On the Fourth of July, at five o'clock in the morning, the porters
called the sleepers out of their berths at Wickford Junction. Modern
civilization offers no such test to the temper and to personal
appearance as this early preparation to meet the inspection of society
after a night in the stuffy and luxuriously upholstered tombs of a
sleeping-car. To get into them at night one must sacrifice dignity; to
get out of them in the morning, clad for the day, gives the proprietors
a hard rub. It is wonderful, however, considering the twisting and
scrambling in the berth and the miscellaneous and ludicrous presentation
of humanity in the washroom at the end of the car, how presentable
people make themselves in a short space of time. One realizes the debt
of the ordinary man to clothes, and how fortunate it is for society that
commonly people do not see each other in the morning until art has
done its best for them. To meet the public eye, cross and tousled
and disarranged, requires either indifference or courage. It is
disenchanting to some of our cherished ideals. Even the trig,
irreproachable commercial drummer actually looks banged-up, and nothing
of a man; but after a few moments, boot-blacked and paper-collared, he
comes out as fresh as a daisy, and all ready to drum.
Our travelers came out quite as well as could be expected, the artist
sleepy and a trifle disorganized, Mr. King in a sort of facetious
humor that is more dangerous than grumbling, Mr. De Long yawning and
stretching and declaring that he had not slept a wink, while Marion
alighted upon the platform unruffled in plumage, greeting the morning
like a bird. There were the usual early loafers at the station, hands
deep in pockets, ruminant, listlessly observant. No matter at what hour
of day or night a train may arrive or depart at a country station in
America, the loafers are so invariably there in waiting that they seem
to be a part of our railway system. There is something in the life and
movement that seems to satisfy all the desire for activity they have.
Even the most sleepy tourist could not fail to be impressed with the
exquisite beauty of the scene at Wickford Harbor, where the boat was
taken for Newport. The slow awaking of morning life scarcely disturbed
its tranquillity. Sky and sea and land blended in a tone of refined
gray. The shores were silvery, a silvery light came out of the east,
streamed through the entrance of the harbor, and lay molten and glowing
on the water. The steamer's deck and chairs and benches were wet with
dew, the noises in transferring the baggage and getting the boat
under way were all muffled and echoed in the surrounding silence. The
sail-boats that lay at anchor on the still silver surface sent down long
shadows, and the slim masts seemed driven down into the water to hold
the boats in place. The little village was still asleep. It was such
a contrast; the artist was saying to Marion, as they leaned over the
taffrail, to the new raw villages in the Catskills. The houses were
large, and looked solid and respectable, many of them were shingled on
the sides, a spire peeped out over the green trees, and the hamlet
was at once homelike and picturesque. Refinement is the note of the
landscape. Even the old warehouses dropping into the water, and the
decaying piles of the wharves, have a certain grace. How graciously the
water makes into the land, following the indentations, and flowing in
little streams, going in and withdrawing gently and regretfully, and
how the shore puts itself out in low points, wooing the embrace of the
sea--a lovely union. There is no haze, but all outlines are softened in
the silver light. It is like a dream, and there is no disturbance of the
repose when a family party, a woman, a child, and a man come down to the
shore, slip into a boat, and scull away out by the lighthouse and the
rocky entrance of the harbor, off, perhaps, for a day's pleasure. The
artist has whipped out his sketch-book to take some outlines of the
view, and his comrade, looking that way, thinks this group a pleasing
part of the scene, and notes how the salt, dewy morning air has brought
the color into the sensitive face of the girl. There are not many such
hours in a lifetime, he is also thinking, when nature can be seen in
such a charming mood, and for the moment it compensates for the night
ride.
The party indulged this feeling when they landed, still early, at the
Newport wharf, and decided to walk through the old town up to the hotel,
perfectly well aware that after this no money would hire them to leave
their beds and enjoy this novel sensation at such an hour. They had the
street to themselves, and the promenade was one of discovery, and had
much the interest of a landing in a foreign city.
“It is so English,” said the artist.
“It is so colonial,” said Mr. King, “though I've no doubt that any one
of the sleeping occupants of these houses would be wide-awake instantly,
and come out and ask you to breakfast, if they heard you say it is so
English.”
“If they were not restrained,” Marion suggested, “by the feeling that
that would not be English. How fine the shade trees, and what brilliant
banks of flowers!”
“And such lawns! We cannot make this turf in Virginia,” was the
reflection of Mr. De Long.
“Well, colonial if you like,” the artist replied to Mr. King. “What is
best is in the colonial style; but you notice that all the new houses
are built to look old, and that they have had Queen Anne pretty bad,
though the colors are good.”
“That's the way with some towns. Queen Anne seems to strike them all
of a sudden, and become epidemic. The only way to prevent it is to
vaccinate, so to speak, with two or three houses, and wait; then it is
not so likely to spread.”
Laughing and criticising and admiring, the party strolled along the
shaded avenue to the Ocean House. There were as yet no signs of life
at the Club, or the Library, or the Casino; but the shops were getting
open, and the richness and elegance of the goods displayed in the
windows were the best evidence of the wealth and refinement of the
expected customers--culture and taste always show themselves in the
shops of a town. The long gray-brown front of the Casino, with its
shingled sides and hooded balconies and galleries, added to the already
strong foreign impression of the place. But the artist was dissatisfied.
