Chapter 7
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.”
V. NARRAGANSETT PIER AND NEWPORT AGAIN; MARTHA'S VINEYARD AND PLYMOUTH
We have heard it said that one of the charms, of Narragansett Pier is that you can see Newport from it. The summer dwellers at the Pier talk a good deal about liking it better than Newport; it is less artificial and more restful. The Newporters never say anything about the Pier. The Pier people say that it is not fair to judge it when you come direct from Newport, but the longer you stay there the better you like it; and if any too frank person admits that he would not stay in Narragansett a day if he could afford to live in Newport, he is suspected of aristocratic proclivities.
In a calm summer morning, such as our party of pilgrims chose for an excursion to the Pier, there is no prettier sail in the world than that out of the harbor, by Conanicut Island and Beaver-tail Light. It is a holiday harbor, all these seas are holiday seas--the yachts, the sail vessels, the puffing steamers, moving swiftly from one headland to another, or loafing about the blue, smiling sea, are all on pleasure bent. The vagrant vessels that are idly watched from the rocks at the Pier may be coasters and freight schooners engaged seriously in trade, but they do not seem so. They are a part of the picture, always to be seen slowly dipping along in the horizon, and the impression is that they are manoeuvred for show, arranged for picturesque effect, and that they are all taken in at night.
The visitors confessed when they landed that the Pier was a contrast to Newport. The shore below the landing is a line of broken, ragged, slimy rocks, as if they had been dumped there for a riprap wall. Fronting this unkempt shore is a line of barrack-like hotels, with a few cottages of the cheap sort. At the end of this row of hotels is a fine granite Casino, spacious, solid, with wide verandas, and a tennis-court--such a building as even Newport might envy. Then come more hotels, a cluster of cheap shops, and a long line of bath-houses facing a lovely curving beach. Bathing is the fashion at the Pier, and everybody goes to the beach at noon. The spectators occupy chairs on the platform in front of the bath-houses, or sit under tents erected on the smooth sand. At high noon the scene is very lively, and even picturesque, for the ladies here dress for bathing with an intention of pleasing. It is generally supposed that the angels in heaven are not edified by this promiscuous bathing, and by the spectacle of a crowd of women tossing about in the surf, but an impartial angel would admit that many of the costumes here are becoming, and that the effect of the red and yellow caps, making a color line in the flashing rollers, is charming. It is true that there are odd figures in the shifting melee--one solitary old gentleman, who had contrived to get his bathing-suit on hind-side before, wandered along the ocean margin like a lost Ulysses; and that fat woman and fat man were never intended for this sort of exhibition; but taken altogether, with its colors, and the silver flash of the breaking waves, the scene was exceedingly pretty. Not the least pretty part of it was the fringe of children tumbling on the beach, following the retreating waves, and flying from the incoming rollers with screams of delight. Children, indeed, are a characteristic of Narragansett Pier--children and mothers. It might be said to be a family place; it is a good deal so on Sundays, and occasionally when the “business men” come down from the cities to see how their wives and children get on at the hotels.
After the bathing it is the fashion to meet again at the Casino and take lunch--sometimes through a straw--and after dinner everybody goes for a stroll on the cliffs. This is a noble sea-promenade; with its handsome villas and magnificent rocks, a fair rival to Newport. The walk, as usually taken, is two or three miles along the bold, rocky shore, but an ambitious pedestrian may continue it to the light on Point Judith. Nowhere on this coast are the rocks more imposing, and nowhere do they offer so many studies in color. The visitor's curiosity is excited by a massive granite tower which rises out of a mass of tangled woods planted on the crest of the hill, and his curiosity is not satisfied on nearer inspection, when he makes his way into this thick and gloomy forest, and finds a granite cottage near the tower, and the signs of neglect and wildness that might mark the home of a recluse. What is the object of this noble tower? If it was intended to adorn the landscape, why was it ruined by piercing it irregularly with square windows like those of a factory?