The view of the Catskills from a certain hospitable mansion on the east
side of the Hudson is better than any mew from those delectable hills.
The artist said so one morning late in June, and Mr. King agreed with
him, as a matter of fact, but would have no philosophizing about it, as
that anticipation is always better than realization; and when Mr.
Forbes went on to say that climbing a mountain was a good deal like
marriage--the world was likely to look a little flat once that cerulean
height was attained--Mr. King only remarked that that was a low view to
take of the subject, but he would confess that it was unreasonable to
expect that any rational object could fulfill, or even approach, the
promise held out by such an exquisite prospect as that before them.
The friends were standing where the Catskill hills lay before them
in echelon towards the river, the ridges lapping over each other and
receding in the distance, a gradation of lines most artistically drawn,
still further refined by shades of violet, which always have the effect
upon the contemplative mind of either religious exaltation or the
kindling of a sentiment which is in the young akin to the emotion of
love. While the artist was making some memoranda of these outlines, and
Mr. King was drawing I know not what auguries of hope from these purple
heights, a young lady seated upon a rock near by--a young lady just
stepping over the border-line of womanhood--had her eyes also fixed upon
those dreamy distances, with that look we all know so well, betraying
that shy expectancy of life which is unconfessed, that tendency to
maidenly reverie which it were cruel to interpret literally. At the
moment she is more interesting than the Catskills--the brown hair, the
large eyes unconscious of anything but the most natural emotion, the
shapely waist just beginning to respond to the call of the future--it
is a pity that we shall never see her again, and that she has nothing
whatever to do with our journey. She also will have her romance;
fate will meet her in the way some day, and set her pure heart wildly
beating, and she will know what those purple distances mean. Happiness,
tragedy, anguish--who can tell what is in store for her? I cannot but
feel profound sadness at meeting her in this casual way and never seeing
her again. Who says that the world is not full of romance and pathos and
regret as we go our daily way in it? You meet her at a railway station;
there is the flutter of a veil, the gleam of a scarlet bird, the lifting
of a pair of eyes--she is gone; she is entering a drawing-room, and
stops a moment and turns away; she is looking from a window as you
pass--it is only a glance out of eternity; she stands for a second upon
a rock looking seaward; she passes you at the church door--is that all?
It is discovered that instantaneous photographs can be taken. They are
taken all the time; some of them are never developed, but I suppose
these impressions are all there on the sensitive plate, and that the
plate is permanently affected by the impressions. The pity of it is that
the world is so full of these undeveloped knowledges of people worth
knowing and friendships worth making.
The comfort of leaving same things to the imagination was impressed upon
our travelers when they left the narrow-gauge railway at the mountain
station, and identified themselves with other tourists by entering a
two-horse wagon to be dragged wearily up the hill through the woods. The
ascent would be more tolerable if any vistas were cut in the forest to
give views by the way; as it was, the monotony of the pull upward was
only relieved by the society of the passengers. There were two bright
little girls off for a holiday with their Western uncle, a big,
good-natured man with a diamond breast-pin, and his voluble son, a lad
about the age of his little cousins, whom he constantly pestered by
his rude and dominating behavior. The boy was a product which it is the
despair of all Europe to produce, and our travelers had great delight in
him as an epitome of American “smartness.” He led all the conversation,
had confident opinions about everything, easily put down his deferential
papa, and pleased the other passengers by his self-sufficient,
know-it-all air. To a boy who had traveled in California and seen the
Alps it was not to be expected that this humble mountain could afford
much entertainment, and he did not attempt to conceal his contempt for
it. When the stage reached the Rip Van Winkle House, half-way, the shy
schoolgirls were for indulging a little sentiment over the old legend,
but the boy, who concealed his ignorance of the Irving romance until his
cousins had prattled the outlines of it, was not to be taken in by any
such chaff, and though he was a little staggered by Rip's own cottage,
and by the sight of the cave above it which is labeled as the very
spot where the vagabond took his long nap, he attempted to bully
the attendant and drink-mixer in the hut, and openly flaunted his
incredulity until the bar-tender showed him a long bunch of Rip's hair,
which hung like a scalp on a nail, and the rusty barrel and stock of the
musket. The cabin is, indeed, full of old guns, pistols, locks of hair,
buttons, cartridge-boxes, bullets, knives, and other undoubted relics
of Rip and the Revolution. This cabin, with its facilities for slaking
thirst on a hot day, which Rip would have appreciated, over a hundred
years old according to information to be obtained on the spot, is
really of unknown antiquity, the old boards and timber of which it is
constructed having been brought down from the Mountain House some forty
years ago.