It was not at all his idea of Independence Day; it was like Sunday, and
Sunday without any foreign gayety. He had expected firing of cannon
and ringing of bells--there was not even a flag out anywhere; the
celebration of the Fourth seemed to have shrunk into a dull and decorous
avoidance of all excitement. “Perhaps,” suggested Miss Lamont, “if the
New-Englanders keep the Fourth of July like Sunday, they will by and by
keep Sunday like the Fourth of July. I hear it is the day for excursions
on this coast.”
Mr. King was perfectly well aware that in going to a hotel in Newport
he was putting himself out of the pale of the best society; but he had
a fancy for viewing this society from the outside, having often enough
seen it from the inside. And perhaps he had other reasons for this
eccentric conduct. He had, at any rate, declined the invitation of his
cousin, Mrs. Bartlett Glow, to her cottage on the Point of Rocks. It was
not without regret that he did this, for his cousin was a very charming
woman, and devoted exclusively to the most exclusive social life. Her
husband had been something in the oil line in New York, and King had
watched with interest his evolution from the business man into the
full-blown existence of a man of fashion. The process is perfectly
charted. Success in business, membership in a good club, tandem in the
Park, introduction to a good house, marriage to a pretty girl of family
and not much money, a yacht, a four-in-hand, a Newport villa. His name
had undergone a like evolution. It used to be written on his business
card, Jacob B. Glow. It was entered at the club as J. Bartlett Glow. On
the wedding invitations it was Mr. Bartlett Glow, and the dashing pair
were always spoken of at Newport as the Bartlett-Glows.
When Mr. King descended from his room at the Ocean House, although it
was not yet eight o'clock, he was not surprised to see Mr. Benson tilted
back in one of the chairs on the long piazza, out of the way of the
scrubbers, with his air of patient waiting and observation. Irene used
to say that her father ought to write a book--“Life as Seen from Hotel
Piazzas.” His only idea of recreation when away from business seemed to
be sitting about on them.
“The women-folks,” he explained to Mr. King, who took a chair beside
him, “won't be down for an hour yet. I like, myself, to see the show
open.”
“Are there many people here?”
“I guess the house is full enough. But I can't find out that anybody is
actually stopping here, except ourselves and a lot of schoolmarms come
to attend a convention. They seem to enjoy it. The rest, those I've
talked with, just happen to be here for a day or so, never have been
to a hotel in Newport before, always stayed in a cottage, merely put up
here now to visit friends in cottages. You'll see that none of them act
like they belonged to the hotel. Folks are queer.”
At a place we were last summer all the summer boarders, in
boarding-houses round, tried to act like they were staying at the big
hotel, and the hotel people swelled about on the fact of being at a
hotel. Here you're nobody. I hired a carriage by the week, driver in
buttons, and all that. It don't make any difference. I'll bet a gold
dollar every cottager knows it's hired, and probably they think by the
drive.”
“It's rather stupid, then, for you and the ladies.”
“Not a bit of it. It's the nicest place in America: such grass, such
horses, such women, and the drive round the island--there's nothing
like it in the country. We take it every day. Yes, it would be a little
lonesome but for the ocean. It's a good deal like a funeral procession,
nobody ever recognizes you, not even the hotel people who are in hired
hacks. If I were to come again, Mr. King, I'd come in a yacht, drive up
from it in a box on two wheels, with a man clinging on behind with his
back to me, and have a cottage with an English gardener. That would
fetch 'em. Money won't do it, not at a hotel. But I'm not sure but I
like this way best. It's an occupation for a man to keep up a cottage.”
“And so you do not find it dull?”
“No. When we aren't out riding, she and Irene go on to the cliffs, and I
sit here and talk real estate. It's about all there is to talk of.”
There was an awkward moment or two when the two parties met in the lobby
and were introduced before going in to breakfast. There was a little
putting up of guards on the part of the ladies. Between Irene and Marion
passed that rapid glance of inspection, that one glance which includes a
study and the passing of judgment upon family, manners, and dress, down
to the least detail. It seemed to be satisfactory, for after a few words
of civility the two girls walked in together, Irene a little dignified,
to be sure, and Marion with her wistful, half-inquisitive expression.
Mr. King could not be mistaken in thinking Irene's manner a little
constrained and distant to him, and less cordial than it was to Mr.
Forbes, but the mother righted the family balance.
“I'm right glad you've come, Mr. King. It's like seeing somebody from
home. I told Irene that when you came I guess we should know somebody.
It's an awful fashionable place.”
“And you have no acquaintances here?”
“No, not really. There's Mrs. Peabody has a cottage here, what they call
a cottage, but there no such house in Cyrusville. We drove past it.
Her daughter was to school with Irene. We've met 'em out riding several
times, and Sally (Miss Peabody) bowed to Irene, and pa and I bowed to
everybody, but they haven't called. Pa says it's because we are at a
hotel, but I guess it's been company or something. They were real good
friends at school.”
Mr. King laughed. “Oh, Mrs. Benson, the Peabodys were nobodys only a
few years ago. I remember when they used to stay at one of the smaller
hotels.”
“Well, they seem nice, stylish people, and I'm sorry on Irene's
account.”
