The Automobile Girls at Newport: or, Watching the Summer Parade

“Would you like a little cold cream, Miss Sallie, to wipe off your face?” Mollie spoke timidly, remembering how Barbara had laughed at her.

“Certainly I should, my child, and very intelligent of you to have brought it along.”

“Well,” said Ruth, “if you must ‘fix up,’ and I am to take a party of belles and beauties into Newport, instead of true lovers of sport, there are lots of new veils under my seat. Bab, take them out and pass them around. Only the chauffeur shall be dusty and dilapidated enough to look the part.”

Behold their dream had come true! The automobile girls were at last in Newport, watching the summer parade!

Ruth, at the expected hour, turned her car, with a great flourish, into Bellevue Avenue, Newport’s most fashionable thoroughfare. For a few minutes the girls beheld a long procession of carriages and automobiles; a little later, they swung round a corner and stopped in front of a beautiful old Colonial house, with a wide veranda running around three sides of it, and a hospitably open front door.

Miss Sallie descended first, to be greeted by Ralph’s mother, who was expecting them.

“I don’t like her. She’s not a bit like Ralph,” thought Barbara. Then she gave herself an inward shake. “There, Barbara, you know what mother would say to you about your sudden prejudices!”

Mrs. Ewing, who had been a great beauty in her day, looked as though life had disagreed with her.

Barbara had wondered how a private home could accommodate so many people, never having seen a handsome old New England house, but their three rooms occupied only half of one side of the long hall on the second floor. “And they think they are poor!” smiled Bab, to herself, as she looked admiringly at the handsome furniture. “I wonder what they would think of our little five-room cottage.”

“I want some clean clothes before anything else,” sighed dainty Mollie, standing before a mirror, gazing with disdain at her own appearance. “I believe I have one clean shirtwaist left, but I must still wear this dusty old skirt.”

But Ruth was staggering into the room under an immense box.

“Fifteen dollars express charges, mum; not a cent less! Them’s my orders. And extry for carrying the box upstairs. It ain’t my business. I’m too accommodating I am! Where shall I put it down, mum?”

Ruth dropped the heavy bundle on the bed; she couldn’t carry it a moment longer.

“Why, Ruth Stuart!” said Mollie, dancing with glee. “It’s some clothes for us! How did mother get them here in such a hurry? Oh, joy! oh, rapture! I was just fussing about having to wear this old suit to-night.”

Bab was tugging at the heavy cords.

“Foolish Bab!” scoffed Ruth. “You’ll never get it open that way,” and she cut the cord in a business-like fashion with a little knife she always carried.

“Now I’ll run away and leave you,” Ruth continued. “Grace is calling that it is time for my bath. Your turn next. I’ll see the pretty things when I come back.”

Ruth would like to have stayed to see the girls open the box, but she had an instinctive feeling that they would prefer to be alone.

“Here’s a letter from mother. Let’s read that first,” said Bab.

Inside the letter lay two crisp ten-dollar bills!

“I have had a windfall, children,” the letter read, “through the kindness of Mr. Stuart. He told me that some of my old stock that I thought of no value was paying a dividend again. Curiously, your Uncle Ralph had not mentioned it to me; but, when I wrote and told him of Mr. Stuart’s advice, he sent it to me at once. So here’s a little spending money. And oh, my darlings, I hope you will like your new clothes! Mr. Stuart is so kind to me, I am not lonely,” the letter ended, “so have the best time you possibly can. I shall send your trunk to-morrow with your summer muslins and underwear.”

“Mollie mine, don’t tear the paper in that fashion,” remonstrated Barbara. “Let me open the box. Behold and see!” She held up two dainty organdie frocks, delicate and airy. Mollie’s gown was white, with little butterfly medallions of embroidery and lace sprinkled over it.

“Mollie, Mollie! How could mother have guessed your new name was ‘the butterfly girl’? Isn’t it too lovely!” Bab almost forgot to look at her own frock, so enraptured was she with her sister’s.

But Barbara’s frock was just as charming, and as well suited to her. A circle of pink wild roses outlined the hem and encircled the yoke, which was of delicate pink tulle.

Mollie was rummaging with impatient fingers. “Party capes, I do declare – the very newest style! I never reached the point of expecting capes even in my wildest dreams. See, yours is all white, and mine has a pale blue lining with a dear little ‘blue riding hood cap.’ Oh, won’t I be charming?” murmured Mollie, putting the cape over her shoulders and pirouetting before the mirror. “Surely no sensible wolf would want to eat me up!”

