"

"Sue and I have been thinking it over,"said Nell,"and we've concluded that it must be something about the hotel. We seem to have picked out the wrong one."

"The place is empty, and that's a fact,"agreed Rushford.

"It's unnaturally so,"said Sue."Something's the matter with it. It's taboo for some reason."

"We ll, it's good enough for me,"remarked her father."After all, there isn't much difference in prisons! But I want to repeat, as emphatically as possible, that I can't keep on loafing here for a month and preserve my sanity. Don't you see how much whiter my hair's getting? I'm willing to do anything in reason to oblige you, and I fully realise the importance of your sociological and ethnological studies—"

Sue's hand on his mouth stopped him.

"Take a breath, dad,"she cautioned him."Take a breath. Those were mighty long words."

"As I was about to remark,"continued Rushford, calmly, taking the hand away,"I am, of course, a doting parent—who would not be with two such children? But, candidly, I don't just see where I come in. I tell you, girls, I've got to have some excitement."

"The re's plenty of excitement at the Casino, dad."

"Oh, yes—faro excitement; roulette excitement. I never cared for that kind. I've always had the sense to keep out of sure-thing games, even on Wall Street."

"But the people—"

"The people! French apes in fancy waistcoats; Dutch dandies in corsets; women with painted cheeks and pencilled eyebrows whom you're ashamed to look at!"

"Some of them are respectable, dad,"laughed Sue.

"One would never suspect it!"

"Oh, yes, dad; some of them belong to the nobility."

"That's no certificate of character—rather the reverse, if one may believe the papers."

"Gossip, dad; nothing but gossip. And you know how you've always hated gossip. You've told us never to believe it."

"It may be; but one could believe anything of most of the women one sees around here. My only chance for amusement is to get up a flirtation with some of them. I don't think it would be difficult—they don't seem a bit shy. Only,"he added, with a sigh,"I'm getting too old."

"Yes, dad; I'm afraid you are,"agreed Susie."You wouldn't really enjoy it."

"'My days are in the yellow leaf;

The flowers and fruits of love are gone;

The worm, the canker, and the grief

Are mine alone!'"

quoted Nell, in a solemn voice.

"Don't you be too sure!"retorted her father, threateningly, wheeling around upon her."The re's no telling what I may be driven to, if I'm kept imprisoned here much longer!'Though I look old,'—"

"'Yet I am strong and lusty,'"finished Sue."Of course you are, dad, and you don't look old, either. Why,"gazing up at him critically,"you don't look a day over forty!"

"Don't try to bamboozle your Pa, Susie,"laughed Rushford."I can see through you! You'll be trying to make me believe next that you want a stepmother."

"I would if it would make you any happier, dad."

Her father gazed down for an instant into her pseudo-serious face, then caught her in his arms and squeezed her.

"What're you up to?"he demanded."Trying to make a fool of your old dad? Why, Susie, own up,—you'd scratch out the eyes of the best woman in the world if she dared to look twice at me!"

"Of course I would!"admitted Susie, instantly."You know as well as I do, dad, that even the best woman in the world isn't good enough for you."

"Let's go across to the other hotel, dad,"suggested Nell, with a nonchalance intended to conceal the fact that this was the point she and Susie had been aiming at from the very first.

Her father released Susie and stared at his other daughter in amazement.

"What on earth for?"he demanded.

"Oh, everybody seems to be over there—you've noticed—"

"Yes, I've noticed that it's running over with the rag-tag and bob-tail of all Europe! If you think I'll butt into that Bedlam, my dear child, you're badly mistaken. I'd rather live with the freaks in a museum."

"But it's so quiet here."

"I'm glad of it! Besides, I thought you wanted quiet?"

"Only for your sake—don't you see, we're trying our best to please you.

A moment ago, you said you wanted excitement."

"I do; but it must be excitement with an object. I haven't got any use for the infernal, purposeless chattering I hear all around me every time I go out on the dyke. Damn a man, anyhow, who can't find anything better to do than to run around to summer-resorts and flirt with other men's wives! I tell you, girls, I want to get back to New York!"

"Give us another month, dad!"pleaded Sue, catching his arm again, as he stamped up and down."You know that you promised to stay with us two months, at the very least. We can't go around without a chaperon."

Her father's face relaxed as he looked down at her, and he smiled grimly.

"So we get down to the real reason, at last, do we?"he queried."I thought all this solicitude for my health was a trifle unnatural. I'm useful as a chaperon, am I? See here, girls, I can put in my time more profitably at the stock exchange, and have a heap more fun. I'll hire a chaperon for you, or half a dozen, if you want them, and pull out for New York. What do you say? I don't know the first principles of the business, anyway."