The old Mountain House, standing upon its ledge of rock, from which
one looks down upon a map of a considerable portion of New York and New
England, with the lake in the rear, and heights on each side that offer
charming walks to those who have in contemplation views of nature or
of matrimony, has somewhat lost its importance since the vast Catskill
region has come to the knowledge of the world. A generation ago it
was the centre of attraction, and it was understood that going to the
Catskills was going there. Generations of searchers after immortality
have chiseled their names in the rock platform, and one who sits there
now falls to musing on the vanity of human nature and the transitoriness
of fashion. Now New York has found that it has very convenient to it
a great mountain pleasure-ground; railways and excellent roads have
pierced it, the varied beauties of rocks, ravines, and charming retreats
are revealed, excellent hotels capable of entertaining a thousand guests
are planted on heights and slopes commanding mountain as well as lowland
prospects, great and small boarding-houses cluster in the high valleys
and on the hillsides, and cottages more thickly every year dot the
wild region. Year by year these accommodations will increase, new
roads around the gorges will open more enchanting views, and it is not
improbable that the species of American known as the “summer boarder”
will have his highest development and apotheosis in these mountains.
Nevertheless Mr. King was not uninterested in renewing his memories
of the old house. He could recall without difficulty, and also without
emotion now, a scene on this upper veranda and a moonlight night long
ago, and he had no doubt he could find her name carved on a beech-tree
in the wood near by; but it was useless to look for it, for her name had
been changed. The place was, indeed, full of memories, but all chastened
and subdued by the indoor atmosphere, which impressed him as that of
a faded Sunday. He was very careful not to disturb the decorum by any
frivolity of demeanor, and he cautioned the artist on this point; but
Mr. Forbes declared that the dining-room fare kept his spirits at a
proper level. There was an old-time satisfaction in wandering into the
parlor, and resting on the haircloth sofa, and looking at the hair-cloth
chairs, and pensively imagining a meeting there, with songs out of
the Moody and Sankey book; and he did not tire of dropping into the
reposeful reception-room, where he never by any chance met anybody,
and sitting with the melodeon and big Bible Society edition of the
Scriptures, and a chance copy of the Christian at Play. These amusements
were varied by sympathetic listening to the complaints of the proprietor
about the vandalism of visitors who wrote with diamonds on the
window-panes, so that the glass had to be renewed, or scratched their
names on the pillars of the piazza, so that the whole front had to be
repainted, or broke off the azalea blossoms, or in other ways desecrated
the premises. In order to fit himself for a sojourn here, Mr. King tried
to commit to memory a placard that was neatly framed and hung on the
veranda, wherein it was stated that the owner cheerfully submits to all
necessary use of the premises, “but will not permit any unnecessary use,
or the exercise of a depraved taste or vandalism.” There were not as yet
many guests, and those who were there seemed to have conned this placard
to their improvement, for there was not much exercise of any sort of
taste. Of course there were two or three brides, and there was the
inevitable English nice middle-class tourist with his wife, the latter
ram-roddy and uncompromising, in big boots and botanical, who, in
response to a gentleman who was giving her information about travel,
constantly ejaculated, in broad English, “Yas, yas; ow, ow, ow, really!”
