{0121}
“She is a kind-hearted, motherly woman,” replied King, a little sharply.
“Oh, motherly! Has it come to that? I do believe you are more than half gone. The girl is pretty; she has a beautiful figure; but my gracious! her parents are impossible—just impossible. And don't you think she's a little too intellectual for society? I don't mean too intellectual, of course, but too mental, don't you know—shows that first. You know what I mean.”
“But, Penelope, I thought it was the fashion now to be intellectual—go in for reading, and literary clubs, Dante and Shakespeare, and political economy, and all that.”
“Yes, I belong to three clubs. I'm going to one tomorrow morning. We are going to take up the 'Disestablishment of the English Church.' That's different; we make it fit into social life somehow, and it doesn't interfere. I'll tell you what, Stanhope, I'll take Miss Benson to the Town and County Club next Saturday.”
“That will be too intellectual for Miss Benson. I suppose the topic will be Transcendentalism?”
“No; we have had that. Professor Spor, of Cambridge, is going to lecture on Bacteria—if that's the way you pronounce it—those mites that get into everything.”
“I should think it would be very improving. I'll tell Miss Benson that if she stays in Newport she must improve her mind.”
“You can make yourself as disagreeable as you like to me, but mind you are on your good behavior at dinner tonight, for the Misses Pelham will be here.”
The five-o'clock at Mrs. Bartlett Glow's was probably an event to nobody in Newport except Mrs. Benson. To most it was only an incident in the afternoon round and drive, but everybody liked to go there, for it is one of the most charming of the moderate-sized villas. The lawn is planted in exquisite taste, and the gardener has set in the open spaces of green the most ingenious devices of flowers and foliage plants, and nothing could be more enchanting than the view from the wide veranda on the sea side. In theory, the occupants lounge there, read, embroider, and swing in hammocks; in point of fact, the breeze is usually so strong that these occupations are carried on indoors.
The rooms were well filled with a moving, chattering crowd when the Bensons arrived, but it could not be said that their entrance was unnoticed, for Mr. Benson was conspicuous, as Irene had in vain hinted to her father that he would be, in his evening suit, and Mrs. Benson's beaming, extra-gracious manner sent a little shiver of amusement through the polite civility of the room.
“I was afraid we should be too late,” was Mrs. Benson's response to the smiling greeting of the hostess, with a most friendly look towards the rest of the company. “Mr. Benson is always behindhand in getting dressed for a party, and he said he guessed the party could wait, and—”
Before the sentence was finished Mrs. Benson found herself passed on and in charge of a certain general, who was charged by the hostess to get her a cup of tea. Her talk went right on, however, and Irene, who was still standing by the host, noticed that wherever her mother went there was a lull in the general conversation, a slight pause as if to catch what this motherly old person might be saying, and such phrases as, “It doesn't agree with me, general; I can't eat it,” “Yes, I got the rheumatiz in New Orleans, and he did too,” floated over the hum of talk.
In the introduction and movement that followed Irene became one of a group of young ladies and gentlemen who, after the first exchange of civilities, went on talking about matters of which she knew nothing, leaving her wholly out of the conversation. The matters seemed to be very important, and the conversation was animated: it was about so-and-so who was expected, or was or was not engaged, or the last evening at the Casino, or the new trap on the Avenue—the delightful little chit-chat by means of which those who are in society exchange good understandings, but which excludes one not in the circle. The young gentleman next to Irene threw in an explanation now and then, but she was becoming thoroughly uncomfortable. She could not be unconscious, either, that she was the object of polite transient scrutiny by the ladies, and of glances of interest from gentlemen who did not approach her. She began to be annoyed by the staring (the sort of stare that a woman recognizes as impudent admiration) of a young fellow who leaned against the mantel—a youth in English clothes who had caught very successfully the air of an English groom. Two girls near her, to whom she had been talking, began speaking in lowered voices in French, but she could not help overhearing them, and her face flushed hotly when she found that her mother and her appearance were the subject of their foreign remarks.
Luckily at the moment Mr. King approached, and Irene extended her hand and said, with a laugh, “Ah, monsieur,” speaking in a very pretty Paris accent, and perhaps with unnecessary distinctness, “you were quite right: the society here is very different from Cyrusville; there they all talk about each other.”