Two light flannel suits, one of cream color for Bab, and a pin-stripe of blue and white for Mollie, completed the glories of the box.

“Now,” said Bab, “what more can we want, for tennis, for rowing, for yachting, for driving? Are there any more entertainments that the rich enjoy, Mollie? Because, if there are, I should like to mention them.”

Oh, the girls will all declare,

  When they see me on the square —  Here comes a millionaire,  Mollie darling!

“What do you think of that for poetry made while you wait? You don’t half appreciate my talents, Miss Mollie Thurston,” ended Bab, with a final hug.

“Hurry, children,” called Miss Sallie, appearing at their door. “You know we are to meet Mrs. Cartwright at the Casino to-night. She wants to introduce us to the place where a large part of Newport’s gayety occurs.”

“What is the ‘Casino’?” whispered Mollie, when Miss Sallie had disappeared.

“Oh, it’s only a big club, where you play tennis and have dances, and any sort of entertainments. Nearly all the nicest people in Newport belong to it. Mrs. Cartwright says we’ll have most of our fun over there.”

Bab put her arm round her sister, as they walked downstairs.

“Mollie,” she said, “I have the queerest feeling. I am so happy, it frightens me. I never had such a good time before. I wonder how it will all turn out?”

Barbara could not guess that there were to be tears for her, as well as joys, at Newport. It was as well she did not know, or her pleasure would have been marred.

The girls finished dinner as quickly as possible.

“There’s time for a stroll on the cliffs, isn’t there, before eight?” inquired Ruth. “Do you feel equal to exercise, Aunt Sallie? Everyone takes the cliff walk the first thing after arrival in Newport.”

“Certainly,” Miss Sallie agreed. “I suppose I can manage it, though I have ridden so far that I may have lost the use of my limbs. However, I can sit down if I grow tired, and you children can go on without me. It’s perfectly safe, isn’t it, Mrs. Ewing?”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Ewing replied; “though it looks fairly dangerous, the cliffs are so high, the highest on the Atlantic Coast from Cape Ann to Yucatan. But very few accidents have occurred there – so far.”

Ruth and Barbara led the way. They could hear the sea booming and pounding below them. From the edge of the cliff they looked down a hundred feet at the sea, washing in on the level stretch of beach.

Ruth shivered and turned pale. “Oh,” she shuddered, “it makes me horribly nervous! I am ashamed of it, so I don’t often mention it, but I simply can’t look down from great heights. It even makes me a little sick to look out of a high window, and I’m a miserable climber, I get so dizzy. Let us go back. Do you mind, Bab?”

“No, Ruth,” Bab answered. “I suppose I am a tomboy; I used to play hare and hounds with the boys at school, and I learned to climb like a goat over the rocks at Kingsbridge; but these Newport cliffs are a different matter.”

Barbara’s powers were to be tested, but neither she nor Ruth thought anything more of their talk. Miss Sallie and the other two girls had joined them, and they made their way along the narrow, winding path that dipped in hollows and curves, and stretched for two miles ahead of them.

“How hard it is,” said Miss Sallie, “to tell which view is the more beautiful!”

On the inland side of the cliffs, beautiful, shaded lawns, luxuriant with flowers, ran down to the edge of the path. Set in their midst were the marble palaces of Newport’s millionaires. Toward the sea, great points of land jutted out into the harbor, where the water was violet with the shadows of the closing day.

“Miss Stuart! Miss Stuart!” Aunt Sallie heard a gay voice calling her.

Running across the lawn, and waving her scarf at them, came Mrs. Cartwright.

“Were you coming to see me first?” she asked.

Miss Stuart confessed that she had not the shadow of an idea which house belonged to Mrs. Cartwright.

“You must see it for a minute, since you are already here,” urged Mrs. Cartwright, and led the way up the graveled path to her veranda.

“Mollie,” she said, addressing the young girl, “I think it is peculiarly appropriate for my butterfly girl to be introduced to my piazza. It is made to look like a Japanese teahouse,” she explained to Miss Sallie.

The sides of Mrs. Cartwright’s veranda were of heavy Japanese paper stretched on bamboo poles which opened and closed at will. The paper had been painted by a famous Japanese artist to represent springtime in Japan. There were whole rows of cherry trees in full blossom, with little Japanese children playing beneath them. Opposite this scene was another painting – a marshy lake, surrounded by queer Japanese birds.

The veranda was lighted by a hundred tiny shaded lamps. Japanese matting covered the floor, while the tea tables were set with tea services bought in old Japan. The girls had never seen anything so lovely.