At breakfast the party had topics enough in common to make conversation
lively. The artist was sure he should be delighted with the beauty and
finish of Newport. Miss Lamont doubted if she should enjoy it as much as
the freedom and freshness of the Catskills. Mr. King amused himself
with drawing out Miss Benson on the contrast with Atlantic City. The
dining-room was full of members of the Institute, in attendance upon the
annual meeting, graybearded, long-faced educators, devotees of theories
and systems, known at a glance by a certain earnestness of manner and
intensity of expression, middle-aged women of a resolute, intellectual
countenance, and a great crowd of youthful schoolmistresses, just on the
dividing line between domestic life and self-sacrifice, still full of
sentiment, and still leaning perhaps more to Tennyson and Lowell than to
mathematics and Old English.
“They have a curious, mingled air of primness and gayety, as if gayety
were not quite proper,” the artist began. “Some of them look downright
interesting, and I've no doubt they are all excellent women.”
“I've no doubt they are all good as gold,” put in Mr. King. “These
women are the salt of New England.” (Irene looked up quickly and
appreciatively at the speaker.) “No fashionable nonsense about them.
What's in you, Forbes, to shy so at a good woman?”
“I don't shy at a good woman--but three hundred of them! I don't
want all my salt in one place. And see here--I appeal to you, Miss
Lamont--why didn't these girls dress simply, as they do at home, and
not attempt a sort of ill-fitting finery that is in greater contrast to
Newport than simplicity would be?”
“If you were a woman,” said Marion, looking demurely, not at Mr. Forbes,
but at Irene, “I could explain it to you. You don't allow anything for
sentiment and the natural desire to please, and it ought to be just
pathetic to you that these girls, obeying a natural instinct, missed the
expression of it a little.”
“Men are such critics,” and Irene addressed the remark to Marion, “they
pretend to like intellectual women, but they can pardon anything better
than an ill-fitting gown. Better be frivolous than badly dressed.”
“Well,” stoutly insisted Forbes, “I'll take my chance with the
well-dressed ones always; I don't believe the frumpy are the most
sensible.”
“No; but you make out a prima facie case against a woman for want of
taste in dress, just as you jump at the conclusion that because a woman
dresses in such a way as to show she gives her mind to it she is of the
right sort. I think it's a relief to see a convention of women devoted
to other things who are not thinking of their clothes.”
“Pardon me; the point I made was that they are thinking of their
clothes, and thinking erroneously.”
“Why don't you ask leave to read a paper, Forbes, on the relation of
dress to education?” asked Mr. King.
They rose from the table just as Mrs. Benson was saying that for her
part she liked these girls, they were so homelike; she loved to hear
them sing college songs and hymns in the parlor. To sing the songs of
the students is a wild, reckless dissipation for girls in the country.
When Mr. King and Irene walked up and down the corridor after breakfast
the girl's constraint seemed to have vanished, and she let it be seen
that she had sincere pleasure in renewing the acquaintance. King himself
began to realize how large a place the girl's image had occupied in
his mind. He was not in love--that would be absurd on such short
acquaintance--but a thought dropped into the mind ripens without
consciousness, and he found that he had anticipated seeing Irene again
with decided interest. He remembered exactly how she looked at Fortress
Monroe, especially one day when she entered the parlor, bowing right and
left to persons she knew, stopping to chat with one and another,
tall, slender waist swelling upwards in symmetrical lines, brown hair,
dark-gray eyes--he recalled every detail, the high-bred air (which was
certainly not inherited), the unconscious perfect carriage, and his
thinking in a vague way that such ease and grace meant good living
and leisure and a sound body. This, at any rate, was the image in his
mind--a sufficiently distracting thing for a young man to carry about
with him; and now as he walked beside her he was conscious that there
was something much finer in her than the image he had carried with him,
that there was a charm of speech and voice and expression that made her
different from any other woman he had ever seen. Who can define this
charm, this difference? Some women have it for the universal man--they
are desired of every man who sees them; their way to marriage (which is
commonly unfortunate) is over a causeway of prostrate forms, if not
of cracked hearts; a few such women light up and make the romance of
history. The majority of women fortunately have it for one man only, and
sometimes he never appears on the scene at all! Yet every man thinks his
choice belongs to the first class; even King began to wonder that all
Newport was not raving over Irene's beauty. The present writer saw her
one day as she alighted from a carriage at the Ocean House, her face
flushed with the sea air, and he remembers that he thought her a fine
girl. “By George, that's a fine woman!” exclaimed a New York bachelor,
who prided himself on knowing horses and women and all that; but the
country is full of fine women--this to him was only one of a thousand.
What were this couple talking about as they promenaded, basking in each
other's presence? It does not matter. They were getting to know each
other, quite as much by what they did not say as by what they did say,
by the thousand little exchanges of feeling and sentiment which are
all-important, and never appear even in a stenographer's report of a
conversation. Only one thing is certain about it, that the girl could
recall every word that Mr. King said, even his accent and look, long
after he had forgotten even the theme of the talk. One thing, however,
he did carry away with him, which set him thinking. The girl had been
reading the “Life of Carlyle,” and she took up the cudgels for the old
curmudgeon, as King called him, and declared that, when all was said,
Mrs. Carlyle was happier with him than she would have been with any
other man in England. “What woman of spirit wouldn't rather mate with an
eagle, and quarrel half the time, than with a humdrum barn-yard fowl?”
And Mr. Stanhope King, when he went away, reflected that he who had
fitted himself for the bar, and traveled extensively, and had a moderate
competence, hadn't settled down to any sort of career. He had always an
intention of doing something in a vague way; but now the thought that
he was idle made him for the first time decidedly uneasy, for he had an
indistinct notion that Irene couldn't approve of such a life.
