Part 5 (1/2)
”If they were not restrained,” Marion suggested, ”by the feeling that that would not be English. How fine the shade trees, and what brilliant banks of flowers!”
”And such lawns! We cannot make this turf in Virginia,” was the reflection of Mr. De Long.
”Well, colonial if you like,” the artist replied to Mr. King. ”What is best is in the colonial style; but you notice that all the new houses are built to look old, and that they have had Queen Anne pretty bad, though the colors are good.”
”That's the way with some towns. Queen Anne seems to strike them all of a sudden, and become epidemic. The only way to prevent it is to vaccinate, so to speak, with two or three houses, and wait; then it is not so likely to spread.”
Laughing and criticising and admiring, the party strolled along the shaded avenue to the Ocean House. There were as yet no signs of life at the Club, or the Library, or the Casino; but the shops were getting open, and the richness and elegance of the goods displayed in the windows were the best evidence of the wealth and refinement of the expected customers--culture and taste always show themselves in the shops of a town. The long gray-brown front of the Casino, with its s.h.i.+ngled sides and hooded balconies and galleries, added to the already strong foreign impression of the place. But the artist was dissatisfied.
It was not at all his idea of Independence Day; it was like Sunday, and Sunday without any foreign gayety. He had expected firing of cannon and ringing of bells--there was not even a flag out anywhere; the celebration of the Fourth seemed to have shrunk into a dull and decorous avoidance of all excitement. ”Perhaps,” suggested Miss Lamont, ”if the New-Englanders keep the Fourth of July like Sunday, they will by and by keep Sunday like the Fourth of July. I hear it is the day for excursions on this coast.”
Mr. King was perfectly well aware that in going to a hotel in Newport he was putting himself out of the pale of the best society; but he had a fancy for viewing this society from the outside, having often enough seen it from the inside. And perhaps he had other reasons for this eccentric conduct. He had, at any rate, declined the invitation of his cousin, Mrs. Bartlett Glow, to her cottage on the Point of Rocks. It was not without regret that he did this, for his cousin was a very charming woman, and devoted exclusively to the most exclusive social life. Her husband had been something in the oil line in New York, and King had watched with interest his evolution from the business man into the full-blown existence of a man of fas.h.i.+on. The process is perfectly charted. Success in business, members.h.i.+p in a good club, tandem in the Park, introduction to a good house, marriage to a pretty girl of family and not much money, a yacht, a four-in-hand, a Newport villa. His name had undergone a like evolution. It used to be written on his business card, Jacob B. Glow. It was entered at the club as J. Bartlett Glow. On the wedding invitations it was Mr. Bartlett Glow, and the das.h.i.+ng pair were always spoken of at Newport as the Bartlett-Glows.
When Mr. King descended from his room at the Ocean House, although it was not yet eight o'clock, he was not surprised to see Mr. Benson tilted back in one of the chairs on the long piazza, out of the way of the scrubbers, with his air of patient waiting and observation. Irene used to say that her father ought to write a book--”Life as Seen from Hotel Piazzas.” His only idea of recreation when away from business seemed to be sitting about on them.
”The women-folks,” he explained to Mr. King, who took a chair beside him, ”won't be down for an hour yet. I like, myself, to see the show open.”
”Are there many people here?”
”I guess the house is full enough. But I can't find out that anybody is actually stopping here, except ourselves and a lot of schoolmarms come to attend a convention. They seem to enjoy it. The rest, those I've talked with, just happen to be here for a day or so, never have been to a hotel in Newport before, always stayed in a cottage, merely put up here now to visit friends in cottages. You'll see that none of them act like they belonged to the hotel. Folks are queer.”
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 n.o.body. I hired a carriage by the week, driver in b.u.t.tons, 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 gra.s.s, 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, n.o.body 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 pa.s.sed that rapid glance of inspection, that one glance which includes a study and the pa.s.sing 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 n.o.bodys 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 Inst.i.tute, 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.”