Part 16

“They didn't stay long,” she said, as Mr. King seemed to expect some information out of the letter, “and they have gone on to Bar Harbor. I should like to stop here a week; wouldn't you?”

“Ye-e-s,” trying to recall the mood he was in before he looked at the register; “but--but” (thinking of the words “gone on to Bar Harbor”) “it is a place, after all, that you can see in a short time--go all over it in half a day.”

“But you want to sit about on the rocks, and look at the sea, and dream.”

“I can't dream on an island-not on a small island. It's too cooped up; you get a feeling of being a prisoner.”

“I suppose you wish 'that little isle had wings, and you and I within its shady--'”

“There's one thing I will not stand, Miss Lamont, and that's Moore.”

“Come, let's go to Star Island.”

The party went in the tug Pinafore, which led a restless, fussy life, puffing about among these islands, making the circuit of Appledore at fixed hours, and acting commonly as a ferry. Star Island is smaller than Appledore and more barren, but it has the big hotel (and a different class of guests from those on Appledore), and several monuments of romantic interest. There is the ancient stone church, rebuilt some time in this century; there are some gravestones; there is a monument to Captain John Smith, the only one existing anywhere to that interesting adventurer--a triangular shaft, with a long inscription that could not have been more eulogistic if he had composed it himself. There is something pathetic in this lonely monument when we recall Smith's own touching allusion to this naked rock, on which he probably landed when he once coasted along this part of New England, as being his sole possession in the world at the end of his adventurous career:

“No lot for me but Smith's Isles, which are an array of barren rocks, the most overgrown with shrubs and sharpe whins you can hardly pass them; without either grasse or wood, but three or foure short shrubby old cedars.”

Every tourist goes to the south end of Star Island, and climbs down on the face of the precipice to the “Chair,” a niche where a school-teacher used to sit as long ago as 1848. She was sitting there one day when a wave came up and washed her away into the ocean. She disappeared. But she who loses her life shall save it. That one thoughtless act of hers did more for her reputation than years of faithful teaching, than all her beauty, grace, and attractions. Her “Chair” is a point of pilgrimage. The tourist looks at it, guesses at its height above the water, regards the hungry sea with aversion, re-enacts the drama in his imagination, sits in the chair, has his wife sit in it, has his boy and girl sit in it together, wonders what the teacher's name was, stops at the hotel and asks the photograph girl, who does not know, and the proprietor, who says it's in a book somewhere, and finally learns that it was Underhill, and straightway forgets it when he leaves the island.

What a delicious place it is, this Appledore, when the elements favor! The party were lodged in a little cottage, whence they overlooked the hotel and the little harbor, and could see all the life of the place, looking over the bank of flowers that draped the rocks of the door-yard. How charming was the miniature pond, with the children sailing round and round, and the girls in pretty costumes bathing, and sunlight lying so warm upon the greenish-gray rocks! But the night, following the glorious after-glow, the red sky, all the level sea, and the little harbor burnished gold, the rocks purple--oh! the night, when the moon came! Oh, Irene! Great heavens! why will this world fall into such a sentimental fit, when all the sweetness and the light of it are away at Bar Harbor!

Love and moonlight, and the soft lapse of the waves and singing? Yes, there are girls down by the landing with a banjo, and young men singing the songs of love, the modern songs of love dashed with college slang. The banjo suggests a little fastness; and this new generation carries off its sentiment with some bravado and a mocking tone. Presently the tug Pinafore glides up to the landing, the engineer flings open the furnace door, and the glowing fire illumines the interior, brings out forms and faces, and deepens the heavy shadows outside. It is like a cavern scene in the opera. A party of ladies in white come down to cross to Star. Some of these insist upon climbing up to the narrow deck, to sit on the roof and enjoy the moonlight and the cinders. Girls like to do these things, which are more unconventional than hazardous, at watering-places.

What a wonderful effect it is, the masses of rock, water, sky, the night, all details lost in simple lines and forms! On the piazza of the cottage is a group of ladies and gentlemen in poses more or less graceful; one lady is in a hammock; on one side is the moonlight, on the other come gleams from the curtained windows touching here and there a white shoulder, or lighting a lovely head; the vines running up on strings and half enclosing the piazza make an exquisite tracery against the sky, and cast delicate shadow patterns on the floor; all the time music within, the piano, the violin, and the sweet waves of a woman's voice singing the songs of Schubert, floating out upon the night. A soft wind blows out of the west.