This feeling haunted him as he was making a round of calls that day. He
did not return to lunch or dinner--if he had done so he would have
found that lunch was dinner and that dinner was supper--another vital
distinction between the hotel and the cottage. The rest of the party had
gone to the cliffs with the artist, the girls on a pretense of learning
to sketch from nature. Mr. King dined with his cousin.
“You are a bad boy, Stanhope,” was the greeting of Mrs. Bartlett Glow,
“not to come to me. Why did you go to the hotel?”
“Oh, I thought I'd see life; I had an unaccountable feeling of
independence. Besides, I've a friend with me, a very clever artist, who
is re-seeing his country after an absence of some years. And there are
some other people.”
“Oh, yes. What is her name?”
“Why, there is quite a party. We met them at different places. There's
a very bright New York girl, Miss Lamont, and her uncle from Richmond.”
(“Never heard of her,” interpolated Mrs. Glow.) “And a Mr. and Mrs.
Benson and their daughter, from Ohio. Mr. Benson has made money; Mrs.
Benson, good-hearted old lady, rather plain and--”
“Yes, I know the sort; had a falling-out with Lindley Murray in her
youth and never made it up. But what I want to know is about the girl.
What makes you beat about the bush so? What's her name?”
“Irene. She is an uncommonly clever girl; educated; been abroad a good
deal, studying in Germany; had all advantages; and she has cultivated
tastes; and the fact is that out in Cyrusville--that is where they
live--You know how it is here in America when the girl is educated and
the old people are not--”
“The long and short of it is, you want me to invite them here. I suppose
the girl is plain, too--takes after her mother?”
“Not exactly. Mr. Forbes--that's my friend--says she's a beauty. But if
you don't mind, Penelope, I was going to ask you to be a little civil to
them.”
“Well, I'll admit she is handsome--a very striking-looking girl. I've
seen them driving on the Avenue day after day. Now, Stanhope, I don't
mind asking them here to a five o'clock; I suppose the mother will have
to come. If she was staying with somebody here it would be easier. Yes,
I'll do it to oblige you, if you will make yourself useful while you
are here. There are some girls I want you to know, and mind, my young
friend, that you don't go and fall in love with a country girl whom
nobody knows, out of the set. It won't be comfortable.”
“You are always giving me good advice, Penelope, and I should be a
different man if I had profited by it.”
“Don't be satirical, because you've coaxed me to do you a favor.”
Late in the evening the gentlemen of the hotel party looked in at the
skating-rink, a great American institution that has for a large class
taken the place of the ball, the social circle, the evening meeting.
It seemed a little incongruous to find a great rink at Newport, but an
epidemic is stronger than fashion, and even the most exclusive summer
resort must have its rink. Roller-skating is said to be fine exercise,
but the benefit of it as exercise would cease to be apparent if there
were a separate rink for each sex. There is a certain exhilaration in
the lights and music and the lively crowd, and always an attraction in
the freedom of intercourse offered. The rink has its world as the opera
has, its romances and its heroes. The frequenters of the rink know the
young women and the young men who have a national reputation as adepts,
and their exhibitions are advertised and talked about as are the
appearances of celebrated 'prime donne' and 'tenori' at the opera. The
visitors had an opportunity to see one of these exhibitions. After a
weary watching of the monotonous and clattering round and round of the
swinging couples or the stumbling single skaters, the floor was cleared,
and the darling of the rink glided upon the scene. He was a slender,
handsome fellow, graceful and expert to the nicest perfection in his
profession. He seemed not so much to skate as to float about the floor,
with no effort except volition. His rhythmic movements were followed
with pleasure, but it was his feats of dexterity, which were more
wonderful than graceful, that brought down the house. It was evident
that he was a hero to the female part of the spectators, and no doubt
his charming image continued to float round and round in the brain of
many a girl when she put her, head on the pillow that night. It is said
that a good many matches which are not projected or registered in heaven
are made at the rink.
At the breakfast-table it appeared that the sketching-party had been a
great success--for everybody except the artist, who had only some rough
memoranda, like notes for a speech, to show. The amateurs had made
finished pictures.
Miss Benson had done some rocks, and had got their hardness very well.
Miss Lamont's effort was more ambitious; her picture took in no less
than miles of coast, as much sea as there was room for on the paper,
a navy of sail-boats, and all the rocks and figures that were in
the foreground, and it was done with a great deal of naivete and
conscientiousness. When it was passed round the table, the comments were
very flattering.
“It looks just like it,” said Mr. Benson.
“It's very comprehensive,” remarked Mr. Forbes.
“What I like, Marion,” said Mr. De Long, holding it out at arm's-length,
“is the perspective; it isn't an easy thing to put ships up in the sky.”
“Of course,” explained Irene, “it was a kind of hazy day.”
“But I think Miss Lamont deserves credit for keeping the haze out of
it.” King was critically examining it, turning his head from side
to side. “I like it; but I tell you what I think it lacks: it lacks
atmosphere. Why don't you cut a hole in it, Miss Lamont, and let the air
in?”
“Mr. King,” replied Miss Lamont, quite seriously, “you are a real
friend, I can only repay you by taking you to church this morning.”
“You didn't make much that time, King,” said Forbes, as he lounged out
of the room.
After church King accepted a seat in the Benson carriage for a drive on
the Ocean Road. He who takes this drive for the first time is enchanted
with the scene, and it has so much variety, deliciousness in curve and
winding, such graciousness in the union of sea and shore, such charm of
color, that increased acquaintance only makes one more in love with it.
