“We shall me—um um—we shall me-eet, me-eet—um um—we shall meet,In the sweet by-am-by, by-am-by-um um-by-am-by.On the bu-u-u-u—on the bu-u-u-u—on the bu-te-ful shore.”
In the morning this fairy-like settlement, with its flimsy and eccentric architecture, took on more the appearance of reality. The season was late, as usual, and the hotels were still waiting for the crowds that seem to prefer to be late and make a rushing carnival of August, but the tiny cottages were nearly all occupied. At 10 A.M. the band was playing in the three-story pagoda sort of tower at the bathing-place, and the three stories were crowded with female spectators. Below, under the bank, is a long array of bath-houses, and the shallow water was alive with floundering and screaming bathers. Anchored a little out was a raft, from which men and boys and a few venturesome girls were diving, displaying the human form in graceful curves. The crowd was an immensely good-humored one, and enjoyed itself. The sexes mingled together in the water, and nothing thought of it, as old Pepys would have said, although many of the tightly-fitting costumes left less to the imagination than would have been desired by a poet describing the scene as a phase of the 'comedie humaine.' The band, having played out its hour, trudged back to the hotel pier to toot while the noon steamboat landed its passengers, in order to impress the new arrivals with the mad joyousness of the place. The crowd gathered on the high gallery at the end of the pier added to this effect of reckless holiday enjoyment. Miss Lamont was infected with this gayety, and took a great deal of interest in this peripatetic band, which was playing again on the hotel piazza before dinner, with a sort of mechanical hilariousness. The rink band opposite kept up a lively competition, grinding out go-round music, imparting, if one may say so, a glamour to existence. The band is on hand at the pier at four o'clock to toot again, and presently off, tramping to some other hotel to satisfy the serious pleasure of this people.
While Mr. King could not help wondering how all this curious life would strike Irene—he put his lonesomeness and longing in this way—and what she would say about it, he endeavored to divert his mind by a study of the conditions, and by some philosophizing on the change that had come over American summer life within a few years. In his investigations he was assisted by Mr. De Long, to whom this social life was absolutely new, and who was disposed to regard it as peculiarly Yankee—the staid dissipation of a serious-minded people. King, looking at it more broadly, found this pasteboard city by the sea one of the most interesting developments of American life. The original nucleus was the Methodist camp-meeting, which, in the season, brought here twenty thousand to thirty thousand people at a time, who camped and picnicked in a somewhat primitive style. Gradually the people who came here ostensibly for religious exercises made a longer and more permanent occupation, and, without losing its ephemeral character, the place grew and demanded more substantial accommodations. The spot is very attractive. Although the shore looks to the east, and does not get the prevailing southern breeze, and the beach has little surf, both water and air are mild, the bathing is safe and agreeable, and the view of the illimitable sea dotted with sails and fishing-boats is always pleasing. A crowd begets a crowd, and soon the world's people made a city larger than the original one, and still more fantastic, by the aid of paint and the jigsaw. The tent, however, is the type of all the dwelling-houses. The hotels, restaurants, and shops follow the usual order of flamboyant seaside architecture. After a time the Baptists established a camp, ground on the bluffs on the opposite side of the inlet. The world's people brought in the commercial element in the way of fancy shops for the sale of all manner of cheap and bizarre “notions,” and introduced the common amusements. And so, although the camp-meetings do not begin till late in August, this city of play-houses is occupied the summer long. The shops and shows represent the taste of the million, and although there is a similarity in all these popular coast watering-places, each has a characteristic of its own. The foreigner has a considerable opportunity of studying family life, whether he lounges through the narrow, sometimes circular, streets by night, when it appears like a fairy encampment, or by daylight, when there is no illusion. It seems to be a point of etiquette to show as much of the interiors as possible, and one can learn something of cooking and bed-making and mending, and the art of doing up the back hair. The photographer revels here in pictorial opportunities. The pictures of these bizarre cottages, with the family and friends seated in front, show very serious groups. One of the Tabernacle—a vast iron hood or dome erected over rows of benches that will seat two or three thousand people—represents the building when it is packed with an audience intent upon the preacher. Most of the faces are of a grave, severe type, plain and good, of the sort of people ready to die for a notion. The impression of these photographs is that these people abandon themselves soberly to the pleasures of the sea and of this packed, gregarious life, and get solid enjoyment out of their recreation.
Here, as elsewhere on the coast, the greater part of the population consists of women and children, and the young ladies complain of the absence of men—and, indeed, something is desirable in society besides the superannuated and the boys in round-abouts.