And there was the young bride from Kankazoo, who frightened Mr. King
back into his chamber one morning when he opened his door and beheld the
vision of a woman going towards the breakfast-room in what he took to be
a robe de nuit, but which turned out to be one of the “Mother-Hubbards”
which have had a certain celebrity as street dresses in some parts of
the West. But these gayeties palled after a time, and one afternoon
our travelers, with their vandalism all subdued, walked a mile over the
rocks to the Kaaterskill House, and took up their abode there to watch
the opening of the season. Naturally they expected some difficulty in
transferring their two trunks round by the road, where there had been
nothing but a wilderness forty years ago; but their change of base was
facilitated by the obliging hotelkeeper in the most friendly manner, and
when he insisted on charging only four dollars for moving the trunks,
the two friends said that, considering the wear and tear of the mountain
involved, they did not see how he could afford to do it for such a sum,
and they went away, as they said, well pleased.
It happened to be at the Kaaterskill House--it might have been at
the Grand, or the Overlook--that the young gentlemen in search of
information saw the Catskill season get under way. The phase of American
life is much the same at all these great caravansaries. It seems to the
writer, who has the greatest admiration for the military genius that can
feed and fight an army in the field, that not enough account is made
of the greater genius that can organize and carry on a great American
hotel, with a thousand or fifteen hundred guests, in a short, sharp,
and decisive campaign of two months, at the end of which the substantial
fruits of victory are in the hands of the landlord, and the guests are
allowed to depart with only their personal baggage and side-arms, but so
well pleased that they are inclined to renew the contest next year. This
is a triumph of mind over mind. It is not merely the organization and
the management of the army under the immediate command of the landlord,
the accumulation and distribution of supplies upon this mountain-top, in
the uncertainty whether the garrison on a given day will be one hundred
or one thousand, not merely the lodging, rationing and amusing of this
shifting host, but the satisfying of as many whims and prejudices
as there are people who leave home on purpose to grumble and enjoy
themselves in the exercise of a criticism they dare not indulge in their
own houses. Our friends had an opportunity of seeing the machinery set
in motion in one of these great establishments. Here was a vast balloon
structure, founded on a rock, but built in the air, and anchored with
cables, with towers and a high pillared veranda, capable, with its
annex, of lodging fifteen hundred people. The army of waiters and
chamber-maids, of bellboys, and scullions and porters and laundry-folk,
was arriving; the stalwart scrubbers were at work, the store-rooms were
filled, the big kitchen shone with its burnished coppers, and an array
of white-capped and aproned cooks stood in line under their chef; the
telegraph operator was waiting at her desk, the drug clerk was arranging
his bottles, the newspaper stand was furnished, the post-office was open
for letters. It needed but the arrival of a guest to set the machinery
in motion. And as soon as the guest came the band would be there to
launch him into the maddening gayety of the season. It would welcome his
arrival in triumphant strains; it would pursue him at dinner, and drown
his conversation; it will fill his siesta with martial dreams, and it
would seize his legs in the evening, and entreat him to caper in the
parlor. Everything was ready. And this was what happened. It was the
evening of the opening day. The train wagons might be expected
any moment. The electric lights were blazing. All the clerks stood
expectant, the porters were by the door, the trim, uniformed bell-boys
were all in waiting line, the register clerk stood fingering the leaves
of the register with a gracious air. A noise is heard outside, the big
door opens, there is a rush forward, and four people flock in a man in a
linen duster, a stout woman, a lad of ten, a smartly dressed young lady,
and a dog. Movement, welcome, ringing of bells, tramping of feet--the
whole machinery has started. It was adjusted to crack an egg-shell or
smash an iron-bound trunk. The few drops presaged a shower. The next day
there were a hundred on the register; the day after, two hundred; and
the day following, an excursion.
