Chapter 6

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.”