{0155}
The artist and Miss Lamont, in search of the picturesque, had the courage, although the thermometer was in the humor to climb up to ninety degrees, to explore the Baptist encampment. They were not rewarded by anything new except at the landing, where, behind the bath-houses, the bathing suits were hung out to dry, and presented a comical spectacle, the humor of which seemed to be lost upon all except themselves. It was such a caricature of humanity! The suits hanging upon the line and distended by the wind presented the appearance of headless, bloated forms, fat men and fat women kicking in the breeze, and vainly trying to climb over the line. It was probably merely fancy, but they declared that these images seemed larger, more bloated, and much livelier than those displayed on the Cottage City side. When travelers can be entertained by trifles of this kind it shows that there is an absence of more serious amusement. And, indeed, although people were not wanting, and music was in the air, and the bicycle and tricycle stable was well patronized by men and women, and the noon bathing was well attended, it was evident that the life of Cottage City was not in full swing by the middle of July.
{0156}
The morning on which our tourists took the steamer for Wood's Holl the sea lay shimmering in the heat, only stirred a little by the land breeze, and it needed all the invigoration of the short ocean voyage to brace them up for the intolerably hot and dusty ride in the cars through the sandy part of Massachusetts. So long as the train kept by the indented shore the route was fairly picturesque; all along Buzzard Bay and Onset Bay and Monument Beach little cottages, gay with paint and fantastic saw-work explained, in a measure, the design of Providence in permitting this part of the world to be discovered; but the sandy interior had to be reconciled to the deeper divine intention by a trial of patience and the cultivation of the heroic virtues evoked by a struggle for existence, of fitting men and women for a better country. The travelers were confirmed, however, in their theory of the effect of a sandy country upon the human figure. This is not a juicy land, if the expression can be tolerated, any more than the sandy parts of New Jersey, and its unsympathetic dryness is favorable to the production—one can hardly say development of the lean, enduring, flat-chested, and angular style of woman.
In order to reach Plymouth a wait of a couple of hours was necessary at one of the sleepy but historic villages. There was here no tavern, no restaurant, and nobody appeared to have any license to sell anything for the refreshment of the travelers. But at some distance from the station, in a two-roomed dwelling-house, a good woman was found who was willing to cook a meal of victuals, as she explained, and a sign on her front door attested, she had a right to do. What was at the bottom of the local prejudice against letting the wayfaring man have anything to eat and drink, the party could not ascertain, but the defiant air of the woman revealed the fact that there was such a prejudice. She was a noble, robust, gigantic specimen of her sex, well formed, strong as an ox, with a resolute jaw, and she talked, through tightly-closed teeth, in an aggressive manner. Dinner was ordered, and the party strolled about the village pending its preparation; but it was not ready when they returned. “I ain't goin' to cook no victuals,” the woman explained, not ungraciously, “till I know folks is goin' to eat it.” Knowledge of the world had made her justly cautious. She intended to set out a good meal, and she had the true housewife's desire that it should be eaten, that there should be enough of it, and that the guests should like it. When she waited on the table she displayed a pair of arms that would discourage any approach to familiarity, and disincline a timid person to ask twice for pie; but in point of fact, as soon as the party became her bona-fide guests, she was royally hospitable, and only displayed anxiety lest they should not eat enough.
“I like folks to be up and down and square,” she began saying, as she vigilantly watched the effect of her culinary skill upon the awed little party. “Yes, I've got a regular hotel license; you bet I have. There's been folks lawed in this town for sellin' a meal of victuals and not having one. I ain't goin' to be taken in by anybody. I warn't raised in New Hampshire to be scared by these Massachusetts folks. No, I hain't got a girl now. I had one a spell, but I'd rather do my own work. You never knew what a girl was doin' or would do. After she'd left I found a broken plate tucked into the ash-barrel. Sho! you can't depend on a girl. Yes, I've got a husband. It's easier to manage him. Well, I tell you a husband is better than a girl. When you tell him to do anything, you know it's going to be done. He's always about, never loafin' round; he can take right hold and wash dishes, and fetch water, and anything.”
{0159}
King went into the kitchen after dinner and saw this model husband, who had the faculty of making himself generally useful, holding a baby on one arm, and stirring something in a pot on the stove with the other. He looked hot but resigned. There has been so much said about the position of men in Massachusetts that the travelers were glad of this evidence that husbands are beginning to be appreciated. Under proper training they are acknowledged to be “better than girls.”