With increasing arrivals opportunity was offered for the study of
character. Away from his occupation, away from the cares of the
household and the demands of society, what is the self-sustaining
capacity of the ordinary American man or woman? It was interesting to
note the enthusiasm of the first arrival, the delight in the view--Round
Top, the deep gorges, the charming vista of the lowlands, a world and
wilderness of beauty; the inspiration of the air, the alertness to
explore in all directions, to see the lake, the falls, the mountain
paths. But is a mountain sooner found out than a valley, or is there a
want of internal resources, away from business, that the men presently
become rather listless, take perfunctory walks for exercise, and are so
eager for meal-time and mail-time? Why do they depend so much upon
the newspapers, when they all despise the newspapers? Mr. King used
to listen of an evening to the commonplace talk about the fire, all of
which was a dilution of what they had just got out of the newspapers,
but what a lively assent there was to a glib talker who wound up his
remarks with a denunciation of the newspapers! The man was no doubt
quite right, but did he reflect on the public loss of his valuable
conversation the next night if his newspaper should chance to fail? And
the women, after their first feeling of relief, did they fall presently
into petty gossip, complaints about the table, criticisms of each
other's dress, small discontents with nearly everything? Not all of
them.
An excursion is always resented by the regular occupants of a summer
resort, who look down upon the excursionists, while they condescend
to be amused by them. It is perhaps only the common attitude of the
wholesale to the retail dealer, although it is undeniable that a person
seems temporarily to change his nature when he becomes part of an
excursion; whether it is from the elation at the purchase of a day
of gayety below the market price, or the escape from personal
responsibility under a conductor, or the love of being conspicuous as a
part of a sort of organization, the excursionist is not on his ordinary
behavior.
An excursion numbering several hundreds, gathered along the river
towns by the benevolent enterprise of railway officials, came up to the
mountain one day. The officials seemed to have run a drag-net through
factories, workshops, Sunday-schools, and churches, and scooped in
the weary workers at homes and in shops unaccustomed to a holiday. Our
friends formed a part of a group on the hotel piazza who watched the
straggling arrival of this band of pleasure. For by this time our
two friends had found a circle of acquaintances, with the facility of
watering-place life, which in its way represented certain phases of
American life as well as the excursion. A great many writers have sought
to classify and label and put into a paragraph a description of the
American girl. She is not to be disposed of by any such easy process.
Undoubtedly she has some common marks of nationality that distinguish
her from the English girl, but in variety she is practically infinite,
and likely to assume almost any form, and the characteristics of a dozen
nationalities. No one type represents her. What, indeed, would one say
of this little group on the hotel piazza, making its comments upon
the excursionists? Here is a young lady of, say, twenty-three years,
inclining already to stoutness, domestic, placid, with matron written on
every line of her unselfish face, capable of being, if necessity were, a
notable housekeeper, learned in preserves and jellies and cordials, sure
to have her closets in order, and a place for every remnant, piece of
twine, and all odds and ends. Not a person to read Browning with, but to
call on if one needed a nurse, or a good dinner, or a charitable deed.
Beside her, in an invalid's chair, a young girl, scarcely eighteen, of
quite another sort, pale, slight, delicate, with a lovely face and large
sentimental eyes, all nerves, the product, perhaps, of a fashionable
school, who in one season in New York, her first, had utterly broken
down into what is called nervous prostration. In striking contrast was
Miss Nettie Sumner, perhaps twenty-one, who corresponded more nearly to
what the internationalists call the American type; had evidently taken
school education as a duck takes water, and danced along in society into
apparent robustness of person and knowledge of the world. A handsome
girl, she would be a comely woman, good-natured, quick at repartee,
confining her knowledge of books to popular novels, too natural
and frank to be a flirt, an adept in all the nice slang current in
fashionable life, caught up from collegians and brokers, accustomed to
meet men in public life, in hotels, a very “jolly” companion, with a
fund of good sense that made her entirely capable of managing her own
affairs. Mr. King was at the moment conversing with still another young
lady, who had more years than the last-named-short, compact figure,
round girlish face, good, strong, dark eyes, modest in bearing,
self-possessed in manner, sensible-who made ready and incisive comments,
and seemed to have thought deeply on a large range of topics, but had
a sort of downright practicality and cool independence, with all
her femininity of bearing, that rather, puzzled her interlocutor. It
occurred to Mr. King to guess that Miss Selina Morton might be from
Boston, which she was not, but it was with a sort of shock of surprise
that he learned later that this young girl, moving about in society in
the innocent panoply of girlhood, was a young doctor, who had no doubt
looked through and through him with her keen eyes, studied him in the
light of heredity, constitutional tendencies, habits, and environment,
as a possible patient. It almost made him ill to think of it. Here were
types enough for one morning; but there was still another.