“You are officially invited to have tea with me here, any or every afternoon you are in Newport. Now I will run and get Mr. Cartwright,” added their hostess, “and we will go over to the Casino.”

Outside, the Casino looked like a rambling, old Dutch mansion, with peaked gables and overhanging eaves.

“We’ve a Dutch house, English lawns and a French chef,” Mr. Cartwright laughingly explained to Miss Sallie as they entered.

“And we’ve dozens of tennis courts,” added Mrs. Cartwright. “We are working dreadfully hard, now, for the tournament that is to take place in a few weeks. It is really the social event of the whole year at Newport. Is there a star player among you girls? Why not enter the tournament and compete for the championship? We are to have a special match game, this year, played by the young people. Let us keep these tennis courts busy for a while. You’ll come over, too, Miss Stuart, won’t you, and play bridge while we work. Or you’ll work at bridge, while we play tennis. Perhaps you think that is the way I should have put it.”

CHAPTER XII – A WEEK LATER

“Barbara, I wouldn’t play tennis with Gladys and Harry Townsend, if I were you,” said Mollie to her sister, one morning a week later. “They were horrid to you yesterday. Didn’t you notice, when you called to Hugh and Ruth that their last ball had gone over the line, Gladys just shrugged her shoulders, and gave a sneery kind of smile to that Townsend fellow, and he lifted his eyebrows! Is your score the best, or Ruth’s? I know you’re both ahead of Gladys and Grace. I am sure Gladys doesn’t play a bit better than I do; so she needn’t have been so high and mighty.”

Mollie shrugged her dainty shoulders. “You see, she told me, the first day she arrived, that, of course, I didn’t play in the class with the others, so you had just the right eight for the two courts – four girls and four men.”

“Why, Mollie!” Bab looked surprised. “I thought you said you didn’t want to play. You can take my place any time.”

Mollie smiled. “No,” she answered; “I don’t want to play. It’s not that. But it annoys me when you let Gladys Le Baron, cousin or no cousin, snub us all the time, and you not notice it. Ralph certainly wouldn’t like to have me play with him now, when you’re in for a match game.”

“Mollie,” said Bab, tying her tennis shoe, “I do notice how rude Gladys is. She left me standing all alone the other afternoon, when Ruth and Grace had gone into the club house to speak to Aunt Sallie. Friends of Gladys’s came up, and she deliberately turned her back on me and didn’t introduce me. I felt so out of it! Mrs. Post and Mrs. Erwin soon joined them, and they shook hands with me. I found the other people were some guests who had come down for Mrs. Erwin’s ball, next week, and were staying at her house.

“I know,” she continued, “Gladys is furious that we are invited to the dance. Mrs. Erwin was so cordial and nice. She said, right before me, that though the ball was a grown-up affair, she knew Gladys would want her cousins and friends, and she had invited us on her account. Wasn’t it funny? Miss Gladys couldn’t say a word. Goodness knows, she doesn’t want us. She has been lording it over us, for days, because she and Harry were to be the only very young people invited. Gladys imagines herself a woman of society, and is in reality merely a foolish little girl,” said Barbara. Then she added reflectively: “Miss Sallie says we are all too young to ‘go out,’ and she doubts the propriety of allowing us to attend Mrs. Erwin’s ball. Last night she told Ruth she had almost decided against our going. Ruth championed our cause on the strength of the shortness of our stay in Newport, also that we should be permitted to go as a special favor to our hostess. You know Miss Sallie hates to refuse Ruth anything. Consequently we will be ‘among those present’ at Mrs. Erwin’s ball whether Miss Gladys approves or not.”

“I just wish I could tell my lovely Mrs. Cartwright how mean Gladys is,” said Mollie. “She would not ask her to her charity fair.”

“Please don’t say anything, Mollie,” pleaded Barbara, taking her tennis racquet from the bed. She had already answered Ralph’s impatient whistle from the garden below. “It won’t do any good for us to be horrid to Gladys in return; it will only make us seem as hateful as she is. Things will come around, somehow. I don’t mind her – so very much.”

“Well, I do,” answered Mollie. “But you haven’t told me how your score and Ruth’s stand.”

“Oh, I think we are pretty nearly even.” Barbara was half way out the door. “Be careful, Molliekins,” she urged, “if you go rowing with that freshman this afternoon. Why do you want to know about Ruth’s score and mine? It’s a week before the game, and anything may happen before then. We all play pretty evenly; Hugh Post and Ralph Ewing, too.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean anything, Bab,” Mollie said, thoughtfully. “Only Ruth’s awfully anxious to play in the tournament. She’s just crazy about it.”