It was late afternoon when they reached the quiet haven of Plymouth—a place where it is apparently always afternoon, a place of memory and reminiscences, where the whole effort of the population is to hear and to tell some old thing. As the railway ends there, there is no danger of being carried beyond, and the train slowly ceases motion, and stands still in the midst of a great and welcome silence. Peace fell upon the travelers like a garment, and although they had as much difficulty in landing their baggage as the early Pilgrims had in getting theirs ashore, the circumstance was not able to disquiet them much. It seemed natural that their trunks should go astray on some of the inextricably interlocked and branching railways, and they had no doubt that when they had made the tour of the State they would be discharged, as they finally were, into this cul-de-sac.
The Pilgrims have made so much noise in the world, and so powerfully affected the continent, that our tourists were surprised to find they had landed in such a quiet place, and that the spirit they have left behind them is one of such tranquillity. The village has a charm all its own. Many of the houses are old-fashioned and square, some with colonial doors and porches, irregularly aligned on the main street, which is arched by ancient and stately elms. In the spacious door-yards the lindens have had room and time to expand, and in the beds of bloom the flowers, if not the very ones that our grandmothers planted, are the sorts that they loved. Showing that the town has grown in sympathy with human needs and eccentricities, and is not the work of a surveyor, the streets are irregular, forming picturesque angles and open spaces.
Nothing could be imagined in greater contrast to a Western town, and a good part of the satisfaction our tourists experienced was in the absence of anything Western or “Queen Anne” in the architecture.
In the Pilgrim Hall—a stone structure with an incongruous wooden-pillared front—they came into the very presence of the early worthies, saw their portraits on the walls, sat in their chairs, admired the solidity of their shoes, and imbued themselves with the spirit of the relics of their heroic, uncomfortable lives. In the town there was nothing to disturb the serenity of mind acquired by this communion. The Puritan interdict of unseemly excitement still prevailed, and the streets were silent; the artist, who could compare it with the placidity of Holland towns, declared that he never walked in a village so silent; there was no loud talking; and even the children played without noise, like little Pilgrims... God bless such children, and increase their numbers! It might have been the approach of Sunday—if Sunday is still regarded in eastern Massachusetts—that caused this hush, for it was now towards sunset on Saturday, and the inhabitants were washing the fronts of the houses with the hose, showing how cleanliness is next to silence.
Possessed with the spirit of peace, our tourists, whose souls had been vexed with the passions of many watering-places, walked down Leyden Street (the first that was laid out), saw the site of the first house, and turned round Carver Street, walking lingeringly, so as not to break the spell, out upon the hill-Cole's Hill—where the dead during the first fearful winter were buried. This has been converted into a beautiful esplanade, grassed and graveled and furnished with seats, and overlooks the old wharves, some coal schooners, and shabby buildings, on one of which is a sign informing the reckless that they can obtain there clam-chowder and ice-cream, and the ugly, heavy granite canopy erected over the “Rock.” No reverent person can see this rock for the first time without a thrill of excitement. It has the date of 1620 cut in it, and it is a good deal cracked and patched up, as if it had been much landed on, but there it is, and there it will remain a witness to a great historic event, unless somebody takes a notion to cart it off uptown again. It is said to rest on another rock, of which it formed a part before its unfortunate journey, and that lower rock as everybody knows, rests upon the immutable principle of self-government. The stone lies too far from the water to enable anybody to land on it now, and it is protected from vandalism by an iron grating. The sentiment of the hour was disturbed by the advent of the members of a baseball nine, who wondered why the Pilgrims did not land on the wharf, and, while thrusting their feet through the grating in a commendable desire to touch the sacred rock, expressed a doubt whether the feet of the Pilgrims were small enough to slip through the grating and land on the stone. It seems that there is nothing safe from the irreverence of American youth.
{0164}
Has any other coast town besides Plymouth had the good sense and taste to utilize such an elevation by the water-side as an esplanade? It is a most charming feature of the village, and gives it what we call a foreign air. It was very lovely in the afterglow and at moonrise. Staid citizens with their families occupied the benches, groups were chatting under the spreading linden-tree at the north entrance, and young maidens in white muslin promenaded, looking seaward, as was the wont of Puritan maidens, watching a receding or coming Mayflower. But there was no loud talking, no laughter, no outbursts of merriment from the children, all ready to be transplanted to the Puritan heaven! It was high tide, and all the bay was silvery with a tinge of color from the glowing sky. The long, curved sand-spit-which was heavily wooded when the Pilgrims landed-was silvery also, and upon its northern tip glowed the white sparkle in the lighthouse like the evening-star. To the north, over the smooth pink water speckled with white sails, rose Captain Hill, in Duxbury, bearing the monument to Miles Standish. Clarke's Island (where the Pilgrims heard a sermon on the first Sunday), Saguish Point, and Gurnett Headland (showing now twin white lights) appear like a long island intersected by thin lines of blue water. The effect of these ribbons of alternate sand and water, of the lights and the ocean (or Great Bay) beyond, was exquisite.
