American Adventures Part 50

Many a Mrs. H.S. Jumpkinson-Jones has beaten her way to glory by the Palm Beach route. Many of the names which sound vaguely familiar when you read them in connection with the story of a jewel robbery, in lists of "those present," or in an insinuating paragraph in the tattered copy of "Town Topics" which you pick up, in lieu of reading matter, from the table in your dentist's waiting room, first broke into the paradise of the society column by way of this resort. For a woman with money and the press-agent type of mind it is not a difficult thing to accomplish. One must think of sensational things to do--invent a new fad in dress, or send one's dog riding each day in a special wheel chair, or bring down one's own private dancing instructor or golf instructor at $5,000 for the season. Above all, one must be nice to the correspondents of newspapers. Never must one forget to do that. Never must one imagine oneself so securely placed in society columns that one may forget the reporters who gave one that place.

One lady who, for several seasons, figured extensively in the news from Palm Beach, fell into this error. She thought herself safe, and altered her manner toward newspaper folk. But, alas! thereupon they altered their manner toward her. The press clippings sent by the bureau to which she subscribed became fewer and fewer. Her sensational feats went unnoticed. At last came a ball--one of the three big b.a.l.l.s of the season; a New York paper printed a list of names of persons who went to the ball; a column of names in very small type. Lying in bed a few mornings later she read through the names and came to the end without finding her own. Thinking that she must have skipped it, she read the names over again with great care. Then she sent for her husband, and he read them. When it was clear to them both that her name was actually not there, it is said she went into hysterics. At all events, her husband came down in a rage and complained to the hotel management. But what could the management do? What can they do? The woman is doomed. The Palm Beach correspondents who "made" her have been snubbed by her and have unanimously declared "thumbs down." It is theirs to give, but let no climber be unmindful of the fact that it is also theirs to take away!

As Mrs. H.S. Jumpkinson-Jones looks over the top of her harem veil she may see a great glistening steam yacht, with rakish masts and funnel, lying off the pier-head; and down on the sand she may see the young master and mistress of that yacht: a modest, attractive pair, possessors of one of the world's great fortunes, yet not nearly so elaborately dressed, nor so insistent upon their "position," as the Jumpkinson-Joneses. By raising the brim of her hat a trifle Mrs. H.S.

Jumpkinson-Jones may see, sweeping in glorious circles above the yacht, the hydroplane which, when it left the edge of the beach a few minutes since, blew back with its propeller a stinging storm of sand, and caused skirts to snap like flags in a hundred-mile-an-hour hurricane; and in that hydroplane she knows there is another multimillionaire.

Near by, sitting disconsolately upon the sand, are the one-horse Middle-Western millionaire with his wife and daughter--the three who were ousted from her seats by the beach-chair man. Mrs. H.S.

Jumpkinson-Jones, like every one who has spent a season, let alone half a dozen seasons, at Palm Beach, immediately recognizes the type.

Father is the leading merchant of his town; mother the social arbiter; daughter the regnant belle. Father definitely didn't wish to come here, nor was mother anxious to, but daughter made them. Often she has read the lists of prominent arrivals at Palm Beach and seen alluring pictures of them taken on the sand. She has dreamed of the place, and in her dreams has seemed to hear the call of Destiny. Who knows? may it not be at Palm Beach that she will meet _him_?--the beautiful and wealthy scion of a n.o.ble house who (so the fortune teller at the Elks' Club bazaar told her) will rescue her from the narrow life at home, and transport her, as his bride, into a world of wonder and delight, and footmen in knee-breeches. Daughter insisted on Palm Beach. So mother got a lot of pretty clothes for daughter, and father purchased several yards of green and yellow railroad tickets, and off they went. They arrived at Palm Beach. They walked the miles of green carpeted corridor. They were dazed--as every one must be who sees them for the first time--at the stunning size of the hotels. They looked upon the endless promenade of other visitors. They went to the beach at bathing hour, to the cocoanut grove at the time for tea and dancing, in wheel chairs through the jungle trail and _Reve d'Ete_, to the waiters' cake walk in the Poinciana dining room, to the concert at the Breakers, to the palm room, and to the sea by moonlight; everywhere they went they saw people, people, people: richly dressed people, gay people, people who knew quant.i.ties of other people; yet among them all was not one single being that they had ever seen before. After several days of this, father met a man he knew--a business friend from Akron. A precious lot of good that did! Why didn't father know the two young men who sat last night at the next table in the dining room? Even those two would have done just now.

Clearly they had been mad to know her too, for they were likewise feeling desolate. Perhaps mother can get father to sc.r.a.pe up an acquaintance with them. But alas, before this plan can be set in motion, the two young men have formed their own conclusions as to what Palm Beach is like when you do not know anybody in the place. They have departed. Next day, when mother enters daughter's room to say good night, she finds her weeping; and next day, to father's infinite relief, they start for home. So it has gone with many a bush-league belle.