"Oh, yes, you do, dad!"protested Susie."You're a perfectly ideal chaperon."

"I am? The ideal chaperon, then, must be one who never does any chaperoning!"

"That's it, exactly!"cried Nell, clapping her hands delightedly."How quickly you see things, dad!"

"So that's it!"and he stood for a moment looking darkly at his offspring."We ll, you girls are old enough to take care of yourselves. If you can't, it's high time you were learning how!"

"Oh, we're perfectly able to take care of ourselves,"Sue assured him.

"You mustn't worry about us for a moment, dad."

"I'm not likely to. But, in that case, why do you want me along at all?"

"Why, don't you see, dad, it's you who give us the odour of respectability. By ourselves, we should be social outcasts, impossible, not to be spoken to—except by men. It isn't convenable."

"Oh, I see,"said Rushford."The first great principle of European society seems to be,'Think the worst of every one.'"

"Not precisely, dad; but no unmarried woman may venture outside the circumference of the family circle. That's the great European convention—the basic principle of her social order."

"A sort of'tag, you're it,'game, isn't it? The family circle is a kind of dead line—the ring of fire which keeps out the wild beasts. Step over, and you're lost!"

"Of course,"said Nell,"it is only to unmarried women that the rule applies."

"Oh, certainly,"assented her father."Married women are allowed more latitude—in fact, from such French novels as I've read, I should infer that they usually swing clear around the circle! It's a reaction, I suppose; a sort of compensation for the privations of their youth. I don't like it. Let's go home!"

"But your promise, dad!"pleaded Sue, permitting the faintest suspicion of moisture to appear in her dark eyes."And you know you really do need a vacation."

Her father looked down at her, saw the moisture, and surrendered.

"You're a humbug,"he said;"and this vacation business is another. A man spends two or three months loafing around because somebody tells him he's looking badly and ought to take a rest; and before he knows it, he's accumulated so much rust in his system that he never gets it all out again. His machinery creaks more or less for the rest of his life. The wise man postpones his vacation to the next world."

"We ll, let's call it a jaunt,"suggested Susie."A jaunt somehow implies hurry and bustle, with plenty of exercise."

"And I don't know which is the bigger fool,"pursued her father, not heeding her;"the fellow who takes a vacation every year on his own hook, or the one who permits his daughters to drag him away from his comfortable home and his morning paper and the business which gives him his interest in life, and maroon him in a desert of a Dutch watering-place, where there's absolutely nothing for a self-respecting man to do but smoke himself to death and wait for a paper which never comes till day after to-morrow!"

"It sounds terribly involved, but I'll help you reason it out, dad, any time you like,"said Susie, obligingly."And you'll stay, won't you, dear?"

"Oh, I'll stay, since your heart's so set upon it. I'll try to bear up and find a diversion of some kind and not rust out any more than I can help. I might dig in the sand or make mud pies or play mumbly-peg. But I draw the line at plunging into that whirlpool across the street. My bed here is nearly as comfortable as the one at home, and the grub's first-rate."

"Very well, dad,"agreed Susie, instantly seizing the concession, but speaking as though it were she who was making it,"we'll stay here, then. Only I do wish there were a few more people,"she added, with a sigh."I hate to sit down in that big, empty dining-room. I imagine I'm at an Egyptian banquet, and that there are horrid, rattly skeletons sitting in all those high, covered chairs."

"What you need is some fresh air,"said her father."You girls get your hats and go for a walk. You're growing morbid. If you think of skeletons again, I'll give you a liver pill."

"Won't you come, dad?"

"No; you know you don't want me. Besides, I see the panjandrum who brings the mail coming up the dyke down yonder."

He stood gazing down the Digue until his womenkind reappeared, bedight, ready for the walk.

"You'll do,"he said, looking them over critically."In fact, my dears, if I wasn't afraid of making you conceited, I'd say I'd never seen two handsomer girls in my life."

"Now it's you who are blarneying, dad!"cried Susie, but she dimpled with pleasure nevertheless, and so did Nell.

"No I'm not,"retorted Rushford;"and I dare say there are plenty of other men, even in this Dutch limbo, who have an eye for beauty; let them break their hearts, if they have any, but keep your own hearts whole, my dears."

They were laughing in earnest, now, as they looked up in his face, which had grown suddenly serious.

"Why, dad, what ails you?"questioned Sue."I think it is you who need the pill!"

Rushford's face cleared; they were heart-whole thus far—there could be no doubt of that.