Even the unobtrusive tavern at the rear of the esplanade, ancient, feebly lighted, and inviting, added something to the picturesqueness of the scene. The old tree by the gate—an English linden—illuminated by the street lamps and the moon, had a mysterious appearance, and the tourists were not surprised to learn that it has a romantic history. The story is that the twig or sapling from which it grew was brought over from England by a lover as a present to his mistress, that the lovers quarreled almost immediately, that the girl in a pet threw it out of the window when she sent her lover out of the door, and that another man picked it up and planted it where it now grows. The legend provokes a good many questions. One would like to know whether this was the first case of female rebellion in Massachusetts against the common-law right of a man to correct a woman with a stick not thicker than his little finger—a rebellion which has resulted in the position of man as the tourists saw him where the New Hampshire Amazon gave them a meal of victuals; and whether the girl married the man who planted the twig, and, if so, whether he did not regret that he had not kept it by him.
This is a world of illusions. By daylight, when the tide was out, the pretty silver bay of the night before was a mud flat, and the tourists, looking over it from Monument Hill, lost some of their respect for the Pilgrim sagacity in selecting a landing-place. They had ascended the hill for a nearer view of the monument, King with a reverent wish to read the name of his Mayflower ancestor on the tablet, the others in a spirit of cold, New York criticism, for they thought the structure, which is still unfinished, would look uglier near at hand than at a distance. And it does. It is a pile of granite masonry surmounted by symbolic figures.
“It is such an unsympathetic, tasteless-looking thing!” said Miss Lamont.
“Do you think it is the worst in the country?”
“I wouldn't like to say that,” replied the artist, “when the competition in this direction is so lively. But just look at the drawing” (holding up his pencil with which he had intended to sketch it). “If it were quaint, now, or rude, or archaic, it might be in keeping, but bad drawing is just vulgar. I should think it had been designed by a carpenter, and executed by a stone-mason.”
“Yes,” said the little Lamont, who always fell in with the most abominable opinions the artist expressed; “it ought to have been made of wood, and painted and sanded.”
“You will please remember,” mildly suggested King, who had found the name he was in search of, “that you are trampling on my ancestral sensibilities, as might be expected of those who have no ancestors who ever landed or ever were buried anywhere in particular. I look at the commemorative spirit rather than the execution of the monument.”
“So do I,” retorted the girl; “and if the Pilgrims landed in such a vulgar, ostentatious spirit as this, I'm glad my name is not on the tablet.”
The party were in a better mood when they had climbed up Burial Hill, back of the meeting-house, and sat down on one of the convenient benches amid the ancient gravestones, and looked upon the wide and magnificent prospect. A soft summer wind waved a little the long gray grass of the ancient resting-place, and seemed to whisper peace to the weary generation that lay there. What struggles, what heroisms, the names on the stones recalled! Here had stood the first fort of 1620, and here the watchtower of 1642, from the top of which the warder espied the lurking savage, or hailed the expected ship from England. How much of history this view recalled, and what pathos of human life these graves made real. Read the names of those buried a couple of centuries ago—captains, elders, ministers, governors, wives well beloved, children a span long, maidens in the blush of womanhood—half the tender inscriptions are illegible; the stones are broken, sunk, slanting to fall. What a pitiful attempt to keep the world mindful of the departed!
