Part 4 (1/2)
”I doubt about the comfort,” the artist began to reply.
”And so do I,” said Miss Sumner. ”What on earth do you suppose made those girls come up here in white dresses, blowing about in the wind, and already drabbled? Did you ever see such a lot of cheap millinery? I haven't seen a woman yet with the least bit of style.”
”Poor things, they look as if they'd never had a holiday before in their lives, and didn't exactly know what to do with it,” apologized Miss Lamont.
”Don't you believe it. They've been to more church and Sunday-school picnics than you ever attended. Look over there!”
It was a group seated about their lunch-baskets. A young gentleman, the comedian of the patty, the life of the church sociable, had put on the hat of one of the girls, and was making himself so irresistibly funny in it that all the girls t.i.ttered, and their mothers looked a little shamefaced and pleased.
”Well,” said Mr. King, ”that's the only festive sign I've seen. It's more like a funeral procession than a pleasure excursion. What impresses me is the extreme gravity of these people--no fun, no hilarity, no letting themselves loose for a good time, as they say. Probably they like it, but they seem to have no capacity for enjoying themselves; they have no vivacity, no gayety--what a contrast to a party in France or Germany off for a day's pleasure--no devices, no resources.”
”Yes, it's all sad, respectable, confoundedly uninteresting. What does the doctor say?” asked the artist.
”I know what the doctor will say,” put in Miss Summer, ”but I tell you that what this crowd needs is missionary dressmakers and tailors. If I were dressed that way I should feel and act just as they do. Well, Selina?”
”It's pretty melancholy. The trouble is constant grinding work and bad food. I've been studying these people. The women are all--”
”Ugly,” suggested the artist.
”Well, ill-favored, scrimped; that means ill-nurtured simply. Out of the three hundred there are not half a dozen well-conditioned, filled out physically in comfortable proportions. Most of the women look as if they had been dragged out with indoor work and little intellectual life, but the real cause of physical degeneration is bad cooking. If they lived more out-of-doors, as women do in Italy, the food might not make so much difference, but in our climate it is the prime thing. This poor physical state accounts for the want of gayety and the lack of beauty. The men, on the whole, are better than the women, that is, the young men. I don't know as these people are overworked, as the world goes. I dare say, Nettie, there's not a girl in this crowd who could dance with you through a season. They need to be better fed, and to have more elevating recreations-something to educate their taste.”
”I've been educating the taste of one excursionist this morning, a good-faced workman, who was prying about everywhere with a curious air, and said he never'd been on an excursion before. He came up to me in the office, deferentially asked me if I would go into the parlor with him, and, pointing to something hanging on the wall, asked, 'What is that?'
'That,' I said, 'is a view from Sunset Rock, and a very good one.'
'Yes,' he continued, walking close up to it, 'but what is it?' 'Why, it's a painting.' 'Oh, it isn't the place?' 'No, no; it's a painting in oil, done with a brush on a piece of canvas--don't you see--, made to look like the view over there from the rock, colors and all.' 'Yes, I thought, perhaps--you can see a good ways in it. It's pooty.' 'There's another one,' I said--'falls, water coming down, and trees.' 'Well, I declare, so it is! And that's jest a make-believe? I s'pose I can go round and look?' 'Certainly.' And the old fellow tiptoed round the parlor, peering at all the pictures in a confused state of mind, and with a guilty look of enjoyment. It seems incredible that a person should attain his age with such freshness of mind. But I think he is the only one of the party who even looked at the paintings.”
”I think it's just pathetic,” said Miss Lamont. ”Don't you, Mr. Forbes?”
”No; I think it's encouraging. It's a sign of an art appreciation in this country. That man will know a painting next time he sees one, and then he won't rest till he has bought a chromo, and so he will go on.”
”And if he lives long enough, he will buy one of Mr. Forbes's paintings.”
”But not the one that Miss Lamont is going to sit for.”
When Mr. King met the party at the dinner-table, the places of Miss Lamont and Mr. Forbes were still vacant. The other ladies looked significantly at them, and one of them said, ”Don't you think there's something in it? don't you think they are interested in each other?” Mr.
King put down his soup-spoon, too much amazed to reply. Do women never think of anything but mating people who happen to be thrown together?
Here were this young lady and his friend, who had known each other for three days, perhaps, in the most casual way, and her friends had her already as good as married to him and off on a wedding journey. All that Mr. King said, after apparent deep cogitation, was, ”I suppose if it were here it would have to be in a traveling-dress,” which the women thought frivolous.
Yet it was undeniable that the artist and Marion had a common taste for hunting out picturesque places in the wood-paths, among the rocks, and on the edges of precipices, and they dragged the rest of the party many a mile through wildernesses of beauty. Sketching was the object of all these expeditions, but it always happened--there seemed a fatality in it that whenever they halted anywhere for a rest or a view, the Lamont girl was sure to take an artistic pose, which the artist couldn't resist, and his whole occupation seemed to be drawing her, with the Catskills for a background. ”There,” he would say, ”stay just as you are; yes, leaning a little so”--it was wonderful how the lithe figure adapted itself to any background--”and turn your head this way, looking at me.” The artist began to draw, and every time he gave a quick glance upwards from his book, there were the wistful face and those eyes. ”Confound it! I beg your pardon-the light. Will you please turn your eyes a little off, that way-so.” There was no reason why the artist should be nervous, the face was perfectly demure; but the fact is that art will have only one mistress. So the drawing limped on from day to day, and the excursions became a matter of course. Sometimes the party drove, extending their explorations miles among the hills, exhilarated by the sparkling air, excited by the succession of lovely changing prospects, bestowing their compa.s.sion upon the summer boarders in the smartly painted boarding-houses, and comparing the other big hotels with their own.
They couldn't help looking down on the summer boarders, any more than cottagers at other places can help a feeling of superiority to people in hotels. It is a natural desire to make an aristocratic line somewhere.
Of course they saw the Kaaterskill Falls, and bought twenty-five cents'
worth of water to pour over them, and they came very near seeing the Haines Falls, but were a little too late.
”Have the falls been taken in today?” asked Marion, seriously.
”I'm real sorry, miss,” said the proprietor, ”but there's just been a party here and taken the water. But you can go down and look if you want to, and it won't cost you a cent.”
They went down, and saw where the falls ought to be. The artist said it was a sort of dry-plate process, to be developed in the mind afterwards; Mr. King likened it to a dry smoke without lighting the cigar; and the doctor said it certainly had the sanitary advantage of not being damp.
The party even penetrated the Platerskill Cove, and were well rewarded by its exceeding beauty, as is every one who goes there. There are sketches of all these lovely places in a certain artist's book, all looking, however, very much alike, and consisting princ.i.p.ally of a graceful figure in a great variety of unstudied att.i.tudes.