Their Pilgrimage | Page 7

little steamer. Why, here is material, thought King, for a
troupe of bacchantes, lighthearted leaders of a summer festival. What
charming girls, quick of wit, dashing in repartee, who can pick the
strings, troll a song, and dance a brando!
"It's like sailing over the Bay of Naples," Irene was saying to Mr. King,
who had found a seat beside her in the little cabin; "the guitar-
strumming and the impassioned songs, only that always seems to me a
manufactured gayety, an attempt to cheat the traveler into the belief
that all life is a holiday. This is spontaneous."
"Yes, and I suppose the ancient Roman gayety, of which the Neapolitan
is an echo, was spontaneous once. I wonder if our society is getting to
dance and frolic along like that of old at Baiae!"
"Oh, Mr. King, this is an excursion. I assure you the American girl is a

serious and practical person most of the time. You've been away so
long that your standards are wrong. She's not nearly so knowing as she
seems to be."
The boat was preparing to land at Newport News--a sand bank, with a
railway terminus, a big elevator, and a hotel. The party streamed along
in laughing and chatting groups, through the warehouse and over the
tracks and the sandy hillocks to the hotel. On the way they captured a
novel conveyance, a cart with an ox harnessed in the shafts, the
property of an aged negro, whose white hair and variegated raiment
proclaimed him an ancient Virginian, a survival of the war. The
company chartered this establishment, and swarmed upon it till it
looked like a Neapolitan 'calesso', and the procession might have been
mistaken for a harvest- home--the harvest of beauty and fashion. The
hotel was captured without a struggle on the part of the regular
occupants, a dance extemporized in the dining-room, and before the
magnitude of the invasion was realized by the garrison, the dancing feet
and the laughing girls were away again, and the little boat was leaping
along in the Elizabeth River towards the Portsmouth Navy-yard.
It isn't a model war establishment this Portsmouth yard, but it is a
pleasant resort, with its stately barracks and open square and occasional
trees. In nothing does the American woman better show her patriotism
than in her desire to inspect naval vessels and understand dry-docks
under the guidance of naval officers. Besides some old war hulks at the
station, there were a couple of training-ships getting ready for a cruise,
and it made one proud of his country to see the interest shown by our
party in everything on board of them, patiently listening to the
explanation of the breech-loading guns, diving down into the between-
decks, crowded with the schoolboys, where it is impossible for a man
to stand upright and difficult to avoid the stain of paint and tar, or
swarming in the cabin, eager to know the mode of the officers' life at
sea. So these are the little places where they sleep? and here is where
they dine, and here is a library--a haphazard case of books in the
saloon.
It was in running her eyes over these that a young lady discovered that
the novels of Zola were among the nautical works needed in the
navigation of a ship of war.
On the return--and the twenty miles seemed short enough--lunch was

served, and was the occasion of a good deal of hilarity and innocent
badinage. There were those who still sang, and insisted on sipping the
heel-taps of the morning gayety; but was King mistaken in supposing
that a little seriousness had stolen upon the party--a serious intention,
namely, between one and another couple? The wind had risen, for one
thing, and the little boat was so tossed about by the vigorous waves that
the skipper declared it would be imprudent to attempt to land on the
Rip- Raps. Was it the thought that the day was over, and that
underneath all chaff and hilarity there was the question of settling in
life to be met some time, which subdued a little the high spirits, and
gave an air of protection and of tenderness to a couple here and there?
Consciously, perhaps, this entered into the thought of nobody; but still
the old story will go on, and perhaps all the more rapidly under a mask
of raillery and merriment.
There was great bustling about, hunting up wraps and lost parasols and
mislaid gloves, and a chorus of agreement on the delight of the day,
upon going ashore, and Mrs. Cortlandt, who looked the youngest and
most animated of the flock, was quite overwhelmed with thanks and
congratulations upon the success of her excursion.
"Yes, it was perfect; you've given us all a great deal of