Mr. Stanhope King was not in very good spirits. Even Boston did not make him cheerful. He was half annoyed to see the artist and Miss Lamont drifting along in such laughing good-humor with the world, as if a summer holiday was just a holiday without any consequences or responsibilities. It was to him a serious affair ever since that unsatisfactory note from Miss Benson; somehow the summer had lost its sparkle. And yet was it not preposterous that a girl, just a single girl, should have the power to change for a man the aspect of a whole coast-by her presence to make it iridescent with beauty, and by her absence to take all the life out of it? And a simple girl from Ohio! She was not by any means the prettiest girl in the Newport Casino that morning, but it was her figure that he remembered, and it was the look of hurt sensibility in her eyes that stayed with him. He resented the attitude of the Casino towards her, and he hated himself for his share in it. He would write to her..... He composed letter after letter in his mind, which he did not put on paper. How many millions of letters are composed in this way! It is a favorite occupation of imaginative people; and as they say that no thoughts or mental impressions are ever lost, but are all registered—made, as it were, on a “dry-plate,” to be developed hereafter—what a vast correspondence must be lying in the next world, in the Dead-letter Office there, waiting for the persons to whom it is addressed, who will all receive it and read it some day! How unpleasant and absurd it will be to read, much of it! I intend to be careful, for my part, about composing letters of this sort hereafter. Irene, I dare say, will find a great many of them from Mr. King, thought out in those days. But he mailed none of them to her. What should he say? Should he tell her that he didn't mind if her parents were what Mrs. Bartlett Glow called “impossible”? If he attempted any explanation, would it not involve the offensive supposition that his social rank was different from hers? Even if he convinced her that he recognized no caste in American society, what could remove from her mind the somewhat morbid impression that her education had put her in a false position? His love probably could not shield her from mortification in a society which, though indefinable in its limits and code, is an entity more vividly felt than the government of the United States.
“Don't you think the whole social atmosphere has changed,” Miss Lamont suddenly asked, as they were running along in the train towards Manchester-by-the-Sea, “since we got north of Boston? I seem to find it so. Don't you think it's more refined, and, don't you know, sort of cultivated, and subdued, and Boston? You notice the gentlemen who get out at all these stations, to go to their country-houses, how highly civilized they look, and ineffably respectable and intellectual, all of them presidents of colleges, and substantial bank directors, and possible ambassadors, and of a social cult (isn't that the word?) uniting brains and gentle manners.”
“You must have been reading the Boston newspapers; you have hit the idea prevalent in these parts, at any rate. I was, however, reminded myself of an afternoon train out of London, say into Surrey, on which you are apt to encounter about as high a type of civilized men as anywhere.”
“And you think this is different from a train out of New York?” asked the artist.
“Yes. New York is more mixed. No one train has this kind of tone. You see there more of the broker type and politician type, smarter apparel and nervous manners, but, dear me, not this high moral and intellectual respectability.”
“Well,” said the artist, “I'm changing my mind about this country. I didn't expect so much variety. I thought that all the watering-places would be pretty much alike, and that we should see the same people everywhere. But the people are quite as varied as the scenery.”
“There you touch a deep question—the refining or the vulgarizing influence of man upon nature, and the opposite. Now, did the summer Bostonians make this coast refined, or did this coast refine the Bostonians who summer here?”
“Well, this is primarily an artistic coast; I feel the influence of it; there is a refined beauty in all the lines, and residents have not vulgarized it much. But I wonder what Boston could have done for the Jersey coast?”
In the midst of this high and useless conversation they came to the Masconomo House, a sort of concession, in this region of noble villas and private parks, to the popular desire to get to the sea. It is a long, low house, with very broad passages below and above, which give lightness and cheerfulness to the interior, and each of the four corners of the entrance hall has a fireplace. The pillars of the front and back piazzas are pine stems stained, with the natural branches cut in unequal lengths, and look like the stumps for the bears to climb in the pit at Berne. Set up originally with the bark on, the worms worked underneath it in secret, at a novel sort of decoration, until the bark came off and exposed the stems most beautifully vermiculated, giving the effect of fine carving. Back of the house a meadow slopes down to a little beach in a curved bay that has rocky headlands, and is defended in part by islands of rock. The whole aspect of the place is peaceful. The hotel does not assert itself very loudly, and if occasionally transient guests appear with flash manners, they do not affect the general tone of the region.
One finds, indeed, nature and social life happily blended, the exclusiveness being rather protective than offensive. The special charm of this piece of coast is that it is bold, much broken and indented, precipices fronting the waves, promontories jutting out, high rocky points commanding extensive views, wild and picturesque, and yet softened by color and graceful shore lines, and the forest comes down to the edge of the sea. And the occupants have heightened rather than lessened this picturesqueness by adapting their villas to a certain extent to the rocks and inequalities in color and form, and by means of roads, allies, and vistas transforming the region into a lovely park.