Mr. King, who saw that something had occurred, was quick-witted enough to reply jestingly in French, as they moved away, but he asked, as soon as they were out of ear-shot, “What is it?”
“Nothing,” said the girl, recovering her usual serenity. “I only said something for the sake of saying something; I didn't mean to speak so disrespectfully of my own town. But isn't it singular how local and provincial society talk is everywhere? I must look up mother, and then I want you to take me on the veranda for some air. What a delightful house this is of your cousin's!”
The two young ladies who had dropped into French looked at each other for a moment after Irene moved away, and one of them spoke for both when she exclaimed: “Did you ever see such rudeness in a drawing-room! Who could have dreamed that she understood?” Mrs. Benson had been established very comfortably in a corner with Professor Slem, who was listening with great apparent interest to her accounts of the early life in Ohio. Irene seemed relieved to get away into the open air, but she was in a mood that Mr. King could not account for. Upon the veranda they encountered Miss Lamont and the artist, whose natural enjoyment of the scene somewhat restored her equanimity. Could there be anything more refined and charming in the world than this landscape, this hospitable, smiling house, with the throng of easy-mannered, pleasant-speaking guests, leisurely flowing along in the conventional stream of social comity. One must be a churl not to enjoy it. But Irene was not sorry when, presently, it was time to go, though she tried to extract some comfort from her mother's enjoyment of the occasion. It was beautiful. Mr. Benson was in a calculating mood. He thought it needed a great deal of money to make things run so smoothly.
Why should one inquire in such a paradise if things do run smoothly? Cannot one enjoy a rose without pulling it up by the roots? I have no patience with those people who are always looking on the seamy side. I agree with the commercial traveler who says that it will only be in the millennium that all goods will be alike on both sides. Mr. King made the acquaintance in Newport of the great but somewhat philosophical Mr. Snodgrass, who is writing a work on “The Discomforts of the Rich,” taking a view of life which he says has been wholly overlooked. He declares that their annoyances, sufferings, mortifications, envies, jealousies, disappointments, dissatisfactions (and so on through the dictionary of disagreeable emotions), are a great deal more than those of the poor, and that they are more worthy of sympathy. Their troubles are real and unbearable, because they are largely of the mind. All these are set forth with so much powerful language and variety of illustration that King said no one could read the book without tears for the rich of Newport, and he asked Mr. Snodgrass why he did not organize a society for their relief. But the latter declared that it was not a matter for levity. The misery is real. An imaginary case would illustrate his meaning. Suppose two persons quarrel about a purchase of land, and one builds a stable on his lot so as to shut out his neighbor's view of the sea. Would not the one suffer because he could not see the ocean, and the other by reason of the revengeful state of his mind? He went on to argue that the owner of a splendid villa might have, for reasons he gave, less content in it than another person in a tiny cottage so small that it had no spare room for his mother-in-law even, and that in fact his satisfaction in his own place might be spoiled by the more showy place of his neighbor. Mr. Snodgrass attempts in his book a philosophical explanation of this. He says that if every man designed his own cottage, or had it designed as an expression of his own ideas, and developed his grounds and landscape according to his own tastes, working it out himself, with the help of specialists, he would be satisfied. But when owners have no ideas about architecture or about gardening, and their places are the creation of some experimenting architect and a foreign gardener, and the whole effort is not to express a person's individual taste and character, but to make a show, then discontent as to his own will arise whenever some new and more showy villa is built. Mr. Benson, who was poking about a good deal, strolling along the lanes and getting into the rears of the houses, said, when this book was discussed, that his impression was that the real object of these fine places was to support a lot of English gardeners, grooms, and stable-boys. They are a kind of aristocracy. They have really made Newport (that is the summer, transient Newport, for it is largely a transient Newport). “I've been inquiring,” continued Mr. Benson, “and you'd be surprised to know the number of people who come here, buy or build expensive villas, splurge out for a year or two, then fail or get tired of it, and disappear.”
Mr. Snodgrass devotes a chapter to the parvenues at Newport. By the parvenu—his definition may not be scientific—he seems to mean a person who is vulgar, but has money, and tries to get into society on the strength of his money alone. He is more to be pitied than any other sort of rich man. For he not only works hard and suffers humiliation in getting his place in society, but after he is in he works just as hard, and with bitterness in his heart, to keep out other parvenues like himself. And this is misery.