The artist had seated himself on a rock a little distance from the
house, and was trying to catch some of the figures as they appeared up
the path, and a young girl was looking over his shoulder with an amused
face, just as he was getting an elderly man in a long flowing duster,
straggling gray hair, hat on the back of his head, large iron-rimmed
spectacles, with a baggy umbrella, who stopped breathless at the summit,
with a wild glare of astonishment at the view. This young girl, whom the
careless observer might pass without a second glance, was discovered on
better acquaintance to express in her face and the lines of her figure
some subtle intellectual quality not easily interpreted. Marion Lamont,
let us say at once, was of Southern origin, born in London during the
temporary residence of her parents there, and while very young deprived
by death of her natural protectors. She had a small, low voice, fine
hair of a light color, which contrasted with dark eyes, waved back from
her forehead, delicate, sensitive features--indeed, her face, especially
in conversation with any one, almost always had a wistful, appealing
look; in figure short and very slight, lithe and graceful, full of
unconscious artistic poses, fearless and sure-footed as a gazelle in
climbing about the rocks, leaping from stone to stone, and even making
her way up a tree that had convenient branches, if the whim took her,
using her hands and arms like a gymnast, and performing whatever feat
of. daring or dexterity as if the exquisitely molded form was all
instinct with her indomitable will, and obeyed it, and always with an
air of refinement and spirited breeding. A child of nature in seeming,
but yet a woman who was not to be fathomed by a chance acquaintance.
The old man with the spectacles was presently overtaken by a stout,
elderly woman, who landed in the exhausted condition of a porpoise that
has come ashore, and stood regardless of everything but her own weight,
while member after member of the party straggled up. No sooner did
this group espy the artist than they moved in his direction. “There's a
painter.” “I wonder what he's painting.” “Maybe he'll paint us.” “Let's
see what he's doing.” “I should like to see a man paint.” And the crowd
flowed on, getting in front of the sketcher, and creeping round behind
him for a peep over his shoulder. The artist closed his sketch-book
and retreated, and the stout woman, balked of that prey, turned round
a moment to the view, exclaimed, “Ain't that elegant!” and then waddled
off to the hotel.
“I wonder,” Mr. King was saying, “if these excursionists are
representative of general American life?”
“If they are,” said the artist, “there's little here for my purpose. A
good many of them seem to be foreigners, or of foreign origin. Just as
soon as these people get naturalized, they lose the picturesqueness they
had abroad.”
“Did it never occur to your highness that they may prefer to be
comfortable rather than picturesque, and that they may be ignorant that
they were born for artistic purposes?” It was the low voice of Miss
Lamont, and that demure person looked up as if she really wanted
information.
“I doubt about the comfort,” the artist began to reply.
“And so do I,” said Miss Sumner. “What on earth do you suppose made
those girls come up here in white dresses, blowing about in the wind,
and already drabbled? Did you ever see such a lot of cheap millinery? I
haven't seen a woman yet with the least bit of style.”
“Poor things, they look as if they'd never had a holiday before in their
lives, and didn't exactly know what to do with it,” apologized Miss
Lamont.
“Don't you believe it. They've been to more church and Sunday-school
picnics than you ever attended. Look over there!”
It was a group seated about their lunch-baskets. A young gentleman, the
comedian of the patty, the life of the church sociable, had put on the
hat of one of the girls, and was making himself so irresistibly funny
in it that all the girls tittered, and their mothers looked a little
shamefaced and pleased.
“Well,” said Mr. King, “that's the only festive sign I've seen. It's
more like a funeral procession than a pleasure excursion. What impresses
me is the extreme gravity of these people--no fun, no hilarity, no
letting themselves loose for a good time, as they say. Probably they
like it, but they seem to have no capacity for enjoying themselves; they
have no vivacity, no gayety--what a contrast to a party in France or
Germany off for a day's pleasure--no devices, no resources.”