Here, as at Newport, is cottage life, but the contrast of the two places is immense. There is here no attempt at any assembly or congregated gayety or display. One would hesitate to say that the drives here have more beauty, but they have more variety. They seem endless, through odorous pine woods and shady lanes, by private roads among beautiful villas and exquisite grounds, with evidences everywhere of wealth to be sure, but of individual taste and refinement. How sweet and cool are these winding ways in the wonderful woods, overrun with vegetation, the bayberry, the sweet-fern, the wild roses, wood-lilies, and ferns! and it is ever a fresh surprise at a turn to find one's self so near the sea, and to open out an entrancing coast view, to emerge upon a promontory and a sight of summer isles, of lighthouses, cottages, villages—Marblehead, Salem, Beverly. What a lovely coast! and how wealth and culture have set their seal on it.
It possesses essentially the same character to the north, although the shore is occasionally higher and bolder, as at the picturesque promontory of Magnolia, and Cape Ann exhibits more of the hotel and popular life. But to live in one's own cottage, to choose his calling and dining acquaintances, to make the long season contribute something to cultivation in literature, art, music—to live, in short, rather more for one's self than for society—seems the increasing tendency of the men of fortune who can afford to pay as much for an acre of rock and sand at Manchester as would build a decent house elsewhere. The tourist does not complain of this, and is grateful that individuality has expressed itself in the great variety of lovely homes, in cottages very different from those on the Jersey coast, showing more invention, and good in form and color.
There are New-Yorkers at Manchester, and Bostonians at Newport; but who was it that said New York expresses itself at Newport, and Boston at Manchester and kindred coast settlements? This may be only fancy. Where intellectual life keeps pace with the accumulation of wealth, society is likely to be more natural, simpler, less tied to artificial rules, than where wealth runs ahead. It happens that the quiet social life of Beverly, Manchester, and that region is delightful, although it is a home rather than a public life. Nowhere else at dinner and at the chance evening musicale is the foreigner more likely to meet sensible men who are good talkers, brilliant and witty women who have the gift of being entertaining, and to have the events of the day and the social and political problems more cleverly discussed. What is the good of wealth if it does not bring one back to freedom, and the ability to live naturally and to indulge the finer tastes in vacation-time?
After all, King reflected, as the party were on their way to the Isles of Shoals, what was it that had most impressed him at Manchester? Was it not an evening spent in a cottage amid the rocks, close by the water, in the company of charming people? To be sure, there were the magical reflection of the moonlight and the bay, the points of light from the cottages on the rocky shore, the hum and swell of the sea, and all the mystery of the shadowy headlands; but this was only a congenial setting for the music, the witty talk, the free play of intellectual badinage, and seriousness, and the simple human cordiality that were worth all the rest.
What a kaleidoscope it is, this summer travel, and what an entertainment, if the tourist can only keep his “impression plates” fresh to take the new scenes, and not sink into the state of chronic grumbling at hotels and minor discomforts! An interview at a ticket-office, a whirl of an hour on the rails, and to Portsmouth, anchored yet to the colonial times by a few old houses, and resisting with its respectable provincialism the encroachments of modern smartness, and the sleepy wharf in the sleepy harbor, where the little steamer is obligingly waiting for the last passenger, for the very last woman, running with a bandbox in one hand, and dragging a jerked, fretting child by the other hand, to make the hour's voyage to the Isles of Shoals.
(The shrewd reader objects to the bandbox as an anachronism: it is no longer used. If I were writing a novel, instead of a veracious chronicle, I should not have introduced it, for it is an anachronism. But I was powerless, as a mere narrator, to prevent the woman coming aboard with her bandbox. No one but a trained novelist can make a long-striding, resolute, down-East woman conform to his notions of conduct and fashion.)
{0175}
If a young gentleman were in love, and the object of his adoration were beside him, he could not have chosen a lovelier day nor a prettier scene than this in which to indulge his happiness; and if he were in love, and the object absent, he could scarcely find a situation fitter to nurse his tender sentiment. Doubtless there is a stage in love when scenery of the very best quality becomes inoperative. There was a couple on board seated in front of the pilot-house, who let the steamer float along the pretty, long, landlocked harbor, past the Kittery Navy-yard, and out upon the blue sea, without taking the least notice of anything but each other. They were on a voyage of their own, Heaven help them! probably without any chart, a voyage of discovery, just as fresh and surprising as if they were the first who ever took it. It made no difference to them that there was a personally conducted excursion party on board, going, they said, to the Oceanic House on Star Island, who had out their maps and guide-books and opera-glasses, and wrung the last drop of the cost of their tickets out of every foot of the scenery. Perhaps it was to King a more sentimental journey than to anybody else, because he invoked his memory and his imagination, and as the lovely shores opened or fell away behind the steamer in ever-shifting forms of beauty, the scene was in harmony with both his hope and his longing. As to Marion and the artist, they freely appropriated and enjoyed it. So that mediaeval structure, all tower, growing out of the rock, is Stedman's Castle—just like him, to let his art spring out of nature in that way. And that is the famous Kittery Navy-yard!
