Life flows very evenly, very quietly, and, I think, very happily in Belle Harbour. Children are born, grow up, marry, and die without moving out of sight of old Christ Church, save, perhaps, for a brief but adventurous journey to Washington, Richmond or the coast. Business sometimes takes the Belle Harbour citizen to Washington; sometimes social obligations render a trip to the capital necessary; honeymoons are always spent at Virginia Beach. But for the most part the resident of King’s Street lives his life between the post-office and the Seminary, respectively the Northern and Southern limits of his world. When he penetrates beyond the Seminary it is to drive into the country, perhaps to some decaying plantation. When he goes North of the post-office it is to enter the shabby, care-free negro quarter. He clings very closely to the old traditions, the old customs, the old thoughts. There are no telephones in Belle Harbour, and I doubt if you could find a phonograph in any of the dim, white-walled drawing-rooms. Belle Harbour still shudders when it recalls how, a few years ago, it was threatened with the advent of an electric car line. On that occasion the old town, if it did not absolutely awake, at least turned and muttered in its sleep, disturbed by monstrous visions.
The residents of King’s Street, observing him from behind latticed windows or meeting him on the oak-shaded sidewalk of that grass-grown thoroughfare, wondered who Burton was and why he elected to take up quarters in the town when Washington was less than twenty miles away across the Potomac. The citizens of Belle Harbour entertained no illusions regarding the desirability of their town as a place of sojourn, especially after May; they realized that an elevation of five feet above tide-level does not constitute an ideal situation, and that, judged as a health resort, Belle Harbour was far from being a success. Even admitting the idiosyncrasies of the Northerner, Burton’s presence was inexplicable. Belle Harbour knew something about the Northern traveller, for the town was a Mecca towards which Washington visitors frequently turned their steps. But they seldom tarried; having viewed the old church in which Revolutionary heroes had worshipped, and paid their dimes and quarters for sections of crumbling bricks supposed to have been detached from the edifice walls, but in reality pried out of neighboring sidewalks by enterprising boys, they literally as well as metaphorically shook the dust of the old town from their feet and hurried to the steamboat. Even the commercial traveller took pains to insure the completion of his business before the last boat returned to Washington. The only hostelry in the town confined its ministrations entirely to the citizens, and they seldom penetrated farther than the little, low-raftered bar-room. And so Belle Harbour viewed Burton with extreme but courteous interest.
The information afforded by Mrs. Phillips, of whom the visitor had rented two second-floor rooms for an indefinite period, was limited and unsatisfactory. He was a New York man, she confided, and an architect; he had his meals sent to his rooms and ate three eggs every morning; he found Belle Harbour very picturesque and interesting, and wore pink and blue pajamas; he made strange drawings in books and did much writing; he smoked cigarettes or pipes all day long and dropped the ashes on the floor. King’s Street heard these facts with avidity and reiterated “Why?” And Mrs. Phillips only shook her head and murmured in tones of finality,—