Even the Mrs. Jumpkinson-Joneses, satiated though they be with private cars, press notices, and Palm Beach, can hardly fail to be sensible to the almost delirious beauty of the scene at bathing hour.

Nowhere is the sand more like a deep, warm dust of yellow gold; nowhere is there a margin of the earth so splashed with spots of brilliant color: sweaters, parasols, bathing suits, canvas shelters--blue, green, purple, pink, yellow, orange, scarlet--vibrating together in the sharp sunlight like brush marks on a high-keyed canvas by Sorolla; nowhere has flesh such living, glittering beauty as the flesh of long, white, lovely arms which flash out, cold and dripping, from the sea; nowhere does water appear less like water, more like a flowing waste of liquid emeralds and sapphires, held perpetually in cool solution and edged with a thousand gleaming, flouncing strings of pearls.

Over the beach lies a layer of people, formed in groups, some of them costumed for the water, some for the sh.o.r.e; some of them known to the great lady, many of them unknown to her. The groups are forever shifting as their members rise and run down to the sea, or come back shiny and dripping, to fling themselves again upon the warm sand, roll in it, or stretch out in lazy comfort while their friends shovel it over them with their hands. Now one group, or another, will rise and form a grinning row while a snap-shot is taken; now they recline again; now they scamper down to see the hydroplane come in; now they return, drop to the sand, and idly watch women bathers tripping past them toward the water. Here comes a girl in silken knickerbockers, with cuffs b.u.t.toning over her stockings like the cuffs of riding breeches. Heads turn simultaneously as she goes by. Here is a tomboy in a jockey cap; here two women wearing over their bathing suits brilliant colored satin wraps which flutter revealingly in the warm, fresh fragrant breeze. And now comes the slender, aristocratic, foreign-looking beauty who wears high-heeled slippers with her bathing costume, and steps gracefully to the water's edge under the shade of a bright colored j.a.panese parasol.

It seems that every one must now be on the beach. But no! Here come the three most wonderful of all: the three most watched, most talked about, most spoiled, most coveted young women at Palm Beach. Their bathing suits are charming: very short, high waisted, and cut at the top like Empire evening gowns, showing lovely arms and shoulders. Hovering about them, like flies about a box of sweets, yet also with something of the jealous guardianship of watchdogs, is their usual escort of young men--for though they know none of the fashionable women, their beauty gives them a power of wide selection as to masculine society.

One is a show girl, famous in the way such girls become famous in a New York season, vastly prosperous (if one may judge by appearances), yet with a prosperity founded upon the capitalization of youth and amazing loveliness of person. The other two, less advertised, but hardly less striking in appearance, have been nicknamed, for the convenience of the gossips, "The Queen of Sheba," and "The Queen of the May." They too suggest, somehow, a.s.sociation with the trivial stage, but it is said that one of them--the slender wonderfully rounded one--has never had the footlights in her face, but has been (in some respects, at least), a model.

Like the climbers, like the bush league belle, these girls, we judge, brought definite ambitions with them to Palm Beach. Partly, no doubt, they came for pleasure, but also one hears stories of successful ventures made by men, on their behalf, at Beach Club tables, and of costly rings and brooches which they now possess, although they did not bring them with them. But after all, the sources from which come their jeweled trinkets may only be surmised, whereas, to the success of their desire for fun, the eyes and ears of the entire smiling beach bear witness. Watch them as they clasp hands and run down to the water's edge; see them prancing playfully where the waves die on the sand, while devoted swains launch the floating mattress upon which it is their custom to bask so picturesquely; see them now as they rush into the green waves and mount the softly rocking thing; observe the gleam of their white arms as, idly, they splash and paddle; note the languid grace of their rec.u.mbence: chins on hands, heels waving lazily in air; hear them squeal in inharmonious unison, as a young member of the "Browning Club," makes as though to splatter them, or mischievously threatens to overturn their unwieldy couchlike craft. Free from the restriction of ideas about "society," about the "tradition" of Palm Beach, about "convention," they seem to detect no difference between this resort and certain summer beaches, more familiar to them, and at the same time more used to boisterousness and cachinnation. They go everywhere, these girls. You will see them having big c.o.c.ktails, in a little while, on the porch of the Breakers; you will see them having tea, and dancing under the dry rustling palm fronds of the cocoanut grove, when the colored electric lights begin to glow in the luminous semi-tropical twilight; and you will see them, resplendent, at the Beach Club, dining, or playing at the green-topped tables.