“Yes, it's all sad, respectable, confoundedly uninteresting. What does
the doctor say?” asked the artist.
“I know what the doctor will say,” put in Miss Summer, “but I tell you
that what this crowd needs is missionary dressmakers and tailors. If
I were dressed that way I should feel and act just as they do. Well,
Selina?”
“It's pretty melancholy. The trouble is constant grinding work and bad
food. I've been studying these people. The women are all--”
“Ugly,” suggested the artist.
“Well, ill-favored, scrimped; that means ill-nurtured simply. Out of the
three hundred there are not half a dozen well-conditioned, filled out
physically in comfortable proportions. Most of the women look as if they
had been dragged out with indoor work and little intellectual life, but
the real cause of physical degeneration is bad cooking. If they lived
more out-of-doors, as women do in Italy, the food might not make so much
difference, but in our climate it is the prime thing. This poor physical
state accounts for the want of gayety and the lack of beauty. The men,
on the whole, are better than the women, that is, the young men. I don't
know as these people are overworked, as the world goes. I dare say,
Nettie, there's not a girl in this crowd who could dance with you
through a season. They need to be better fed, and to have more elevating
recreations-something to educate their taste.”
“I've been educating the taste of one excursionist this morning, a
good-faced workman, who was prying about everywhere with a curious air,
and said he never'd been on an excursion before. He came up to me in the
office, deferentially asked me if I would go into the parlor with him,
and, pointing to something hanging on the wall, asked, 'What is that?'
'That,' I said, 'is a view from Sunset Rock, and a very good one.'
'Yes,' he continued, walking close up to it, 'but what is it?' 'Why,
it's a painting.' 'Oh, it isn't the place?' 'No, no; it's a painting in
oil, done with a brush on a piece of canvas--don't you see--, made to
look like the view over there from the rock, colors and all.' 'Yes, I
thought, perhaps--you can see a good ways in it. It's pooty.' 'There's
another one,' I said--'falls, water coming down, and trees.' 'Well, I
declare, so it is! And that's jest a make-believe? I s'pose I can go
round and look?' 'Certainly.' And the old fellow tiptoed round the
parlor, peering at all the pictures in a confused state of mind, and
with a guilty look of enjoyment. It seems incredible that a person
should attain his age with such freshness of mind. But I think he is the
only one of the party who even looked at the paintings.”
“I think it's just pathetic,” said Miss Lamont. “Don't you, Mr. Forbes?”
“No; I think it's encouraging. It's a sign of an art appreciation in
this country. That man will know a painting next time he sees one, and
then he won't rest till he has bought a chromo, and so he will go on.”
“And if he lives long enough, he will buy one of Mr. Forbes's
paintings.”
“But not the one that Miss Lamont is going to sit for.”
When Mr. King met the party at the dinner-table, the places of Miss
Lamont and Mr. Forbes were still vacant. The other ladies looked
significantly at them, and one of them said, “Don't you think there's
something in it? don't you think they are interested in each other?” Mr.
King put down his soup-spoon, too much amazed to reply. Do women never
think of anything but mating people who happen to be thrown together?
Here were this young lady and his friend, who had known each other for
three days, perhaps, in the most casual way, and her friends had her
already as good as married to him and off on a wedding journey. All that
Mr. King said, after apparent deep cogitation, was, “I suppose if it
were here it would have to be in a traveling-dress,” which the women
thought frivolous.