But our visitors did not care for the philosophizing of Mr. Snodgrass—you can spoil almost anything by turning it wrong side out. They thought Newport the most beautiful and finished watering-place in America. Nature was in the loveliest mood when it was created, and art has generally followed her suggestions of beauty and refinement. They did not agree with the cynic who said that Newport ought to be walled in, and have a gate with an inscription, “None but Millionaires allowed here.” It is very easy to get out of the artificial Newport and to come into scenery that Nature has made after artistic designs which artists are satisfied with. A favorite drive of our friends was to the Second Beach and the Purgatory Rocks overlooking it. The photographers and the water-color artists have exaggerated the Purgatory chasm into a Colorado canon, but anybody can find it by help of a guide. The rock of this locality is a curious study. It is an agglomerate made of pebbles and cement, the pebbles being elongated as if by pressure. The rock is sometimes found in detached fragments having the form of tree trunks. Whenever it is fractured, the fracture is a clean cut, as if made by a saw, and through both pebbles and cement, and the ends present the appearance of a composite cake filled with almonds and cut with a knife. The landscape is beautiful.
“All the lines are so simple,” the artist explained. “The shore, the sea, the gray rocks, with here and there the roof of a quaint cottage to enliven the effect, and few trees, only just enough for contrast with the long, sweeping lines.”
“You don't like trees?” asked Miss Lamont.
“Yes, in themselves. But trees are apt to be in the way. There are too many trees in America. It is not often you can get a broad, simple effect like this.”
It happened to be a day when the blue of the sea was that of the Mediterranean, and the sky and sea melted into each other, so that a distant sail-boat seemed to be climbing into the heavens. The waves rolled in blue on the white sand beach, and broke in silver. Three young girls on horseback galloping in a race along the hard beach at the moment gave the needed animation to a very pretty picture.
North of this the land comes down to the sea in knolls of rock breaking off suddenly-rocks gray with lichen, and shaded with a touch of other vegetation. Between these knifeback ledges are plots of sea-green grass and sedge, with little ponds, black, and mirroring the sky. Leaving this wild bit of nature, which has got the name of Paradise (perhaps because few people go there), the road back to town sweeps through sweet farm land; the smell of hay is in the air, loads of hay encumber the roads, flowers in profusion half smother the farm cottages, and the trees of the apple-orchards are gnarled and picturesque as olives.
The younger members of the party climbed up into this paradise one day, leaving the elders in their carriages. They came into a new world, as unlike Newport as if they had been a thousand miles away. The spot was wilder than it looked from a distance. The high ridges of rock lay parallel, with bosky valleys and ponds between, and the sea shining in the south—all in miniature. On the way to the ridges they passed clean pasture fields, bowlders, gray rocks, aged cedars with flat tops like the stone-pines of Italy. It was all wild but exquisite, a refined wildness recalling the pictures of Rousseau.
Irene and Mr. King strolled along one of the ridges, and sat down on a rock looking off upon the peaceful expanse, the silver lines of the curving shores, and the blue sea dotted with white sails.
“Ah,” said the girl, with an inspiration, “this is the sort of five-o'clock I like.”
“And I'm sure I'd rather be here with you than at the Blims' reception, from which we ran away.”
“I thought,” said Irene, not looking at him, and jabbing the point of her parasol into the ground, “I thought you liked Newport.”
“So I do, or did. I thought you would like it. But, pardon me, you seem somehow different from what you were at Fortress Monroe, or even at lovely Atlantic City,” this with a rather forced laugh.
“Do I? Well, I suppose I am; that is, different from what you thought me. I should hate this place in a week more, beautiful as it is.”
“Your mother is pleased here?”
The girl looked up quickly. “I forgot to tell you how much she thanked you for the invitation to your cousin's. She was delighted there.”
“And you were not?”
“I didn't say so; you were very kind.”
“Oh, kind; I didn't mean to be kind. I was purely selfish in wanting you to go. Cannot you believe, Miss Benson, that I had some pride in having my friends see you and know you?”
“Well, I will be as frank as you are, Mr. King. I don't like being shown off. There, don't look displeased. I didn't mean anything disagreeable.”
“But I hoped you understood my motives better by this time.”
“I did not think about motives, but the fact is” (another jab of the parasol), “I was made desperately uncomfortable, and always shall be under such circumstances, and, my friend—I should like to believe you are my friend—you may as well expect I always will be.”