The Beach Club has been for some time, I suppose, the last redoubt held in this country by the forces of open, or semi-open gambling. Every now and then one hears a rumor that it is to be stormed and taken by the hosts of legislative piety, yet on it goes, upon its gilded way--a place, it should be said, of orderly, spectacular distinction. The Beach Club occupies a plain white house, low-spreading and unpretentious, but fitted most agreeably within, and boasting a superb cuisine. Not every one is admitted. Members have cards, and must be vouched for, formally, by persons known to those who operate the place. Many of the quiet pleasant people who, leading their own lives regardless of the splurging going on about them, form the background of Palm Beach life--much as "walking ladies and gentlemen" form the crowd in a spectacular theatrical production--have never seen the inside of the Beach Club; and I have little doubt that many visitors who drop in at Palm Beach for a few days never so much as hear of it. It is not run for them, nor for the "piker," nor for the needy clerk, but for the furious spenders.

Let us therefore view the Beach Club only as an interesting adjunct to Palm Beach life, and let us admit that, as such, it is altogether in the picture. Let us, in short, seek, upon this brief excursion, not only to recover from our case of grippe, but to recover also that sense of the purely esthetic, without regard to moral issues, which we used to enjoy some years ago, before our legislatures legislated virtue into us. Let us soar, upon the wings of our checkbook, in one final flight to the realms of unalloyed beauty. Let us, in considering this most extravagantly pa.s.sionate and pa.s.sionately extravagant of American resorts, be great artists, who are above morals. Let us refuse pointblank to consider morals at all. For by so doing we may avoid giving ourselves away.

The season wanes. Crowds on the beach grow thinner. Millionaires begin to move their private cars from Palm Beach sidings, and depart for other fashionable places farther north. Croupiers at the Beach Club stand idle for an hour at a time, though ready to spin the wheel, invitingly, for any one who saunters in. The shops hold cut-price sales. And we, regarding somewhat sadly our white trousers, perceive that there does not remain a single spotless pair. The girl in Mr. Foster's fruit store has more leisure, now, and smiles agreeably as we pa.s.s upon our way to the hotel dining-room. The waiter, likewise, is not pressed for time.

"They was seven-hunduhd an' twe've folks heah yestahday," he says. "On'y six-fohty-three to-day. Ah reckon they a-goin' t' close the Breakuhs day aftuh t'-mo'w."

Still the flowers bloom; still the place is beautiful; still the weather is not uncomfortably warm. Nevertheless the season dies. And so it comes about that we depart.

The ride through Florida is tedious. The miles of palmettoes, with leaves glittering like racks of bared cutla.s.ses in the sun, the miles of dark swamp, in which the cypresses seem to wade like dismal club-footed men, the miles of live-oak strung with their sad tattered curtains of Spanish moss, the miles of sandy waste, of pineapple and orange groves, of pines with feathery palm-like tops, above all the sifting of fine Florida dust, which covers everything inside the car as with a coat of flour--these make you wish that you were North again.

The train stops at a station. You get off to walk upon the platform. The row of hackmen and hotel porters stand there, in gloomy silent defiance of the rapidly approaching end of things, each holding a sign bearing the name of some hotel. In another week the railway company may, if it wishes, lift the ban on shouting hotel runners. Let them shout. There will be n.o.body to hear.

You buy a newspaper.

Ah! What is this? "Great Blizzard in New York--Trains Late--Wires Down."

You know what New York blizzards are. You picture the scenes being enacted there to-day. You see the icy streets with horses falling down.

You see cyclonic clouds of snow whirl savagely around the corners of high buildings, pelting the homegoing h.o.a.rds, whirling them about, throwing women down upon street crossings. You have a vision of the muddy, slushy subway steps, and slimy platforms, packed with people, their clothing caked with wet white spangles. You see them wedged, cross and damp, into the trains, and hear them coughing into one another's necks. You see emaciated tramps, pausing to gaze wanly into bakery windows: men without overcoats, their collars turned up, their hands deep in the pockets of their trousers, their heads bent against the storm; you see them walk on to keep from freezing. You remember Roscoe Conkling. That sort of thing can happen in a New York blizzard! Little tattered newsboys, thinly clad, will die to-night upon cold corners.

Poor widows, lacking money to buy coal, are shuddering even now in squalid tenements, and covering their wailing little ones with shoddy blankets.

"Horrible!" you say, sighing upon the balmy air. Then, with the sweetly resigned philosophy of Palm Beach, you add:

"Oh, well, what does it matter? _I'm_ in Florida anyhow. After all it is a pretty good old world!"

CHAPTER LIV

a.s.sORTED AND RESORTED FLORIDA

"Some year or more ago, I s'pose, I roamed from Maine to Floridy, And,--see where them Palmettoes grows?

I bought that little key...."

--SIDNEY LANIER ("A FLORIDA GHOST.")