The northern part of Appledore Island is an interesting place to wander. There are no trees, but the plateau is far from barren. The gray rocks crop out among bayberry and huckleberry bushes, and the wild rose, very large and brilliant in color, fairly illuminates the landscape, massing its great bushes. Amid the chaotic desert of broken rocks farther south are little valleys of deep green grass, gay with roses. On the savage precipices at the end one may sit in view of an extensive sweep of coast with a few hills, and of other rocky islands, sails, and ocean-going steamers. Here are many nooks and hidden corners to dream in and make love in, the soft sea air being favorable to that soft-hearted occupation.

One could easily get attached to the place, if duty and Irene did not call elsewhere. Those who dwell here the year round find most satisfaction when the summer guests have gone and they are alone with freaky nature. “Yes,” said the woman in charge of one of the cottages, “I've lived here the year round for sixteen years, and I like it. After we get fixed up comfortable for winter, kill a critter, have pigs, and make my own sassengers, then there ain't any neighbors comin' in, and that's what I like.”

VII. BAR HARBOR

The attraction of Bar Harbor is in the union of mountain and sea; the mountains rise in granite majesty right out of the ocean. The traveler expects to find a repetition of Mount Athos rising six thousand feet out of the AEgean.

The Bar-Harborers made a mistake in killing--if they did kill--the stranger who arrived at this resort from the mainland, and said it would be an excellent sea-and-mountain place if there were any mountains or any sea in sight. Instead, if they had taken him in a row-boat and pulled him out through the islands, far enough, he would have had a glimpse of the ocean, and if then he had been taken by the cog-railway seventeen hundred feet to the top of Green Mountain, he would not only have found himself on firm, rising ground, but he would have been obliged to confess that, with his feet upon a solid mountain of granite, he saw innumerable islands and, at a distance, a considerable quantity of ocean. He would have repented his hasty speech. In two days he would have been a partisan of the place, and in a week he would have been an owner of real estate there.

There is undeniably a public opinion in Bar Harbor in favor of it, and the visitor would better coincide with it. He is anxiously asked at every turn how he likes it, and if he does not like it he is an object of compassion. Countless numbers of people who do not own a foot of land there are devotees of the place. Any number of certificates to its qualities could be obtained, as to a patent medicine, and they would all read pretty much alike, after the well-known formula: “The first bottle I took did, me no good, after the second I was worse, after the third I improved, after the twelfth I walked fifty miles in one day; and now I never do without it, I take never less than fifty bottles a year.” So it would be: “At first I felt just as you do, shut-in place, foggy, stayed only two days. Only came back again to accompany friends, stayed a week, foggy, didn't like it. Can't tell how I happened to come back again, stayed a month, and I tell you, there is no place like it in America. Spend all my summers here.”

The genesis of Bar Harbor is curious and instructive. For many years, like other settlements on Mount Desert Island; it had been frequented by people who have more fondness for nature than they have money, and who were willing to put up with wretched accommodations, and enjoyed a mild sort of “roughing it.” But some society people in New York, who have the reputation of setting the mode, chanced to go there; they declared in favor of it; and instantly, by an occult law which governs fashionable life, Bar Harbor became the fashion. Everybody could see its preeminent attractions. The word was passed along by the Boudoir Telephone from Boston to New Orleans, and soon it was a matter of necessity for a debutante, or a woman of fashion, or a man of the world, or a blase boy, to show themselves there during the season. It became the scene of summer romances; the student of manners went there to study the “American girl.” The notion spread that it was the finest sanitarium on the continent for flirtations; and as trade is said to follow the flag, so in this case real-estate speculation rioted in the wake of beauty and fashion.

There is no doubt that the “American girl” is there, as she is at divers other sea-and-land resorts; but the present peculiarity of this watering-place is that the American young man is there also. Some philosophers have tried to account for this coincidence by assuming that the American girl is the attraction to the young man. But this seems to me a misunderstanding of the spirit of this generation. Why are young men quoted as “scarce” in other resorts swarming with sweet girls, maidens who have learned the art of being agreeable, and interesting widows in the vanishing shades of an attractive and consolable grief? No. Is it not rather the cold, luminous truth that the American girl found out that Bar Harbor, without her presence, was for certain reasons, such as unconventionality, a bracing air, opportunity for boating, etc., agreeable to the young man? But why do elderly people go there? This question must have been suggested by a foreigner, who is ignorant that in a republic it is the young ones who know what is best for the elders.

Our tourists passed a weary, hot day on the coast railway of Maine. Notwithstanding the high temperature, the country seemed cheerless, the sunlight to fall less genially than in more fertile regions to the south, upon a landscape stripped of its forests, naked, and unpicturesque. Why should the little white houses of the prosperous little villages on the line of the rail seem cold and suggest winter, and the land seem scrimped and without an atmosphere? It chanced so, for everybody knows that it is a lovely coast. The artist said it was the Maine Law. But that could not be, for the only drunken man encountered on their tour they saw at the Bangor Station, where beer was furtively sold.