Yet it was undeniable that the artist and Marion had a common taste for
hunting out picturesque places in the wood-paths, among the rocks, and
on the edges of precipices, and they dragged the rest of the party many
a mile through wildernesses of beauty. Sketching was the object of all
these expeditions, but it always happened--there seemed a fatality in it
that whenever they halted anywhere for a rest or a view, the Lamont girl
was sure to take an artistic pose, which the artist couldn't resist, and
his whole occupation seemed to be drawing her, with the Catskills for a
background. “There,” he would say, “stay just as you are; yes, leaning a
little so”--it was wonderful how the lithe figure adapted itself to any
background--“and turn your head this way, looking at me.” The artist
began to draw, and every time he gave a quick glance upwards from his
book, there were the wistful face and those eyes. “Confound it! I beg
your pardon-the light. Will you please turn your eyes a little off, that
way-so.” There was no reason why the artist should be nervous, the
face was perfectly demure; but the fact is that art will have only one
mistress. So the drawing limped on from day to day, and the excursions
became a matter of course. Sometimes the party drove, extending their
explorations miles among the hills, exhilarated by the sparkling air,
excited by the succession of lovely changing prospects, bestowing
their compassion upon the summer boarders in the smartly painted
boarding-houses, and comparing the other big hotels with their own.
They couldn't help looking down on the summer boarders, any more than
cottagers at other places can help a feeling of superiority to people in
hotels. It is a natural desire to make an aristocratic line somewhere.
Of course they saw the Kaaterskill Falls, and bought twenty-five cents'
worth of water to pour over them, and they came very near seeing the
Haines Falls, but were a little too late.
“Have the falls been taken in today?” asked Marion, seriously.
“I'm real sorry, miss,” said the proprietor, “but there's just been a
party here and taken the water. But you can go down and look if you want
to, and it won't cost you a cent.”
They went down, and saw where the falls ought to be. The artist said it
was a sort of dry-plate process, to be developed in the mind afterwards;
Mr. King likened it to a dry smoke without lighting the cigar; and the
doctor said it certainly had the sanitary advantage of not being damp.
The party even penetrated the Platerskill Cove, and were well rewarded
by its exceeding beauty, as is every one who goes there. There are
sketches of all these lovely places in a certain artist's book, all
looking, however, very much alike, and consisting principally of a
graceful figure in a great variety of unstudied attitudes.
“Isn't this a nervous sort of a place?” the artist asked his friend, as
they sat in his chamber overlooking the world.
“Perhaps it is. I have a fancy that some people are born to enjoy the
valley, and some the mountains.”
“I think it makes a person nervous to live on a high place. This feeling
of constant elevation tires one; it gives a fellow no such sense of
bodily repose as he has in a valley. And the wind, it's constantly
nagging, rattling the windows and banging the doors. I can't escape the
unrest of it.” The artist was turning the leaves and contemplating the
poverty of his sketch-book. “The fact is, I get better subjects on the
seashore.”
“Probably the sea would suit us better. By the way, did I tell you that
Miss Lamont's uncle came last night from Richmond? Mr. De Long, uncle on
the mother's side. I thought there was French blood in her.”
“What is he like?”
“Oh, a comfortable bachelor, past middle age; business man; Southern;
just a little touch of the 'cyar' for 'car.' Said he was going to take
his niece to Newport next week. Has Miss Lamont said anything about
going there?”
“Well, she did mention it the other day.”
The house was filling up, and, King thought, losing its family aspect.
He had taken quite a liking for the society of the pretty invalid girl,
and was fond of sitting by her, seeing the delicate color come back
to her cheeks, and listening to her shrewd little society comments. He
thought she took pleasure in having him push her wheel-chair up and down
the piazza at least she rewarded him by grateful looks, and complimented
him by asking his advice about reading and about being useful to others.
Like most young girls whose career of gayety is arrested as hers was,
she felt an inclination to coquet a little with the serious side of
life. All this had been pleasant to Mr. King, but now that so many more
guests had come, he found himself most of the time out of business. The
girl's chariot was always surrounded by admirers and sympathizers. All
the young men were anxious to wheel her up and down by the hour; there
was always a strife for this sweet office; and at night, when the
vehicle had been lifted up the first flight, it was beautiful to see
the eagerness of sacrifice exhibited by these young fellows to wheel
her down the long corridor to her chamber. After all, it is a kindly,
unselfish world, full of tenderness for women, and especially for
invalid women who are pretty. There was all day long a competition of
dudes and elderly widowers and bachelors to wait on her. One thought she
needed a little more wheeling; another volunteered to bring her a glass
of water; there was always some one to pick up her fan, to recover her
handkerchief (why is it that the fans and handkerchiefs of ugly women
seldom go astray?), to fetch her shawl--was there anything they could
do? The charming little heiress accepted all the attentions with most
engaging sweetness. Say what you will, men have good hearts.
