II_Kitty of the Roses

Towns, like persons, have individuality, some distinct, others

indistinct. By the individuality of some we are attracted, by that of

others we are repelled. There are some that are sour, selfish, intent

only upon themselves, that give us a scowl of suspicion for greeting

and turn their shoulder as one who would say “I don’t know you and I

don’t want to. I am very busy; keep out of my way.” Then there are

towns that shout us a laughing “Hello,” that shake our hand and pat our

back, merry, care-free, pleasure-pursuing towns these that make us

welcome so long as we laugh and sing with them, but have no love for us

when we frown or weep.

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There are frankly mercenary towns whose greetings are shrewd and sober

and whose eyes seek our pocket-book even as the door closes behind us.

In such towns our welcome is likely to be just as long as our bank

account, but, at least, we will find no hypocrisy. And then there are

towns that are like--well, like a genial, kindly-faced fellow who sits

on a bench in the sunlight whittling a stick, gives us a neighborly nod

and moves along that we may sit beside him. He doesn’t take our hand,

he doesn’t look askance at our frayed cuffs and battered valise, but,

after awhile, if he likes us he offers us a stick that we, too, may

whittle, or, maybe, he shoves his tobacco along to us. Perhaps as we

sit there in the sunlight and watch him we wonder why he doesn’t work;

after we have stayed awhile we cease wondering and find ourself content

to whittle and smoke in the sunshine and let the world wag along.

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And there are many other sorts of towns, just as many as there are

sorts of personality; hard, cross-grained towns; fretful, grumpy towns;

alert, busy, inhospitable towns; lazy, dirty towns; nervous, hysterical

towns, and mean, rapacious towns. It takes all sorts to make a world,

and even in the worst of them, if we know them intimately enough, we

may find virtues large enough to atone for the faults. And all this

sermonizing merely as an introduction to a little country town that is

barely on the ordinary map and that not one person in fifty--no, not

one in a hundred, perhaps--has ever heard of.

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Belle Harbour is a town that whittles in the sunshine. It is a sleepy,

good-natured, courteous old town with a picturesque past and a dubious

future.

I would much rather not venture upon exact dates, but Belle Harbour

was something of a place when the British marched on Washington, and a

house that does not lay claim to having served as a Hessian barracks,

a British hospital, or a general’s residence, is so indecently modern

that good citizens view it askance. Belle Harbour dozed quietly until

the Civil War disturbed it. Even then it bore excitement with a sort of

calm dignity. When the war was over it relapsed into slumber once more

and now nothing save the last trump will ever fully awaken it.

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But it’s a fine old town, a town with a dignified past, with

substantial red brick mansions set just back from its broad streets,

with oaks and chestnuts shading the crumbling brick sidewalks, and

magnolias leaning over the mossy walls and rusted fences. Belle

Harbour’s streets are wide, not because traffic demands width, but

because when the town was laid out there was a great deal of room and

it seemed a pity not to make use of as much of it as was possible.

So on Belle Harbour’s main streets ten vehicles could very easily

pass side by side. Not that they ever have or ever will; the sound of

one mud-splashed buggy rattling over the paving stones is an event

that causes great interest, while the simultaneous appearance of two

vehicles produces a condition of mild panic up and down the streets.

Next to the low curbstones the worn, irregular paving stones show signs

of travel; but for the rest, the streets are wild wastes of weeds

and grass, wherein here and there a splash of color tells where an

adventurous garden flower, aided by bird or breeze, is striving to

colonize the wilderness.

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Life flows very evenly, very quietly, and, I think, very happily in

Belle Harbour. Children are born, grow up, marry, and die without

moving out of sight of old Christ Church, save, perhaps, for a

brief but adventurous journey to Washington, Richmond or the coast.

Business sometimes takes the Belle Harbour citizen to Washington;

sometimes social obligations render a trip to the capital necessary;

honeymoons are always spent at Virginia Beach. But for the most part

the resident of King’s Street lives his life between the post-office

and the Seminary, respectively the Northern and Southern limits of

his world. When he penetrates beyond the Seminary it is to drive into

the country, perhaps to some decaying plantation. When he goes North

of the post-office it is to enter the shabby, care-free negro quarter.

He clings very closely to the old traditions, the old customs, the old

thoughts. There are no telephones in Belle Harbour, and I doubt if you

could find a phonograph in any of the dim, white-walled drawing-rooms.

Belle Harbour still shudders when it recalls how, a few years ago,

it was threatened with the advent of an electric car line. On that

occasion the old town, if it did not absolutely awake, at least turned

and muttered in its sleep, disturbed by monstrous visions.

