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.
After the bathing it is the fashion to meet again at the Casino and take lunch—sometimes through a straw—and after dinner everybody goes for a stroll on the cliffs. This is a noble sea-promenade; with its handsome villas and magnificent rocks, a fair rival to Newport. The walk, as usually taken, is two or three miles along the bold, rocky shore, but an ambitious pedestrian may continue it to the light on Point Judith. Nowhere on this coast are the rocks more imposing, and nowhere do they offer so many studies in color. The visitor's curiosity is excited by a massive granite tower which rises out of a mass of tangled woods planted on the crest of the hill, and his curiosity is not satisfied on nearer inspection, when he makes his way into this thick and gloomy forest, and finds a granite cottage near the tower, and the signs of neglect and wildness that might mark the home of a recluse. What is the object of this noble tower? If it was intended to adorn the landscape, why was it ruined by piercing it irregularly with square windows like those of a factory?
One has to hold himself back from being drawn into the history and romance of this Narragansett shore. Down below the bathing beach is the pretentious wooden pile called Canonchet, that already wears the air of tragedy. And here, at this end, is the mysterious tower, and an ugly unfinished dwelling-house of granite, with the legend “Druid's Dream” carved over the entrance door; and farther inland, in a sandy and shrubby landscape, is Kendall Green, a private cemetery, with its granite monument, surrounded by heavy granite posts, every other one of which is hollowed in the top as a receptacle for food for birds. And one reads there these inscriptions: “Whatever their mode of faith, or creed, who feed the wandering birds, will themselves be fed.” “Who helps the helpless, Heaven will help.” This inland region, now apparently deserted and neglected, was once the seat of colonial aristocracy, who exercised a princely hospitality on their great plantations, exchanged visits and ran horses with the planters of Virginia and the Carolinas, and were known as far as Kentucky, and perhaps best known for their breed of Narragansett pacers. But let us get back to the shore.