A good part of its attraction lies in the fickleness of its aspect. Its
serene and soft appearance might pall if it were not now and then, and
often suddenly, and with little warning, transformed into a wild coast,
swept by a tearing wind, enveloped in a thick fog, roaring with the
noise of the angry sea slapping the rocks and breaking in foam on the
fragments its rage has cast down. This elementary mystery and terror
is always present, with one familiar with the coast, to qualify the
gentleness of its lovelier aspects. It has all moods. Perhaps the most
exhilarating is that on a brilliant day, when shore and sea sparkle in
the sun, and the waves leap high above the cliffs, and fall in diamond
showers.
This Sunday the shore was in its most gracious mood, the landscape as
if newly created. There was a light, luminous fog, which revealed just
enough to excite the imagination, and refined every outline and softened
every color. Mr. King and Irene left the carriage to follow the road,
and wandered along the sea path. What softness and tenderness of color
in the gray rocks, with the browns and reds of the vines and lichens!
They went out on the iron fishing-stands, and looked down at the shallow
water. The rocks under water took on the most exquisite shades--purple
and malachite and brown; the barnacles clung to them; the long
sea-weeds, in half a dozen varieties, some in vivid colors, swept over
them, flowing with the restless tide, like the long locks of a drowned
woman's hair. King, who had dabbled a little in natural history, took
great delight in pointing out to Irene this varied and beautiful life
of the sea; and the girl felt a new interest in science, for it was all
pure science, and she opened her heart to it, not knowing that love can
go in by the door of science as well as by any other opening. Was
Irene really enraptured by the dear little barnacles and the exquisite
sea-weeds? I have seen a girl all of a flutter with pleasure in a
laboratory when a young chemist was showing her the retorts and the
crooked tubes and the glass wool and the freaks of color which the
alkalies played with the acids. God has made them so, these women, and
let us be thankful for it.
What a charm there was about everything! Occasionally the mist became so
thin that a long line of coast and a great breadth of sea were visible,
with the white sails drifting.
“There's nothing like it,” said King--“there's nothing like this island.
It seems as if the Creator had determined to show man, once for all,
a landscape perfectly refined, you might almost say with the beauty
of high-breeding, refined in outline, color, everything softened into
loveliness, and yet touched with the wild quality of picturesqueness.”
“It's just a dream at this moment,” murmured Irene. They were standing
on a promontory of rock. “See those figures of people there through
the mist--silhouettes only. And look at that vessel--there--no--it has
gone.”
As she was speaking, a sail-vessel began to loom up large in the
mysterious haze. But was it not the ghost of a ship? For an instant it
was coming, coming; it was distinct; and when it was plainly in sight
it faded away, like a dissolving view, and was gone. The appearance was
unreal. What made it more spectral was the bell on the reefs, swinging
in its triangle, always sounding, and the momentary scream of the
fog-whistle. It was like an enchanted coast. Regaining the carriage,
they drove out to the end, Agassiz's Point, where, when the mist lifted,
they saw the sea all round dotted with sails, the irregular coasts and
islands with headlands and lighthouses, all the picture still, land and
water in a summer swoon.
Late that afternoon all the party were out upon the cliff path in front
of the cottages. There is no more lovely sea stroll in the world, the
way winding over the cliff edge by the turquoise sea, where the turf,
close cut and green as Erin, set with flower beds and dotted with
noble trees, slopes down, a broad pleasure park, from the stately and
picturesque villas. But it was a social mistake to go there on Sunday.
Perhaps it is not the height of good form to walk there any day, but Mr.
King did not know that the fashion had changed, and that on Sunday this
lovely promenade belongs to the butlers and the upper maids, especially
to the butlers, who make it resplendent on Sunday afternoons when the
weather is good. As the weather had thickened in the late afternoon, our
party walked in a dumb-show, listening to the soft swish of the waves on
the rocks below, and watching the figures of other promenaders, who were
good enough ladies and gentlemen in this friendly mist.
The next day Mr. King made a worse mistake. He remembered that at high
noon everybody went down to the first beach, a charming sheltered place
at the bottom of the bay, where the rollers tumble in finely from the
south, to bathe or see others bathe. The beach used to be lined with
carriages at that hour, and the surf, for a quarter of a mile, presented
the appearance of a line of picturesquely clad skirmishers going out to
battle with the surf. Today there were not half a dozen carriages and
omnibuses altogether, and the bathers were few-nursery maids, fragments
of a day-excursion, and some of the fair conventionists. Newport was not
there. Mr. King had led his party into another social blunder. It has
ceased to be fashionable to bathe at Newport.
Strangers and servants may do so, but the cottagers have withdrawn their
support from the ocean. Saltwater may be carried to the house and used
without loss of caste, but bathing in the surf is vulgar. A gentleman
may go down and take a dip alone--it had better be at an early hour--and
the ladies of the house may be heard to apologize for his eccentricity,
as if his fondness for the water were abnormal and quite out of
experience. And the observer is obliged to admit that promiscuous
bathing is vulgar, as it is plain enough to be seen when it becomes
unfashionable. It is charitable to think also that the cottagers have
made it unfashionable because it is vulgar, and not because it is a
cheap and refreshing pleasure accessible to everybody.
Nevertheless, Mr. King's ideas of Newport were upset. “It's a little
off color to walk much on the cliffs; you lose caste if you bathe in the
surf. What can you do?”