“What do they do there, uncle?” asked the girl, after scanning the place in search of dry-docks and vessels and the usual accompaniments of a navy-yard.
“Oh, they make 'repairs,' principally just before an election. It is very busy then.”
“What sort of repairs?”
“Why, political repairs; they call them naval in the department. They are always getting appropriations for them. I suppose that this country is better off for naval repairs than any other country in the world.”
“And they are done here?”
“No; they are done in the department. Here is where the voters are. You see, we have a political navy. It costs about as much as those navies that have ships and guns, but it is more in accord with the peaceful spirit of the age. Did you never hear of the leading case of 'repairs' of a government vessel here at Kittery? The 'repairs' were all done here, at Portsmouth, New Hampshire; the vessel lay all the time at Portsmouth, Virginia. How should the department know that there were two places of the same name? It usually intends to have 'repairs' and the vessel in the same navy-yard.”
The steamer was gliding along over smooth water towards the seven blessed isles, which lay there in the sun, masses of rock set in a sea sparkling with diamond points. There were two pretty girls in the pilot-house, and the artist thought their presence there accounted for the serene voyage, for the masts of a wrecked schooner rising out of the shallows to the north reminded him that this is a dangerous coast. But he said the passengers would have a greater sense of security if the usual placard (for the benefit of the captain) was put up: “No flirting with the girl at the wheel.”
At a distance nothing could be more barren than these islands, which Captain John Smith and their native poet have enveloped in a halo of romance, and it was not until the steamer was close to it that any landing-place was visible on Appledore, the largest of the group.
The boat turned into a pretty little harbor among the rocks, and the settlement was discovered: a long, low, old-fashioned hotel with piazzas, and a few cottages, perched on the ledges, the door-yards of which were perfectly ablaze with patches of flowers, masses of red, yellow, purple-poppies, marigolds, nasturtiums, bachelor's-buttons, lovely splashes of color against the gray lichen-covered rock. At the landing is an interior miniature harbor, walled in, and safe for children to paddle about and sail on in tiny boats. The islands offer scarcely any other opportunity for bathing, unless one dare take a plunge off the rocks.
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Talk of the kaleidoscope! At a turn of the wrist, as it were, the elements of society had taken a perfectly novel shape here. Was it only a matter of grouping and setting, or were these people different from all others the tourists had seen? There was a lively scene in the hotel corridor, the spacious office with its long counters and post-office, when the noon mail was opened and the letters called out. So many pretty girls, with pet dogs of all degrees of ugliness (dear little objects of affection overflowing and otherwise running to waste—one of the most pathetic sights in this sad world), jaunty suits with a nautical cut, for boating and rock-climbing, family groups, so much animation and excitement over the receipt of letters, so much well-bred chaffing and friendliness, such an air of refinement and “style,” but withal so homelike. These people were “guests” of the proprietors, who nevertheless felt a sort of proprietorship themselves in the little island, and were very much like a company together at sea. For living on this island is not unlike being on shipboard at sea, except that this rock does not heave about in a nauseous way.
Mr. King discovered by the register that the Bensons had been here (of all places in the world, he thought this would be the ideal one for a few days with her), and Miss Lamont had a letter from Irene, which she did not offer to read.
“They didn't stay long,” she said, as Mr. King seemed to expect some information out of the letter, “and they have gone on to Bar Harbor. I should like to stop here a week; wouldn't you?”
“Ye-e-s,” trying to recall the mood he was in before he looked at the register; “but—but” (thinking of the words “gone on to Bar Harbor”) “it is a place, after all, that you can see in a short time—go all over it in half a day.”
“But you want to sit about on the rocks, and look at the sea, and dream.”
“I can't dream on an island-not on a small island. It's too cooped up; you get a feeling of being a prisoner.”
“I suppose you wish 'that little isle had wings, and you and I within its shady—'”
“There's one thing I will not stand, Miss Lamont, and that's Moore.”
“Come, let's go to Star Island.”