They were plunged into a cold bath on the steamer in the half-hour's sail from the end of the rail to Bar Harbor. The wind was fresh, white-caps enlivened the scene, the spray dashed over the huge pile of baggage on the bow, the passengers shivered, and could little enjoy the islands and the picturesque shore, but fixed eyes of hope upon the electric lights which showed above the headlands, and marked the site of the hotels and the town in the hidden harbor. Spits of rain dashed in their faces, and in some discomfort they came to the wharf, which was alive with vehicles and tooters for the hotels. In short, with its lights and noise, it had every appearance of being an important place, and when our party, holding on to their seats in a buckboard, were whirled at a gallop up to Rodick's, and ushered into a spacious office swarming with people, they realized that they were entering upon a lively if somewhat haphazard life. The first confused impression was of a bewildering number of slim, pretty girls, nonchalant young fellows in lawn-tennis suits, and indefinite opportunities in the halls and parlors and wide piazzas for promenade and flirtations.

Rodick's is a sort of big boarding-house, hesitating whether to be a hotel or not, no bells in the rooms, no bills of fare (or rarely one), no wine-list, a go-as-you-please, help-yourself sort of place, which is popular because it has its own character, and everybody drifts into it first or last. Some say it is an acquired taste; that people do not take to it at first. The big office is a sort of assembly-room, where new arrivals are scanned and discovered, and it is unblushingly called the “fish-pond” by the young ladies who daily angle there. Of the unconventional ways of the establishment Mr. King had an illustration when he attempted to get some washing done. Having read a notice that the hotel had no laundry, he was told, on applying at the office, that if he would bring his things down there they would try to send them out for him. Not being accustomed to carrying about soiled clothes, he declined this proposal, and consulted a chambermaid. She told him that ladies came to the house every day for the washing, and that she would speak to one of them. No result following this, after a day King consulted the proprietor, and asked him point blank, as a friend, what course he would pursue if he were under the necessity of having washing done in that region. The proprietor said that Mr. King's wants should be attended to at once. Another day passed without action, when the chambermaid was again applied to. “There's a lady just come in to the hall I guess will do it.”

“Is she trustworthy?”

“Don't know, she washes for the woman in the room next to you.” And the lady was at last secured.

Somebody said that those who were accustomed to luxury at home liked Rodick's, and that those who were not grumbled. And it was true that fashion for the moment elected to be pleased with unconventionality, finding a great zest in freedom, and making a joke of every inconvenience. Society will make its own rules, and although there are several other large hotels, and good houses as watering-place hotels go, and cottage-life here as elsewhere is drawing away its skirts from hotel life, society understood why a person might elect to stay at Rodick's. Bar Harbor has one of the most dainty and refined little hotels in the world-the Malvern. Any one can stay there who is worth two millions of dollars, or can produce a certificate from the Recorder of New York that he is a direct descendant of Hendrick Hudson or Diedrich Knickerbocker. It is needless to say that it was built by a Philadelphian--that is to say one born with a genius for hotel-keeping. But though a guest at the Malvern might not eat with a friend at Rodick's, he will meet him as a man of the world on friendly terms.

Bar Harbor was indeed an interesting society study. Except in some of the cottages, it might be said that society was on a lark. With all the manners of the world and the freemasonry of fashionable life, it had elected to be unconventional. The young ladies liked to appear in nautical and lawn-tennis toilet, carried so far that one might refer to the “cut of their jib,” and their minds were not much given to any elaborate dressing for evening. As to the young gentlemen, if there were any dress-coats on the island, they took pains not to display them, but delighted in appearing in the evening promenade, and even in the ballroom, in the nondescript suits that made them so conspicuous in the morning, the favorite being a dress of stripes, with striped jockey cap to match, that did not suggest the penitentiary uniform, because in state-prisons the stripes run round. This neglige costume was adhered to even in the ballroom. To be sure, the ballroom was little frequented, only an adventurous couple now and then gliding over the floor, and affording scant amusement to the throng gathered on the piazza and about the open windows. Mrs. Montrose, a stately dame of the old school, whose standard was the court in the days of Calhoun, Clay, and Webster, disapproved of this laxity, and when a couple of young fellows in striped array one evening whirled round the room together, with brier-wood pipes in their mouths, she was scandalized. If the young ladies shared her sentiments they made no resolute protests, remembering perhaps the scarcity of young men elsewhere, and thinking that it is better to be loved by a lawn-tennis suit than not to be loved at all. The daughters of Mrs. Montrose thought they should draw the line on the brier-wood pipe.