“Oh,” explained Miss Lamont, “you can make calls; go to teas and
receptions and dinners; belong to the Casino, but not appear there much;
and you must drive on the Ocean Road, and look as English as you can.
Didn't you notice that Redfern has an establishment on the Avenue?
Well, the London girls wear what Redfern tells them to wear-much to the
improvement of their appearance--and so it has become possible for a
New-Yorker to become partially English without sacrificing her native
taste.”
Before lunch Mrs. Bartlett Glow called on the Bensons, and invited
them to a five-o'clock tea, and Miss Lamont, who happened to be in the
parlor, was included in the invitation. Mrs. Glow was as gracious as
possible, and especially attentive to the old lady, who purred
with pleasure, and beamed and expanded into familiarity under the
encouragement of the woman of the world. In less than ten minutes Mrs.
Glow had learned the chief points in the family history, the state of
health and habits of pa (Mr. Benson), and all about Cyrusville and its
wonderful growth. In all this Mrs. Glow manifested a deep interest, and
learned, by observing out of the corner of her eye, that Irene was in
an agony of apprehension, which she tried to conceal under an increasing
coolness of civility. “A nice lady,” was Mrs. Benson's comment when Mrs.
Glow had taken herself away with her charmingly-scented air of frank
cordiality--“a real nice lady. She seemed just like our folks.”
Irene heaved a deep sigh. “I suppose we shall have to go.”
“Have to go, child? I should think you'd like to go. I never saw such a
girl--never. Pa and me are just studying all the time to please you, and
it seems as if--” And the old lady's voice broke down.
“Why, mother dear”--and the girl, with tears in her eyes, leaned over
her and kissed her fondly, and stroked her hair--“you are just as good
and sweet as you can be; and don't mind me; you know I get in moods
sometimes.”
The old lady pulled her down and kissed her, and looked in her face with
beseeching eyes.
“What an old frump the mother is!” was Mrs. Glow's comment to Stanhope,
when she next met him; “but she is immensely amusing.”
“She is a kind-hearted, motherly woman,” replied King, a little sharply.
“Oh, motherly! Has it come to that? I do believe you are more than half
gone. The girl is pretty; she has a beautiful figure; but my gracious!
her parents are impossible--just impossible. And don't you think she's
a little too intellectual for society? I don't mean too intellectual, of
course, but too mental, don't you know--shows that first. You know what
I mean.”
“But, Penelope, I thought it was the fashion now to be intellectual--go
in for reading, and literary clubs, Dante and Shakespeare, and political
economy, and all that.”
“Yes, I belong to three clubs. I'm going to one tomorrow morning. We are
going to take up the 'Disestablishment of the English Church.' That's
different; we make it fit into social life somehow, and it doesn't
interfere. I'll tell you what, Stanhope, I'll take Miss Benson to the
Town and County Club next Saturday.”
“That will be too intellectual for Miss Benson. I suppose the topic will
be Transcendentalism?”
“No; we have had that. Professor Spor, of Cambridge, is going to lecture
on Bacteria--if that's the way you pronounce it--those mites that get
into everything.”
“I should think it would be very improving. I'll tell Miss Benson that
if she stays in Newport she must improve her mind.”
“You can make yourself as disagreeable as you like to me, but mind you
are on your good behavior at dinner tonight, for the Misses Pelham will
be here.”
The five-o'clock at Mrs. Bartlett Glow's was probably an event to nobody
in Newport except Mrs. Benson. To most it was only an incident in the
afternoon round and drive, but everybody liked to go there, for it
is one of the most charming of the moderate-sized villas. The lawn is
planted in exquisite taste, and the gardener has set in the open spaces
of green the most ingenious devices of flowers and foliage plants, and
nothing could be more enchanting than the view from the wide veranda on
the sea side. In theory, the occupants lounge there, read, embroider,
and swing in hammocks; in point of fact, the breeze is usually so strong
that these occupations are carried on indoors.
The rooms were well filled with a moving, chattering crowd when the
Bensons arrived, but it could not be said that their entrance was
unnoticed, for Mr. Benson was conspicuous, as Irene had in vain hinted
to her father that he would be, in his evening suit, and Mrs. Benson's
beaming, extra-gracious manner sent a little shiver of amusement through
the polite civility of the room.
“I was afraid we should be too late,” was Mrs. Benson's response to the
smiling greeting of the hostess, with a most friendly look towards the
rest of the company. “Mr. Benson is always behindhand in getting dressed
for a party, and he said he guessed the party could wait, and--”
Before the sentence was finished Mrs. Benson found herself passed on and
in charge of a certain general, who was charged by the hostess to get
her a cup of tea. Her talk went right on, however, and Irene, who was
still standing by the host, noticed that wherever her mother went there
was a lull in the general conversation, a slight pause as if to catch
what this motherly old person might be saying, and such phrases as,
“It doesn't agree with me, general; I can't eat it,” “Yes, I got the
rheumatiz in New Orleans, and he did too,” floated over the hum of talk.
