The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner Part 223

"Did it never occur to your highness that they may prefer to be comfortable rather than picturesque, and that they may be ignorant that they were born for artistic purposes?" It was the low voice of Miss Lamont, and that demure person looked up as if she really wanted information.

"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.

"Isn't this a nervous sort of a place?" the artist asked his friend, as they sat in his chamber overlooking the world.

"Perhaps it is. I have a fancy that some people are born to enjoy the valley, and some the mountains."

"I think it makes a person nervous to live on a high place. This feeling of constant elevation tires one; it gives a fellow no such sense of bodily repose as he has in a valley. And the wind, it's constantly nagging, rattling the windows and banging the doors. I can't escape the unrest of it." The artist was turning the leaves and contemplating the poverty of his sketch-book. "The fact is, I get better subjects on the seash.o.r.e."

"Probably the sea would suit us better. By the way, did I tell you that Miss Lamont's uncle came last night from Richmond? Mr. De Long, uncle on the mother's side. I thought there was French blood in her."

"What is he like?"

"Oh, a comfortable bachelor, past middle age; business man; Southern; just a little touch of the 'cyar' for 'car.' Said he was going to take his niece to Newport next week. Has Miss Lamont said anything about going there?"

"Well, she did mention it the other day."

The house was filling up, and, King thought, losing its family aspect. He had taken quite a liking for the society of the pretty invalid girl, and was fond of sitting by her, seeing the delicate color come back to her cheeks, and listening to her shrewd little society comments. He thought she took pleasure in having him push her wheel-chair up and down the piazza at least she rewarded him by grateful looks, and complimented him by asking his advice about reading and about being useful to others. Like most young girls whose career of gayety is arrested as hers was, she felt an inclination to coquet a little with the serious side of life. All this had been pleasant to Mr. King, but now that so many more guests had come, he found himself most of the time out of business. The girl's chariot was always surrounded by admirers and sympathizers. All the young men were anxious to wheel her up and down by the hour; there was always a strife for this sweet office; and at night, when the vehicle had been lifted up the first flight, it was beautiful to see the eagerness of sacrifice exhibited by these young fellows to wheel her down the long corridor to her chamber. After all, it is a kindly, unselfish world, full of tenderness for women, and especially for invalid women who are pretty. There was all day long a compet.i.tion of dudes and elderly widowers and bachelors to wait on her. One thought she needed a little more wheeling; another volunteered to bring her a gla.s.s of water; there was always some one to pick up her fan, to recover her handkerchief (why is it that the fans and handkerchiefs of ugly women seldom go astray?), to fetch her shawl--was there anything they could do? The charming little heiress accepted all the attentions with most engaging sweetness.

Say what you will, men have good hearts.

Yes, they were going to Newport. King and Forbes, who had not had a Fourth of July for some time, wanted to see what it was like at Newport.

Mr. De Long would like their company. But before they went the artist must make one more trial at a sketch-must get the local color. It was a large party that went one morning to see it done under the famous ledge of rocks on the Red Path. It is a fascinating spot, with its coolness, sense of seclusion, mosses, wild flowers, and ferns. In a small grotto under the frowning wall of the precipice is said to be a spring, but it is difficult to find, and lovers need to go a great many times in search of it. People not in love can sometimes find a damp place in the sand.

The question was where Miss Lamont should pose. Should she nestle under the great ledge, or sit on a projecting rock with her figure against the sky? The artist could not satisfy himself, and the girl, always adventurous, kept s.h.i.+fting her position, climbing about on the jutting ledge, until she stood at last on the top of the precipice, which was some thirty or forty feet high. Against the top leaned a dead balsam, just as some tempest had cast it, its dead branches bleached and scraggy.

Down this impossible ladder the girl announced her intention of coming.

"No, no," shouted a chorus of voices; "go round; it's unsafe; the limbs will break; you can't get through them; you'll break your neck." The girl stood calculating the possibility. The more difficult the feat seemed, the more she longed to try it.

"For Heaven's sake don't try it, Miss Lamont," cried the artist.

"But I want to. I think I must. You can sketch me in the act. It will be something new."