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The residents of King’s Street, observing him from behind latticed

windows or meeting him on the oak-shaded sidewalk of that grass-grown

thoroughfare, wondered who Burton was and why he elected to take

up quarters in the town when Washington was less than twenty miles

away across the Potomac. The citizens of Belle Harbour entertained

no illusions regarding the desirability of their town as a place of

sojourn, especially after May; they realized that an elevation of five

feet above tide-level does not constitute an ideal situation, and that,

judged as a health resort, Belle Harbour was far from being a success.

Even admitting the idiosyncrasies of the Northerner, Burton’s presence

was inexplicable. Belle Harbour knew something about the Northern

traveller, for the town was a Mecca towards which Washington visitors

frequently turned their steps. But they seldom tarried; having viewed

the old church in which Revolutionary heroes had worshipped, and paid

their dimes and quarters for sections of crumbling bricks supposed to

have been detached from the edifice walls, but in reality pried out

of neighboring sidewalks by enterprising boys, they literally as well

as metaphorically shook the dust of the old town from their feet and

hurried to the steamboat. Even the commercial traveller took pains to

insure the completion of his business before the last boat returned to

Washington. The only hostelry in the town confined its ministrations

entirely to the citizens, and they seldom penetrated farther than the

little, low-raftered bar-room. And so Belle Harbour viewed Burton with

extreme but courteous interest.

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The information afforded by Mrs. Phillips, of whom the visitor had

rented two second-floor rooms for an indefinite period, was limited and

unsatisfactory. He was a New York man, she confided, and an architect;

he had his meals sent to his rooms and ate three eggs every morning;

he found Belle Harbour very picturesque and interesting, and wore

pink and blue pajamas; he made strange drawings in books and did much

writing; he smoked cigarettes or pipes all day long and dropped the

ashes on the floor. King’s Street heard these facts with avidity and

reiterated “_Why?_” And Mrs. Phillips only shook her head and murmured

in tones of finality,--

“Well, you must remember he’s a No’therner!”

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Burton’s conduct on the afternoon of the day which had given him his

first glimpse of the girl in the rose-garden did nothing to dispel the

growing conviction that there was something strange and mysterious

about his presence in Belle Harbour. Armed with a sketch-book, he

wandered aimlessly the length of King’s Street, smoked four cigarettes

in the shade of the church-yard chestnuts, and subsequently wandered

aimlessly home again without once having set pencil to paper or,

apparently, having seen aught but the end of his well-made nose. King’s

Street whispered behind its sun-repelling jalousies. And yet Mrs.

Phillips’s information, as far as it went, was quite correct, and the

mystery was apparent rather than real.

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Stephen Burton was an architect. A commission for a costly church

edifice for a wealthy congregation in a New Jersey residential

village had sent him South in search of details of pure Colonial

architecture. He had found more to interest him in Belle Harbour than

he had anticipated or than its citizens knew of. The old church was

a veritable mine of valuable material, and certain old doorways and

gables and porches scattered through the town and over the adjacent

country were far too interesting to allow of neglect. Being a man of

comfortable means, Burton’s profession was a passion rather than a

trade; he could and did afford to accept only those commissions that

appealed to him, but having once taken them he put his very best into

each, with the result that he was already known, at thirty-eight years

of age, as the foremost man in the line of his selection--church and

public edifices. He had already spent a week in Belle Harbour; there

was no hurry; if he liked, there was another week at his disposal. With

an office force that could be entirely depended upon there was no good

reason for returning North until it suited his pleasure. This afternoon

New York seemed utterly repellent to him; a hot, noisy, dusty city in

which were no rose-gardens and no girls in white gowns gathered at the

waist with lavender ribbons. Deuce take New York!

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When he gained his room, the rear apartment that overlooked the side

yard, his first action was to go to the window and survey the prospect.

He found it disappointing. The roses were there, to be sure, and the

hammock; but roses and hammocks do not always in themselves satisfy.

He lighted a pipe and wondered a trifle impatiently why the denizens

of the house beyond the box-hedged garden kept indoors when there was

a cool and shady porch and a comfortable hammock awaiting them. He

felt somewhat aggrieved over it. When Bob--the general factotum of the

establishment--brought up his supper and set the frayed white cloth

over the table Burton contemplated making inquiries as to the occupants

of the house at whose blank windows he had been gazing for the

better part of an hour. But on second thought he refrained; there was

something alluring in the thought of nursing his ignorance; he could

give his fancy full swing and make of the rose-filled space beyond the

iron fence an Enchanted Garden and of the girl in white an imprisoned

Princess. The idea appealed to him, and he recalled with satisfaction

that the voice he had heard calling from the house--that is to say,

Castle--had sounded Blue Beardish to a degree. So he merely sent Bob

for a fresh syphon of soda and uncorked the bottle of Scotch whiskey

with a thrill of something approaching excitement.