In the introduction and movement that followed Irene became one of a
group of young ladies and gentlemen who, after the first exchange of
civilities, went on talking about matters of which she knew nothing,
leaving her wholly out of the conversation. The matters seemed to
be very important, and the conversation was animated: it was about
so-and-so who was expected, or was or was not engaged, or the last
evening at the Casino, or the new trap on the Avenue--the delightful
little chit-chat by means of which those who are in society exchange
good understandings, but which excludes one not in the circle. The young
gentleman next to Irene threw in an explanation now and then, but she
was becoming thoroughly uncomfortable. She could not be unconscious,
either, that she was the object of polite transient scrutiny by the
ladies, and of glances of interest from gentlemen who did not approach
her. She began to be annoyed by the staring (the sort of stare that a
woman recognizes as impudent admiration) of a young fellow who leaned
against the mantel--a youth in English clothes who had caught very
successfully the air of an English groom. Two girls near her, to whom
she had been talking, began speaking in lowered voices in French, but
she could not help overhearing them, and her face flushed hotly when
she found that her mother and her appearance were the subject of their
foreign remarks.
Luckily at the moment Mr. King approached, and Irene extended her hand
and said, with a laugh, “Ah, monsieur,” speaking in a very pretty Paris
accent, and perhaps with unnecessary distinctness, “you were quite
right: the society here is very different from Cyrusville; there they
all talk about each other.”
Mr. King, who saw that something had occurred, was quick-witted enough
to reply jestingly in French, as they moved away, but he asked, as soon
as they were out of ear-shot, “What is it?”
“Nothing,” said the girl, recovering her usual serenity. “I only said
something for the sake of saying something; I didn't mean to speak so
disrespectfully of my own town. But isn't it singular how local and
provincial society talk is everywhere? I must look up mother, and then I
want you to take me on the veranda for some air. What a delightful house
this is of your cousin's!”
The two young ladies who had dropped into French looked at each other
for a moment after Irene moved away, and one of them spoke for both when
she exclaimed: “Did you ever see such rudeness in a drawing-room!
Who could have dreamed that she understood?” Mrs. Benson had been
established very comfortably in a corner with Professor Slem, who was
listening with great apparent interest to her accounts of the early life
in Ohio. Irene seemed relieved to get away into the open air, but she
was in a mood that Mr. King could not account for. Upon the veranda they
encountered Miss Lamont and the artist, whose natural enjoyment of the
scene somewhat restored her equanimity. Could there be anything more
refined and charming in the world than this landscape, this hospitable,
smiling house, with the throng of easy-mannered, pleasant-speaking
guests, leisurely flowing along in the conventional stream of social
comity. One must be a churl not to enjoy it. But Irene was not sorry
when, presently, it was time to go, though she tried to extract some
comfort from her mother's enjoyment of the occasion. It was beautiful.
Mr. Benson was in a calculating mood. He thought it needed a great deal
of money to make things run so smoothly.
Why should one inquire in such a paradise if things do run smoothly?
Cannot one enjoy a rose without pulling it up by the roots? I have no
patience with those people who are always looking on the seamy side. I
agree with the commercial traveler who says that it will only be in the
millennium that all goods will be alike on both sides. Mr. King made
the acquaintance in Newport of the great but somewhat philosophical
Mr. Snodgrass, who is writing a work on “The Discomforts of the Rich,”
taking a view of life which he says has been wholly overlooked. He
declares that their annoyances, sufferings, mortifications, envies,
jealousies, disappointments, dissatisfactions (and so on through the
dictionary of disagreeable emotions), are a great deal more than those
of the poor, and that they are more worthy of sympathy. Their troubles
are real and unbearable, because they are largely of the mind. All these
are set forth with so much powerful language and variety of illustration
that King said no one could read the book without tears for the rich of
Newport, and he asked Mr. Snodgrass why he did not organize a society
for their relief. But the latter declared that it was not a matter
for levity. The misery is real. An imaginary case would illustrate his
meaning. Suppose two persons quarrel about a purchase of land, and one
builds a stable on his lot so as to shut out his neighbor's view of the
sea. Would not the one suffer because he could not see the ocean, and
the other by reason of the revengeful state of his mind? He went on
to argue that the owner of a splendid villa might have, for reasons he
gave, less content in it than another person in a tiny cottage so small
that it had no spare room for his mother-in-law even, and that in fact
his satisfaction in his own place might be spoiled by the more
showy place of his neighbor. Mr. Snodgrass attempts in his book a
philosophical explanation of this. He says that if every man designed
his own cottage, or had it designed as an expression of his own ideas,
and developed his grounds and landscape according to his own tastes,
working it out himself, with the help of specialists, he would be
satisfied. But when owners have no ideas about architecture or about
gardening, and their places are the creation of some experimenting
architect and a foreign gardener, and the whole effort is not to express
a person's individual taste and character, but to make a show, then
discontent as to his own will arise whenever some new and more showy
villa is built. Mr. Benson, who was poking about a good deal, strolling
along the lanes and getting into the rears of the houses, said, when
this book was discussed, that his impression was that the real object of
these fine places was to support a lot of English gardeners, grooms,
and stable-boys. They are a kind of aristocracy. They have really made
Newport (that is the summer, transient Newport, for it is largely a
transient Newport). “I've been inquiring,” continued Mr. Benson, “and
you'd be surprised to know the number of people who come here, buy or
build expensive villas, splurge out for a year or two, then fail or get
tired of it, and disappear.”
Mr. Snodgrass devotes a chapter to the parvenues at Newport. By the
parvenu--his definition may not be scientific--he seems to mean a person
who is vulgar, but has money, and tries to get into society on the
strength of his money alone. He is more to be pitied than any other
sort of rich man. For he not only works hard and suffers humiliation in
getting his place in society, but after he is in he works just as hard,
and with bitterness in his heart, to keep out other parvenues like
himself. And this is misery.