And before any one could interpose, the resolute girl caught hold of the balsam and swung off. A boy or a squirrel would have made nothing of the feat. But for a young lady in long skirts to make her way down that balsam, squirming about and through the stubs and dead limbs, testing each one before she trusted her weight to it, was another affair. It needed a very cool head and the skill of a gymnast. To transfer her hold from one limb to another, and work downward, keeping her skirts neatly gathered about her feet, was an achievement that the spectators could appreciate; the presence of spectators made it much more difficult. And the lookers-on were a good deal more excited than the girl. The artist had his book ready, and when the little figure was half-way down, clinging in a position at once artistic and painful, he began. "Work fast," said the girl. "It's hard hanging on." But the pencil wouldn't work. The artist made a lot of wild marks. He would have given the world to sketch in that exquisite figure, but every time he cast his eye upward the peril was so evident that his hand shook. It was no use. The danger increased as she descended, and with it the excitement of the spectators. All the young gentlemen declared they would catch her if she fell, and some of them seemed to hope she might drop into their arms.

Swing off she certainly must when the lowest limb was reached. But that was ten feet above the ground and the alighting-place was sharp rock and broken bowlders. The artist kept up a pretense of drawing. He felt every movement of her supple figure and the strain upon the slender arms, but this could not be transferred to the book. It was nervous work. The girl was evidently getting weary, but not losing her pluck. The young fellows were very anxious that the artist should keep at his work; they would catch her. There was a pause; the girl had come to the last limb; she was warily meditating a slide or a leap; the young men were quite ready to sacrifice themselves; but somehow, no one could tell exactly how, the girl swung low, held herself suspended by her hands for an instant, and then dropped into the right place--trust a woman for that; and the artist, his face flushed, set her down upon the nearest flat rock. Chorus from the party, "She is saved!"

"And my sketch is gone up again."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Forbes." The girl looked full of innocent regret. "But when I was up there I had to come down that tree. I couldn't help it, really."

IV

NEWPORT

On the Fourth of July, at five o'clock in the morning, the porters called the sleepers out of their berths at Wickford Junction. Modern civilization offers no such test to the temper and to personal appearance as this early preparation to meet the inspection of society after a night in the stuffy and luxuriously upholstered tombs of a sleeping-car. To get into them at night one must sacrifice dignity; to get out of them in the morning, clad for the day, gives the proprietors a hard rub. It is wonderful, however, considering the twisting and scrambling in the berth and the miscellaneous and ludicrous presentation of humanity in the washroom at the end of the car, how presentable people make themselves in a short s.p.a.ce of time. One realizes the debt of the ordinary man to clothes, and how fortunate it is for society that commonly people do not see each other in the morning until art has done its best for them. To meet the public eye, cross and tousled and disarranged, requires either indifference or courage. It is disenchanting to some of our cherished ideals. Even the trig, irreproachable commercial drummer actually looks banged-up, and nothing of a man; but after a few moments, boot-blacked and paper-collared, he comes out as fresh as a daisy, and all ready to drum.

Our travelers came out quite as well as could be expected, the artist sleepy and a trifle disorganized, Mr. King in a sort of facetious humor that is more dangerous than grumbling, Mr. De Long yawning and stretching and declaring that he had not slept a wink, while Marion alighted upon the platform unruffled in plumage, greeting the morning like a bird.

There were the usual early loafers at the station, hands deep in pockets, ruminant, listlessly observant. No matter at what hour of day or night a train may arrive or depart at a country station in America, the loafers are so invariably there in waiting that they seem to be a part of our railway system. There is something in the life and movement that seems to satisfy all the desire for activity they have.

Even the most sleepy tourist could not fail to be impressed with the exquisite beauty of the scene at Wickford Harbor, where the boat was taken for Newport. The slow awaking of morning life scarcely disturbed its tranquillity. Sky and sea and land blended in a tone of refined gray. The sh.o.r.es were silvery, a silvery light came out of the east, streamed through the entrance of the harbor, and lay molten and glowing on the water. The steamer's deck and chairs and benches were wet with dew, the noises in transferring the baggage and getting the boat under way were all m.u.f.fled and echoed in the surrounding silence. The sail-boats that lay at anchor on the still silver surface sent down long shadows, and the slim masts seemed driven down into the water to hold the boats in place. The little village was still asleep. It was such a contrast; the artist was saying to Marion, as they leaned over the taffrail, to the new raw villages in the Catskills. The houses were large, and looked solid and respectable, many of them were s.h.i.+ngled on the sides, a spire peeped out over the green trees, and the hamlet was at once homelike and picturesque. Refinement is the note of the landscape.

Even the old warehouses dropping into the water, and the decaying piles of the wharves, have a certain grace. How graciously the water makes into the land, following the indentations, and flowing in little streams, going in and withdrawing gently and regretfully, and how the sh.o.r.e puts itself out in low points, wooing the embrace of the sea--a lovely union.