Florida in winter comes near to being all things to all men. To all she offers amus.e.m.e.nt plus her climate, and in no one section is the contrast in what amus.e.m.e.nt const.i.tutes, and costs, set forth more sharply than where, on the west coast of the State, Belleair and St. Petersburg are situated, side by side.

The Hotel Belleview at Belleair compares favorably with any in the State, and is peopled, during the cold months, with affluent golf maniacs, for whom two fine courses have been laid out.

When the pipes supplying water for the greens of his home course, at Brook, Indiana, freeze, annually, George Ade, for instance, knows that, instead of hibernating, it is time for him to take his white flannel suits, hang them on the clothesline in the back yard until the fragrance of the moth-ball has departed, pack them in his wardrobe trunk, and take his winter flight to the Belleview. He knows that, at the Belleview, he will meet hundreds of men and women who are suffering from the malady with which he is afflicted.

The conversation at Belleair is, so far as my companion and I could learn, confined entirely to comparisons between different courses, different kinds of clubs and b.a.l.l.s, and different scores. Belleair turns up its nose at Palm Beach. It considers the game of golf as played at Palm Beach a trifling game, and it feels that the winter population of Palm Beach wastes a lot of time talking about clothes and the stock market when it might be discussing cleeks, midirons, and mashies. The woman who thinks it essential to be blond whether she is blond or not, and who regards Forty-second Street as the axle upon which the universe turns, would be likely to die of ennui in a week at Belleair, whereas, in Palm Beach, if she died in that time, it would probably be of delight--with a possibility of alcoholism as a contributing cause. And likewise, though Belleair has plutocrats in abundance, they are not starred for their wealth, as are the Palm Beach millionaires, nor yet for their social position, but are rated strictly according to their club handicap. Hence it happens that if, speaking of a Palm Beach millionaire, you ask: "How did he make it?" you will be told the story of some combine of trusts, some political grafting, or some widely advertised patent medicine; but if you ask in Belleair: "How did he make it?" the answer is likely to be: "He made it in 4, with a cleek."

Consider on the other hand, St. Petersburg, with its cheap hotels, its boarding houses, its lunch rooms and cafeterias, and its winter population of farmers and their wives from the North. The people you see in St. Petersburg are identical with those you might see on market day in a county town of Ohio or Indiana. Several thousands of them come annually from several dozen States, and many a family of them lives through the winter comfortably on less than some other families spend at Belleair in a week, or at Palm Beach in a day.

If I am any judge of the signs of happiness, there is plenty of it in the hearts of those who winter at St. Petersburg. The city park is full of contented people, most of them middle-aged or old. The women listen to the band, and the men play checkers under the palmetto-thatched shelter, or toss horseshoes on the greensward, at the sign of the Sunshine Pleasure Club--an occupation which is St. Petersburg's equivalent for Palm Beach's game of tossing chips on the green-topped tables of a gambling house. And yet--

Is it always pleasant to be virtuous? Is it always delightful to be where pious people, nave people, people who love simple pastimes, are enjoying themselves? I am reminded of a talk I had with a negro whose strong legs turned the pedals of a wheel chair in which my companion and I rode one day through the Palm Beach jungle trail. It is a wonderful place, that jungle, with its tangled trunks and vines and its green foliage swimming in sifted sunlight; with its palms, palmettoes, ferns, and climbing morning-glories, its banana trees, gnarled rubber banyans, and wild mangoes--which are like trees growing upside down, digging their spreading branches into the ground. For a time we forgot the pedaling negro behind us, but a faint puffing sound on a slight up-grade reminded us, presently, that our party was not of two, but three. When the chair was running free again, one of us inquired of the chairman:

"What would you do if you had a million dollars?"

"Well, boss," replied the negro seriously, "Ah knows one thing Ah'd do.

No mattuh how much o' dis worl's goods Ah haid, Ah'd allus get mah exuhcize."

"That's wise," my companion replied. "What kind of exercise would you take?"

"Ah ain't nevvuh jest stedied dat out, boss," returned the man. "But it sho' would be some kind o' exuhcize besides pushin' one o' dese-heah chaihs."

"When you weren't exercising would you go and have a good time?"

"No, boss."

"Why not?"

"Well, boss, y' see Ah's a 'ligious man, Ah is."

"But can't people who are religious have a good time?"

"Oh," said the negro, "dey might have deh little pleasuhs now an' den, but dey cain't hev no sich good times like othah folks kin. A man 't 's a 'ligious man, he cain't hev no sich good times like Mistuh Wahtuhbe'y's an' dem folks 'at was heah up to laist week. Ah was Mistuh Wahtuhbe'y's chaih boy. He gimme ninety-two dollahs an' fifty cents tips one week! Ya.s.suh! Dat might be _cha'ity_ but 't ain't 'ligion.