Chapter 15

While this charming spectacle was exhibited at the beach, afternoon service was going on in the tabernacle, and King sought that in preference. The vast audience under the canopy directed its eyes to a man on the platform, who was violently gesticulating and shouting at the top of his voice. King, fresh from the scenes of the beach, listened a long time, expecting to hear some close counsel on the conduct of life, but he heard nothing except the vaguest emotional exhortation. By this the audience were apparently unmoved, for it was only when the preacher paused to get his breath on some word on which he could dwell by reason of its vowels, like w-o-r-l-d or a-n-d, that he awoke any response from his hearers. The spiritual exercise of prayer which followed was even more of a physical demonstration, and it aroused more response. The officiating minister, kneeling at the desk, gesticulated furiously, doubled up his fists and shook them on high, stretched out both arms, and pounded the pulpit. Among people of his own race King had never before seen anything like this, and he went away a sadder if not a wiser man, having at least learned one lesson of charity--never again to speak lightly of a negro religious meeting.

This vast city of the sea has many charms, and is the resort of thousands of people, who find here health and repose. But King, who was immensely interested in it all as one phase of American summer life, was glad that Irene was not at Ocean Grove.

XI. SARATOGA

It was the 22d of August, and the height of the season at Saratoga. Familiar as King had been with these Springs, accustomed as the artist was to foreign Spas, the scene was a surprise to both. They had been told that fashion had ceased to patronize it, and that its old-time character was gone. But Saratoga is too strong for the whims of fashion; its existence does not depend upon its decrees; it has reached the point where it cannot be killed by the inroads of Jew or Gentile. In ceasing to be a society centre, it has become in a manner metropolitan; for the season it is no longer a provincial village, but the meeting-place of as mixed and heterogeneous a throng as flows into New York from all the Union in the autumn shopping period.

It was race week, but the sporting men did not give Saratoga their complexion. It was convention time, but except in the hotel corridors politicians were not the feature of the place. One of the great hotels was almost exclusively occupied by the descendants of Abraham, but the town did not at all resemble Jerusalem. Innumerable boarding-houses swarmed with city and country clergymen, who have a well-founded impression that the waters of the springs have a beneficent relation to the bilious secretions of the year, but the resort had not an oppressive air of sanctity. Nearly every prominent politician in the State and a good many from other States registered at the hotels, but no one seemed to think that the country was in danger. Hundreds of men and women were there because they had been there every year for thirty or forty years back, and they have no doubt that their health absolutely requires a week at Saratoga; yet the village has not the aspect of a sanitarium. The hotel dining-rooms and galleries were thronged with large, overdressed women who glittered with diamonds and looked uncomfortable in silks and velvets, and Broadway was gay with elegant equipages, but nobody would go to Saratoga to study the fashions. Perhaps the most impressive spectacle in this lowly world was the row of millionaires sunning themselves every morning on the piazza of the States, solemn men in black broadcloth and white hats, who said little, but looked rich; visitors used to pass that way casually, and the townspeople regarded them with a kind of awe, as if they were the king-pins of the whole social fabric; but even these magnates were only pleasing incidents in the kaleidoscopic show.

The first person King encountered on the piazza of the Grand Union was not the one he most wished to see, although it could never be otherwise than agreeable to meet his fair cousin, Mrs. Bartlett Glow. She was in a fresh morning toilet, dainty, comme il faut, radiant, with that unobtrusive manner of “society” which made the present surroundings, appear a trifle vulgar to King, and to his self-disgust forced upon him the image of Mrs. Benson.

“You here?” was his abrupt and involuntary exclamation.

“Yes--why not?” And then she added, as if from the Newport point of view some explanation were necessary: “My husband thinks he must come here for a week every year to take the waters; it's an old habit, and I find it amusing for a few days. Of course there is nobody here. Will you take me to the spring? Yes, Congress. I'm too old to change. If I believed the pamphlets the proprietors write about each other's springs I should never go to either of them.”

Mrs. Bartlett Glow was not alone in saying that nobody was there. There were scores of ladies at each hotel who said the same thing, and who accounted for their own presence there in the way she did. And they were not there at all in the same way they would be later at Lenox. Mrs. Pendragon, of New Orleans, who was at the United States, would have said the same thing, remembering the time when the Southern colony made a very distinct impression upon the social life of the place; and the Ashleys, who had put up at the Congress Hall in company with an old friend, a returned foreign minister, who stuck to the old traditions--even the Ashleys said they were only lookers-on at the pageant.