The party went in the tug Pinafore, which led a restless, fussy life, puffing about among these islands, making the circuit of Appledore at fixed hours, and acting commonly as a ferry. Star Island is smaller than Appledore and more barren, but it has the big hotel (and a different class of guests from those on Appledore), and several monuments of romantic interest. There is the ancient stone church, rebuilt some time in this century; there are some gravestones; there is a monument to Captain John Smith, the only one existing anywhere to that interesting adventurer—a triangular shaft, with a long inscription that could not have been more eulogistic if he had composed it himself. There is something pathetic in this lonely monument when we recall Smith's own touching allusion to this naked rock, on which he probably landed when he once coasted along this part of New England, as being his sole possession in the world at the end of his adventurous career:
“No lot for me but Smith's Isles, which are an array of barren rocks, the most overgrown with shrubs and sharpe whins you can hardly pass them; without either grasse or wood, but three or foure short shrubby old cedars.”{0181}
“No lot for me but Smith's Isles, which are an array of barren rocks, the most overgrown with shrubs and sharpe whins you can hardly pass them; without either grasse or wood, but three or foure short shrubby old cedars.”
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Every tourist goes to the south end of Star Island, and climbs down on the face of the precipice to the “Chair,” a niche where a school-teacher used to sit as long ago as 1848. She was sitting there one day when a wave came up and washed her away into the ocean. She disappeared. But she who loses her life shall save it. That one thoughtless act of hers did more for her reputation than years of faithful teaching, than all her beauty, grace, and attractions. Her “Chair” is a point of pilgrimage. The tourist looks at it, guesses at its height above the water, regards the hungry sea with aversion, re-enacts the drama in his imagination, sits in the chair, has his wife sit in it, has his boy and girl sit in it together, wonders what the teacher's name was, stops at the hotel and asks the photograph girl, who does not know, and the proprietor, who says it's in a book somewhere, and finally learns that it was Underhill, and straightway forgets it when he leaves the island.
What a delicious place it is, this Appledore, when the elements favor! The party were lodged in a little cottage, whence they overlooked the hotel and the little harbor, and could see all the life of the place, looking over the bank of flowers that draped the rocks of the door-yard. How charming was the miniature pond, with the children sailing round and round, and the girls in pretty costumes bathing, and sunlight lying so warm upon the greenish-gray rocks! But the night, following the glorious after-glow, the red sky, all the level sea, and the little harbor burnished gold, the rocks purple—oh! the night, when the moon came! Oh, Irene! Great heavens! why will this world fall into such a sentimental fit, when all the sweetness and the light of it are away at Bar Harbor!
Love and moonlight, and the soft lapse of the waves and singing? Yes, there are girls down by the landing with a banjo, and young men singing the songs of love, the modern songs of love dashed with college slang. The banjo suggests a little fastness; and this new generation carries off its sentiment with some bravado and a mocking tone. Presently the tug Pinafore glides up to the landing, the engineer flings open the furnace door, and the glowing fire illumines the interior, brings out forms and faces, and deepens the heavy shadows outside. It is like a cavern scene in the opera. A party of ladies in white come down to cross to Star. Some of these insist upon climbing up to the narrow deck, to sit on the roof and enjoy the moonlight and the cinders. Girls like to do these things, which are more unconventional than hazardous, at watering-places.
What a wonderful effect it is, the masses of rock, water, sky, the night, all details lost in simple lines and forms! On the piazza of the cottage is a group of ladies and gentlemen in poses more or less graceful; one lady is in a hammock; on one side is the moonlight, on the other come gleams from the curtained windows touching here and there a white shoulder, or lighting a lovely head; the vines running up on strings and half enclosing the piazza make an exquisite tracery against the sky, and cast delicate shadow patterns on the floor; all the time music within, the piano, the violin, and the sweet waves of a woman's voice singing the songs of Schubert, floating out upon the night. A soft wind blows out of the west.
The northern part of Appledore Island is an interesting place to wander. There are no trees, but the plateau is far from barren. The gray rocks crop out among bayberry and huckleberry bushes, and the wild rose, very large and brilliant in color, fairly illuminates the landscape, massing its great bushes. Amid the chaotic desert of broken rocks farther south are little valleys of deep green grass, gay with roses. On the savage precipices at the end one may sit in view of an extensive sweep of coast with a few hills, and of other rocky islands, sails, and ocean-going steamers. Here are many nooks and hidden corners to dream in and make love in, the soft sea air being favorable to that soft-hearted occupation.