Part 11

“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.”

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.”