“Of course she is, child. So are we all, for that matter,” answered Bab. “You don’t mean – ”

“I don’t mean a single thing, Bab Thurston!” said Mollie, a little indignantly.

“Yes, I am coming, at last, Ralph,” Barbara sang softly over the banisters. She had not overcome her awe of Mrs. Ewing. Ralph’s mother was by no means pleased with the idea that her adored Ralph preferred Barbara to any of the other girls.

“It’s like Ralph,” she complained to his father, “to pick out the poorest girl of the lot, when the rich ones are so much more charming. A great way for him to retrieve the family fortunes!”

“We will hope,” said Ralph’s father quietly, “that Ralph will not try to restore our fortunes by marrying for money.”

As Barbara walked down to meet Ralph she looked grave, and her face was flushed. Ruth did want to play in the tournament, but so did she, for that matter! Could she resign in Ruth’s favor? Then Barbara laughed to herself. “Catch a girl like Ruth letting me give up to her! I wonder if it would be fair of me to disappoint Ralph?”

“Come on, Miss Day-dreamer,” ordered Ralph, hurrying her along. “The others have been waiting for us for fifteen minutes down at the Casino courts. Do you know that there is a party on for the afternoon? Ruth and Hugh are to pile as many of us as they can into their motor cars, and take us ten miles out the Ocean Drive. We are to stop at Mrs. Duffy’s English tea place on our way back.”

Bab was certainly not playing in good form today. She even missed one of Gladys’s serves, which were usually too soft to count. When the morning’s practice was over, Ruth’s and Hugh’s score was two points ahead.

“Who is going to play in the tournament from these courts?” asked Mrs. Cartwright, crossing the lawn, her tennis racquet swinging in her hand. Mollie was close beside her, also “that freshman,” who followed Mollie wherever she went.

“Bab,” answered Ruth, coming up to smile at Mrs. Cartwright, who was looking prettier than usual in her tennis blouse of pale pink madras with a linen skirt of the same shade.

“What a funny Gladys!” Mrs. Cartwright laughed as the other girls joined her. “You are following our latest Newport fad, are you not, of having your head wrapped in a chiffon veil while you play tennis. You look like a Turkish girl, with only your eyes peeping out.”

Gladys had tied up her head in a pale blue chiffon veil, with a fetching bow just over the ear. The other women who were playing on the courts, with the exception of Mrs. Cartwright and the automobile girls, were draped in the same fashion.

“That suggests a game to me,” continued Mrs. Cartwright. “You must come to my veranda some night and we will play it. It is called ‘eyeology.’ I won’t tell you anything more about it now. Just you wait! But to go back to my first question. Then I am to enter Barbara for the tournament?”

“I should say not, Mrs. Cartwright,” said Barbara, who was standing near. This time she would not let Ruth speak.

“Ruth is certainly the best player among us,” drawled Gladys; “she and Mr. Post; but,” she went on in insinuating tones, “you know there are strange things that can happen in tennis!”

“If you mean, Gladys, that I cheated the other day,” broke out Barbara fiercely, “I simply won’t bear it! I know it is horrid of me to make a scene,” she turned to Ruth with her eyes full of tears, “but this is the second time.”

“Please don’t get excited, Miss Thurston,” cried Gladys scornfully. “I have not said you cheated. It looks a little bit like a case of guilty conscience.”

Harry Townsend smiled knowingly.

Bab, nearly in tears, couldn’t answer, but Ralph and Hugh Post both protested indignantly.

“Please don’t discuss a thing of this kind here,” said Mrs. Cartwright, angrily. “We don’t allow quarreling on the Casino courts. I am surprised at you, Barbara. You were accused of nothing.”

Mollie’s eyes were black, instead of their usual lovely blue. She was very indignant, but she was always more of a diplomat than Barbara.

“Lovely lady,” she said, putting her hand in Mrs. Cartwright’s as they moved away, “Gladys did mean that Bab cheated. This is the second time she has said it. Wouldn’t you answer back if you were accused of not playing fair with your very best friend?”

Mrs. Cartwright gave Mollie’s hand a squeeze. “Tell Barbara I am sorry if I was too hard on her, but I don’t like scenes!”

“I wish I could get an excuse to pummel that Harry Townsend!” muttered Ralph indignantly to Hugh, when the girls had gone home. “I can’t take it out on Gladys, for she’s a girl. That Townsend fellow’s nothing but a sneak. He just stands round and smiles and says nothing, until he puts me in a rage!”