Paying their entrance, and passing through the turnstile in the pretty pavilion gate, they stood in the Congress Spring Park. The band was playing in the kiosk; the dew still lay on the flowers and the green turf; the miniature lake sparkled in the sun. It is one of the most pleasing artificial scenes in the world; to be sure, nature set the great pine-trees on the hills, and made the graceful little valley, but art and exquisite taste have increased the apparent size of the small plot of ground, and filled it with beauty. It is a gem of a place with a character of its own, although its prettiness suggests some foreign Spa. Groups of people, having taken the water, were strolling about the graveled paths, sitting on the slopes overlooking the pond, or wandering up the glen to the tiny deer park.

“So you have been at the White Sulphur?” said Mrs. Glow. “How did you like it?”

“Immensely. It's the only place left where there is a congregate social life.”

“You mean provincial life. Everybody knows everybody else.”

“Well,” King retorted, with some spirit, “it is not a place where people pretend not to know each other, as if their salvation depended on it.”

“Oh, I see; hospitable, frank, cordial-all that. Stanhope, do you know, I think you are a little demoralized this summer. Did you fall in love with a Southern belle? Who was there?”

“Well, all the South, pretty much. I didn't fall in love with all the belles; we were there only two weeks. Oh! there was a Mrs. Farquhar there.”

“Georgiana Randolph! Georgie! How did she look? We were at Madame Sequin's together, and a couple of seasons in Paris. Georgie! She was the handsomest, the wittiest, the most fascinating woman I ever saw. I hope she didn't give you a turn?”

“Oh, no. But we were very good friends. She is a very handsome woman--perhaps you would expect me to say handsome still; but that seems a sort of treason to her mature beauty.”

“And who else?”

“Oh, the Storbes from New Orleans, the Slifers from Mobile--no end of people--some from Philadelphia--and Ohio.”

“Ohio? Those Bensons!” said she, turning sharply on him.

“Yes, those Bensons, Penelope. Why not?”

“Oh, nothing. It's a free country. I hope, Stanhope, you didn't encourage her. You might make her very unhappy.”

“I trust not,” said King stoutly. “We are engaged.”

“Engaged!” repeated Mrs. Glow, in a tone that implied a whole world of astonishment and improbability.

“Yes, and you are just in time to congratulate us. There they are!” Mr. Benson, Mrs. Benson, and Irene were coming down the walk from the deer park. King turned to meet them, but Mrs. Glow was close at his side, and apparently as pleased at seeing them again as the lover. Nothing could be more charming than the grace and welcome she threw into her salutations. She shook hands with Mr. Benson; she was delighted to meet Mrs. Benson again, and gave her both her little hands; she almost embraced Irene, placed a hand on each shoulder, kissed her on the cheek, and said something in a low voice that brought the blood to the girl's face and suffused her eyes with tenderness.

When the party returned to the hotel the two women were walking lovingly arm in arm, and King was following after, in the more prosaic atmosphere of Cyrusville, Ohio. The good old lady began at once to treat King as one of the family; she took his arm, and leaned heavily on it, as they walked, and confided to him all her complaints. The White Sulphur waters, she said, had not done her a mite of good; she didn't know but she'd oughter see a doctor, but he said that it warn't nothing but indigestion. Now the White Sulphur agreed with Irene better than any other place, and I guess that I know the reason why, Mr. King, she said, with a faintly facetious smile. Meantime Mrs. Glow was talking to Irene on the one topic that a maiden is never weary of, her lover; and so adroitly mingled praises of him with flattery of herself that the girl's heart went out to her in entire trust.

“She is a charming girl,” said Mrs. Glow to King, later. “She needs a little forming, but that will be easy when she is separated from her family. Don't interrupt me. I like her. I don't say I like it. But if you will go out of your set, you might do a great deal worse. Have you written to your uncle and to your aunt?”

“No; I don't know why, in a matter wholly personal to myself, I should call a family council. You represent the family completely, Penelope.”

“Yes. Thanks to my happening to be here. Well, I wouldn't write to them if I were you. It's no use to disturb the whole connection now. By the way, Imogene Cypher was at Newport after you left; she is more beautiful than ever--just lovely; no other girl there had half the attention.”

“I am glad to hear it,” said King, who did not fancy the drift their conversation was taking. “I hope she will make a good match. Brains are not necessary, you know.”

“Stanhope, I never said that--never. I might have said she wasn't a bas bleu. No more is she. But she has beauty, and a good temper, and money. It isn't the cleverest women who make the best wives, sir.”

“Well, I'm not objecting to her being a wife. Only it does not follow that, because my uncle and aunts are in love with her, I should want to marry her.”

“I said nothing about marriage, my touchy friend. I am not advising you to be engaged to two women at the same time. And I like Irene immensely.”

