Mrs. Farquhar, Colonel Fane, and a great many of their first and second cousins were at the station the morning the Bensons and King and Forbes departed for the North. The gallant colonel was foremost in his expressions of regret, and if he had been the proprietor of Virginia, and of the entire South added thereto, and had been anxious to close out the whole lot on favorable terms to the purchaser, he would not have exhibited greater solicitude as to the impression the visitors had received. This solicitude was, however, wholly in his manner--and it is the traditional-manner that has nearly passed away--for underneath all this humility it was plain to be seen that the South had conferred a great favor, sir, upon these persons by a recognition of their merits.
"I am not come to give you good-by, but au revoir," said Mrs. Farquhar to Stanhope and Irene, who were standing apart. "I hate to go North in the summer, it is so hot and crowded and snobbish, but I dare say I shall meet you somewhere, for I confess I don't like to lose sight of so much happiness. No, no, Miss Benson, you need not thank me, even with a blush; I am not responsible for this state of things. I did all I could to warn you, and I tell you now that my sympathy is with Mr. Meigs, who never did either of you any harm, and I think has been very badly treated."
"I don't know any one, Mrs. Farquhar, who is so capable of repairing his injuries as yourself," said King.
"Thank you; I'm not used to such delicate elephantine compliments. It is just like a man, Miss Benson, to try to kill two birds with one stone--get rid of a rival by sacrificing a useless friend. All the same, au revoir."
"We shall be glad to see you," replied Irene, "you know that, wherever we are; and we will try to make the North tolerable for you."
"Oh, I shall hide my pride and go. If you were not all so rich up there! Not that I object to wealth; I enjoy it. I think I shall take to that old prayer: 'May my lot be with the rich in this world, and with the South in the next!'"
I suppose there never was such a journey as that from the White Sulphur to New York. If the Virginia scenery had seemed to King beautiful when he came down, it was now transcendently lovely. He raved about it, when I saw him afterwards--the Blue Ridge, the wheat valleys, the commercial advantages, the mineral resources of the State, the grand old traditional Heaven knows what of the Old Dominion; as to details he was obscure, and when I pinned him down, he was not certain which route they took. It is my opinion that the most costly scenery in the world is thrown away upon a pair of newly plighted lovers.
The rest of the party were in good spirits. Even Mrs. Benson, who was at first a little bewildered at the failure of her admirably planned campaign, accepted the situation with serenity.
"So you are engaged!" she said, when Irene went to her with the story of the little affair in Lovers' Walk. "I suppose he'll like it. He always took a fancy to Mr. King. No, I haven't any objections, Irene, and I hope you'll be happy. Mr. King was always very polite to me--only he didn't never seem exactly like our folks. We only want you to be happy." And the old lady declared with a shaky voice, and tears streaming down her cheeks, that she was perfectly happy if Irene was.
Mr. Meigs, the refined, the fastidious, the man of the world, who had known how to adapt himself perfectly to Mrs. Benson, might nevertheless have been surprised at her implication that he was "like our folks."
At the station in Jersey City--a place suggestive of love and romance and full of tender associations--the party separated for a few days, the Bensons going to Saratoga, and King accompanying Forbes to Long Branch, in pursuance of an agreement which, not being in writing, he was unable to break. As the two friends went in the early morning down to the coast over the level salt meadows, cut by bayous and intersected by canals, they were curiously reminded both of the Venice lagoons and the plains of the Teche; and the artist went into raptures over the colors of the landscape, which he declared was Oriental in softness and blending. Patriotic as we are, we still turn to foreign lands for our comparisons.
Long Branch and its adjuncts were planned for New York excursionists who are content with the ocean and the salt air, and do not care much for the picturesque. It can be described in a phrase: a straight line of sandy coast with a high bank, parallel to it a driveway, and an endless row of hotels and cottages. Knowing what the American seaside cottage and hotel are, it is unnecessary to go to Long Branch to have an accurate picture of it in the mind. Seen from the end of the pier, the coast appears to be all built up--a thin, straggling city by the sea. The line of buildings is continuous for two miles, from Long Branch to Elberon; midway is the West End, where our tourists were advised to go as the best post of observation, a medium point of respectability between the excursion medley of one extremity and the cottage refinement of the other, and equally convenient to the races, which attract crowds of metropolitan betting men and betting women. The fine toilets of these children of fortune are not less admired than their fashionable race-course manners. The satirist who said that Atlantic City is typical of Philadelphia, said also that Long Branch is typical of New York. What Mr. King said was that the satirist was not acquainted with the good society of either place.
All the summer resorts get somehow a certain character, but it is not easy always to say how it is produced. The Long Branch region was the resort of politicians, and of persons of some fortune who connect politics with speculation. Society, which in America does not identify itself with politics as it does in England, was not specially attracted by the newspaper notoriety of the place, although, fashion to some extent declared in favor of Elberon.
In the morning the artist went up to the pier at the bathing hour. Thousands of men, women, and children were tossing about in the lively surf promiscuously, revealing to the spectators such forms as Nature had given them, with a modest confidence in her handiwork. It seemed to the artist, who was a student of the human figure, that many of these people would not have bathed in public if Nature had made them self-conscious............