“Oh, don’t fight, Ralph,” Hugh protested. “I hate that Townsend man, though, as much as you do. He is too infernally polite, for one thing, and he walks on his tiptoes. He comes right up behind you, and you never know where he is until he speaks. I believe he wears rubber soles on his shoes!”

That afternoon, when the automobile parties had finished drinking their tea, Barbara asked Ralph to take a little walk with her in the woods. She wanted to ask him something.

“Ralph,” she began, “if I should fall down in my tennis, in the next few days, would you and Hugh play a test game to see which of you is the better man to help Ruth out in the tournament?”

Ralph shook his head. “No,” he answered. “You are not losing your nerve, are you, Bab? Ruth and Hugh are wonderfully good players, but we are as good as the rest of ’em. I’ll take my chances with you.”

“Would you be very, very much disappointed if we lost?”

“Oh, yes,” said Ralph, cheerily, “but I could bear it all right.” He looked hard at Barbara for a minute. Then he said: “Go ahead, Barbara; I think I understand. I am game. And I’ll never breathe it to a soul. Hugh and Ruth would never forgive us, if they found out!”

“Well, Ralph,” said Barbara, “I don’t think there’s going to be any reason for my trying to let Ruth win; she’s a better player than I am, and she will win anyhow, but, in case she shouldn’t, Ruth has been a perfect dear to Mollie and me!”

“Gladys,” said Ruth that night, when the young people were having an informal dance at the Casino, “I shall never forgive you for accusing Barbara of cheating, as you did today. Barbara is perfectly incapable of cheating. I can’t understand why you don’t like her.”

Ruth’s frank face clouded. She was incapable of understanding the petty meannesses in Gladys’s nature.

“Mr. Townsend and I thought differently concerning Miss Thurston,” Gladys replied, “but I have made no accusations, and will make none. You will find things out for yourself, though, when it is too late!”

Mollie was very sympathetic with Barbara that night. Things had not been going well with Bab for several days; she had an unfortunate habit of speaking her mind without thinking, and this trait had gotten her into trouble with Miss Sallie several times. That lady had a profound respect for the rich, while Barbara had been heard to say that some of the most fashionable ideas of Newport were “just nonsense.”

“Bab,” comforted Mollie, “Mrs. Cartwright told me to say she was sorry she had been cross to you. She wants you to be the gypsy fortune-teller at her bazaar. She says you are very clever, and would do it better than anyone else; besides, she thinks no one would know you. She has lots of gypsy things to dress up in.”

“I would much rather be a waitress, like you girls,” Bab declared.

“But you will do what Mrs. Cartwright wants you to, won’t you?” urged Mollie.

“I’ll see,” said Bab.

The automobile girls were seeing Newport indeed! Mrs. Erwin and Mrs. Cartwright were both leaders in society. The girls had not only been invited to Mrs. Erwin’s ball, but to the big dance which took place after the tennis tournament, and Mrs. Cartwright was arranging for a Charity Fair, which was to be the most original entertainment of the Newport season.

CHAPTER XIII – THE NIGHT OF THE BALL

“Yes, Hugh,” Barbara said, as the last strains of the Merry Widow waltz died away, “I should like to rest here a minute.” Barbara sank down on the low, rose-colored divan shaded by magnificent palms in Mrs. Erwin’s conservatory. “I would love an ice, too,” she added.

It was the night of Mrs. Erwin’s famous white and gold ball, long remembered in the history of splendid entertainments in Newport.

Barbara truly wanted a minute to think. She had come to the ball under Miss Sallie’s excellent chaperonage, early in the evening, and had been dancing hard ever since. The little girl from Kingsbridge, who had never before seen anything finer than a village entertainment, felt almost overcome by the splendor and magnificence of everything about her.

Mrs. Erwin’s ballroom was built out from the side of her handsome villa like a Greek portico. The conservatory joined it at one end, forming an inner triangular court. This court was filled with rare trees which threw their branches out over a miniature artificial lake. The guests could pass from the ballroom into this open garden, or they could enter it through the conservatory.

The walls of the wonderful ballroom were covered with a white silk brocade, and on this night Mrs. Erwin had allowed only yellow flowers to be used as decorations. Great bowls of yellow roses perfumed the air, and golden orchids looked like troops of butterflies just poising before they took flight.

“Now I know,” said Mollie, with a catch in her breath, as she first came into the magnificent ballroom, “what King Midas’s garden must have looked like, when he went round and caressed all the flowers in it with the golden touch.”