It was evident that she had taken a great fancy to the girl. They were always together; it seemed to happen so, and King could hardly admit to himself that Mrs. Glow was de trop as a third. Mr. Bartlett Glow was very polite to King and his friend, and forever had one excuse and another for taking them off with him--the races or a lounge about town. He showed them one night, I am sorry to say, the inside of the Temple of Chance and its decorous society, its splendid buffet, the quiet tables of rouge et noir, and the highly respectable attendants--aged men, whitehaired, in evening costume, devout and almost godly in appearance, with faces chastened to resignation and patience with a wicked world, sedate and venerable as the deacons in a Presbyterian church. He was lonesome and wanted company, and, besides, the women liked to be by themselves occasionally.

One might be amused at the Saratoga show without taking an active part in it, and indeed nobody did seem to take a very active part in it. Everybody was looking on. People drove, visited the springs--in a vain expectation that excessive drinking of the medicated waters would counteract the effect of excessive gormandizing at the hotels--sat about in the endless rows of armchairs on the piazzas, crowded the heavily upholstered parlors, promenaded in the corridors, listened to the music in the morning, and again in the afternoon, and thronged the stairways and passages, and blocked up the entrance to the ballrooms. Balls? Yes, with dress de rigueur, many beautiful women in wonderful toilets, a few debutantes, a scarcity of young men, and a delicious band--much better music than at the White Sulphur.

And yet no society. But a wonderful agglomeration, the artist was saying. It is a robust sort of place. If Newport is the queen of the watering-places, this is the king. See how well fed and fat the people are, men and women large and expansive, richly dressed, prosperous--looking! What a contrast to the family sort of life at the White Sulphur! Here nobody, apparently, cares for anybody else--not much; it is not to be expected that people should know each other in such a heterogeneous concern; you see how comparatively few greetings there are on the piazzas and in the parlors. You notice, too, that the types are not so distinctively American as at the Southern resort--full faces, thick necks--more like Germans than Americans. And then the everlasting white hats. And I suppose it is not certain that every man in a tall white hat is a politician, or a railway magnate, or a sporting man.

These big hotels are an epitome of expansive, gorgeous American life. At the Grand Union, King was No. 1710, and it seemed to him that he walked the length of the town to get to his room after ascending four stories. He might as well, so far as exercise was concerned, have taken an apartment outside. And the dining-room. Standing at the door, he had a vista of an eighth of a mile of small tables, sparkling with brilliant service of glass and porcelain, chandeliers and frescoed ceiling. What perfect appointments! what well-trained waiters!--perhaps they were not waiters, for he was passed from one “officer” to another “officer” down to his place. At the tables silent couples and restrained family parties, no hilarity, little talking; and what a contrast this was to the happy-go-lucky service and jollity of the White Sulphur! Then the interior parks of the United States and the Grand Union, with corridors and cottages, close-clipped turf, banks of flowers, forest trees, fountains, and at night, when the band filled all the air with seductive strains, the electric and the colored lights, gleaming through the foliage and dancing on fountains and greensward, made a scene of enchantment. Each hotel was a village in itself, and the thousands of guests had no more in common than the frequenters of New York hotels and theatres. But what a paradise for lovers!

“It would be lonesome enough but for you, Irene,” Stanhope said, as they sat one night on the inner piazza of the Grand Union, surrendering themselves to all the charms of the scene.

“I love it all,” she said, in the full tide of her happiness.

On another evening they were at the illumination of the Congress Spring Park. The scene seemed the creation of magic. By a skillful arrangement of the colored globes an illusion of vastness was created, and the little enclosure, with its glowing lights, was like the starry heavens for extent. In the mass of white globes and colored lanterns of paper the eye was deceived as to distances. The allies stretched away interminably, the pines seemed enormous, and the green hillsides mountainous. Nor were charming single effects wanting. Down the winding walk from the hill, touched by a distant electric light, the loitering people, in couples and in groups, seemed no more in real life than the supernumeraries in a scene at the opera. Above, in the illuminated foliage, were doubtless a castle and a broad terrace, with a row of statues, and these gay promenaders were ladies and cavaliers in an old-time masquerade. The gilded kiosk on the island in the centre of the miniature lake and the fairy bridge that leads to it were outlined by colored globes; and the lake, itself set about with brilliants, reflected kiosk and bridge and lights, repeating a hundredfold the fantastic scene, while from their island retreat the band sent out through the illumined night strains of sentiment and gayety and sadness. In the intervals of the music there was silence, as if the great throng were too deeply enjoying this feast of the senses to speak. Perhaps a foreigner would have been impressed with the decorous respectability of the assembly; he would have remarked that there were no little tables scattered about the ground, no boys running about with foaming mugs of beer, no noise, no loud talking; and how restful to all the senses!

