Chapter I: Dramatis Personae

Mary Elton was a girl whom her friends called unusual, and her friends’ friends, peculiar. She was young enough to be judged leniently by her elders on the ground of her immaturity, and old enough to be looked up to by her juniors as a clever woman whose character was past the formative period. An undisguised interest in her own character frequently laid her open to the charge of egotism, but she had never been accused of conceit. A sort of fundamental frankness, combined with a remarkably clear vision, was the basis of her nature. Seeing things without disguise made it possible to speak of things without reserve, and neither timidity nor politeness ever tempted her to call black white, or even gray, and a spade was given no less definite a name when she found it necessary to refer to that symbol of the unmentionable.

Men discovered in Mary Elton certain masculine characteristics of mind and heart, an almost grim sense of humor and a readiness to see the man’s point of view, which, paradoxically enough, made her the more feminine, there being no quality regarded as so essentially womanly as intelligent sympathy for the superior male, and understanding of his complexities.

But, as Mary acknowledged with equal openness to herself and to her friends, no man had ever been in love with her. Many had given her their warmest friendship, and had confided their affairs of the heart to her as to one of their own sex, but no one had ever faintly intimated that marriage could concern her in any more personal way than as a subject of abstract discussion.

Among her clear-sighted and warm-hearted friendships there was none more sincere than that which bound her with mutual chains of comprehending sympathy to Philip Morley. There had always been good comradeship between them, their temperaments being sufficiently unlike to enable them to act and react upon each other to their common advantage and stimulus. He confided his small love affairs to Mary, and she gave them either the sympathy he craved or the scolding he deserved, as circumstances seemed to demand.

To outward view he was tall, with a suggestion of latent power about him, which was in singular contrast with the superficial laziness of his manner. Mary used to tell him that it was a mere toss-up of chances whether he became a leader of men or a follower of women. Certainly hints of both tendencies lurked in his handsome features, the strength lying in his firm mouth and decided chin, the sentiment and love of pleasure looking out from his blue eyes.

One morning, after a lapse of time longer than Philip usually allowed to pass without having seen Mary, he found a bulky envelope on his office desk, addressed in so boldly and blatantly masculine a hand that it instantly proclaimed the writer to be a woman. He glanced at the pile of letters it surmounted, with the constitutional indifference that extended even to his morning mail; then a slow smile brightened his features into an expression of half-amused pleasure.

“Mary’s screeds generally deserve to be read first,” he said to himself. “She always insists that the length of her letters is in inverse ratio to their importance, by which token this must be a trifle of exceptional airiness.”

With a slit of his finger he liberated two closely written sheets of letter-paper and read as follows:--

MY DEAR PHILIP,--I am sending cards to the rabble (and notes to the
elect) to bid them come here “very informally”--whatever that may
mean--next Wednesday afternoon, November twenty-seventh, to meet
Miss Edith Dudley. I am perfectly aware that every one hates teas,
and I know that nothing less than a personal appeal eight pages
long would bring you to one, but I do want you to come and see this
holiday novelty that I am exhibiting for the first time in Boston.
“Who under the sun is Miss Dudley?” I hear you inquire, “and why
did I never hear of her before?” Because, I reply sententiously,
like all Bostonians, your knowledge of men and women is limited to
State Street and the Back Bay; and this lovely creature, who is
a sort of step-cousin-in-law of mine, happens to be known only in
Europe and the southern and western portions of this continent.
Listen, my children, and you shall hear why she is what she is.
Don’t fancy that you are beginning a Balzac novel if I go into
her ancestry sufficiently to tell you that her mother was French,
her father Kentuckian, her education as cosmopolitan as her
inheritances, and her beauty as bewilderingly elusive as that of
the opal or the rainbow. Her mother died several years ago, and by
some strange inconsistency of temperament her hot Southern father
must needs marry the cold Northern cousin of my uncle. (Doesn’t
that sound Ollendorfian?) The alliance instantly froze him to
death; so this lovely wonderful daughter was left to the mercy and
justice of her stepmother. They went abroad together and stayed
two years, and now Edith has come to pay me a long visit on the
feeble strength of my relationship to the second Mrs. Dudley. She
will be in Boston most of the winter, first with me, and then
with the Warners. You are the only person to whom I have given a
word of preparation as to what to expect; but you may pass on the
information to those whom it may concern. As usual, my note has
grown into a foreign letter, the gist of which may be summed up in
the refrain, Come early and avoid the rush! November 27th. One day
only!! Beauty and the Beast!!!

Always faithfully your friend,
MARY ELTON (the Beast).

“How exactly like Mary!” the young man exclaimed out loud. “Her voice gets into her letters in the most extraordinary way, and makes her pen talk instead of writing. Of course I shall have to go and meet this siren who has bewitched the most clear-sighted of her sex;” and he jotted down in his note-book the date of one of the few “teas” he was not glad to forget.