Part 12

“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.