“Fifi!”
“Aunts!”
“But, my dear child,” cried Aunt Jo, “I thought this was the night of the bridal dinner.”
“It is,” admitted Fifi cheerfully. “But I didn’t go. I’m not going to the wedding either. I sent in my regrets today.”
It was all very vague; but it seemed, as far as her aunts could gather, that young Van Tyne was too perfect—whatever that meant. After much urging Fifi finally explained that he reminded her of an advertisement for a new car.
“A new car?” inquired Aunt Cal, wide eyed. “What new car?”
“Any new car.”
“Do you mean——”
Aunt Cal blushed.
“I don’t understand this new slang, but isn’t there some part of a car that’s called the—the clutch?”
“Oh, I like him physically,” remarked Fifi coolly. Her aunts started in unison. “But he was just——Oh, too perfect, too new; as if they’d fooled over him at the factory for a long time and put special curtains on him——”
Aunt Jo had visions of a black-leather sheik.
“——and balloon tires and a permanent shave. He was too civilized for me, Aunt Cal.” She sighed. “I must be one of the rougher girls, after all.”
She was as immaculate and dainty sitting there as though she were the portrait of a young lady and about to be hung on the wall. But underneath her cheerfulness her aunts saw that she was in a state of hysterical excitement, and they persisted in suspecting that something more definite and shameful was the matter.
“But it isn’t,” insisted Fifi. “Our engagement was announced three months ago, and not a single chorus girl has sued George for breach of promise. Not one! He doesn’t use alcohol in any form except as hair tonic. Why, we’ve never even quarreled until today!”
“You’ve made a serious mistake,” said Aunt Cal.
Fifi nodded.
“I’m afraid I’ve broken the heart of the nicest man I ever met in my life, but it can’t be helped. Immaculate! Why, what’s the use of being immaculate when, no matter how hard you try, you can’t be half so immaculate as your husband? And tactful? George could introduce Mr. Trotzky to Mr. Rockefeller and there wouldn’t be a single blow. But after a certain point, I want to have all the tact in my family, and I told him so. I’ve never left a man practically at the church door before, so I’m going to stay here until everyone has had a chance to forget.”
And stay she did—rather to the surprise of her aunts, who expected that next morning she would rush wildly and remorsefully back to New York. She appeared at breakfast very calm and fresh and cool, and as though she had slept soundly all night, and spent the day reclining under a red parasol beside the sunny dunes, watching the Atlantic roll in from the east. Her aunts intercepted the evening paper and burnt it unseen in the open fire, under the impression that Fifi’s flight would be recorded in red headlines across the front page. They accepted the fact that Fifi was here, and except that Aunt Jo was inclined to go mah-jongg without a pair when she speculated on the too perfect man, their lives went along very much the same. But not quite the same.
“What’s the matter with that niece of yourn?” demanded the yardman gloomily of Aunt Josephine. “What’s a young pretty girl want to come and hide herself down here for?”
“My niece is resting,” declared Aunt Josephine stiffly.
“Them dunes ain’t good for wore-out people,” objected the yardman, soothing his head with his fingers. “There’s a monotoness about them. I seen her yesterday take her parasol and like to beat one down, she got so mad at it. Some day she’s going to notice how many of them there are, and all of a sudden go loony.” He sniffed. “And then what kind of a proposition we going to have on our hands?”
“That will do, Percy,” snapped Aunt Jo. “Go about your business. I want ten pounds of broken-up shells rolled into the front walk.”
“What’ll I do with that parasol?” he demanded. “I picked up the pieces.”
“It’s not my parasol,” said Aunt Jo tartly. “You can take the pieces and roll them into the front walk too.”
And so the June of Fifi’s abandoned honeymoon drifted away, and every morning her rubber shoes left wet footprints along a desolate shore at the end of nowhere. For a while she seemed to thrive on the isolation, and the sea wind blew her cheeks scarlet with health; but after a week had passed, her aunts saw that she was noticeably restless and less cheerful even than when she came.
“I’m afraid it’s getting on your nerves, my dear,” said Aunt Cal one particularly wild and windy afternoon. “We love to have you here, but we hate to see you looking so sad. Why don’t you ask your mother to take you to Europe for the summer?”
“Europe’s too dressed up,” objected Fifi wearily. “I like it here where everything’s rugged and harsh and rude, like the end of the world. If you don’t mind, I’d like to stay longer.”
She stayed longer, and seemed to grow more and more melancholy as the days slipped by to the raucous calls of the gulls and the flashing tumult of the waves along the shore. Then one afternoon she returned at twilight from the longest of her long walks with a strange derelict of a man. And after one look at him her aunts thought that the gardener’s prophecy had come true and that solitude had driven Fifi mad at last.
II.
He was a very ragged wreck of a man as he stood in the doorway on that summer evening, blinking into Aunt Cal’s eyes; rather like a beachcomber who had wandered accidentally out of a movie of the South Seas. In his hands he carried a knotted stick of a brutal, treacherous shape. It was a murderous-looking stick, and the sight of it caused Aunt Cal to shrink back a little into the room.
Fifi shut the door behind them and turned to her aunts as if this were the most natural occasion in the world.
“This is Mr. Hopkins,” she announced, and then turned to her companion for corroboration. “Or is it Hopwood?”
“Hopkins,” said the man hoarsely. “Hopkins.”
Fifi nodded cheerfully.
“I’ve asked Mr. Hopkins to dinner,” she said.
There was some dignity which Aunt Cal and Aunt Josephine had acquired, living here beside the proud sea, that would not let them show surprise. The man was a guest now; that was enough. But in their hearts all was turmoil and confusion. They would have been no more surprised had Fifi brought in a many-headed monster out of the Atlantic.
“Won’t you—won’t you sit down, Mr. Hopkins?” said Aunt Cal nervously.
Mr. Hopkins looked at her blankly for a moment, and then made a loud clicking sound in the back of his mouth. He took a step toward a chair and sank down on its gilt frailty as though he meant to annihilate it immediately. Aunt