“I cannot do that. You under—”
“I just see things as they are,” Irene went on, hastily. “You think I am different here. Well, I don't mind saying that when I made your acquaintance I thought you different from any man I had met.” But now it was out, she did mind saying it; and stopped, confused, as if she had confessed something. But she continued, almost immediately: “I mean I liked your manner to women; you didn't appear to flatter, and you didn't talk complimentary nonsense.”
“And now I do?”
“No. Not that. But everything is somehow changed here. Don't let's talk of it. There's the carriage.”
Irene arose, a little flushed, and walked towards the point. Mr. King, picking his way along behind her over the rocks, said, with an attempt at lightening the situation, “Well, Miss Benson, I'm going to be just as different as ever a man was.”
We have heard it said that one of the charms, of Narragansett Pier is that you can see Newport from it. The summer dwellers at the Pier talk a good deal about liking it better than Newport; it is less artificial and more restful. The Newporters never say anything about the Pier. The Pier people say that it is not fair to judge it when you come direct from Newport, but the longer you stay there the better you like it; and if any too frank person admits that he would not stay in Narragansett a day if he could afford to live in Newport, he is suspected of aristocratic proclivities.
In a calm summer morning, such as our party of pilgrims chose for an excursion to the Pier, there is no prettier sail in the world than that out of the harbor, by Conanicut Island and Beaver-tail Light. It is a holiday harbor, all these seas are holiday seas—the yachts, the sail vessels, the puffing steamers, moving swiftly from one headland to another, or loafing about the blue, smiling sea, are all on pleasure bent. The vagrant vessels that are idly watched from the rocks at the Pier may be coasters and freight schooners engaged seriously in trade, but they do not seem so. They are a part of the picture, always to be seen slowly dipping along in the horizon, and the impression is that they are manoeuvred for show, arranged for picturesque effect, and that they are all taken in at night.
The visitors confessed when they landed that the Pier was a contrast to Newport. The shore below the landing is a line of broken, ragged, slimy rocks, as if they had been dumped there for a riprap wall. Fronting this unkempt shore is a line of barrack-like hotels, with a few cottages of the cheap sort. At the end of this row of hotels is a fine granite Casino, spacious, solid, with wide verandas, and a tennis-court—such a building as even Newport might envy. Then come more hotels, a cluster of cheap shops, and a long line of bath-houses facing a lovely curving beach. Bathing is the fashion at the Pier, and everybody goes to the beach at noon. The spectators occupy chairs on the platform in front of the bath-houses, or sit under tents erected on the smooth sand. At high noon the scene is very lively, and even picturesque, for the ladies here dress for bathing with an intention of pleasing. It is generally supposed that the angels in heaven are not edified by this promiscuous bathing, and by the spectacle of a crowd of women tossing about in the surf, but an impartial angel would admit that many of the costumes here are becoming, and that the effect of the red and yellow caps, making a color line in the flashing rollers, is charming. It is true that there are odd figures in the shifting melee—one solitary old gentleman, who had contrived to get his bathing-suit on hind-side before, wandered along the ocean margin like a lost Ulysses; and that fat woman and fat man were never intended for this sort of exhibition; but taken altogether, with its colors, and the silver flash of the breaking waves, the scene was exceedingly pretty. Not the least pretty part of it was the fringe of children tumbling on the beach, following the retreating waves, and flying from the incoming rollers with screams of delight. Children, indeed, are a characteristic of Narragansett Pier—children and mothers. It might be said to be a family place; it is a good deal so on Sundays, and occasionally when the “business men” come down from the cities to see how their wives and children get on at the hotels.
{0135}
After the bathing it is the fashion to meet again at the Casino and take lunch—sometimes through a straw—and after dinner everybody goes for a stroll on the cliffs. This is a noble sea-promenade; with its handsome villas and magnificent rocks, a fair rival to Newport. The walk, as usually taken, is two or three miles along the bold, rocky shore, but an ambitious pedestrian may continue it to the light on Point Judith. Nowhere on this coast are the rocks more imposing, and nowhere do they offer so many studies in color. The visitor's curiosity is excited by a massive granite tower which rises out of a mass of tangled woods planted on the crest of the hill, and his curiosity is not satisfied on nearer inspection, when he makes his way into this thick and gloomy forest, and finds a granite cottage near the tower, and the signs of neglect and wildness that might mark the home of a recluse. What is the object of this noble tower? If it was intended to adorn the landscape, why was it ruined by piercing it irregularly with square windows like those of a factory?