But our visitors did not care for the philosophizing of Mr.
Snodgrass--you can spoil almost anything by turning it wrong side out.
They thought Newport the most beautiful and finished watering-place in
America. Nature was in the loveliest mood when it was created, and art
has generally followed her suggestions of beauty and refinement. They
did not agree with the cynic who said that Newport ought to be walled
in, and have a gate with an inscription, “None but Millionaires allowed
here.” It is very easy to get out of the artificial Newport and to come
into scenery that Nature has made after artistic designs which artists
are satisfied with. A favorite drive of our friends was to the Second
Beach and the Purgatory Rocks overlooking it. The photographers and the
water-color artists have exaggerated the Purgatory chasm into a Colorado
canon, but anybody can find it by help of a guide. The rock of this
locality is a curious study. It is an agglomerate made of pebbles and
cement, the pebbles being elongated as if by pressure. The rock is
sometimes found in detached fragments having the form of tree trunks.
Whenever it is fractured, the fracture is a clean cut, as if made by
a saw, and through both pebbles and cement, and the ends present the
appearance of a composite cake filled with almonds and cut with a knife.
The landscape is beautiful.
“All the lines are so simple,” the artist explained. “The shore, the
sea, the gray rocks, with here and there the roof of a quaint cottage
to enliven the effect, and few trees, only just enough for contrast with
the long, sweeping lines.”
“You don't like trees?” asked Miss Lamont.
“Yes, in themselves. But trees are apt to be in the way. There are
too many trees in America. It is not often you can get a broad, simple
effect like this.”
It happened to be a day when the blue of the sea was that of the
Mediterranean, and the sky and sea melted into each other, so that a
distant sail-boat seemed to be climbing into the heavens. The waves
rolled in blue on the white sand beach, and broke in silver. Three
young girls on horseback galloping in a race along the hard beach at the
moment gave the needed animation to a very pretty picture.
North of this the land comes down to the sea in knolls of rock breaking
off suddenly-rocks gray with lichen, and shaded with a touch of other
vegetation. Between these knifeback ledges are plots of sea-green grass
and sedge, with little ponds, black, and mirroring the sky. Leaving this
wild bit of nature, which has got the name of Paradise (perhaps because
few people go there), the road back to town sweeps through sweet farm
land; the smell of hay is in the air, loads of hay encumber the roads,
flowers in profusion half smother the farm cottages, and the trees of
the apple-orchards are gnarled and picturesque as olives.
The younger members of the party climbed up into this paradise one day,
leaving the elders in their carriages. They came into a new world, as
unlike Newport as if they had been a thousand miles away. The spot
was wilder than it looked from a distance. The high ridges of rock lay
parallel, with bosky valleys and ponds between, and the sea shining in
the south--all in miniature. On the way to the ridges they passed clean
pasture fields, bowlders, gray rocks, aged cedars with flat tops like
the stone-pines of Italy. It was all wild but exquisite, a refined
wildness recalling the pictures of Rousseau.
Irene and Mr. King strolled along one of the ridges, and sat down on
a rock looking off upon the peaceful expanse, the silver lines of the
curving shores, and the blue sea dotted with white sails.
“Ah,” said the girl, with an inspiration, “this is the sort of
five-o'clock I like.”
“And I'm sure I'd rather be here with you than at the Blims' reception,
from which we ran away.”
“I thought,” said Irene, not looking at him, and jabbing the point of
her parasol into the ground, “I thought you liked Newport.”
“So I do, or did. I thought you would like it. But, pardon me, you seem
somehow different from what you were at Fortress Monroe, or even at
lovely Atlantic City,” this with a rather forced laugh.
“Do I? Well, I suppose I am; that is, different from what you thought
me. I should hate this place in a week more, beautiful as it is.”
“Your mother is pleased here?”
The girl looked up quickly. “I forgot to tell you how much she thanked
you for the invitation to your cousin's. She was delighted there.”
“And you were not?”
“I didn't say so; you were very kind.”
“Oh, kind; I didn't mean to be kind. I was purely selfish in wanting you
to go. Cannot you believe, Miss Benson, that I had some pride in having
my friends see you and know you?”
“Well, I will be as frank as you are, Mr. King. I don't like being shown
off. There, don't look displeased. I didn't mean anything disagreeable.”
“But I hoped you understood my motives better by this time.”
“I did not think about motives, but the fact is” (another jab of the
parasol), “I was made desperately uncomfortable, and always shall be
under such circumstances, and, my friend--I should like to believe you
are my friend--you may as well expect I always will be.”
“I cannot do that. You under--”
“I just see things as they are,” Irene went on, hastily. “You think I
am different here. Well, I don't mind saying that when I made your
acquaintance I thought you different from any man I had met.” But now
it was out, she did mind saying it; and stopped, confused, as if she had
confessed something. But she continued, almost immediately: “I mean I
liked your manner to women; you didn't appear to flatter, and you didn't
talk complimentary nonsense.”
“And now I do?”
“No. Not that. But everything is somehow changed here. Don't let's talk
of it. There's the carriage.”
Irene arose, a little flushed, and walked towards the point. Mr. King,
picking his way along behind her over the rocks, said, with an attempt
at lightening the situation, “Well, Miss Benson, I'm going to be just as
different as ever a man was.”