Yes, they were going to Newport. King and Forbes, who had not had a
Fourth of July for some time, wanted to see what it was like at Newport.
Mr. De Long would like their company. But before they went the artist
must make one more trial at a sketch-must get the local color. It was a
large party that went one morning to see it done under the famous ledge
of rocks on the Red Path. It is a fascinating spot, with its coolness,
sense of seclusion, mosses, wild flowers, and ferns. In a small grotto
under the frowning wall of the precipice is said to be a spring, but it
is difficult to find, and lovers need to go a great many times in search
of it. People not in love can sometimes find a damp place in the sand.
The question was where Miss Lamont should pose. Should she nestle under
the great ledge, or sit on a projecting rock with her figure against
the sky? The artist could not satisfy himself, and the girl, always
adventurous, kept shifting her position, climbing about on the jutting
ledge, until she stood at last on the top of the precipice, which was
some thirty or forty feet high. Against the top leaned a dead balsam,
just as some tempest had cast it, its dead branches bleached and
scraggy. Down this impossible ladder the girl announced her intention
of coming. “No, no,” shouted a chorus of voices; “go round; it's unsafe;
the limbs will break; you can't get through them; you'll break your
neck.” The girl stood calculating the possibility. The more difficult
the feat seemed, the more she longed to try it.
“For Heaven's sake don't try it, Miss Lamont,” cried the artist.
“But I want to. I think I must. You can sketch me in the act. It will be
something new.”
And before any one could interpose, the resolute girl caught hold of the
balsam and swung off. A boy or a squirrel would have made nothing of
the feat. But for a young lady in long skirts to make her way down that
balsam, squirming about and through the stubs and dead limbs, testing
each one before she trusted her weight to it, was another affair. It
needed a very cool head and the skill of a gymnast. To transfer her hold
from one limb to another, and work downward, keeping her skirts neatly
gathered about her feet, was an achievement that the spectators could
appreciate; the presence of spectators made it much more difficult. And
the lookers-on were a good deal more excited than the girl. The artist
had his book ready, and when the little figure was half-way down,
clinging in a position at once artistic and painful, he began. “Work
fast,” said the girl. “It's hard hanging on.” But the pencil wouldn't
work. The artist made a lot of wild marks. He would have given the
world to sketch in that exquisite figure, but every time he cast his eye
upward the peril was so evident that his hand shook. It was no use. The
danger increased as she descended, and with it the excitement of the
spectators. All the young gentlemen declared they would catch her if she
fell, and some of them seemed to hope she might drop into their arms.
Swing off she certainly must when the lowest limb was reached. But that
was ten feet above the ground and the alighting-place was sharp rock and
broken bowlders. The artist kept up a pretense of drawing. He felt every
movement of her supple figure and the strain upon the slender arms, but
this could not be transferred to the book. It was nervous work. The girl
was evidently getting weary, but not losing her pluck. The young fellows
were very anxious that the artist should keep at his work; they would
catch her. There was a pause; the girl had come to the last limb; she
was warily meditating a slide or a leap; the young men were quite ready
to sacrifice themselves; but somehow, no one could tell exactly how, the
girl swung low, held herself suspended by her hands for an instant,
and then dropped into the right place--trust a woman for that; and
the artist, his face flushed, set her down upon the nearest flat rock.
Chorus from the party, “She is saved!”
“And my sketch is gone up again.”
“I'm sorry, Mr. Forbes.” The girl looked full of innocent regret. “But
when I was up there I had to come down that tree. I couldn't help it,
really.”