One has to hold himself back from being drawn into the history and romance of this Narragansett shore. Down below the bathing beach is the pretentious wooden pile called Canonchet, that already wears the air of tragedy. And here, at this end, is the mysterious tower, and an ugly unfinished dwelling-house of granite, with the legend “Druid's Dream” carved over the entrance door; and farther inland, in a sandy and shrubby landscape, is Kendall Green, a private cemetery, with its granite monument, surrounded by heavy granite posts, every other one of which is hollowed in the top as a receptacle for food for birds. And one reads there these inscriptions: “Whatever their mode of faith, or creed, who feed the wandering birds, will themselves be fed.” “Who helps the helpless, Heaven will help.” This inland region, now apparently deserted and neglected, was once the seat of colonial aristocracy, who exercised a princely hospitality on their great plantations, exchanged visits and ran horses with the planters of Virginia and the Carolinas, and were known as far as Kentucky, and perhaps best known for their breed of Narragansett pacers. But let us get back to the shore.
In wandering along the cliff path in the afternoon, Irene and Mr. King were separated from the others, and unconsciously extended their stroll, looking for a comfortable seat in the rocks. The day was perfect. The sky had only a few fleecy, high-sailing clouds, and the great expanse of sea sparkled under the hectoring of a light breeze. The atmosphere was not too clear on the horizon for dreamy effects; all the headlands were softened and tinged with opalescent colors. As the light struck them, the sails which enlivened the scene were either dark spots or shining silver sheets on the delicate blue. At one spot on this shore rises a vast mass of detached rock, separated at low tide from the shore by irregular bowlders and a tiny thread of water. In search of a seat the two strollers made their way across this rivulet over the broken rocks, passed over the summit of the giant mass, and established themselves in a cavernous place close to the sea. Here was a natural seat, and the bulk of the seamed and colored ledge, rising above their heads and curving around them, shut them out of sight of the land, and left them alone with the dashing sea, and the gulls that circled and dipped their silver wings in their eager pursuit of prey. For a time neither spoke. Irene was looking seaward, and Mr. King, who had a lower seat, attentively watched the waves lapping the rocks at their feet, and the fine profile and trim figure of the girl against the sky. He thought he had never seen her looking more lovely, and yet he had a sense that she never was so remote from him. Here was an opportunity, to be sure, if he had anything to say, but some fine feeling of propriety restrained him from taking advantage of it. It might not be quite fair, in a place so secluded and remote, and with such sentimental influences, shut in as they were to the sea and the sky.
“It seems like a world by itself,” she began, as in continuation of her thought. “They say you can see Gay Head Light from here.”
“Yes. And Newport to the left there, with its towers and trees rising out of the sea. It is quite like the Venice Lagoon in this light.”
“I think I like Newport better at this distance. It is very poetical. I don't think I like what is called the world much, when I am close to it.”
The remark seemed to ask for sympathy, and Mr. King ventured: “Are you willing to tell me, Miss Benson, why you have not seemed as happy at Newport as elsewhere? Pardon me; it is not an idle question.” Irene, who seemed to be looking away beyond Gay Head, did not reply. “I should like to know if I have been in any way the cause of it. We agreed to be friends, and I think I have a friend's right to know.” Still no response. “You must see—you must know,” he went on, hurriedly, “that it cannot be a matter of indifference to me.”
“It had better be,” she said, as if speaking deliberately to herself, and still looking away. But suddenly she turned towards him, and the tears sprang to her eyes, and the words rushed out fiercely, “I wish I had never left Cyrusville. I wish I had never been abroad. I wish I had never been educated. It is all a wretched mistake.”
King was unprepared for such a passionate outburst. It was like a rift in a cloud, through which he had a glimpse of her real life. Words of eager protest sprang to his lips, but, before they could be uttered, either her mood had changed or pride had come to the rescue, for she said: “How silly I am! Everybody has discontented days. Mr. King, please don't ask me such questions. If you want to be a friend, you will let me be unhappy now and then, and not say anything about it.”
“But, Miss Benson—Irene—”
“There—'Miss Benson' will do very well.”
