THERE is one long road at Cinerea Lake, always dusty, with a sidewalk
of planks. The hotel, with the appendant cottages, is on the one
side, and a few old farmhouses, now boarding-houses, with a dozen
little wooden shops, are on the other. Most of the shops sell novels,
sweetmeats, embroidery work, and newspapers. There were not many men
at Cinerea. It is not customary in America for men to join their wives
and children on pleasure excursions. What few men there were seemed
oppressed by the novelty of the position, and sat in chairs upon the
piazza, with their feet upon the railing. They seldom ventured farther
during the day. There was a stock telegraph instrument in the hall of
the hotel, and an enterprising New York broker had an office in an
ante-room. Vane noticed that every one of these gentlemen left their
foot-rests on the verandah shortly after breakfast, and, following them
to the nearest store, he learned that this activity was caused by a
desire to purchase the evening papers of the day before, which arrived,
as a written placard informed him, at 9.45 A.M. Vane himself asked for
a paper, but got no answer from the young woman behind the counter,
while a friend who was sitting with her, working, and eating pieces
of chocolate from a paper bag upon her lap, stopped her embroidery a
moment to stare at him rudely. Suddenly it dawned upon Vane that he
had seen the faces of these two ladies at his hotel. They were sitting
on a little piazza in front of the shop, behind a small counter, but
the shop itself seemed to be a sort of club-room for the ladies of the
place, and these were evidently guests. Vane apologized for his error
with some inward amusement, but his speech was rewarded with a still
blanker stare from the young woman with the chocolate.
So far, this "popular summer resort" promised more errors than
entertainment. Vane had certainly never felt so lonely before as among
this gay company. Work gives its own companionship, but idleness is
gregarious. The place was full of girls of all styles of behavior and
prettiness. Some were playing tennis, others making up companies for
drives, others starting off for long walks. Vane had pictured the type
of American girlhood as something fragile and delicate, but these had
healthy faces and lithe young figures robed in flannel and untrammelled
by the dressmakers' art. They were bright, quick with their eyes, but
far from ethereal. Vane himself went to walk, and, after following the
road for a mile or so, entered a woody path, which, as a finger-post
assured him, led to Diana's baths.
He felt much in the mood for a meeting with a heathen goddess, and
entered the forest accordingly. But he found nothing nearer Diana than
Miss Morse and her friend, who were sitting reading with two young
men. The path seemed to vanish where they sat, and Vane made hold to
stop and ask one of the young men the way. They were slow of speech,
and Miss Morse herself replied. She assured him that he was at his
destination, and Vane found himself, in a moment, in conversation with
her.
Diana's Baths were formed by a small brook trickling over some mossy
rocks and making a few pools in which Diana might possibly have wet her
feet. Vane made this suggestion, which was received with much laughter,
at the end of which he found himself on such a footing of intimacy that
he was being introduced to Miss Morse's companions: "Miss Westerhouse,
may I introduce Mr.---- Mr.----" "Vane," suggested he. "Mr. Vane,
of New York, Miss Morse. Miss Westerhouse, Mr. Vane. Mr. Vane, Mr.
Thomson and Mr. Dibble." The young men nodded rather awkwardly. Miss
Westerhouse made a place on the rock beside her, and Vane sat down
wondering how the situation would be explained, and who had told her
that he came from New York.
"I met you yesterday on your arrival, did I not?" Miss Morse went on.
Vane admitted that she had, and remembered the scene with the hotel
clerk.
"Coming from New York, I fear you will find Cinerea Lake rather dull.
We are after the season, you know."
He hastened to assure her that he had found the place most attractive.
"It is getting to be rather too well known now, but it is pretty,
though not so nice as it was. You meet all sorts of people here
already."
Vane felt duly instructed as to the social position of his companions,
and assented, with much honesty, to her last statement.
"It is not very gay here, now. We have a hop twice a week."
"That will be delightful," said Vane with enthusiasm.
"Do you reside in New York?" Miss Westerhouse broke in.
