The Beauty and the Bolshevist | Page 8

sunrise over the Atlantic spread out before him.
He stood there a moment, somebody's close, well-kept lawn under his feet, and a pale-pink sea sucking in and out on the rocks a hundred feet below. The same hot, red sun was coming up; there wasn't a steady breeze, but cool salt puffs came to him now and then with a breaking wave. It was going to be a hot day, and Ben liked swimming better than most things in life. He hesitated.
If he had turned to the left, he would have come presently to a public beach and would have had his swim conventionally and in due time. But some impulse told him to turn to the right, and he began to wander westward along the edge of the cliffs--always on his left hand, space and the sea, and on his right, lawns or gardens or parapets crowned by cactus plants in urns, and behind these a great variety of houses--French chateaux and marble palaces and nice little white cottages, and, finally, a frowning Gothic castle. All alike seemed asleep, with empty piazzas and closed shutters, and the only sign of life he saw in any of them was one pale housemaid shaking a duster out of a window in an upper gable.
At last he came to a break in the cliffs--a cove, with a beach in it, a group of buildings obviously bathing-houses. The sacredness of this pavilion did not occur to Ben; indeed, there was nothing to suggest it. He entered it light-heartedly and was discouraged to find the door of every cabin securely locked. The place was utterly deserted. But Ben was persistent, and presently he detected a bit of a garment hanging over a door, and, pulling it out, he found himself in possession of a man's bathing suit. A little farther on he discovered a telephone room unlocked. Here he undressed and a minute later was swimming straight out to sea.
The level rays of the sun were doing to the water just what the headlights of the motors had done to the road; they were enlarging every ripple and edging the deep purple-blue with yellow light. Except for a fishing dory chunking out to its day's work, Ben had the sea and land to himself. He felt as if they were all his own, and, for a socialist, was guilty of the sin of pride of possession. He was enjoying himself so much that it was a long time before he turned to swim back.
He was swimming with his head under water most of the time so that he did not at once notice that a raft he had passed on his way out was now occupied. As soon as he did see it his head came up. It was a female figure, and even from a distance he could see that she was unconscious of his presence and felt quite as sure of having the world to herself as he was. She was sitting on the edge of the raft, kicking a pair of the prettiest legs in the world in and out of the water. They were clad in the thinnest of blue-silk stockings, the same in which a few minutes before she had been dancing, but not being able to find any others in her bathhouse, she had just kept them on, recklessly ignoring the inevitable problem of what she should wear home. She was leaning back on her straightened arms, with her head back, looking up into the sky and softly whistling to herself. Ben saw in a second that she was the girl of the silver turban.
He stole nearer and nearer, cutting silently through the water, and then, when he had looked his fill, he put his head down again, splashed a little, and did not look up until his hand was on the raft, when he allowed an expression of calm surprise to appear on his face.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "Is this a private raft?"
The young lady, who had had plenty of time since the splash to arrange her countenance, looked at him with a blank coldness, and then suddenly smiled.
"I thought it was a private world," she replied.
"It's certainly a very agreeable one," said Ben, climbing on the raft. "And what I like particularly about it is the fact that no one is alive but you and me. Newport appears to be a city of the dead."
"It always was," she answered, contemptuously.
"Oh, come. Not an hour ago you were dancing in blue and green and a silver turban at a party over there," and he waved his hand in the direction from which he had come.
"Did you think it was a good ball?"
"I enjoyed it," he answered, truthfully.
Her face fell. "How very disappointing," she said. "I didn't