“Well, Miss—Irene, then, there was something I wanted to say to you the other day in Paradise—”
“Look, Mr. King. Did you see that wave? I'm sure it is nearer our feet than when we sat down here.”
“Oh, that's just an extra lift by the wind. I want to tell you. I must tell you that life—has all changed since I met you—Irene, I—”
“There! There's no mistake-about that. The last wave came a foot higher than the other!”
King sprang up. “Perhaps it is the tide. I'll go and see.” He ran up the rock, leaped across the fissures, and looked over on the side they had ascended. Sure enough, the tide was coming in. The stones on which they had stepped were covered, and a deep stream of water, rising with every pulsation of the sea, now, where there was only a rivulet before. He hastened back. “There is not a moment to lose. We are caught by the tide, and if we are not off in five minutes we shall be prisoners here till the turn.”
{0140}
He helped her up the slope and over the chasm. The way was very plain when they came on, but now he could not find it. At the end of every attempt was a precipice. And the water was rising. A little girl on the shore shouted to them to follow along a ledge she pointed out, then descend between two bowlders to the ford. Precious minutes were lost in accomplishing this circuitous descent, and then they found the stepping-stones under water, and the sea-weed swishing about the slippery rocks with the incoming tide. It was a ridiculous position for lovers, or even “friends”—ridiculous because it had no element of danger except the ignominy of getting wet. If there was any heroism in seizing Irene before she could protest, stumbling with his burden among the slimy rocks, and depositing her, with only wet shoes, on the shore, Mr. King shared it, and gained the title of “Life-preserver.” The adventure ended with a laugh.
The day after the discovery and exploration of Narragansett, Mr. King spent the morning with his cousin at the Casino. It was so pleasant that he wondered he had not gone there oftener, and that so few people frequented it. Was it that the cottagers were too strong for the Casino also, which was built for the recreation of the cottagers, and that they found when it came to the test that they could not with comfort come into any sort of contact with popular life? It is not large, but no summer resort in Europe has a prettier place for lounging and reunion. None have such an air of refinement and exclusiveness. Indeed, one of the chief attractions and entertainments in the foreign casinos and conversation-halls is the mingling there of all sorts of peoples, and the animation arising from diversity of conditions. This popular commingling in pleasure resorts is safe enough in aristocratic countries, but it will not answer in a republic.
The Newport Casino is in the nature of a club of the best society. The building and grounds express the most refined taste. Exteriorly the house is a long, low Queen Anne cottage, with brilliant shops on the ground-floor, and above, behind the wooded balconies, is the clubroom. The tint of the shingled front is brown, and all the colors are low and blended. Within, the court is a mediaeval surprise. It is a miniature castle, such as might serve for an opera scene. An extension of the galleries, an ombre, completes the circle around the plot of close-clipped green turf. The house itself is all balconies, galleries, odd windows half overgrown and hidden by ivy, and a large gilt clock-face adds a touch of piquancy to the antique charm of the facade. Beyond the first court is a more spacious and less artificial lawn, set with fine trees, and at the bottom of it is the brown building containing ballroom and theatre, bowling-alley and closed tennis-court, and at an angle with the second lawn is a pretty field for lawn-tennis. Here the tournaments are held, and on these occasions, and on ball nights, the Casino is thronged.
If the Casino is then so exclusive, why is it not more used as a rendezvous and lounging-place? Alas! it must be admitted that it is not exclusive. By an astonishing concession in the organization any person can gain admittance by paying the sum of fifty cents. This tax is sufficient to exclude the deserving poor, but it is only an inducement to the vulgar rich, and it is even broken down by the prodigal excursionist, who commonly sets out from home with the intention of being reckless for one day. It is easy to see, therefore, why the charm of this delightful place is tarnished.