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Burton frequently wondered, when he gazed about his apartments, why

he had thought it necessary to rent two rooms from Mrs. Phillips. So

far as space went one would have been quite enough. The front room

overlooked King’s Street, or would have done so had the trees which

grew close to the windows allowed, and was broad and long and high,

with white walls and ceiling against which three old yellow-stained

steel engravings looked lamentably inadequate. Even the big four-poster

bed seemed lost in the immensity of the apartment. The rear room was

more cheerful. It was no smaller and there were the same glaringly

white walls, but the furnishings were more numerous and the adornments

more ambitious. Here he was the proud possessor of six pictures, a

framed sampler, three advertising calendars, and two lithographed

mottoes. He never tired of studying the sampler; its artistic effects

fascinated him even though the information conveyed was but slight:

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A b c d e f g

H i j k l m n

O p q r s t u

V w x y z &

ELIZABETH R. WARREN

HER WORK

1827 1838

It was the border of purple, green, and yellow roses that awakened his

enthusiasm, and the queer little something--which might have been an

hourglass and might have been a dressmaker’s form--which divided the

dates at the bottom. As for the mottoes he found less in them to care

for. “Give Us this Day our Daily Bread” was hackneyed and incomplete,

while “Dare to do Right” had so many violent comparisons of color that

none would have thought of paying heed to its advice. The pictures

were uninteresting, a few depressing, a few inexcusable, even when

their period was taken into consideration. Aside from the sampler, the

most artistic of the wall-decorations, Burton decided, were the three

calendars.

The furniture was all of it good, if somewhat out of repair. The big

lounge was of mahogany veneer with a high, straight back of such

delightfully simple lines as to atone for the slippery, inhospitable

horsehair with which it was upholstered. There were some good chairs,

a folding card-table, a swell-front, claw-footed lowboy, and a solid

mahogany desk, beautiful enough to drive a man to theft. The floor was

polished until it shone, and over it were scattered four rag rugs whose

tones of gray and brown or gray and blue were a delight. After a week

of practice Burton was able to step upon these rugs without having

them slide from under him. But he never became proud and careless, and

this evening as he carried the bottle of Scotch across to the table he

held his breath and only felt quite safe when he had lowered himself

carefully into his fiddle-back, rush-bottomed chair.

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The table was placed by the window commanding the Castle, and during

supper he studied speculatively the pregnability of the place. What

he saw delighted him. The rose-vines made it possible to attain the

second-story balcony with a minimum of exertion. With the Princess once

in his arms---- He paused suddenly just there and closed his eyes,

striving with a pleasant warmth under the pocket of his negligee shirt

to imagine the situation thoroughly. With the Princess in his arms!

With those wide brown eyes just under his own and the pearl-like cheek

within reach---- He shook his head and opened his own eyes, which, by

the way, were steel-colored and not brown, and looked across the two

gardens to the Castle.

“If I had you there, Princess,” he murmured, “I very much fear we would

never escape from the Ogre. We should be caught like rats in a trap--I

think that’s the correct term, though hardly complimentary to you--up

there on the balcony. Personally, I wouldn’t much care; with those lips

of yours where I could reach them, my dear, the Ogre might do his worst

and be hanged to him; but then there’s you to think of. On the whole,

perhaps it would be best if I had you rescued by proxy. There’s Bob,

for instance!”

He smiled broadly at the thought and refilled his glass.

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“Once down from the balcony, the rest would be simple. A wild flight

through the rose-garden, a perilous surmounting of the iron fence,

a swift rush down the side yard here, and then a trusty steed in

waiting,--you see, my dear, an automobile would be out of the question

on these funny roads of yours,--and the wide world before us!”

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He lighted a cigarette and leaned out over the casement. The evening

shadows were blurring the rose-blooms, and high overhead a half moon

was sailing out of a bank of fleecy clouds. The Castle showed a

solitary light in the window beyond the balcony. He blew a puff of

smoke towards it.

“Kitty--Kitty of the Roses,” he murmured, “do you want to be rescued,

dear?”

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From the house came the sound of a girl’s voice in song, sweet,

caressing; he could not distinguish the words, and in a moment the

voice was stilled.

He waited and listened, but the silence held. With a little laugh at

himself, Burton arose and lighted his lamp.

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“I’m afraid you don’t, my dear,” he said. “You’re too happy. Don’t you

know that real Princesses are never happy?”

He lowered the shade with a last look into the darkened garden and

resolutely took up his papers.

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