Mrs. Bartlett Glow had the whim to devote herself to Mrs. Benson, and was repaid by the acquisition of a great deal of information concerning the social and domestic, life in Cyrusville, Ohio, and the maternal ambition for Irene. Stanhope and Irene sat a little apart from the others, and gave themselves up to the witchery of the hour. It would not be easy to reproduce in type all that they said; and what was most important to them, and would be most interesting to the reader, are the things they did not say--the half exclamations, the delightful silences, the tones, the looks that are the sign language of lovers. It was Irene who first broke the spell of this delightful mode of communication, and in a pause of the music said, “Your cousin has been telling me of your relatives in New York, and she told me more of yourself than you ever did.”

“Very likely. Trust your friends for that. I hope she gave me a good character.”

“Oh, she has the greatest admiration for you, and she said the family have the highest expectations of your career. Why didn't you tell me you were the child of such hopes? It half frightened me.”

“It must be appalling. What did she say of my uncle and aunts?”

“Oh, I cannot tell you, except that she raised an image in my mind of an awful vision of ancient family and exclusiveness, the most fastidious, delightful, conventional people, she said, very old family, looked down upon Washington Irving, don't you know, because he wrote. I suppose she wanted to impress me with the value of the prize I've drawn, dear. But I should like you just as well if your connections had not looked down on Irving. Are they so very high and mighty?”

“Oh, dear, no. Much like other people. My aunts are the dearest old ladies, just a little nearsighted, you know, about seeing people that are not--well, of course, they live in a rather small world. My uncle is a bachelor, rather particular, not what you would call a genial old man; been abroad a good deal, and moved mostly in our set; sometimes I think he cares more for his descent than for his position at the bar, which is a very respectable one, by the way. You know what an old bachelor is who never has had anybody to shake him out of his contemplation of his family?”

“Do you think,” said Irene, a little anxiously, letting her hand rest a moment upon Stanhope's, “that they will like poor little me? I believe I am more afraid of the aunts than of the uncle. I don't believe they will be as nice as your cousin.”

“Of course they will like you. Everybody likes you. The aunts are just a little old-fashioned, that is all. Habit has made them draw a social circle with a small radius. Some have one kind of circle, some another. Of course my aunts are sorry for any one who is not descended from the Van Schlovenhovens--the old Van Schlovenhoven had the first brewery of the colony in the time of Peter Stuyvesant. In New York it's a family matter, in Philadelphia it's geographical. There it's a question whether you live within the lines of Chestnut Street and Spruce Street--outside of these in the city you are socially impossible: Mrs. Cortlandt told me that two Philadelphia ladies who had become great friends at a summer resort--one lived within and the other without the charmed lines--went back to town together in the autumn. At the station when they parted, the 'inside' lady said to the other: 'Good-by. It has been such a pleasure to know you! I suppose I shall see you sometimes at Moneymaker's!' Moneymaker's is the Bon Marche of Philadelphia.”

The music ceased; the band were hurrying away; the people all over the grounds were rising to go, lingering a little, reluctant to leave the enchanting scene. Irene wished, with a sigh, that it might never end; unreal as it was, it was more native to her spirit than that future which her talk with Stanhope had opened to her contemplation. An ill-defined apprehension possessed her in spite of the reassuring presence of her lover and her perfect confidence in the sincerity of his passion; and this feeling was somehow increased by the appearance of Mrs. Glow with her mother; she could not shake off the uneasy suggestion of the contrast.

At the hour when the ladies went to their rooms the day was just beginning for a certain class of the habitues. The parlors were nearly deserted, and few chairs were occupied on the piazzas, but the ghosts of another generation seemed to linger, especially in the offices and barroom. Flitting about were to be seen the social heroes who had a notoriety thirty and forty years ago in the newspapers. This dried-up old man in a bronze wig, scuffling along in list slippers, was a famous criminal lawyer in his day; this gentleman, who still wears an air of gallantry, and is addressed as General, had once a reputation for successes in the drawing-room as well as on the field of Mars; here is a genuine old beau, with the unmistakable self-consciousness of one who has been a favorite of the sex, but who has slowly decayed in the midst of his cosmetics; here saunter along a couple of actors with the air of being on the stage. These people all have the “nightcap” habit, and drift along towards the bar-room--the last brilliant scene in the drama of the idle day, the necessary portal to the realm of silence and sleep.

This is a large apartment, brightly lighted, with a bar extending across one end of it. Modern taste is conspicuous here, nothing is gaudy, colors are subdued, and its decorations are simple even the bar itself is refined, substantial, decorous, wanting entirely the meretricious glitter and barbarous ornamentation of the old structures of this sort, and the attendants have wholly laid aside the smart antics of the former bartender, and the customers are swiftly and silently served by the deferential waiters. This is one of the most striking changes that King noticed in American life.