The band was playing this morning—not rink music—when Mrs. Glow and King entered and took chairs on the ombre. It was a very pretty scene; more people were present than usual of a morning. Groups of half a dozen had drawn chairs together here and there, and were chatting and laughing; two or three exceedingly well-preserved old bachelors, in the smart rough morning suits of the period, were entertaining their lady friends with club and horse talk; several old gentlemen were reading newspapers; and there were some dowager-looking mammas, and seated by them their cold, beautiful, high-bred daughters, who wore their visible exclusiveness like a garment, and contrasted with some other young ladies who were promenading with English-looking young men in flannel suits, who might be described as lawn-tennis young ladies conscious of being in the mode, but wanting the indescribable atmosphere of high-breeding. Doubtless the most interesting persons to the student of human life were the young fellows in lawn-tennis suits. They had the languid air which is so attractive at their age, of having found out life, and decided that it is a bore. Nothing is worth making an exertion about, not even pleasure. They had come, one could see, to a just appreciation of their value in life, and understood quite well the social manners of the mammas and girls in whose company they condescended to dawdle and make, languidly, cynical observations. They had, in truth, the manner of playing at fashion and elegance as in a stage comedy. King could not help thinking there was something theatrical about them altogether, and he fancied that when he saw them in their “traps” on the Avenue they were going through the motions for show and not for enjoyment. Probably King was mistaken in all this, having been abroad so long that he did not understand the evolution of the American gilded youth.
In a pause of the music Mrs. Bartlett Glow and Mr. King were standing with a group near the steps that led down to the inner lawn. Among them were the Postlethwaite girls, whose beauty and audacity made such a sensation in Washington last winter. They were bantering Mr. King about his Narragansett excursion, his cousin having maliciously given the party a hint of his encounter with the tide at the Pier... Just at this moment, happening to glance across the lawn, he saw the Bensons coming towards the steps, Mrs. Benson waddling over the grass and beaming towards the group, Mr. Benson carrying her shawl and looking as if he had been hired by the day, and Irene listlessly following. Mrs. Glow saw them at the same moment, but gave no other sign of her knowledge than by striking into the banter with more animation. Mr. King intended at once to detach himself and advance to meet the Bensons. But he could not rudely break away from the unfinished sentence of the younger Postlethwaite girl, and the instant that was concluded, as luck would have it, an elderly lady joined the group, and Mrs. Glow went through the formal ceremony of introducing King to her. He hardly knew how it happened, only that he made a hasty bow to the Bensons as he was shaking hands with the ceremonious old lady, and they had gone to the door of exit. He gave a little start as if to follow them, which Mrs. Glow noticed with a laugh and the remark, “You can catch them if you run,” and then he weakly submitted to his fate. After all, it was only an accident which would hardly need a word of explanation. But what Irene saw was this: a distant nod from Mrs. Glow, a cool survey and stare from the Postlethwaite girls, and the failure of Mr. King to recognize his friends any further than by an indifferent bow as he turned to speak to another lady. In the raw state of her sensitiveness she felt all this as a terrible and perhaps intended humiliation.
King did not return to the hotel till evening, and then he sent up his card to the Bensons. Word came back that the ladies were packing, and must be excused. He stood at the office desk and wrote a hasty note to Irene, attempting an explanation of what might seem to her a rudeness, and asked that he might see her a moment. And then he paced the corridor waiting for a reply. In his impatience the fifteen minutes that he waited seemed an hour. Then a bell-boy handed him this note:
“MY DEAR MR. KING,—No explanation whatever was needed. We never shall forget your kindness. Good-by. IRENE BENSON”
“MY DEAR MR. KING,—No explanation whatever was needed. We never shall forget your kindness. Good-by. IRENE BENSON”
He folded the note carefully and put it in his breast pocket, took it out and reread it, lingering over the fine and dainty signature, put it back again, and walked out upon the piazza. It was a divine night, soft and sweet-scented, and all the rustling trees were luminous in the electric light. From a window opening upon a balcony overhead came the clear notes of a barytone voice enunciating the oldfashioned words of an English ballad, the refrain of which expressed hopeless separation.
The eastern coast, with its ragged outline of bays, headlands, indentations, islands, capes, and sand-spits, from Watch Hill, a favorite breezy resort, to Mount Desert, presents an almost continual chain of hotels and summer cottages. In fact, the same may be said of the whole Atlantic front from Mount Desert down to Cape May. It is to the traveler an amazing spectacle. The American people can no longer be reproached for not taking any summer recreation. The amount of money invested to meet the requirements of this vacation idleness is enormous. When one is on the coast in July or August it seems as if the whole fifty millions of people had come down to lie on the rocks, wade in the sand, and dip into the sea. But this is not the case. These crowds are only a fringe of the pleasure-seeking population. In all the mountain regions from North Carolina to the Adirondacks and the White Hills, along the St. Lawrence and the lakes away up to the Northwest, in every elevated village, on every mountain-side, about every pond, lake, and clear stream, in the wilderness and the secluded farmhouse, one encounters the traveler, the summer boarder, the vacation idler, one is scarcely out of sight of the American flag flying over a summer resort. In no other nation, probably, is there such a general summer hejira, no other offers on such a vast scale such a variety of entertainment, and it is needless to say that history presents no parallel to this general movement of a people for a summer outing. Yet it is no doubt true that statistics, which always upset a broad generous statement such as I have made, would show that the majority of people stay at home in the summer, and it is undeniable that the vexing question for everybody is where to go in July and August.