"As much as I do anywhere," said Vane. "I have to travel a great deal."
Vane noticed a sudden lack of interest in him after this remark, and
fancied that they set him down for a commercial traveler. "I have only
lived in New York of late years, and then only when I am not----on the
road," he added, as the humorous view of the situation struck him. A
silence followed this remark, and a certain coldness; but Vane, who had
a particularly comfortable place, leaning back on a mossy rock, made no
motion to go. Finally Miss Westerhouse made an effort.
"Then you are not much acquainted in New York."
"I have a good many business acquaintances."
"Oh, I mean your lady friends."
"I have none," said Vane.
"Some very pleasant New Yorkers have been here," said Miss Morse, "but
they only stayed a few days. Mrs. Haviland and Miss Thomas----" Vane
could not repress a slight movement. "Do you know them?" said the young
lady with some interest.
"Miss Winifred Thomas?"
"This was Miss Baby----"
"It is the same person," said Vane, with decision.
"Is she not just too lovely?" broke in again Miss Westerhouse, with
enthusiasm. Vane could not but concur in this sentiment. Miss Morse's
interest in him seemed revived.
"I suppose we must go back to dinner now," said she. "By the way, we
are going to have a straw-ride this afternoon. Would you not like to
come, Mr. Vane? The gentlemen are getting it up. Mr. Dibble, here, is
chief manager----"
Vane said he should be delighted, and they rose to go. Picking up
two books and a bonbonnière which lay upon the grass, he followed
Miss Morse. He looked at the books as he went, and uttered a slight
ejaculation. One, to be sure, was _Lucile_, but the other was a volume
of Prosper Mérimée's _Lettres à une Inconnue_.
On the way back Vane was presented to several other young ladies, and
when he finally entered the hotel piazza, it was in company with a Miss
Parsons, of Brooklyn, who in turn presented him to a Miss Storrs, of
Cleveland, and left them, as she unnecessarily explained, to dress for
dinner.
Vane was rather ashamed to own to himself that he was displeased at
the acquaintance that seemed to have existed between Miss Thomas and
his late companions. Little as he cared for Miss Thomas, there was
certainly a world-wide difference between her and Miss Morse, Mr.
Thomson and Mr. Dibble; and yet he could not bring himself to admit
that he was snobbish or prejudiced. It was simply that the wealth
and education of these young ladies had outstripped their breeding,
while the young men were still seeking for the first. He pictured to
himself Miss Thomas sitting in flannels at Diana's Baths, and going on
straw-rides with Mr. Dibble, and the idea was distasteful to him.
It was surely an odd chance that he should travel upon her wake in this
way. Throughout the afternoon he occasionally caught himself wondering
how she would appear in these surroundings. This thing was a mixture of
Arcady and an American female college, with a touch of Vauxhall thrown
in. And it was only six weeks since he had wandered in the moonlight
of the Alhambra; and the harvest was hardly all gathered that had been
ripening about the walls of Carcassonne. Vane wished that he could meet
these people at home--that he could see their life really as it was.
Was this, then, all? It could not be. There must be something more real
behind it.
Vane could fancy, in the days when he had been in love, himself and
her living in that out-of-the-way corner in France, in that forgotten
nook sheltered on the backward shores of Spain, eddied in the flood
of modern life and civilization, where he had wandered in the pine
woods upon Monserrat. But this place, this painted wooden hotel, this
company, seemed more foreign to him than anything in the Old World.
What was it? What was it that gave the strange character to it all? Was
he, then, such a foreigner that he could not understand it? Was even
his love exotic, that it seemed impossible here?
The young man gave himself much mental trouble in getting at the
secret of this American life. And, in the last analysis, it seemed
unreal--unreal because it was temporary; because the old was going and
the new had not yet come; because it was like the wooden houses and the
temporary bridges, and the provisional social conventions, and the thin
fashionable veneer of neo-conservatism--it was suffered to remain until
the people found time and resolution to make a change.