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But there are resorts suited to all tastes, and to the economical as well as to the extravagant. Perhaps the strongest impression one has in visiting the various watering-places in the summer-time, is that the multitudes of every-day folk are abroad in search of enjoyment. On the New Bedford boat for Martha's Vineyard our little party of tourists sailed quite away from Newport life—Stanhope with mingled depression and relief, the artist with some shrinking from contact with anything common, while Marion stood upon the bow beside her uncle, inhaling the salt breeze, regarding the lovely fleeting shores, her cheeks glowing and her eyes sparkling with enjoyment. The passengers and scene, Stanhope was thinking, were typically New England, until the boat made a landing at Naushon Island, when he was reminded somehow of Scotland, as much perhaps by the wild furzy appearance of the island as by the “gentle-folks” who went ashore.
The boat lingered for the further disembarkation of a number of horses and carriages, with a piano and a cow. There was a farmer's lodge at the landing, and over the rocks and amid the trees the picturesque roof of the villa of the sole proprietor of the island appeared, and gave a feudal aspect to the domain. The sweet grass affords good picking for sheep, and besides the sheep the owner raises deer, which are destined to be chased and shot in the autumn.
The artist noted that there were several distinct types of women on board, besides the common, straight-waisted, flat-chested variety. One girl who was alone, with a city air, a neat, firm figure, in a traveling suit of elegant simplicity, was fond of taking attitudes about the rails, and watching the effect produced on the spectators. There was a blue-eyed, sharp-faced, rather loose-jointed young girl, who had the manner of being familiar with the boat, and talked readily and freely with anybody, keeping an eye occasionally on her sister of eight years, a child with a serious little face in a poke-bonnet, who used the language of a young lady of sixteen, and seemed also abundantly able to take care of herself. What this mite of a child wants of all things, she confesses, is a pug-faced dog. Presently she sees one come on board in the arms of a young lady at Wood's Holl. “No,” she says, “I won't ask her for it; the lady wouldn't give it to me, and I wouldn't waste my breath;” but she draws near to the dog, and regards it with rapt attention. The owner of the dog is a very pretty black-eyed girl with banged hair, who prattles about herself and her dog with perfect freedom. She is staying at Cottage City, lives at Worcester, has been up to Boston to meet and bring down her dog, without which she couldn't live another minute. “Perhaps,” she says, “you know Dr. Ridgerton, in Worcester; he's my brother. Don't you know him? He's a chiropodist.”
These girls are all types of the skating-rink—an institution which is beginning to express itself in American manners.
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The band was playing on the pier when the steamer landed at Cottage City (or Oak Bluff, as it was formerly called), and the pier and the gallery leading to it were crowded with spectators, mostly women a pleasing mingling of the skating-rink and sewing-circle varieties—and gayety was apparently about setting in with the dusk. The rink and the ground opposite the hotel were in full tilt. After supper King and Forbes took a cursory view of this strange encampment, walking through the streets of fantastic tiny cottages among the scrub oaks, and saw something of family life in the painted little boxes, whose wide-open front doors gave to view the whole domestic economy, including the bed, centre-table, and melodeon. They strolled also on the elevated plank promenade by the beach, encountering now and then a couple enjoying the lovely night. Music abounded. The circus-pumping strains burst out of the rink, calling to a gay and perhaps dissolute life. The band in the nearly empty hotel parlor, in a mournful mood, was wooing the guests who did not come to a soothing tune, something like China—“Why do we mourn departed friends?” A procession of lasses coming up the broad walk, advancing out of the shadows of night, was heard afar off as the stalwart singers strode on, chanting in high nasal voices that lovely hymn, which seems to suit the rink as well as the night promenade and the campmeeting: