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diff --git a/40324-0.txt b/40324-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bcbcf16 --- /dev/null +++ b/40324-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5121 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40324 *** + +Transcriber's Notes: + + 1. Page scan source: + http://books.google.com/books?id=l_YUAAAAQAAJ + (Oxford University) + + 2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe]. + + + + + + + TRUE TO A TYPE + + + + + + + TRUE TO A TYPE + + + + + BY + + R. CLELAND + + + + + IN TWO VOLUMES + + VOL. I. + + + + + WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS + + EDINBURGH AND LONDON + + MDCCCLXXXVII + + + _All Rights reserved_ + + + + + + + CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. + + + CHAP. + + I. PROLOGUE. + + II. CLAM BEACH. + + III. THE FIRST EVENING. + + IV. THE PERILS OF SURF-BATHING. + + V. ROSE AND LETTICE. + + VI. WITH THE SMOKERS. + + VII. A TABLEAU. + + VIII. MRS WILKIE'S POWDER. + + IX. BETWEEN FRIENDS. + + X. A MOTHER'S CARES. + + XI. DISCUSSING A SUITOR. + + XII. TO NAHANT? + + XIII. MAIDA SPRINGER. + + XIV. SUNSET AND MOONSHINE. + + XV. IN AN OMNIBUS. + + XVI. LIPPENSTOCK BAY. + + XVII. FESSENDEN'S ISLAND. + + XVIII. AN ADIEU. + + XIX. STORM-STAYED. + + + + + + TRUE TO A TYPE. + + + + + CHAPTER I. + + PROLOGUE. + + +It was evening in New Orleans--the brief swift evening of the South, +which links, with imperceptible graduation, the sultry glare of day to +the cool of night. The narrow old streets were growing dim in the +transparent dusk. The torpid houses, sealed up hermetically through +all the afternoon to exclude the heated light and air, awoke from +their siesta, throwing wide their doors and casements to the breeze. +The inhabitants came forth, and sauntered up and down, or sat about +their doors, drawing long, deep breaths of the evening air--coming +back to life again, and throwing off their languor. It was the hour of +rest for the toilers, of refreshment for all, and they were enjoying +it in indolent content. + +Only one among the many moving to and fro appeared animated by a +purpose. He stepped briskly forward, brushing against an idler now and +then, but was past before the other's eyes had turned in lazy inquiry +to know the reason. + +He was young. Twenty-one was his actual age, though he might have +passed for some years older. His features and his skin were browned +and sharpened by climate and vicissitude; but in his eye at that +moment there was no sign of aught but youth and hope and blissful +anticipation. Brushing his way swiftly through the sauntering throng, +his gaze seemed fixed upon some joy beyond, heedless of nearer +objects; and his eyes shone with a clearness like the rift in a +moon-obscuring cloud, betraying the brightness and the light within; +and a smile was lurking in the corners of his mouth, which waited only +for a pretext to break forth in joyous laughter. + +Threading his way through the older portion of the town, he arrived at +last in the outskirts, where high blank walls overtopped by trees, and +houses with their faces turned studiously from the street, preserved +the sullen deadness which more populous neighbourhood had cast aside +at sundown. + +Before a garden door he stopped and knocked--knocked loudly, and with +a peculiar tantarabulation, as if it were a well-remembered signal, +and stood and waited impatiently. The shuffling of feet could be heard +within, and there came whisperings and rustlings, but the door +remained fast, and the young man stood and waited, and knocked again, +more softly this time, and with a brightening smile as he stood and +listened. + +"They have gone to call her," he said to himself, "that she may come +and open to me herself, as she used to do. Dear girl! It is three long +years since last she let me in--three weary years. But why this long +delay? She could not expect me, but she knows my knock. Can she be +from home? Then why does not some one open?" + +Again the footsteps could be heard within. Laggingly they drew near. +Heavy unwillingness could be noted in their tread. The young man +knocked again. A key turned gratingly in the stiff old lock, and bolts +and fastenings creaked and rasped and yielded tardily, as to a hand +which trembled while it pressed them. The door swung open, and the +youth with arms extended leaped within the threshold; but the figure +which admitted him was not the one he had expected; his arms fell by +his side--it was not she. + +The figure which had opened drew backward with a scream. It was a +servant, and in the doubtful light the white-handkerchief about the +head stood out against the dusky foliage of the magnolias, and defined +the negro face. + +"O Lordie, Lordie!" was her trembling exclamation, as she shrank away. +She would have run, but her limbs were powerless. She stood staring at +the visitor with starting eyes whose whites revealed the round dilated +pupils, while her mouth hung open in helpless terror. + +"Dinah! Is this your welcome to a returned sailor? Where are your +mistresses? Did they hear my knock?" + +Dinah cowered against the wall, subsiding gradually into a heap upon +the ground, powerless to cry out, too dazed even to pray. Her +scattered faculties seemed fumbling for a word of power wherewith to +reinstate themselves, and avert some peril. "Jerusalem!" was the first +which came to hand. Its utterance brought strength and some return of +thought. It was followed by "Bress de Lord!" and then with speech +restored, she clasped her hands above her head, and with all her +strength cried out. "O Lordie! Take de drown man's spook away!" + +The visitor turned on his heel and walked round to the front of the +house, where doors and shutters stood wide open. Entering by a window +open to the ground, he stood in the reception-room: it was empty, and +its recesses were concealed in gloom. Nothing was clearly seen but the +great white magnolia blossoms in the dim garden without, which +burdened the air with their almost too luscious sweetness. + +A door opened behind him and the mistress entered, followed by her +daughter carrying a lamp. The young man turned eagerly, and the light +falling on his features betrayed a shade of disappointment passing +across them as he recognised the ladies. + +"Is Lina from home?" he asked. "But, mother, at least you can welcome +me home in the meantime. What! Not a word! No kiss even for your +long-lost son-in-law! Surely that is carrying your New England reserve +too far." + +"Welcome if you will, then, lad! I wish you nought but good. I always +liked you well; and you have done nothing to make me change. But oh! +if it had been His will, I would fain you had never returned, seeing +you have stayed so long." + +She laid her hand upon his open palm. It was cold and nerveless, and +her eyes were full of tears. + +The young man would have clasped the fingers, but their dullness stole +into his heart, and the tremor of her voice filled him with sickening +forebodings. + +"Lina! Where is Lina? Tell me quick! Has anything come to her?" + +"She is gone." + +"Dead, do you mean to say?" + +"The same to you, lad, as if she were. She is gone from you for ever." + +"Hush, mother!" said the daughter. "Remember we agreed to tell him +nothing." + +"Millicent! Is it you who say such things? What do you mean? Would you +keep me from my wife?" + +"She is gone; and you must never see her more," said Millicent. + +"I must! and will! and shall!" + +"You are not the man, then," cried the elder woman, "that I take you +for. I tell you, lad, the sight of you would kill her!" + +"Why so? What have you told her about me? What has she done? Or what +do you say that _I_ have done?" + +"Neither of you has done aught amiss, lad--of that I am right sure." + +"What then? What is the matter?" + +"Let it rest, lad. It is God's will. Be brave. Be a man, and bear it." + +"Bear what? What is it I must bear? You have no right to doubt my +courage. Why will you not speak? I demand to be told all." + +"Oh lad!--my poor, poor lad!" sobbed the old woman. "Why will you be +so set? It is to save your own poor heart that we would keep you in +the dark; for what we should have to tell can bring you nought but +sorrow--a sorrow without a remedy." + +"Have no fear for me. Speak! I can carry my load, whatever it may be. +What is your mystery? Where is Lina?" + +"Gone, lad! Have done with her." + +"Gone?--dead? No! You do not mean that she is dead. You would have +told me that at once. What is it that you mean? Say! Is my Lina not +alive? Answer me." + +"She lives," the mother answered, with a groan. "There! Nay, it is +useless to press me. I tell you she is gone." + +"Gone! Would you insinuate shame against my wedded wife? +Unnatural!--against your own sweet daughter? Where has she gone?--and +when?--and how?--I am after her. Tell me quick!" + +"You cannot go to her, Joseph. She is far away. And"--laying her hand +on his arm--"at least I can tell you this, and assure you with all my +heart; there is nought to blush for. She was your faithful wife. No +shame can light on her, or upon you." + +"_Was_, you say?" + +"Yes, lad; all's over now." + +"What do you mean?" + +"She is married--married again." + +"Another man's wife? I do not believe you. What man would dare----? +I'll have his life! But it is not true. Lina never would desert me." + +"Word came that you were lost. Remember that. Pieces of the wreck were +picked up at sea. And Lina--she nearly lost her reason. We thought +that she would die." + +"But I wrote--wrote several times. Do you mean that she did not get my +letters?" and the young man paced the room in vehement disorder. "You +knew I was alive! I can see that you did. You were expecting me! I can +guess it from your delay in letting me in. You would have kept me out +altogether if you had dared! I am sure of it by your behaviour. Only +you were afraid of a public scandal." + +"I did, and I was, lad; and it is yourself would grieve the most, if a +word were to light on the good name of the woman you vowed to love and +honour." + +"The woman who deserts me for another man! But still she is mine! She +cannot be another's. Give her back! Give up the name of her betrayer. +Who is he? Where are they? Speak!" + +The mother had sunk into a chair, her arms propped upon her knees, +covering her face and sobbing wildly, while Millicent bent down and +strove to soothe her. + +"Speak, woman! speak!" he shouted. + +"Have you no pity?" It was Millicent who spoke. + +"What pity are you showing now to me? Give back my wife! Where have +you hidden her? And this man----? She has left me, has she? But _he_ +shall not have her! If I had him by the throat----!" and he clenched +his teeth in fury. + +"Lina never left you. You might know it. You should blush to have +thought it. If ever woman was devoted to a man, it was our Lina. When +word came that you were lost, she fell senseless on the floor. It was +weeks before she recovered her reason; and even then it seemed +doubtful if she would survive. We took her North as soon as we dared +move her, and in the bracing air and change of scene it seemed as if +the vehemence of her grief had spent itself; but the old self seemed +to have gone from her as well. She moved about a listless white-faced +shadow, indifferent to life and everything. It was heartbreaking to +see her--and she not yet eighteen! And mother and I, we were beside +ourselves with anxiety. She appeared too feeble to bring back here, +and we feared the sight of the familiar scenes would revive her grief, +and drive her mad, or kill her. And so, when a gentleman grew +interested in her, and slid into a kind of pitiful intimacy that +seemed to soothe her, we thanked God for raising us up a consoler. And +when, by-and-by, he asked her to marry him, mother and I persuaded her +to listen, for we thought that new duties and a new life would draw +her thoughts away from her great sorrow, and bring her peace. It was +fifteen months, or more, from the time the news reached us of your +loss, when she was married; so you have no call to say that her memory +was short, or that her love was light to come and light to go. She +loved you very truly, and she cherishes your memory yet." + +"What did she say when she received my letters?" + +"She has received none of them. When mother and I got home after her +marriage, we found one awaiting us here. We opened it and we read it, +and we burned it--though it went to our hearts to do so." + +"What right had you to open a letter to my wife? what right to +intercept it?" + +"The right of her nearest to guard poor Lina's peace. What good would +it have done you if we had given it to her? No doubt she would have +left her husband; but that would not have given her back to _you_. You +know her as well as I do. You know that she would not have looked you +in the face after having given herself to another. She would have +pined away for shame; or, more likely, she would have gone mad." + +"Yes, lad," put in the mother, "you must take your trouble on your own +back, unless you would destroy the woman you bound yourself to defend. +You must go away and never let her know you are alive. I make no +question but she would leave her present husband without a word; but +think of yourself! Could _you_ take her to your bosom out of another +man's arms? Could she ever be the same to you as she was before?" + +"Perhaps--perhaps--I do not know." + +"And think of her! How could she live beneath your looks of always +remembering reproach?" + +"At least I can promise never to say a word. I would not reproach +her." + +"Not in words, I well believe, lad. But the reproach unspoken of a +wounded love will out in many a tone and look, without our knowing. +And then, there is the world. How could my girl hold up her head among +honest women? Their pity would be harder even than their scorn to +bear. Lina would die of shame. Oh, lad! be generous, as I know you are +able to be. I know you for a brave true man; and when the first smart +is past, you will have pity for the girl you loved, and who loved you +well. You will spare her weakness, and let your own brave strong heart +contain its grief in silence. You do not know her name or where she +dwells, and you will not attempt to seek her." + +The young man smothered a mighty sob, which nearly rent his breast +asunder, and drew his hand roughly across his eyes to clear their +gathering dimness. He turned and went, without a word of leave-taking. +The elasticity was gone out of his step. His shoulders were bowed as +though they bore a burden. His face was drawn, and aged, and faded. +His very soul seemed crushed. Without another word he stole away out +into the night, where no eye could pry into his sorrow. + +Next day he left New Orleans, and forsook the sea. He returned to his +native province, and, entering on a new career, strove to absorb +himself in its new interests, and forget the past. He prospered, but +he never forgot; or, if he did, the faculty of loving seemed to have +died out of him in the meanwhile. In five-and-twenty years from the +day he lost his wife, no other woman had been able to awaken even a +passing interest in his mind. + + + + + CHAPTER II. + + CLAM BEACH. + + +The Chowder House at Clam Beach is not a giant among the hotels which +line the Atlantic coast. It is designed to accommodate only a hundred +guests, and even at the height of the season it refuses to stretch its +capacity beyond a hundred and fifty. It stands upon a solitary shore, +is some miles from the nearest railway, and shows nothing from its +windows but the tumbling line of surf and the daily procession of +cloud and sunshine across a boundless stretch of sea and sand. + +It is a three-storeyed building encased in wooden galleries, which +form outside corridors on the different floors; and it forms three +sides of a square, enclosing to the back a sheltered tennis-lawn for +those who would avoid the bluster of the keen sea-breeze. + +The place is resorted to by families with a juvenile division, whose +nurses and small fry burrow in the sand which comes up to the very +doorsteps. It makes no pretence to fashion. The guests feel at liberty +to be happy, each in his own favourite dress and manner, without fear +of being compromised. The young bathe in the surf and walk or ride on +the sands all day; and after the Yankee supper of meats, fruit, and +tea, which takes place at seven, make themselves gay with dances and +singing: while the seniors stroll together in groups, or sit apart, +acquiescing in the American law of life, which gives the world to the +young, and places the middle-aged with the elders on the shelf. The +old may work, if so is their good pleasure, but it is only the lads +and lasses who are to play. + +It was early afternoon, in the very hottest of the day. The first bell +for dinner had rung, and the guests were streaming towards the house +from every point along the shore; while the most hungry, already +arrived, loitered on the galleries, and counted the minutes till the +dining-room should be thrown open. + +The omnibus from the station, jolting round the corner, and drawing up +before the door, afforded a pleasing diversion from the yearnings of +appetite. It brought the newspapers of the day; and more, it brought +new guests, who, busied in alighting and claiming their luggage, +formed a subject for observation to the idle eyes above, unintroduced +as yet, and therefore at liberty to stare their fill with all the +impertinent curiosity at their disposal. + +The ladies counted the boxes on the roof, and turned away with a +sniff. Even at Clam Beach, with its freedom from dress parade, the +number of trunks is taken as a criterion of "standing," and certain +ladies of grand manner from Boston are even suspected of bringing +empty ones to support their position. + +The men, toothpick in mouth, continued to stare. There were two pretty +faces visible beneath the flapping brims of broad seaside hats,--one +violet-eyed, with masses of sunny brown hair; the other blond, with +eyes like the forget-me-not,--and they could study them without +prejudice or offence just then. Later, when they met in the parlours +above, it would be different. + +Presently the hotel cart trotted up with a number of trunks. A slight +"Ah!" of satisfaction spread itself on the air, and the ladies resumed +their attitude of observation. They were not going to be compromised +after all, it seemed, by the presence of fellow-guests without +ostensible movable property, and forthwith they began to note the +value and fashion of each article of the feminine newcomers' wardrobe, +and the general look of the men. One of these appeared about thirty, +available for flirtation and social uses; while the other was older, +with a suspicion of grey in the short close-cut whisker--a florid and +well-fed man, and seemingly well to do, which was a point in favour of +his female following: and a point of some sort is needed where +available men to marriageable girls stand in the proportion of only +two to five. + +Two oldish ladies brought up the number of the arrivals to six; but as +they were dressed in the ordinary manner of the period, nobody noticed +them much. They were mere furniture, intended to remain in corners, +and be sat beside when younger women, finding themselves neglected, +chose to assume demureness under the wing of a chaperon. + +"Two trunks. Those! Valise, handbag, rugs, and umbrellas." It was the +younger man who was addressing the porter. + +"Oh, Peter!" cried the oldest lady, "have you my parrysol?--and my +book?--and my scent-bottle?--and my spectacle-case? Where can they all +be?" + +"You've just left them behind you, mother, as usual. You would have +left yourself, I do believe, if I had not been at your elbow." + +"What am I to do for want of my parrysol? Between the hot sun and the +sea air, every bit of colour will be eaten out of my blue ribbons, and +my face just brandered like a raw beef-steak. I wonder if the little +things can have gotten into my pockets!" And so saying, she stepped +forth upon the gravel, where elbow-room was free, shook out her +skirts, and proceeded to dive down deep into apertures she wot of in +all parts of her circumference. + +"What's this?" she cried, sinking over the elbow into a pocket on the +far-off side. "What can it be?" And the eyes and eyeglasses in the +galleries were turned in her direction; while Peter, half wroth and +half amused, stood waiting the end of her search. + +"It's terrible hard to grip. But there! Now! I've cornered it at last. +Can it be livin', I wonder? The way it runs about! And I canna just +lay finger on it." + +"A mouse, mother, is it?" He was growing cross and sarcastic under the +observation of the loungers. "Out with it! Here's a terrier ready to +snap it up." + +"Peter Wilkie, hold your peace! Would ye make fun of your own mother, +and all thae impident Yankees looking on? Think shame! Hey! here it is +at last, the bothersome thing!" And out it came, proving to be only a +large-sized peppermint-drop. + +"Toot! that's not what I was looking for. Here, my dear!" and without +more ado she popped it into the open mouth of a small boy who stood by +gaping at her in her search, to his complete confusion and the +increased diversion of the gallery. + +"See there, Peter! If that's no' the parrysol after all, tied up with +the umbrellies! Just where it should be! And me hunting for it +everywhere! I wonder you didn't see it! And here's the specs and the +scent-bottle all the time in the ridicule at my side! Wonders will +never cease. As for the book, it'll turn up ere I want it; and if +anybody took it, they'll be little made up, for it's just Beattie's +Lectures on the Ten Commandments, and very hard upon the sin of +stealing. And, Peter, be sure and make the landlord give us rooms upon +the first floor. I _can-not_ be climbing stairs--it brings on the +palpitations." + +Meanwhile the other tenants of the omnibus had alighted and entered +the house. "A man with a sickly wife and a couple of daughters," was +the verdict upon the party, which was only rectified by reference to +the house-register after they had catalogued themselves--"Joseph +Naylor, Mrs Caleb Naylor, and the Misses Naylor, all of Jones's +Landing, Upper Canada." + +"Oh, girls, I am exhausted! Open the windows and the trunks. Hartshorn +and sal-volatile! I shall faint--I am sure I shall faint. Margaret, +get ready to go down with your uncle. Lucy, my child, you must remain +with me." + +"Stuff and nonsense, Maria!" said the uncle. They were being shown +their rooms up-stairs. "You have only to exert yourself. That's all +you require to set you up. And of course you must come down to dinner. +The sight of so many strangers will do you good, and we shall want +your help to make up our minds about the company." + +Mrs Naylor shook her head in plaintive toleration. It was not to be +expected that coarse-fibred masculinity should comprehend the +susceptibility of her delicate nerves. She half-closed her eyes and +sank into a chair, with every appearance of taking up her quarters for +good--unless, indeed, she should have to be laid upon the adjoining +bed. + +Joseph, standing impatiently without, grew uneasy, as perhaps was +intended. He was of an anxious temper, fussy as well as kind. The +responsibility of having a delicate lady on his hands oppressed him. +He had groaned under the load for years, but he had not got used to +it. It oppressed him ever the more, the longer he endured it, and he +was overridden by the whims and complaints of this relict of his +deceased brother, even more than if she had been wife of his own. + +"Pray try, sister--try. It is for your health we are here, you know. +It will be distressing if you begin by taking to your bed. I feel +confident that a morsel of dinner and a glass of sparkling wine will +do you good." + +I will not say that it was the suggestion of the wine which induced +Mrs Naylor to change her purpose; it may only have been willingness to +yield to entreaty. At any rate, she let herself be persuaded, though +not too easily, and eventually went downstairs with the rest. + +At dinner they shared a table with their fellow-travellers of the +omnibus, and found Mr Wilkie and his mother already placed when they +entered. + +"Mother," Peter had been saying, "you will have to behave here, or you +will compromise me before all those Toronto people. If they carry back +a tale of queer doings on our part, you will find it harder than ever +to get into society when we go home. There is Mrs Judge Petty with her +son and daughter, and there Colonel and Mrs Carraway, and the +Vice-Chancellor Chickenpips! Mind what you are about. This is not the +Gallowgate of Glasgow--remember that! If they see you biting your +bread or eating with your knife, you're done for; and so am I." + +"Peter Wilkie, I wonder ye can have the heart to be speaking like that +to your dying mother!--bringing on the palpitations worse than ever. +Oh, my heart! it's just thumping. If I did take lodgers at one +time--ay, and turn the mangle with my own hands--whose sake was it +done for? Tell me that. I wonder where the money would have come from +to pay for your fine edication if I had chosen to sit and drink my tea +in the afternoons like a feckless leddy, as I might have done! It +wasn't your bankrupt father, danderin' about the doors hand-idle, that +could have helped you. I just slaved with that mangle and the lodgers +to bring up my boay; and now, when he is in a splendid way of doing, +this is the thanks he gives me--to cast the Gallowgate up to me! As if +it wasna you, and your father before you, that brought me down to +that! Think shame of yourself, Peter Wilkie!" And the big round tears +came rattling in a very hailstorm out of the old blue eyes, leaving +watercourses among her ribbons, and mingling with the gravy in her +plate, till the son felt like a brute--or at least he should have felt +so; and he certainly feared that he must appear like one in the eyes +of any fellow-guest who might observe him. + +The entrance of the Naylors made a welcome diversion. As they took +their places the old woman's tears dried up of themselves, her eyes +being withdrawn from the inward contemplation of her own distresses to +the lace cap of Mrs Naylor and the gowns of her daughters. +Unconsciously she sat up more squarely in her chair, prinked out her +cap-strings, and wondered if Mrs Naylor's hair could be all her own; +while her son and the gentleman exchanged an observation on the +journey they had made together. + +Mrs Naylor was not only of the Provinces, but provincial at that. Like +other "leading ladies" of Jones's Landing, she was wont to inform +strangers that she was "very exclusive," with the gratifying result of +taking away their breath; though perhaps, if she had but known, it was +the stupendous conceit which could imagine herself or her circle in +the smallest degree desirable, rather than the splendour of her +position which astonished them. She had no small opinion of her +"position," but, like other rural great ones, she bowed in her heart +before the superiority of dwellers in the capital. There was a +grandeur in their way of accepting her pretensions, while setting them +calmly aside, which filled her with admiring awe on her rare visits to +Toronto--made her rave about its elegance, and try to play off in +Jones's Landing some of the mannerisms she had found so impressive. +And here it may be observed that, in its way, Toronto is a capital, +even as New York is, or London, and quite as accustomed as either to +put on metropolitan airs, so far as circumstances permit; and seeing +that all mankind are made of one kind of clay, there may be less +difference in the spirit which animates the small community and the +great one than would appear. A cock-boat is built of the same +materials as a man-of-war, and it is floated and steered in accordance +with the same laws of nature. + +At a distant table Mrs Naylor descried Mrs Justice Petty, Mrs +Vice-Chancellor Chickenpip, and Mrs Carraway--the very cream of +Toronto society. Ice-cream, alas! they were likely to prove to Mrs +Naylor, as she did not know them, and they made a point of not thawing +to unknown fellow-country-women whom they met in American hotels--it +being difficult to shake them off afterwards, especially the +undesirable ones. So far, indeed, did those ladies' prudence carry +them, that they would only bathe at eccentric hours and in secretly +arranged parties. The very sea should not receive them in the same +embrace with persons from Canada who were not in Society. As for +Americans, it did not matter: they might never meet them again, and +Americans are held to be a peculiar people, without social degrees or +defined lines of demarcation. Everybody among them may be anybody, and +each is expected to have a spice of everything. Among them, vulgarity, +if they have any, is overlooked. They are generally amusing, often +rich, and cannot compromise a Canadian. + +Mrs Naylor's eye, surveying the company, lighted on her distinguished +compatriots. She knew them, although she had not the happiness of +being acquainted with them--a humbling thought, which made her +approach with more meekness than otherwise she might have felt, the +two people from Toronto who shared her table. If not the rose, they at +least grew near it, and might--who knew?--be woven into a link of +connection with the queen of flowers. She addressed a polite +observation to the old lady, who, accepting it as a tribute to her +clever son and her own good looks, responded affably, as not unwilling +to confer the favour of her notice, though aware that it was a thing +of value. + +And so it came about that, when dinner was over, the Naylor party and +the Wilkies had coalesced, and strolled together to a shady corner of +the galleries, where broad awnings, flapping in fitful air-currents, +lent a little freshness to the languor of the hot and drowsy +afternoon. + + + + + CHAPTER III. + + THE FIRST EVENING. + + +When the sweltering hours of afternoon have passed on westward, and +the shadows creep out to meet the coming twilight in the east, there +is an arousing in the world comparable to the quickening which passes +across it at the opening of each new day. The air, too languid, an +hour since, to lift the drooping streamer on the flag-staff, awakens +into flutterings which set the aspen-leaves in the shrubbery spinning +gleefully upon their slender stalks. The watch-dog rattling his chain +emerges from his kennel, stretching and blinking, and yawning his +formidable jaws. The interest of living steals slowly back on him, and +ere long he is amusing himself with a half-gnawed bone, his eyes fixed +upon the kitchen-door, whence supper and the cook are wont to visit +him. + +There are stirrings and rustlings in the long silent passages and +chambers of the hotel. The life of the inmates, which had burned low, +like charcoal-embers in the thick hot stillness, lights up in the +eddies of cooler air which flutter in, and brightens into flame. The +sleepers draw themselves together where they lie on swing, in hammock, +on couch, or deeply cushioned chair, and open their eyes and start and +are awake, inhale the freshness of the sea-salt air, and the house is +alive once more with the stirring of its inmates, like a clock which +had run down, but is now wound up and set agoing. + +Old Mrs Wilkie had been surprised by sleep as she lay back in a long +cane chair, preliminary to getting up and seeking the privacy of her +chamber. Her feet had been raised on the further end of the seductive +invention for barely a second, when, with a sigh, her head fell +backward, leaving the lips apart, and plunging her in deep sweet +gurgling slumber, which echoed purlingly along the silent gallery, +like sounds of hidden brooks in shady dells. + +She started now, and, wheeling round, sat bolt-upright, in haste to +hide among her skirts the broad prunella shoes which had stood up +before her like a massive screen, concealing her foreshortened figure +from intrusive eyes. + +"Peter Wilkie! are you sleeping? Come here," were the first words she +spoke on opening her eyes. There was crossness in her voice, and her +face was aflush with anger, or perhaps with lingering sleep. "I wish +you would speak to that impertinent Yankee woman over there. What +business has she looking at me like that? It's my feet she's trying to +see, I do believe." + +"They're big enough to be plainly seen without much trying, mother. +But never mind, I'll back them to gang their ain gate against hers or +anybody's. Why did you not go to your room, as I advised you, instead +of exhibiting yourself like a sleeping beauty before the whole house?" + +"I just fell asleep before I knew; and it's like your father's son to +be jawing and jeering when I'm too poorly to take my own part," and +she pressed her side. "Sleeping beauty, quothy! It'll be telling ye, +my man, if any scart of a wife ye may pick up in this unwholesome +country keeps her looks half as well when she comes to my time of +life;" and having secured the last word, she withdrew to smooth her +tumbled hair and prepare for the next meal. + +There was a general rolling up of awnings and opening of shutters all +over the house. Doors and windows were thrown open, and whisperings +from the sea stole in everywhere, bringing freshness and gaiety where +sloth and prostration had brooded all the afternoon. The sounds of +laughter and tripping feet echoed on the stairs, and presently the +whole body of guests come out from supper were assembled in the +parlours. There were three parlours, connected with each other by +folding-doors. Only one was carpeted, to be ready for rainy days at +the end of the season. The boards of the other two were bare, like the +holystoned deck of a steamer; and, with their open windows descending +to the floor, they had the appearance of sheltered continuations of +the gallery without, rather than of rooms, they were so sweet and +fresh and spacious. + +Round the pianos, or rather one of them, the crowd gathered. A +Bostonian, the pet of the ladies and the aversion of the other young +men, seated himself before it and began to play. He played, as the +male amateur is wont to play, with abundant sound--eliciting admiring +whispers as to the energy of his touch, and acquitting himself +successfully, though by no means with the brilliancy he himself +supposed. Ere long he slid into a waltz, and then the crowd broke up +into its component parts. Those who could find a partner began to +dance, those who desired one looked about or waited to be asked, while +the elders withdrew to the carpeted drawing-room. + +Those first to reach it having secured the rocking-chairs, the +remainder had to sit still,--all, that is, but Miss Maida Springer, a +school-ma'am, the gossips said, from Vermont--a lady of questionable +youth but indubitable independence of character, who tilted her chair +till its back touched the wall, and swung her feet in a plenitude of +sedentary exercise such as no rocker could afford. + +Mrs Judge Petty was one of the first to reach the drawing-room and +install herself in a comfortable place. Having done so, she had +leisure to look round and consider how the places near her should be +filled. Her eye lighted on Mrs Wilkie drifting doubtfully on the +stream, and, fixing her with an encouraging smile, drew her forward, +and landed her with a turn of the eyelid on a sofa at her elbow. + +Mrs Naylor followed close upon her new acquaintance, and Mrs Petty, +feeling no desire to know _her_, would fain have staved her off with a +chilling stare; but Mrs Naylor could play burr on occasion, and knew +how to disregard what it would be inconvenient to see. She stuck to +her friend, and made small-talk whilst settling herself by her side; +and Mrs Wilkie, though eager to meet the advances of the more +worshipful lady, was too unskilful to refrain from answering her +assiduous companion. It was tantalising. Circumstances through life +had kept her far off from the judges and magnates of her native land; +and now, when she was abroad, and at last in clover--when great ones +were actually seeking her acquaintance--to think that a quite ordinary +person should intrusively interfere! It made her cross, and her +replies grew short and dry; but, alas! to no good purpose--for though +Mrs Naylor could be silenced by taciturnity, Mrs Petty had turned away +her head in the meantime, and was interesting herself in other things. + +Mrs Wilkie flushed and fretted; Mrs Naylor sat and bided her time. She +had two girls to bring out and marry well--enterprises in which +patience and ability to eat humble-pie speed better than more +brilliant qualities. She sat by Mrs Wilkie, keeping her company, +though neither spoke. Their eyes were occupied with the moving crowd +of dancers in the distance, as they whirled and floated on the tide of +sound. + +After a while Mrs Petty turned round to her neighbour and observed, "I +think I see Mr Wilkie--your son, is he not?--dancing with my daughter +Ann. A good height, are they not, for each other? They really look +very well." + +"Most girls look well dancing with my Peter--Mr Wilkie, I ought to +say, for we can't look on a young man in his fine position as just a +boy; though, to be sure, he will always be a boy to me. Eh!--the +trouble I had with him in his teething! I can never forget that, and +the day we put on his first pair of little trousers. I made them +myself out of a bit of black-and-red tartan. And now, to see him +'dancing in the hall,' as the song says, with all the finest girls in +the room just scuffling to get a catch of him." + +Mrs Petty was scarcely gratified at the remark, but she was amused; +and as we grow older on this humdrum planet, to be amused befalls one +so seldom that it compensates for much, even for a lack of proper +respect--so she acquiesced. + +"Yes," she said, "Mr Petty--Judge Petty, you know, my husband--says he +thinks highly of your son, and expects him to do very well. I too have +met him, and like the little I have seen; and now apparently he has +made the acquaintance of Ann, and they seem to get on together very +nicely." + +"Oh yes," chuckled the mother, "he's a great boy with the girls, our +Peter. They're all pulling caps to see who's going to get him. I +just----" + +"Hm!" coughed Mrs Petty, in haste to interrupt before anything worse +had been said of the girls, among whom her own daughter seemed +audaciously to be included. "Oh yes, an excellent young man. I have +scarcely met him, but I hope to see more of him next winter, and I am +very pleased to meet his mother." + +Whereat the other bridled and was happy. How well it would read in her +next letter to her husband--hid away somewhere in Scotland, and never +alluded to--to mention Mr Justice Petty and his family among her +intimate friends! + +"Don't you think my daughter Ann is looking her best this evening?" +the younger mother went on. "So animated. She is perhaps too tranquil +in general. 'Statuesque' was how young Lord Norman described her, when +he passed through Toronto last spring. And really she is clever, +though ill-natured people say she has no conversation. When she gets +hold of a clever man who can understand, see! she positively rattles." + +"Oh yes, Peter generally makes the girls rattle. He's very quick about +sounding them. Terrible empty, though, he says he generally finds +them;" which was a remark she should have spared her new friend, in +view of the elation she felt in making the acquaintance; but Peter was +her monomania. With his name on her lips, the words would come of +themselves, without judgment or consideration. + +"There is my son Walter, too," Mrs Petty continued, taking no notice. +"Dancing, I declare, instead of smoking out of doors. A positive +achievement on the part of that young lady, if she only knew. A very +handsome girl, and nicely dressed; but I do not seem to have observed +her before--must have arrived to-day." + +"So she did," answered Mrs Wilkie. "That's--dear me! how bad my memory +is growing!" + +"Miss Naylor," volunteered her mother. "Niece of Joseph Naylor of +Jones's Landing." + +"The great lumberman? In--deed!" said Mrs Petty, interested and +impressed. "I did not hear of her arrival. I wonder if _he_ is coming! +The richest bachelor in Upper Canada, I understand. It is a risky +business, but still----. One likes to see a celebrity." + +"He is here," his sister-in-law observed. "We arrived this afternoon." + +Mrs Petty turned her eyes, and for the first time permitted them to be +seen resting on the stranger, addressing her with much politeness at +the same time. "Then perhaps you are related to the beautiful girl who +is dancing with my son?" + +"She is my daughter Margaret. I am Mrs Caleb Naylor." + +"So happy to know you, Mrs Naylor," and forthwith the mothers +conversed freely across Mrs Wilkie and over her head, on subjects in +which it was impossible for her to join, though many were her abortive +attempts to put in an oar. Even Mrs Naylor, whose chit-chat she had +stifled with her taciturnity half an hour before, was now grown deaf +and unresponsive to anything she could say. + + + + + CHAPTER IV. + + THE PERILS OF SURF-BATHING. + + +When the day is young and the sky is blue, with just a flake or two of +cloud low down on the horizon; when the sea, in purple slumber like a +dreaming child, is brightened by the flickering glance and shadow on +its rippling swell--and the surf, cresting itself in a wall of +translucent green, leaps up and curls and topples over, crumbling in +snow-white foam upon the sand; when the breeze, still gleeful with the +memory of dew and starlit revels overnight, flits fresh and crisp +beneath the early sunshine,--it is then that it is good to be a +dweller by the shore: to spring from the unconsciousness of sleep into +the luxury of sentient being, with softly fanning airs curling about +the limbs, and wakening in them all their suppleness and strength. + +Obeying the summons of the early gong, the young and vigorous of the +guests of the hotel had hastened to the bathing-houses on the beach, +and now came forth a gay and motley company. They were dressed in +suits of red, blue, orange, green, and grey, with hats of straw or +caps of oilskin, or only falling hair by way of head-dress. White +ankles twinkled all along the sand, and the air was musical with +laughter, as they scampered down and halted by the margin of the white +sea-foam,--ladies and men distinguishable only by their hair or beard, +or by less or greater bulk. They arranged themselves like a necklace +of brightly coloured beads, where great and small alternated with each +other. Each smaller figure was attended by one of the sturdy kind, as +though they were about to dance. The surf along that coast breaks in +such massive billows, that the little and the weak can scarce bear up +alone against the whelming rush, or keep their footing. They are +liable to be thrown down by an advancing roller, turned over when it +breaks, sucked outward in the reflux, and carried beyond their depth. + +The party joined hands, and then stepped out into the foam, a +string of forty beads, to bind the bosom of the next big wave, so +green and smooth and glassy; but as it yet came on, so huge and +impressive with its crest of foam, like the tossing manes of Pharaoh's +chariot-horses, the line outstepping stopped and wavered and bent, as +one panic-stricken near the centre suddenly bounded back, and left the +wings of the line turned sidewise and irresolute, while the wave was +sweeping up indifferent to the doubts and fears of mortals. It swept +upon the wings all unprepared to meet it, lifting them from their feet +and throwing them down, and dabbling them in the wreck of foam and +sand. + +"Oh, Lucy Naylor! that was not fair!--to spring back suddenly and +leave us in the lurch!" rang out from several pairs of feminine lips. +"I will not bathe with you again, if you go on so." But the laughter +of those who were amused at the disaster overbore the displeasure of +the remonstrants; and it being Lucy's first morning, she was forgiven +on promising to be more courageous. + +The line formed up once more, and stepped out steadily to meet the +next invader; and on he came, a smooth green hill, with the frothing +and hissing water gathering on the summit like the gnashing teeth of +an advancing monster. The line stood still, with spreading feet, bent +knee, and breath held in. The monster was upon them, and with a little +cry from here and there along the line, smothered and drowned and +overwhelmed in the hissing deluge as it heaved above them, and with a +thunderous roar, it broke up upon the shore behind them, and then drew +back again in hurrying, seething foam, and left the line still +standing. And then there was a sob or two, and a cry, followed by +laughter and little screams of delight The cool sea water had drenched +their shrinking frames, the saltness prickled exhilaratingly on the +skin, and it was, as some one said, "just altogether too delightful." + +Again the line was formed, and again. Even the timid ones had grown +courageous. The least expert had learned to shoulder and resist the +coming waves. The world was all coolness and freshness and sparkle, +and each new wave was plunged into with a relish keener than the last, +when came a new disturbance or alarm, more pressing and more vehement +than even the onslaught of the billows upon the inexperienced. It +sounded from the shore, a voice addressing them in accents shrill and +clamorous. They ceased their sport and turned, and beheld a figure +with flushed cheeks, no bonnet, her hair disordered, and her cap +askew, with ribbons fluttering wildly in the breeze. + +"Peter Wilkie!" it cried--"Peter Wilkie! Do ye not hear your mother +crying to ye, fit to crack her voice? Let go that woman's hand, and +come out ower this moment!--Peter! Do you hear me? Leave go, and come +out ower. To think that I should live to see the proper up-bringing I +have spared no pains to give ye, circumvented and brought to nothing +by a set of shameless hempies like this!--and you just danderin' in +the middle of them, like a fool goin' to the correction of the +stocks!" + +Mr Peter passed through many phases of feeling while he was being +addressed. First, he was ashamed for his mother's sake. He would fain +have taken no notice, and plunged with his companions into the coming +wave, in hopes that others would do the same, and every one's +attention be withdrawn. Then he grew angry, and endeavoured to laugh +off the intrusion as a quaint absurdity; but as the old lady's voice +rose higher, and an audible titter ran along the line on either side +of him, he realised that he must close the scene at once, on any +terms. To outface the clamour was manifestly impossible, while to +yield would at least bring the scolding to an end. With a shrug and a +scowl, which he strove to hide behind a cough, and an acid smile, he +stepped ashore, took his mother's hand, all dripping as he was, and +led her away behind the bathing-houses, where, let us hope, an +understanding and a reconciliation were effected. + +The interest of the bathers being thus disturbed, many began to feel +chilly and to think they had had enough. Only the few who were good +swimmers cared to remain, and these struck out beyond the ruin of +breakers, to disport themselves above the placid depths beyond. + +In the unbroken water outside, they could frolic at will, diving, +floating, treading water, or swimming further seaward. Naylor, the +uncle of his nieces, who have been mentioned, was one of the eagerest +of all. A man no longer young, but with no sign of coming age save a +thinning of the hair above his temples. Well nourished and prosperous +of aspect, and five feet nine or so in height; broad-shouldered, +muscular, and active, with cheery grey eyes, and a face burnt red by +the sun. His spirits rose with the increasing coolness of the water, +as he swam out and out; and from the sedate middle-aged person he had +been on shore, he seemed changed into a hilarious youth among his new +associates, challenging those near him to strange feats and gambols, +laughing and shouting like a schoolboy. + +Suddenly, with a cry, he threw up his hands, and sank beneath the +surface. + +"Not a bad imitation of a drowning man; but I wish he would not do it +out here, where the water is deep. It isn't half funny. It spoils +one's stroke, and makes me feel heavy and weak," some one said. + +"I am not sure that it was imitation," answered another--a lady this +one. "He may have a cramp. Watch when he rises." + +Presently his head emerged gasping from the depths, and Miss Hillyard, +the lady who had spoken, swam to him, and was able to get her fingers +into his hair, just as he was beginning to sink again, and lifted his +head an inch or two for a moment, calling wildly on the others at the +same time to come to her assistance. + +"Strike out!" she cried to the drowning man, tugging his hair again, +and feeling her own poise seriously endangered by the effort. "What is +the matter with you?" + +"Cramp," he gasped. "Help me on my back. Perhaps I may manage to +float." + +"Help! Mr Sefton, help!" screamed the lady; and Mr Sefton, who was +hurrying forward, was able to get a hand under the sinking man's chin +on the other side, before he had drawn his other would-be rescuer +under. + +"Hold on now, Miss Hillyard! Don't hurry. Be calm. Steady yourself. +Keep cool. We'll manage it. Trust to the water.... Good! He is up. +Have a care, now. He may clutch without meaning it. Keep clear of his +arms.... Steady, friend. Can't you do something for yourself?" + +"I can't. Help me on my back. I cannot strike out one bit. I can +hardly straighten my leg. Ugh!... Never fear, madam, I won't lay hold +on you. Can you help me on my back, do you think? Never mind if you +can't do it. Let go if you feel yourself sinking. One is enough to go +to the bottom." + +With teeth tight set, he straightened out his limbs, and held them +motionless; and by-and-by they succeeded in getting him on his back, +and began to tow and steer him to the shore. + +Fortunately the tide had not yet turned. It was rising still; so the +water helped them on their long and tardy voyage. + +It was an arduous and a tedious task, and but for the tranquil +coolness of the man they were trying to save, it would have been +beyond their power, as they had been a long way out when the accident +occurred. As they approached the surf-line, however, their labour grew +lighter, and presently the heaving swell caught hold of them and swung +them forward with accelerating speed, as though the hungry ocean, +balked of his intended prey, had grown eager to reject the victim he +had failed to drown. Surging and swinging on the translucent tide, +they were borne forward more and more swiftly, and were shot at last +through the curling and overarching bank of surf into shallow water, +where the crowd, which had been watching on the beach, ran in and +dragged the exhausted trio ashore. + +"Uncle!" cried his nieces, laying hold on him, all dripping as he was, +and bestowing hugs of congratulation. "You venturesome old man! How +rash to go swimming out so far, this very first morning!" + +"I should have been done for, if it had not been for this young lady. +I would wish to thank you, madam, if I could find words; but when it +is one's life that has been saved, one does not know how properly to +express it." + +"Pray say nothing," said Miss Hillyard, looking calm and handsome even +in her dripping bathing-dress, her arms so white and strong and +shapely folded on her breast, and the long dark hair hanging like a +mantle down her back. "Do not say a word. Any one who was able to swim +must have done the same. I am glad that I was near at the moment, and +able to be of use." + +And then the bathers dispersed to get dried and dressed, leaving the +beach to the waves and the sea-birds undisturbed. + +Joseph Naylor was an object of interest for the remainder of that day +to all Clam Beach, as the man who had been all but drowned; but Miss +Hillyard was the heroine for the rest of the season. She had saved a +life, and the circumstances grew more marvellous from day to day, as +each narrator in turn strove to give thrill to the only tale of peril +he had ever assisted at; till at length the young lady, growing bored +with the wondering respect it brought her, and which was far from +being the form of admiration in which she took pleasure, began to deny +the incident altogether, and assure people that it had never taken +place. + + + + + CHAPTER V. + + ROSE AND LETTICE. + + +However indifferent or even nauseous applause become familiar may +ultimately grow, it is intensely agreeable while it is yet new. Only +with time and habitude does it begin, like other sweets, to pall upon +the healthy appetite. Miss Hillyard, on the day of her exploit, +distinctly enjoyed the feeling that all eyes followed her, and that +other conversation was hushed whenever she chose to speak. It was an +ovation with which she was favoured on coming down to breakfast. Every +one who knew her was waiting with congratulations to extol her pluck, +and those who did not, were striving to be introduced. + +Her friends felt an accession of importance in belonging to her; and +Mrs Senator Deane of Indiana, under whose wing she was travelling, +secured a carriage for a drive along the shore, so soon as breakfast +was over, to keep the distinction of the heroine's intimacy secure in +her own party. + +Notoriety in a hotel, or anywhere else, grows cheap when the noted one +is to be met upon the stairs and on doorsteps all day long, and can be +accosted and questioned by every comer, while a morning of privacy +could not fail to increase general interest in the whole party. The +exploit was sure to be talked over without reserve in their absence, +and on their return each member of the community would be affected +with the general enthusiasm which his own contribution had done +something to augment. + +"Tell us all about it now, Rose, from the very beginning," cried +Lettice Deane, catching both her hands, as soon as they had driven +from the door. "I am dying to hear everything, now we are out of that +inquisitive crowd--Yankees with their straight out questions, and +Canucks with that wooden British way of theirs, staring without a wink +and saying nothing, but drinking in everything with their eyes. Give +me Western folks after all, say I. One knows what they are and how to +deal with them from the first. These down-Easters, with their +intelligence, and their conceit, and their determination to know all +about it, make me feel like a potato-bug on the end of a pin, under a +microscope. I like folks that are smart, but the cultured intelligence +of Boston is just something too awful." + +"But decent Canadians do not ask questions." + +"I wish they would. They are always looking them--with eyes made +round, ears erect, and mouth ajar. I'd like to shake some of them." + +"Stuff! Lettie. I am Canadian, please remember." + +"You are different. You have lived in Chicago; and that cures most +things. But tell us now!--all about it. How did it begin?" + +"Begin? Let me see. We were all out together in the deep water, having +a social swim, and showing each other what we could do. Mr Sefton had +just picked up a shell from the bottom--quite a pretty one, too, it +seemed--and was swimming up to give it me, when we heard a cry; and +when I turned round, I was just in time to see a hand disappearing +under water. You can scarcely fancy the uncomfortable thrill it gave +me. At once I remembered the octopus they say was cast ashore last +week at St John's, with arms a yard or two long, all covered with +suckers, and I began to think of cold slimy things in the water, +twisting about me and pulling me down. It took all my nerve, and the +certainty that if I yielded to panic, I should sink, to compose me; +when bobbing up to the surface came a head of hair, not five yards +off. That calmed me. It gave me something to do." + +"How brave you are, Rose! With me, now, the sight of a drowning man +would have scared me out of my wits." + +"You cannot swim, Lettie. That is why you think so." + +"And then? What did you do next?" + +"As soon as I could get near enough, I got my fingers into his hair, +and pulled--just a little, then slipped my hand under his shoulder. He +got his face above water then, and he began to paddle with his hands." + +"And were you not afraid?" + +"Well, just a little bit, perhaps, at first. I dreaded his clutching +at me. That would have made a finish of us both." + +"And did he not? And how could you have prevented it, if he had +tried?" + +"He did not once attempt to clutch--seemed most careful, indeed, to +keep his hands away. Lettie! He is a perfect gentleman, that man!--and +brave, I am sure, He thanked me so politely--by-and-by, when he got +his face clear of the water for a bit--as politely as if we had both +been on dry land--for attempting to assist him; but said he thought I +had better let go, as I could not possibly swim ashore with him, and +he could do nothing for himself, owing to cramp in his legs. Then +Sefton joined us, and together we got him on his back. You cannot +imagine how cheerful and composed he was, all through. He actually +smiled when our eyes met. Not a struggle did he make, or an attempt to +lay hold, which made it far more possible for us to deal with him. If +he _had_ struggled, you know, we should certainly have been drowned, +all three." + +"Don't talk of it, Rose. It is just splendid the way you managed it +all, and I am glad to think the man must be a pretty good sort; for +you will have to know him, I suppose, after saving his life, and you +will be introducing him to mother and me and Fanny. Pity he is so old. +Thirty or forty, is he not, mother?" + +"More'n forty, I reckon. Rising forty-five, if he wears well. But even +fifty ain't old for a marrying man--if he's well off, that is. My +senator was not much younger when we made it up between us. I don't +hold with very young men myself. They're real hard to break in for +runnin' in double harness, and the money's still to make, ginnerally +speakin'. And after the girl has slaved and pinched all through her +best years, helping to make the fortune, she finds herself too old +when it's made to get much good out of it. Don't you be a fool, +Lettie, like my sister Barbara. She vowed she'd have a man to please +her eye, even if he should vex her heart.... _And_ she got him! And +she never had a day's peace from the week their honeymoon ended. She +died a brokenhearted woman, with nary bit of life or good looks left +in five years' time." + +"Pshaw, mother! If you've told that story once, you've told it fifty +times. The fellow I agree to take will have to be well off, as well as +young and good-looking. See if he isn't!" + +"You'll have to look sharp then, Lettie. After twenty-five, a girl has +to take what offers, or go without." + +"You shut, Fan! School-girls are growing real forward, it seems to +me." + + + + + CHAPTER VI. + + WITH THE SMOKERS. + + +Joseph Naylor found himself a notoriety for that day, as much as the +heroine who had saved his life. It was notoriety, however, with a +difference, as compared with hers--less incense-like and intoxicating, +though perhaps more tonic. + +The Hebrew prophetess makes it the culmination of Sisera's overthrow +that he, a warrior, should have been done to death by a woman; and +even for the non-combatant there is something ungrateful to manly +pride in owing life to a member of the weaker sex. The debt is too +heavy to be repaid; and it is conventionally settled that obligation +between the sexes should lie the other way. It could scarcely be +agreeable to his self-love to feel himself pointed out among his +fellows as the man who had gone in swimming that morning, and who +would have drowned himself, if a brave young lady had not gone to his +rescue and fished him out. + +Mrs Carraway surveyed him through her glasses in the interval between +her omelet and the robin-on-toast which constituted her breakfast. The +sight of a should-have-been drowned gentleman communicated a marine +flavour to the little bird, suggestive of oyster-sauce with boiled +turkey,--a dish which was not on the bill of fare, and therefore the +more delicious. She sent her colonel, after breakfast, to make friends +with the interesting creature, and get exact particulars of how it had +occurred, at first hand,--rather to the botheration of that tranquil +warrior, who, since he had made his home in the Colonies, had for the +most part practised an affable silence. If natives who approached him +were to his liking, he accepted their advances, and graciously +permitted himself to be courted; if they were not, he kept stolidly +oblivious of their existence, no matter how pressing their overtures +of friendship might be. + +It is by no means a bad way of getting easily through life, provided +you can persuade people that you are worth courting. That is the +difficulty. People worth knowing can generally find better sport than +cultivating your Worship; but even if they do attempt it, the game +will grow monotonous ere long, on the one side as well as the other. +One can fancy that Royalty itself must yawn behind a fan at times, in +weariness of uninterrupted adulation. + +It was a bore to so reserved a gentleman as Colonel Carraway to +break through his own ice; however, he lighted a cigar and strolled +away to the gallery facing the north, and always shady, where inmates +addicted to tobacco were wont to smoke. Naylor had arrived there +before him, and stood the centre of a group in which Judge Petty and +Vice-Chancellor Chickenpip vied with each other in displaying their +forensic gift of unwearied question-asking--a talent which they made +it manifest had not grown rusty from disuse since their elevation to +the bench. + +"I never experienced the sensation of drowning," the Judge was +observing. "Being unable to swim, I never was in danger of it." + +"And yet," said the Vice-Chancellor, with a shrug at the little +paradox, and eyeing the perpetrator with condescending superiority +through his spectacles, as the self-constituted wit is apt to do when +his neighbour attempts a sally, "we teach our boys to swim in order to +prepare them against such dangers." + +"And they rashly tempt them in consequence, and so, not unfrequently, +get drowned. For myself, I have all my life had a cat's antipathy to +water--always excepting, of course, my morning tub." + +"So your lordship's detractors of the blue-ribbon sect have sometimes +insinuated," chuckled the other, delighted to be disagreeable by +way of jest, however threadbare in form the jest might be. The +Vice-Chancellor owed his reputation for smartness to his talent for +ill-nature. The dullest can appreciate malice, while wit which is +merely sportive requires a sense of humour to understand it. + +The Judge was familiar with the idiosyncrasy of his learned brother. +"What need one expect from a pig but a grunt!" was his inward +exclamation; but he was wise enough not to give it utterance. He +merely moved nearer to Naylor, thereby half turning his back upon the +other. + +"I have always felt curious," he said, "to know what drowning, or, +indeed, dying in any form, could be like--without personal experiment, +that is. How did it feel, Mr Naylor? What were your sensations?" + +"It did not get the length of drowning with me this time. I was a deal +too busy struggling for my life, I can tell you, to take much heed of +sensations. When at last I got my nose above water, and felt the young +lady's fingers twisted in my hair, she was behaving in such splendid +style that I could think of nothing but her efforts to help me. If she +had not kept cool, you know, instead of drawing me up she would have +been drawn down herself; and, crippled and sinking as I was, I could +have done nothing to save her. My mind was completely absorbed in +watching her efforts, admiring her nerve, and wondering if she would +really succeed in keeping afloat. As for saving me, I did not think it +possible; for, all the time, that racking cramp kept dragging my leg +together, in spite of my straining efforts to stretch it, and drawing +me to the bottom like tons of lead. Those cramps are hideous things; +and then, after she and Mr Sefton had taken me in tow, and the anxiety +for her safety grew less absorbing, the drowning man's instinct of +clutching came upon me, and it was all I could do to keep still, and +let myself be saved. You are perfectly right, Judge, to keep clear of +the possibility of such an experience; but still, this experience was +quite different from the feeling of drowning--the helpless struggling +and sinking down and away, the yielding of what sustains you on every +side, till the idea of up and down is lost in dizziness, while the +held-in breath seems bursting you asunder. You bear it for hardly a +minute, but that minute lasts an age; and then--and then--no one can +describe what follows. You are confused, and benumbed, and melting +into nothing. I have gone through it. + +"A ship I sailed in, when I was a young man, was run down one foggy +night off the coast of Cuba. It was my watch on deck, and that is how +I am here to tell the tale. The look-out gave no warning till we were +close under the bow of a Spanish man-of-war bearing straight down on +us. I shouted to port the helm. It was too late. The Spaniard was into +us with a crash. He stove in our quarter, and sent us to the bottom. I +was knocked down by the falling rigging, and found myself in the +water, entangled among cordage, and drowning as I have described. I +know nothing more--nothing till I found myself coming to, on board +that foreign ship. The deathly sickness! The longing to sink back into +unconsciousness! The dim dull misery and tingling in every limb! as +the stagnant blood began once more to circulate. I hope you will never +know them. It is bad to drown, but it is far, far worse to be brought +to. It was days before I was myself again; but I had plenty of time to +recruit. The ship was bound for the Philippines, and it was not till +she reached Manilla that I was set ashore." + +"Ah! then you have travelled, sir," said the Vice-Chancellor, +scrutinising him with the condescension of a superior person +recognising an interesting trait in an ordinary mortal. "Yet you have +had time to make your fortune at home, and now you are embarking in +politics, I hear. You deserve credit for the comprehensiveness of your +energy, and will no doubt bring unusual information to bear on public +affairs; but politics is as stormy a sea, and one more difficult to +navigate than the one you know. It would be a pity, after weathering +so many dangers, to make shipwreck there. We want good men in +Parliament, but we want them on the right side." + +"Is that the side of the patriots, Chancellor?--the men who went into +office to save the country, and who made their own fortunes instead? +The tide has turned, and left them high and dry on the bank, or in the +offices they appointed themselves to fill." + +It was a young man who spoke--fair-haired and broad-shouldered, with a +complexion burnt to the colour of bricks by the exposure of outdoor +life. His clothes were not new, but they fitted him, and there was +that look of rest and balance in his limbs which leisure and exercise +alone can give,--so different from the smug constraint with which life +in chambers and offices stamps the man of affairs. + +The Vice-Chancellor turned with the haughty stare of a schoolmaster on +the urchin who has spoken out of turn. Colonel Carraway looked +disgusted at the bad taste which could drag politics into social +intercourse; and politics flavoured with personality as well, to judge +by the thrill in the speaker's voice. Senator Deane rolled his cigar +round to the other cheek, and--never mind, it is a dirty habit. + +"Those Canadians," he observed to his neighbour, "get as hot over +their politics as we do. 'What can there be to quarrel about in +_their_ small concerns?' say you? The same as in our big +affairs--place and plunder, you may be sure. That's about all." + +Joseph Naylor turned round to see who it was whose remark had brought +the Chickenpip oration to a halt. "What! Walter Blount! You here! +Where have you dropped from? The very last man I expected to see. And +yet no one but you would have let his political zeal break out on so +slight provocation. That comes of not being a native. You take the +fever of politics the hotter for being new to it." + +"But _you_ are contesting our Riding just now." + +"The more need to let alone for the present moment, so as to come +fresh to the conflict. Party bickerings grow stale to the mind if one +is always harping on them. Time enough to let out when I get back +there. This is the seaside. But what brings _you_ here?" resting his +eyes admiringly on the other's sturdy limbs. "I see no sign of the +relaxed system which is said to need bracing sea-air." + +The young man did not change colour. The dusky vermilion of his +sunburnt skin was incapable of a heightened tint; but he looked +confused under the twinkling laughter of the other's eye. "I shall be +selling out this Fall, so I thought I might run down here to the sea +before moving West." + +"West? Are you dreaming of making a fortune on the prairies?--turning +farmer in earnest. Have you killed all the bears in your present +neighbourhood, and exterminated the deer?" + +"There will be neither bear nor deer within twenty miles before two +years are over. The new railway runs right across my farm, and the +speculators are prospecting all over the neighbourhood. I am offered a +good price for my land. I shall sell, and go West somewhere, where +settlers are fewer and game more abundant. No! prairie farming would +not suit me. Even an improved farm in a good part of Ontario would be +better than that; but I prefer the woods." + +The circle round Naylor had now broken into groups occupied with their +own talk, leaving him free to pursue his private gossip with his +friend. He settled himself on a bench, buried his hands in his +pockets, pushed out his feet in front, and blew a mighty cloud of +smoke from his German pipe. "I declare I'm tired, Walter, with so much +talking this morning. Now for a good old smoke! Where's your pipe?" + +Walter sat down beside him and filled his pipe slowly and absently, as +if his thoughts were on other things. Then he cleared his voice, +lighted the pipe, and with as much off-handness as he could assume +observed between the whiffs-- + +"Your family are with you, Mr Naylor?" + +"My family is always with me. I carry the whole of it under my hat," +he answered, looking his questioner straight in the eye, with a +twinkle which plainly said, "Speak out if you have anything to say. I +do not intend to help you." + +The young man coughed. The smoke of his pipe had lost its way, and +seemed trying for an outlet down his throat. "Mrs Naylor and her +daughters are here, I understand?" he said at last. + +"Yes." + +There was a lengthened silence. "Yes" is not an answer to which the +next observation can readily be attached. The questioner removed his +pipe, and began nervously to examine what could be making it draw so +badly; while the other watched him in silent amusement, tempered with +a touch of good-natured pity. + +"I wonder," Blount said at last, digging the charge carefully out of +his pipe, and so making it unnecessary to raise his eyes to the +other's face,--"I wonder what they will say to see me here?" + +"Difficult to imagine," came the answer from the thickest of a bank of +smoke. + +"I fear I am not a favourite with Mrs Naylor." + +"She told you not to call any more, I believe? That was pretty plain." + +"Was it not too bad of her? What can she have against me? She has +known me ever since I came to the country, and she used to be like a +mother to me." + +"That was imprudent. Now she sees it, I suppose. A mother of girls may +become mother-in-_law_ to some young fellow one day, and Mrs Naylor +may feel that she ought to reserve herself for that. When girls leave +school, you see, circumstances alter." + +"I am sure I showed no unwillingness to take her for _my_ +mother-in-law." + +"That was the trouble. She could have taken you for a son--a full son, +understand--and you might have been brother to the girls, if that +would have pleased you. But it didn't." + +"How could it? Would it have satisfied you--to take a nice girl to +picnics, and hold her shawl while another fellow danced with her?" + +"Put it that way, and it does seem hard. But what is a mother to do? +Her daughters' prospects ought to be her chief care." + +"Do you think it is right to be mercenary, then? Is money to stand for +everything? Is the fellow to count for nothing?" + +"By no means! A good fellow it _must_ be--a nice fellow and a +gentleman if possible, or the girl's life is spoiled. No amount of +money could make her happy with a ruffian or a cad. But you must +remember that Mrs Naylor's girls are young yet, and I cannot blame her +for wishing to look about before fixing their position for life." + +"It is hard to be passed over merely for being the first comer. And +they may happen on worse subjects as well as better." + +"Quite true. There is a proverb about a girl who was so particular +about the stick she went to cut, that she came to the end of the wood +before she could make up her mind, and then she had to content herself +with a crooked one, or go without. However, proverbial philosophy goes +for nothing, you know; people like to try for themselves. Still, there +is excuse for a mother wishing not to bury her accomplished daughter +in the backwoods, as wife to a wild huntsman. One can understand that +it would be pleasant for you, after being out all day with your gun +and your dog, to find your dinner laid, and a pretty young wife beside +a cosy fire waiting for you; but you cannot call it unreasonable if +the lady's friends wish to secure her a less solitary home. When you +are out, what will she have to amuse her but needle and thread? the +chickens and the cows? You would not like to think of her sitting in +the kitchen talking to the help; and yet you know they will be the +only human creatures she will have to speak to when you are away." + +"I told you I was selling out. She can choose her home anywhere +between Gaspé and Vancouver." + +"You would not like to live in a town, and a girl must have been bred +on a farm to live happily on one afterwards." + +"You leave the husband out of the calculation. Do you think she could +be happy even in London or New York with a fellow she did not care +for?" + +"That is true; but she need not marry unless she cares." + +"While even in the bush, if she liked the fellow, and he was fond of +her, I think they might both be completely happy." + +"I am with you there, my lad. Not a doubt of it,"--and he buried his +hands deeper in his pockets, and bent his head forward to look at his +boots, drawing a deep breath, and smoking harder than ever. + +"Then why--Do you not think, Mr Naylor, you could bring your +sister-in-law to see it in that light? You have always been a friend +to me, since the first day I met you." + +"Always your friend. Be sure of it. But I doubt my influence with Mrs +Naylor; and, if I had any, I doubt if I ought to interfere. Girls +cannot know their own minds till they have seen something of the +world. They may mistake a passing fancy for real regard; and if they +have married in the meantime, there are two lives spoiled, instead of +one just a little scorched--and that only for the moment, perhaps," he +added, after a pause. Then pulling himself together,--"But what makes +you talk like this to a crusty old bachelor? You cannot expect +sympathy in your love-affairs from one who has resisted the illusions +of sentiment as successfully as I have, surely?" + +"I don't know. People are not bachelors and old maids for being harder +than their neighbours, I suspect. I often fancy it is the other way. +But at least you are not against my trying, are you? You will not do +anything to make my chances less than they are already?" + +"No, Blount; I'll do nothing against you. I could almost wish the girl +took a fancy to you, for I believe you are real; and if she does, I +will do nothing to dissuade her. Money and position are not +everything, by any means." + + + + + CHAPTER VII. + + A TABLEAU. + + +Mrs Deane and her party returned early from their drive. The loungers +on the galleries saw them alight. They also saw Naylor come hurriedly +forward, uncovered beneath the penetrating glare of noon, which +singled out the scattered hairs of white among the brown about his +temples, and made them glitter in a way not grateful to the feelings +of a well-preserved bachelor in middle life--if he had but known it. + +Why can a man not stick fast at five-and-thirty?--at least till he +marries? He is at his best then physically, though mentally--if he has +a mind worth mentioning--he may go on improving for another decade, if +not longer. There is so much in life, and in one's self, worth +knowing, and which is not found out till after the time when the +knowledge would have been most precious has slidden by. The soul grows +slower than the body, and may only be coming into bloom when those +weariful crow-feet are beginning to gather round the eyes. But girls +cannot be expected to see all this. How should they, when youth in +themselves is held the crown and perfume of all their charm? + +Still Naylor passed fairly well beneath the scrutiny of curious +eyes--"the man who had been all but drowned that morning." He looked +active, and even athletic, if somewhat gone to flesh. There was +honesty in the steadfast grey eye, and modest self-possession in the +fresh-coloured face. There was an earnestness, too, at the moment, +which lent his bearing the dignity which is seldom attainable by the +well-fed man of middle age and medium stature. + +"Miss Hillyard," he said, "I have not had the happiness of being +introduced to you; but surely, under the debt I owe you from this +morning, you will allow me to offer you my grateful thanks." + +"Mr Naylor," she answered, holding out her hand, "pray say nothing +more about it. You have thanked me already, you know. But I am happy +to make your acquaintance. I only did what any bather must have done +who was near enough. I feel a little proud, I acknowledge, of my +success, and pleased to have been of use; but do not talk of debts and +gratitude: it sounds oppressive." + +"I cannot take it so easily as that, Miss Hillyard. If you had not +laid hold on me as you did, I should have gone under. I felt myself +sinking when you touched me. I should have been down before Sefton +reached me--I am sure of that. You saved my life: it is an obligation +which I never can repay." + +Rosa flushed a little, and looked down. There were a good many pair of +female eyes in the gallery turned upon her, as she felt, with +interest, and just a suspicion of envy, which could not but be +gratifying. Still, it was embarrassing to stand out there on the +gravel when the carriage had driven off, a cynosure for the eyes of +all the people above; and just a trifle stagey, with this bareheaded +gentleman presenting his acknowledgments with demonstrative respect. +Queen Elizabeth would have liked it; but then, she was a public +character: and besides, we prefer nowadays to keep our theatricals and +our private life apart. At the same time, it was pleasant to hear this +earnest and respectful gentleman assure her that she had saved his +life: he looked so manly and so strong. It made her think well of +herself to have been able to help him; and his clear grey eyes looked +so truthful and brave in their level gaze, that she wondered how their +parts in the morning's episode should have been so strangely reversed, +and felt how safe she would have been in his company had the accident +happened to herself. + +As for him, standing before her and looking in her face, it seemed as +if the years must have rolled back upon themselves,--the long +savourless years since his youth,--the years which had been so bitter +when first he had passed through his sore probation of sorrow; and +then, when the lacerated spirit had learned to endure, had grown dull +and insipid. He had felt himself alone, and that the joy of life was +not for him; that others might love, but he must stand aside, an +onlooker at the feast at which no place was laid for him. This new +stirring in his benumbed emotions seemed like the summers he +remembered long ago in the South, when the plants, made torpid by the +arid heat, forget to grow, waiting through rainless weeks beneath a +brazen sky. Then come the showers at last, and the roses put out buds +and bloom anew, till winter comes to nip them. + +He could not withdraw his eyes from the beautiful face before him. As +he looked, it seemed transformed into another--another, yet still the +same. This was more mature and strong; but that other might have been +so too, if it had been given him to see it later. The soft brown eyes +were the same, which lighted when she spoke, with the same blueness in +the white, a lingering remainder from the freshness and purity of +childhood. The hair was less dark than hers whom he remembered so +well, and it had a crisper wave, which caught the falling sunbeams +here and there, and flashed them brightly back like burnished bronze. +There was rich warm colour, too, in the cheek, while that other had +been pale; but the difference accorded with the change of scene +between the bracing airs of the North and the thick hot languor of +Louisiana. This face had vigour and maturity; the other had been more +tender and more frail. Its charm had lain in a drooping softness +claiming support, and promises for the future as yet unfulfilled; +while this was in the glory of all her beauty, sufficient for herself +in her supple strength--a companion for manhood, as the other had been +the clinging cherished one for youth. + +The silence had now lasted for nearly a minute. Rosa became uneasily +aware that she was contributing a tableau for the entertainment of her +fellow-guests, which might be interpreted as "Love at first sight," or +a modern and burlesque rendering of "Pharaoh's daughter and the infant +Moses," according to their several humours. She looked up in her +companion's face, with rising colour in her own, and the flicker of a +smile about her lips, while she held out her hand. + +"You are staying here, Mr Naylor, are you not?" she said. "We shall +see each other again. I am pleased to know you. Now I must follow Mrs +Deane," and she turned and went up the stairs. + +Naylor awoke from his reverie, and found himself alone. He felt how +few and bald had been his expressions of obligation; and he had come +forward prepared to deliver himself so fully, and in such carefully +chosen words, when the near view of her face had raised long-buried +recollections, and confused him with a sense of doubleness in the +presence before him, and left his memory blank. The tender girl he had +been parted from long ago, seemed associated and blended with the +personality of this beautiful deliverer before him; and in an effort +to disentangle the old impressions from the new, the precious moment +for uttering his little speech had slipped away. Now he was alone, +feeling how tongue-tied and thankless he must have appeared, and how +impossible it would be to make another opportunity for delivering his +speech. + +And yet the speech might not be necessary now. She had received him +very graciously, and had even said that she was pleased to know +him--said it twice--and that they would meet again. "What more could +he want?" he thought; "and was he not an ass to fancy that any set +phrases of his could give pleasure to so glorious a creature?--and +shabby at heart, to think that any string of words could lessen the +obligation under which he stood? He must never forget the debt, or +dream that by word or act it could be lessened; rather, he must +treasure the recollection, and watch and be ready, if haply he might, +some day, be privileged to serve or succour in return." + +So thinking, he turned on his heel and went his way, leaving the +spectators in the gallery to find some other object to divert their +leisure. + + + + + CHAPTER VIII. + + MRS WILKIE'S POWDER. + + +Rose left Naylor standing on the gravel, and went into the house, +making her way leisurely up to her room. + +The parlour door stood ajar, disclosing only darkness within, to eyes +coming straight from the outer glare of sunshine. It seemed cool in +there, with the rustling sea-breeze sifting fitfully through the +closed Venetians; and there were gurglings of smothered laughter, +which told that the place was not deserted. She stepped within the +gloom, and, as her eyes grew used to it, she became able to make out +the tenants. + +A cheerful crew of girls, standing and seated in a ring, occupied the +centre of the floor. In their midst sat old Mrs Wilkie on a low +ottoman, which she occupied by herself, like a kind of throne, fanning +herself industriously till the short grey curls upon her temples +danced and fluttered in the artificial gale. The new blue ribbons in +her cap and the old blue eyes in her head danced in unison and +elation, and a proud self-satisfied smile played about her lips, and +deepened the creases in her cheeks, which looked round and rosy like +an overkept winter apple. She was in her glory, and she gave yet a +more energetic flap to the palm-leaf fan, as she pursed her lips +together, and prepared to speak again. + +"Yes, my dears," were her words as Rose joined the circle, "blue was +always my colour. You see I am fair--'like a lily,' the young men used +to tell me I was," and she made a flourish with her fan. "But that was +years ago," and she blew a sigh which made her chest heave like a +portly bellows. "And then I had a colour--like a Cheeny-rose, the +haverels would have it; but the Scotch gentlemen are great hands to +blaw in the lugs of silly girls. Not that I was ever the wan to let my +head be turned with their nonsense--but still they had grounds for +what they said." + +"You were a beauty," said Lettice Deane--"I can see that;" and the +girls exchanged glances brimming with amusement and incredulity, such +as those feel whose bloom is still in the present tense, when one of +the have-beens puts in her claim to personal charms. + +"Yes, my dear, I was admired--in my day," and the double chin went up +with a snap, to join the rest of the self-complacent countenance. + +"Don't say was, Mrs Wilkie," Lettice answered. "You are a dangerous +woman still. It is well that mamma is with us here, to look after the +old man, or--or---- Nobody knows what might happen. These old +gentlemen are very susceptible." + +"I don't think I am acquainted with your papaw, my dear," said the old +woman, looking round the tittering circle with rising colour, and +bridling as if the jest perhaps contained more truth than the scoffer +wot of. "But I never was a flirt; and now, in my poseetion, one has to +be careful, and set an example of propriety. But, as I was saying--and +it's well for young people to know these things--you don't take proper +care of yourselves in this country. You should see our Scotch +complexions when we're young. Strawberries and crame--that's what we +look like. But then we take a hantle care of our chairms; and we live +healthy. It would be good for some Yankee girls if they were put +through a course of proper conduck"--and she looked straight at Lucy +Naylor, the most flagrant of the titterers--"and simple living, by one +of our old Scotch grandmothers. You're for ever drinking icewater and +hot tea, out here; and how can you expeck your insides to be healthy +after that? And you're all the time at candies or pickles, not to +speak of hot bread, and beef-steaks and pitaities for breakfast, as if +ye had a day's ploughing before you--and you just lounging on soffies +and easy-chairs the whole forenoon, with some bit silly novel in your +hands, and nothing to exercise either the body or the intelleck. My +son, the Deputy Minister of Edication, says you're just destroying +yourselves." + +"Tell us about _him_, dear Mrs Wilkie," said Lettice, cutting short +the prelection. "We know our faults already, though I fear we are not +likely to mend them. Tell us about the young man. That will be far +more interesting. What do you call his profession? Something very +long-winded and grand, I know." + +"He is the Deputy Minister of Edication, for the Province. And it _is_ +a grand poseetion for so young a man, or for any man--whatever you may +think. And as for being 'long-winded,' you don't understand. He doesna +preach, my dear--though he could do that too, if there was occasion. +It was that I bred him to. But this pays better. He has his handsome +income for just sitting still in his chair and seeing that his +inferiors work hard enough. And then, there's what the opposeetion +papers, with their ill-scrapet tongues, call pickin's! Oh yes! there's +fine pickin's. But I mustna be telling tales out o' school." + +"He must be a bishop, then, Mrs Wilkie, if he does not preach. We call +boss ministers bishops. Do you call them deputies in Canada? How odd +of you! And yet I danced with him last night. Think of dancing with a +bishop! It sounds positively profane. What a country Canada must be!" + +"The lassie's in a creel! My Peter's no that kind of minister avaw. I +_bred_ him for a minister, it's true--a minister of the Gospel, and +very far from the same kind with your bishops, and their white gowns, +and red things hanging down their backs. It's a U.P. he would have +been, if I had had my way. But Peter preferred being a minister of the +Crown; and there's no denying it _pays_ better. There's no vows laid +on a minister of the Crown. They may dance, or do anything they +like--and very queer things some of them do like, it seems to me. But +Mis-ter Wilkie's very circumspeck. He's Deputy Minister, you see. +'Deputy' means that all the pickin's"--and she winked, poor +soul--"go to _him_; though sometimes he has to give a share to the +chief--quietly, you understand, my dears, for the chief is responsible +to Parliament, and there would be a scandal if it came out. They're +fond of having a scandal in Canada when politics are dull. Then the +chief has to resign, but the deputy just sits still. He's a servant of +the Crown, you see; so he goes on drawing his pay just the same, +whatever chief the politeetians may appint over him. That comes of our +having a Crown in Canada. It's a fine institution, and troubles +nobody. It would be telling you Yankees if you had wan. Ye wouldn't be +turned out of your comfortable offices every four years, then; and +more, it would keep you steady. Ye have no respeck and no reverence +here, and no nothing;" and again she looked severely in Lucy Naylor's +face--that ill-regulated young person having fallen a-laughing worse +than ever. + +"It must be nice to be married to a Deputy Minister of the Crown," +Lettice observed, demurely. + +"Ye may say that; and there's more than you thinks it, I can tell you, +my dear. The young girls where we come from are just pulling caps to +see who is to be the wan. It's really shameless the way they behave, +and many's the good laugh me and Mis-ter Wilkie has at their +ongoings." + +"I suppose you are to choose the successful candidate?" + +"A mother must know the kind that will suit her boay best. But it's a +sore responsibeelity, my dears. It would be terrible if the +expurriment didn't answer; and he's very hard to please, and terrible +fond of his own way." + +"Couldn't you say a good word for one of us here, dear Mrs Wilkie?" +asked Lettice with her most winning smile. "Just see what a lot of us +there are!--and we have all to find husbands yet: every variety of +girl you can think of--tall and short, dark and fair. Surely one of us +might answer. It would be a gain to all. If one were provided for, the +chance would be better, by so much, for all the rest when the next +_parti_ came along." + +"Peter must have intelleck, he says, and high culture. I'm fear'd ye +wouldn't just answer, my dear--though you're a nice girl, I'll allow, +and--well--and comely." + +Lettice coloured to the temples, and her well-arched eyebrows +contracted into something approaching to a frown. It is eminently +provoking, when one fancies one has been rather successful in drawing +out an oddity, and making sport, to find the tables suddenly turned, +and one's self made the butt. + +"I was not thinking of myself," she said, and there was a tremor of +crossness in her voice, which made her discomfiture more amusingly +evident to the rest--"or any one else, for that matter. I know I would +not take a gift of the fellow, with his washy grey eyes, and stiff +priggish pomposity." + +"The grapes are sour, my dear. Did you never hear tell of the story of +the fox? But never you mind. There's a man appinted for you, I make no +doubt; and if there is, ye'll get him, for as long as he is about +appearing." + +There was a scream of laughter, and Lettice, too angry to trust her +voice with a retort, turned on her heel and went out, while the old +lady sniffed vindictively and pursed her lips, as if she could have +said much more, had the offender allowed her time. + +"The impident monkey!" she muttered at last. "Does she think she is to +make sport of _me_, without getting as good as she gives?" "That's a +forward girl," she added aloud. "It isn't becoming for a young woman +to be putting in for a gentleman in that barefaced way. And ye needn't +laugh, my dears; some of you are not much better. As for Mis-ter +Wilkie, ye may keep your minds easy; he can get better than any of you +where we come from, just for the raising of his finger." + +"Poor Lettice!" said Rose. "Are you not a little hard on her? I am +sure she did not mean to be provoking." + +"If _you_ say that, my dear, I am willing to suppose it. But really, +I'm just bothered with young girrls trying to catch my son, every +place I go. It's like the way bees come bizzing round a sugar-bowl; or +wasps, I might say," and she flung an angry glance at Lucy Naylor, +caught laughing again. "You are the young lady, if I'm not mistaken, +that saved the man's life this morning? It was a noble ack; and you're +an example to us women, that are more given to hang about a man till +he sinks, than to bear him up when he's in trouble. You'll be staying +here, like the rest of us?" + +"Yes; I am here with Mrs Deane and her daughter." + +"That girrl that was so impertinent to me just now?--pretending to +cock her nose at a Deputy Minister! Set her up!" + +"Miss Deane is an heiress and a beauty. All the men in Chicago were +wild about her last winter. She did not mean to offend you, I am sure; +though perhaps she is a little spoilt by all the attention she +receives." + +"An heiress, is she? And these will all be heiresses too, maybe? +They're forward and saucy enough for that or anything," she added, +tossing her head at the retiring figures trooping away to overtake +Lettice, and leaving the old woman, whose good-humour they had worn +out, standing alone with Rose. "If it was you, now, I would be proud +to hear that ye were an heiress, and to know you. Ye've got spurrit; +and I'm sure ye have sense as well as good looks. Ye're not so young +as thae light-headed tawpies, with their empty laughs, that have gone +out just now, but you're just in your prime." + +"I am five-and-twenty," said Rose, with a twinkle of dawning mischief. + +"That's within two years of the age I was myself when I was married. +It would be just one like you that I could welcome to my bosom, for a +daughter," and she looked graciously in the other's face, to accept +the answering look of gratitude which she felt was her due. "It's a +sore responsibeelity, I can tell you, to a right-thinking mother, to +get her only son--and _such_ a son!--properly settled in life. They've +no sense, even the best of men, when it comes to choosing a wife. +There's a glamour comes over them, and they just fall a prey to some +designing cuttie that has nothing but the duds she stands in, and +neither sense nor experience. But I mean to stand between my boay and +that misfortune, at any rate." + +"He must feel deeply indebted to you." + +"I don't know if he does, my dear. The men are contrar' cattle, and +very thrawn. But I have my duty to do. He's my objeck in life. I left +home to come out and live with him in a foreign land; and that was no +small sacrifice at my time of life, I can tell you. It's true he has a +fine piseetion and a good income; but if ye had seen the way he was +being put upon, and the waste, when I came out to look after him, it +would have made your hair stand up. A whole peck of pitaities biled +every day for wan man's dinner! The cook's mother kept pigs, ye see. +That's where the pitaities went. But I made a cleen sweep, I can tell +you." + +"It must have been rather trying to you." + +"Eh yes! it's been very hard upon my nerves. I'm not strong; though +perhaps ye wouldn't think it. My colour's so good that nobody will +believe there's much the matter with me. But my heart's affecket, my +dear. If you could just feel the palpitations--thump--thump--like +a smiddie hammer! ever since thae girrls with their jawing went +out,"--and she laid her hand upon her ample chest and closed her eyes. + +"How distressing! Does your medical man give you hopes of getting over +it?" + +"That's in Higher Hands, my dear. We are trying the effecks of sea-air +on my complaint, just now. That's what has brought us all the way down +from Ontario. The doctor thinks I want bracing, and he gives me +poothers to take. You see, it's homoeopathy we are trying. And that +'minds me: this is my time for a poother. What can have come over +Peter that he isn't here to give me it?" + +"Can you not take your powder yourself?" + +"No; it's small and delicate, and not easy to apply. The doctor +ordered it to be sprinkled on the tongue. I wish Peter was here. The +thoughtless rascal!" + +"On the tongue? How odd! Do you think I could do it for you?" + +"My dear, if you would! Ye're a dear lamb, and ye'll be a treasure to +any mother-in-law that gets you." + +"Have you the powder?" + +"I carry them about with me, to prevent accidents, when I'm living in +a strange house. The maids might be for tasting them, ye see, and +nobody knows what might happen." + +Mrs Wilkie sat down in a chair facing the window, handed a tiny parcel +to Rose, and stretched out her feet in front, while she laid back her +head, grasping the chair-arms, shutting her eyes tight, and opening +her mouth wide to display the flat red tongue. It was a moment of +tension with her; she was stretched to her utmost, holding her breath, +and with every muscle tightened in expectant rigidity. + +Rose opened the parcel, which contained a pinch of white powder, and +proceeded to administer; but the appearance of the patient was so +comic that she had to forbear while calming her risible inclinations, +lest her hand should shake and the precious remedy fall on a wrong +place. At length she felt steady, and began to sprinkle as directed. +But the sprinkling took time. The powder was to be evenly scattered +over the member, or evil results would ensue; and meanwhile the +patient was holding in her breath. She clutched the chair-arms, and +strove valiantly; but nature gave way at length. Just as the last +flake descended to its place, the imprisoned wind broke loose with a +mighty sigh; a white cloud ascended between herself and Rose, while +the outstretched jaws relaxed and came together; she opened her eyes +and sat up, but the "poother" was scattered on the viewless air, and +the old lady had little homoeopathy that morning. + + + + + CHAPTER IX. + + BETWEEN FRIENDS. + + +There is considerable monotony in seaside life, but it is monotony of +a different kind from the everyday existence of the rest of the year; +and in this complete change its principal charm and benefit consist. +The home-life of a number of households is laid aside for the time, +and the heterogeneous elements are thrown for the moment into a larger +whole, forming an unstable compound--a salad of humanity where the +sweets, the sours, and the bitters find themselves in new combinations +with one another, and united for the time in a _sauce piquante_ of +fresh air and idleness. There can be no great variety in the +occupations; picnics, excursions, drives, rides, walks, form an +ever-recurring ditto, to which the unaccustomedness alone gives +flavour. + +There is rest for the workers, and society for the home-keeping, but +genuine delight only for the very young, whose gregarious instincts +are still unblunted, and who find in the presence of one another the +exhilaration of spreading their callow wings in early flights. + +For the mother-birds, however, there is anxiety. In this larger +poultry-yard their chicks grow wilder than they have ever known them +before. The broods get mixed, and wander into undreamt-of mischief, +pullets consorting with cockerels of another breed, chickens with +ducklings venturing into the water, while Dame Partlet clucks and +flutters about, pecking and distracted. + +Mrs Naylor sat fidgeting and restless among the matrons who presided +over and superintended the enjoyments of their youthful charges. Lucy +was causing her anxiety. "Who was that tall man she was dancing +with?--dancing not for the first time or the second, but the third +time without a break. And how unnecessarily intimate they appeared! +Could she not fan herself if she felt warm, when they stopped for +breath?--instead of letting an awkward stranger raise tempests which +were blowing her hair into unsightly confusion, and making her so +needlessly conspicuous." If a gentleman was warranted "nice," she did +not object to his paying attention to her girls, but she wanted +assurance of the niceness. She leant over to the nearest neighbour who +seemed at leisure to answer her inquiries, and with whom, being a +stranger, she would not compromise herself, whatever might be said. + +The neighbour was Miss Maida Springer, a damsel scarcely any longer +young, seeing her thirtieth birthday would be her next, who hovered on +the confines of the dance, and looked hungrily after young men leading +other maidens out, and wondering why no one came for her. She sat +under the wing of an elder as lonely as herself--the widow Denwiddie, +who varied the sober tenor of her life by spending a fortnight each +summer among the gaieties and dissipations by the sea. She was bidding +the widow observe things curious in the whirling crowd of dancers as +they passed. + +"See that great thing in pink," she had said last. "Positively stout. +And what a colour for a large woman to wear! If it had been black, +now, or blue, or even white----" and she glanced down approvingly at +her own blue and white washed muslin. "Just watch the slow revolving +heap. Ain't she like an iceberg out at sea, growing pink in the +setting sun? And her poor little bit of a partner, racing to get round +her on time! My! mustn't he feel warm! He reminds me of an ant trying +to carry home a seed of wheat. Why don't he choose a slim one like +himself?" and she ran her eye down her own spare form, which was +certainly as slim as the absence of superfluous tissue could make it, +with spider-like arms and wrists which would not be kept out of +sight,--thinking how much freer the gentleman would have felt in the +clasp of these slender tendrils. + +"Look at that one's feet. Well, I never! What a size! I wonder how she +can venture to stand up and dance. Ain't it good for the beetles they +ain't none of them here?" and then, by a strange coincidence, a pair +of number-one shoes stole out in front to show themselves--things +small and narrow, on which it seemed wonderful that a human being +could stand. But then a few bones can be packed away in very little +room. + +"Will you kindly tell me," asked Mrs Naylor, "who is that gentleman by +the wall, with a lady's fan in his hand?--the one with the limp hair, +brushed up so strangely above his forehead." + +"The tall fine man with drab hair? That's Mr Aurelius Sefton of +Pugwash--one of the most rising pork-packers in the whole West, they +do say." + +"Pugwash? What a name! And pork! That accounts for the sleekness of +his hair. Lard--depend upon it." + +"You think the lard has got in his hair? Well, now, ain't you droll! +Perhaps it has. But if lard has got in the hair, they do tell there +has money got in the pocket. Do you lumber folks in Canady, now, have +chips in your hair--chips and sawdust?" + +Mrs Naylor looked dignified, and turned away. The magnates of her +country deal in lumber. It is quite a high-class pursuit, and not to +be spoken of in the same breath with pork--a horrid butcherly +business, in which no person of refinement would condescend to make +his fortune. + +Maida raised her eyebrows, and turned to her friend. + +"Ain't we high-strung, just! we aristocrats from Canady? What +difference can it make whether it's hogs or logs a man makes his pile +by, so long as he makes it? And I guess, if there's been less money +made in pork, there's been a sight more lost in lumber. I had a friend +once----" and she coloured faintly, looking down, and heaving a sigh +so demonstrative that her friend turned and looked at her. + +"Yes, my dear?" said the widow, with a droop in her voice in token of +sympathy. "You _had_ a friend? That sounds sad. Whaar did he go to?" + +"He went away; and that's why it always seems as if something was +catching my breath and making me feel low, whenever lumber is spoken +of. _He_ went to Canady in the lumbering interest, because prospects +were better there than in old Vermont. He promised to come back when +he had made his pile, and I promised to wait. It's nothing so mighty +unusual for young folks to do; and it's real feelin' of you to shake +your head and look at me like that, Mrs Denwiddie. But don't let folks +see you a-doing it; they might wonder." + +"Ah yes!" heaved the widow, in deep sympathy; "I can understand. It's +the tender way us trustin' women always has. We never tell our love, +but just let folks think it's a big caterpillar has got in the heart +of the cabbage, so to speak; or rather, I should say, liver and +dispepsy that's eatin' our young looks away. It's disappinted love, +now--is it, my dear--that's wearin' you to a shaddy? I know the +feelin' well," and another sigh undulated her portly figure. "It's +twenty years, come Fall, since I was left a lone woman, and hope has +been tellin' me flatterin' tales ever since; but the men are +that backward--they just look foolish when I shake their hands +friendly-like and invite them to sit a bit, after seein' me home from +evenin' meetin'; and away they go, sayin' never a word, and leavin' me +with no more appetite for supper than if I'd eaten it a'ready." + +"Do you mean that you would marry again?" + +"I would then--and don't you forget it--if ever I get the chance." + +Maida glanced sidewise, and shrank the least bit possible away. + +"You think me light-minded now, maybe, my dear? I don't wonder at it. +Them as hain't been married don't know how lonesome it feels to see +just the one cup and saucer laid out beside the teapot at mealtimes." + +"There must be memories. It would be sweet, I should have thought, to +dwell on the idea that one had gone before, and was waiting across the +river to be joined by the old companion." + +"Oh yes; that's sweet--in a way. At least it was, when it was a dear +young minister that was sayin' beautiful things about the Golden +Shore, and comfortin' the bereaved. But twenty years is a long time. +The Rev. Mr Beulah is a married man now, with a fine young family of +his own. Folks have forgotten about my affliction this many a year. +And as for Hezekiah----I don't hold with them spiritualists. He's more +to do, you bet, than to be coming around frightenin' a lone woman with +messages rapped out on a tea-table, or to mind whether I'm married or +single. I'll be laid beside him when the time comes; that's as it +should be. But it would be real pleasant to have some one for company +in the meantime. It's a vale of tears--we've Gospel for that; but if +ever you come to my time of life, you'll be wishin', like me, you had +some one to dry your eyes in it." + +Maida sighed disappointedly. Her friend's sentiments were too robust +for the plaintive tone in which that word "lumber" had been tempting +her to indulge. Mrs Denwiddie, on the other hand, felt talkative, and +there being no one else whom she could address, she accommodated +herself to her friend's mood. + +"Is it long, now, since you saw him last?--your friend, I mean." + +"He went ten years ago." + +"Ten years! That's half a lifetime. Have you been gettin' letters from +him for ten years?" + +"He used to write--at first, that is. Then he would send a newspaper. +Now, I don't know where he is, or what he is doing. I wish I did. All +would be forgiven and forgotten, if he only would return." + +"It's real good of you to speak like that, my dear. It takes a woman +to be true and forgivin' like that. I wonder what the young man will +be doin', now, all this time?" + +"He is trying hard to make that weary fortune, to be sure. He is +ambitious." + +"And he don't allow himself even the encouragement of writin' to tell +you how he's gettin' on. Do you think there could be some one up there +encouragin' him?" + +"Mrs Denwiddie!" + +"There's no tellin', my dear, what the men are up to. They ain't +faithful and endurin' like us." + +"I have waited. I can wait." + +"It does you credit, my dear. But a girl's youth won't wait. How about +settlin' yourself in life?" + +Maida tightened her lips. She knew all that as well as Mrs Denwiddie; +but what right had the woman to inspect her life in this fashion? to +pull open the fold in which she chose to hide her inner self, and pry +and probe in wanton curiosity?--the merciless and contemptuous +curiosity with which married women will card out and examine the +tangled threads of a spinster's being. She knew well enough the +hopelessness of what, for want of another name, she thought of as her +"attachment." Yet why could it not be taken at such small worth as she +put upon it? She had not boasted of it. She knew its little value too +well. But it was all she had, and why might she not wear it, having +nothing else? That evening she was sitting a wallflower while the rest +were merry--with no one to lead her out or make her a sharer in the +gaiety. What wonder if she should wish to refer to a deferred +engagement, and furbish up the poor little relic of a might-have-been, +the one bit of romance she ever had, if only to seem less forlorn in +her own eyes? And this old thing by her side, as lonely and shut out +from the revelry as herself, and who, but for her, would have sat +absolutely solitary--that _she_ should take upon her to be inquisitive +and unpleasant! It was intolerable. She gathered her spare skirts more +tightly round her, and edged some inches away upon the haircloth sofa +she divided with her "friend." She would have risen altogether, but +where was she to go? To what other companion could she join herself? +She was not intimate with any of the other guests, married or single, +old or young. She belonged, poor soul, to the order of bats--both bird +and quadruped, yet accepted by neither. In the marrying aspect, she +was regarded as altogether out of the running, while old and young +agreed each in classing her with the other variety--too old to be a +girl, not old enough to be a tabby--and nobody minded her when other +company could be got. She felt it all, though she bravely ignored and +struggled with her fate, living through many a tragic pang which no +one ever suspected. She dared not put her position to the test by +quarrelling with the widow. Already she saw herself flitting in and +out among the revellers, unheeded, like a disembodied spirit. Where +she sat she had at least a companion, and was safe from pity. She +choked back her anger as a luxury she could not afford, and was ready +to respond when Mrs Denwiddie, warned by symptoms that she might be +left solitary in the crowd, realised that she must have been +disagreeable, and set herself to open a new conversation in a less +personal strain. + +How many of us would dispense with our dear friends, if we were only +sure we could get on without them! + + + + + CHAPTER X. + + A MOTHER'S CARES. + + +Mrs Naylor went back to her chair to digest the information she had +received. Pork and Pugwash were not ideas attractive to her refined +imagination; but if there was money! The sons of "first families" in +the East were sent West at times, she knew. Why not to Pugwash as well +as other places? If Mr Aurelius Sefton were indeed well off, even +Pugwash might be an endurable place to live in. Millinery is sent from +New York by express all over the country, and railways have brought +Everywhere within reach of civilisation. "Yes; if the man had his hair +cut, and his manners chastened down by a judicious mother-in-law, he +really was not ill-looking. She would find out brother Joseph, and bid +him have an eye on the man, and try what he could find out about him +from the other people in the house. It did seem, to see the pair still +circling cheerfully together, as if something might be brought to +pass, if that were desirable. Yet, if it were not, she must see that +the girl did not compromise herself, and get classed with the easily +accessible." "Ah!" she said to herself, "the anxieties of a fond +mother! How are my poor nerves to stand the strain of settling those +two girls?" She realised how good she was, feeling strengthened +thereby, and almost heroic, as she rose and moved slowly round the +outskirts of the dance in search of her brother-in-law. + +The company was more numerous than usual that evening. A brass band +from Lippenstock stood on the verandah, and brayed waltzes in through +the open windows; and three or four omnibus-loads of strangers from +Blue Fish Creek, some miles along the shore, had arrived to assist. +The rooms were full, and it was not easy to pick out any one in the +crowd. She made her way from doorway to doorway and past the windows, +outside which the men not actively engaged were wont to lounge; but no +Joseph could she see--though it was in such situations that he +generally stood watching the gambols he no longer cared to join. She +walked along the neighbouring galleries; but these seemed taken +possession of by dancers cooling off, and sauntering in the moonlight +till they were ready for another start. + +At last, in the shadow of a pillar and leaning on the balustrade, she +came upon a pair looking out seaward, in intimate talk. She thought +she recognised something in the gentleman's back, and figure, and +close-cropped hair. She almost fancied she knew him; yet who could he +be? The lady wore a dress less simple than the attire of the other +girls that evening. There was a shimmer of satin here and there among +the dimness of thinner fabric-- + + + "Like glints of moonshine in a clouded sky"-- + + +and the suggestion of pale yellow, with a bunch of crimson on the +shoulder, where it reached beyond the shadow which fell on the rest of +the figure. + +Mrs Naylor was a woman; and while she might not be able to recall the +back of her own father, a gown once seen was imprinted on her memory, +and she recognised it at once. "Miss Hillyard," she said to herself, +"the heroine--in her lovely Paris dress. I wonder whom she has got +there. That is not the contradictious Scotch schoolmaster, at any +rate, with his awkward knees and elbows. The men seem wild about her. +Natural, that, in the men. But a little unfeminine," she could not +help thinking, "in a lady to swim so well. And it would have been in +better taste if she had dressed more quietly for this once, after +making herself so remarkable in the morning. But then she is a Yankee, +and perhaps not altogether a lady. One never knows how to class those +people. Best let them alone;" and her thoughts reverted to Mr Sefton +of Pugwash, and she felt much inclined to return to the ball-room and +get Lucy away from him without further seeking enlightenment. + +At that moment the gentleman in shadow began to speak more loudly, +pointing to where the moonlight made a patch of flickering lustre on +the hazy sea. + +"How bright the moonlight lies out yonder on the water! Every ripple +catches it a moment and throws it back, till the surface seems to +burn.... How different it was this morning! How different it must be +down deep below, and how easily I might be there now--cold and stiff, +rolling amongst the sea-weed, and slime, and things nibbling in the +darkness! It is a horrible reflection, and it would have come true if +it had not been for you." + +The lady demurred, and moved, and asked if they had not better go in +now; and Mrs Naylor beheld her brother-in-law turn round and lead his +companion back among the dancers. + +She could scarcely believe her eyes. Joseph was forty-seven. She knew +the date of his birth. He had never cared to dance within her +recollection, and she had known him almost since her marriage. She +remembered his coming home from sea about that time, a sad-eyed youth, +who avoided company, and lived in a sort of patient gloom, finding his +sole distraction in close application to business. Her husband +whispered that he had met with a disappointment into which they must +not pry, but rather strive by unspoken sympathy and kindness to +reconcile him to his lot, and wean him from his sorrow. + +In time the cloud upon his spirits had seemed to lift. He was too +kind-hearted not to take interest in the people among whom he lived; +and, sympathising with them in their joys, his own depression by +degrees was lightened. A man's capacity, even for suffering, is +limited. Divide his attention, and you mitigate the intensity of his +woes. It is the self-centred egotist whose troubles kill him, or may +drive him mad, because he is incapable of distraction. To Joseph the +better part of his life had seemed over, and work his only remaining +resource. Yet he had never closed his heart against the cares and +pleasures of his fellows, and he felt a wholesome interest in all that +went on around him, like a father watching the opening hopes of +children, who have not learnt to misgive, or dread the nipping frosts +of disappointment. + +His sister-in-law, not being addicted to moral analysis, probably did +not consider this; but she had seen his despondency clear away, and +knew that he was the kindest, most cheerful, and most popular man she +had ever met--ready to join in every pastime, and differing from the +rest only in a premature middle-aged benevolence, setting in before he +was thirty, which found pleasure in amusing others, without seeking +anything for himself. He had seemed impervious to female charms +through all the years she had known him, and especially he had avoided +dances--or if by chance he found himself at one, only joining when +charity led him to the side of some neglected wallflower. And here he +was to-night, when there was no benevolent occasion for it whatever, +leading out the best-dressed woman in the room, with an ardour which +would have seemed more natural in him twenty years before. True, the +lady had saved his life; but it seemed a droll way of manifesting +gratitude to _dance_ with her, at his age. Her eyebrows made a +satirical twitch upwards, and she sighed impatiently at men's lack of +common-sense. The present was no time to unburden her anxieties--that +was plain; and meanwhile she would saunter round the crowd, and watch +him in his new character of middle-aged youngster. + +The evening was warm, but in the dancing-room it was positively hot. +The atmosphere quivered with the blare of sounding brass, and the +whirling figures, chasing the fleeting strains, raised a sirocco of +sultry air and dust. Still the young people seemed to like it, and Mrs +Naylor looked on in wonder, forgetting that she had once been young +herself. But who were those in the farthest corner, keeping themselves +so well clear of the hurrying hubbub?--revolving dreamily on the +outer edge, in perfect sympathy and time, and in an orbit of their +own--avoiding collision with the meteors and comets of the greater +system, spinning calmly and smoothly on the flood of sound, engrossed +with themselves, and indifferent to all the world beside. + +She looked again. The girl was her own daughter Margaret; but who was +the man in whose arms she was so restfully and intimately revolving? +Her self-reliant daughter was not wont to dance in that clinging +fashion, and she could not imagine what dweller at Clam Beach could +have won her to such unaccustomed softness. What masterful bird could +so have won upon the fancy of her favourite chick? Was he one of the +proper sort? But Margaret was too high-spirited to take up with a +cross-breed, and she felt less solicitous than had it been that +featherhead Lucy. Still she was curious to know who could have tamed +proud Meg to so mild a demeanour. It was not young Petty. She could +have wished that it had been. This one was not so tall, neither was he +raw-looking, as--candour compelled the admission--was Mr Walter +Petty--just a little; but then he was young yet, and it would soon +wear off, with his prospects and assured position. This one was +thoroughly in possession of himself and all his limbs. How deftly he +steered and threaded their way, without stop or collision, among the +less skilful dancers! How strong he looked, and calm, without +heaviness! She could have wished herself young again, to be danced +with by a partner such as he. In their continuous whirling, and the +perpetual intervening of other couples, she could not make out or +recognise his face. After a while they stopped, and she moved from +where she had been standing, to get a better view. How intimately +Margaret stood up to him and talked, with her flapping fan interposed +between them and the rest of the world! + +Mrs Naylor's curiosity increased, and she drew nearer. "What!" she +almost cried out aloud. "Walter Blount! How comes he here? This must +not be!" And flushing, and tightening her lips, she walked across to +where they stood. To think that after all the management she had +expended in making her brother-in-law bring them to the seaside, and +so remove her girl for a while beyond the reach of the "detrimental" +whose fascinations threatened to ruin her prospects, the aggravating +youth should have followed them! It was too provoking. She sniffed +indignantly, and bore down on the offenders, tightening her lace shawl +about her shoulders, and looking tall and stately with all her might. + +"Margaret, my dear," she said, "you are dancing a great deal too much. +You will be knocked up to-morrow, and I mean you to accompany me to +Boston." + +Margaret was taken aback. Her mother's habitual seat was in the +conversation-room, at the other end of the suite, with two pairs of +folding-doors and all the dancers between. It was to avoid her +observation that they had been confining their career to this far-off +corner, and her sweeping thus down on them was altogether unexpected. +She let go her partner's arm, and with drooping eye and pouting lip +prepared to follow her mother, like a naughty child detected in the +act. + +"Mrs Naylor," said Blount, "will you not speak to me?" + +"How d'ye do, Mr Blount? I was not aware you were at Clam Beach." + +"It used to be 'Walter,' and you allowed me to call you aunt. Why this +change?" + +"That was nonsense. We are not related. You are not a stripling now, +Mr Blount, and my daughters have grown to be young women since then." + +"That does not make me feel the less regard for you and them, dear Mrs +Naylor. It is not our fault that we grow older." + +"Why have you left your farm? These haunts of idleness and dissipation +are no good place for a young man who should be making his fortune. +Your stock will be straying and breaking down fences; and how is your +harvest-work to go on in your absence? I am sure your friends would +not approve if they knew." + +"I have sold the farm--sold it very well--and I shall soon be looking +out for another." + +"I am sorry to hear you are becoming unsettled. Roving from place to +place is the sure way for a young man to ruin himself. Remember the +proverb about rolling stones.... Now, Margaret, if you are ready we +will go." And drawing her daughter's arm through her own, she sailed +away, leaving Blount disconsolate. + +"I am amazed, Margaret, at your want of common-sense and proper +feeling," she began, as she led the captive back by the gallery +towards the place where she was wont to sit. But she got no further +with her harangue. Mr Peter Wilkie, coming through a window, +intercepted her retreat, requesting Margaret for the favour of a +dance. + +Margaret was declining with thanks, being in no mood for further +exercise; but her mother, whose brow had cleared at once on the +new-comer's appearance, interposed. + +"Indeed, Margaret, I think a dance would do you good. What an +oppressive evening, Mr Wilkie! We came out here for a breath of +coolness, but I do think it is better for young people not to yield. +The more you give way to the heat, Margaret, my dear, the limper you +will become. A dance with a good partner is far the best way of +throwing off the oppression." + +Margaret felt a little doubtful about the goodness of the partner, but +she said nothing, and took Mr Peter's arm without further demur. What +did it matter? Her evening was irretrievably spoilt. Besides, her +mother meant to be disagreeable--that was abundantly plain--and she +had better accept the offered deliverance. She accompanied Peter back +into the room. She laid her hand on his shoulder and they began to +dance. + +If there is no method of motion more perfect than a good waltz, there +is no purgatory so grievous as a bad one. Racing, stumbling, jolting, +and running into other couples, with the danger of getting entangled +among the feet and knees of her partner at every stride, and her ear +outraged by his disregard of the music, Margaret could only liken +their progress to a hurdle-race at a country fair, as they broke +through the bars of the music, or cleared them helter-skelter. At +length she was able to stop, and Mr Peter, somewhat giddy, and holding +on till his head grew steady, drew a long breath. + +"Heh! that was fine! The best dance I've had to-night. You and me suit +one another splendid, Miss Margaret. Let's have another turn. Are you +ready?" + +"Really, Mr Wilkie, you must let me rest a moment, I am quite out of +breath;" and she fanned herself industriously, taking care, however, +not to include the partner this time. "How oppressive it is here! Do +you not think a breath of fresh air on the gallery would be pleasant?" +and Mr Wilkie, without at all intending it, found himself promenading +in the moonlight, when he would rather have been regaling the company +with his antics in the dance. Like other rugged and ungraceful men, he +had a high opinion of his personal graces; and his doting mother, who +worshipped his very shadow, had conspired with his natural vanity to +breed a self-admiration which tempted him in expansive moments to +display himself before an admiring world. He would have liked to +exhibit under the lights in the crowded ball-room, with this fine girl +hung gracefully on his shoulder, as he knew she could pose herself; +but if that was not to be, at least she was a young person of +intelligence who could appreciate a man of talent. He resigned himself +to the comparative seclusion, stroked his chin, and cleared his voice, +preparatory to saying something smart. + +What the observation was to have been, nobody knows. It is in Limbo +with other good things which have missed their opportunity. It was +Margaret who spoke-- + +"Mr Blount! You out here! Found it too warm inside? So did we. How +pleasant it is here!" + +At that moment the music ceased. The dance was ended, and Mr Peter +Wilkie, his smart saying unsaid, found himself exchanging a +valedictory smile with his companion, who somehow had become detached +from him, and, before he well understood the situation, was wafting +away with Mr Blount, leaving him alone with his handsome shadow in the +moonlight. + + + + + CHAPTER XI. + + DISCUSSING A SUITOR. + + +Is there some connection between a maiden's tresses and the workings +of her mind? When the braids are coiled in shining order for the +captivation of the world, are her thoughts as well confined in +conventional rolls and waves conforming to the fashion of the time? +Poets love to dwell upon her "locks": can it be because they guard +her confidences that they have named them so? There is more in this +than a mere wretched pun; there is a connection between sound and +sense--involuntary, no doubt, but the beginnings of language are all +involuntary. When the hair is unbound, the mind is freed from the +trammels of convention and reserve; and this may be why, at +hair-brushing time, as I have heard, girls' tongues are wont to wag so +freely. + +There must be infinite relief to the poor little head, and brain +benumbed, when the weight of firmly drawn and twisted hair is +unbuckled and let down, and a refreshing stimulation of thought in the +action of brush and comb, spreading and airing and drawing out the +uncomfortable glory. + +Margaret and Lucy Naylor had retired for the night, but not as yet to +rest. Relieved from hair-pins, they stood before their glasses in +freedom and disarray, more charming far than when decked out to meet +the public eye, which might not, alas! be privileged to behold them +now. + +Yet doubtless there is a happiness in being handsome, for its own +sake, even if one is alone. One may legitimately rejoice in beauty +though it be one's own; and it were churlish to libel that as vanity +which is common to all things beautiful. See how the roses spread +their petals to the light, and how birds of starry plumage perch in +solitary places in the sun, to preen their feathers and display their +brilliant dyes! + +The girls were pretty seen at any time, but when busied in these +secret mysteries they were vastly more so. The glossy abundance hung +down like mantles over the pearly shoulders and far below their +waists, and the supple white arms held up and played among the falling +waves of hair, which flashed like skeins of pale and ruddy gold-thread +in the flicker of the candles. The glittering veil half hid their +smiling features, but ever and anon the eyes flashed out beneath the +shadow, more brightly than their wont, answering to lips of red, and +rows of small white teeth, and gurgling rounds of laughter. + +The doings of the evening were all gone over again, the successes won +anew; and in relation, what had seemed but trifling incidents at the +time, grew bigger, and under merry comment vastly entertaining. Lucy +had most to say. She was the chatterbox, and had much to tell about +the gentlemen she had danced with, and their sometimes rather vapid +talk. Could those lordly wiseacres have heard the _résumé_ and +description of their stiff-backed endeavours to converse and please, +they would have been surprised, and some of them not over-gratified, +at the shrewd commentaries of the pretty, timid, and not too clever +little thing they had trifled with so condescendingly. + +Margaret had much less to say, but she was in equally good spirits. It +was with a very old friend that she had mostly been passing the time, +so there was nothing to tell, though Lucy looked a little incredulous +when she said as much; but her evening had been none the less pleasant +on that account, to judge from her ready appreciation of her sister's +fun. + +There was a knock while the talk was at its briskest, but in the +babblement and laughter it was not heard. The knock was repeated, and +this time the speaker stopped short in the middle of a sentence, and +both turned round and looked at each other. + +"It is mamma," whispered Lucy. + +Margaret's countenance fell; she even frowned a little. Something +unpleasant was going to happen, she felt sure. + +"Let's blow out the lights and jump into bed," suggested Lucy. + +"No use," said Margaret. "Open the door and get it over as quickly as +possible. I shan't say a word, and she will run herself out of breath +the sooner." + +"Nonsense!" and Lucy blew out one of the candles as she spoke. "She +will forget about it in the morning if we fall asleep now. I don't +want to have the feeling of a well-spent day spoilt by a lecture." + +The knock was repeated more peremptorily than before. It was too late +to pretend unconsciousness now. Margaret went sullenly to the door and +admitted her mother. + +"What an uproar you two girls are making in here--din enough for a +dozen--chattering like magpies, and laughing at this hour of the +night, when decent people are in their beds! Nice complaints and +remarks the people in adjoining rooms will make to-morrow!--though +they may not venture to speak to _me_ about it," she added grandly, as +if she dared any one to take that liberty. "But that makes it worse. +We cannot explain or set them right when they tattle behind our backs, +and the stories will grow bigger and worse, till no one knows what +they may come to.... You thoughtless pair! Lucy there speaking at the +very tip of her voice. It will be a wonder if the people through the +partitions do not know every word she has been saying--something, most +likely, which will do her no credit. Mrs Chickenpip, I may tell you, +is your neighbour on that side, and she does not spare people who +annoy her. For your own sakes you had better respect her slumbers. She +passed when I was hammering at your door, and she looked many things +at me which good manners prevent people from saying; but she will find +an opportunity of expressing them to some one else, or I am mistaken." + +"Tiresome old cat," said Lucy. "No one will mind her. She is too grim +and proper. Nobody heeds what childless old women say about young +people." + +"Old women? She is younger than I am. Would you speak of your own +mother----?" + +"Oh no, mammy dear! Nobody thinks of its own pretty mamma in that +way;" and she threw her arms round her mother's neck. + +"Have done, Lucy! I am in no mood for fooling, I assure you. Let me +alone, and be quiet. It was you, Margaret, that I wanted to talk to. +We must come to an understanding at once. This kind of thing which has +been going on down-stairs must come to an end. I have been +inexpressibly shocked and pained. It is more than my poor health can +stand. Would you bring my hair with sorrow to the grave?" ... "Grey +hairs with sorrow to the grave," was the Scriptural quotation which +had come into her mind; but even to make a rhetorical point, she felt +that she could not afford to attribute greyness to her carefully +tended braids. She put up her hand and stroked them tenderly, which +disturbed the thread of her argument, and she came to a stop, with her +eyes resting reproachfully on her elder daughter. + +Margaret was aware that she had better let the lecture run itself +down. Interruptions, she knew by experience, acted like winding up a +clock, and set it off again, tick-tack, on a refreshed career. She +bore the reproachful gaze in silence as long as she was able, but at +last it grew too much for her, and rather sullenly she answered-- + +"What do you mean, mother?" + +"You know very well what I mean. Have I not told you many times that +that childish nonsense with young Blount must be given up?" + +"Is it our engagement you mean?" Margaret answered, with heightened +colour. She knew that she was unwise to speak, but her temper was +rising. It always _would_ rise, she knew not how, when her mother +spoke of "young Blount." + +"Your what?" her mother cried, indignantly. "I will not hear of such a +thing. I have forbidden you to be engaged to him. You shan't be +engaged to him; and now that you force me to it, I forbid you to speak +to him. An abominable young man!--worming himself deceitfully into +families where he is not wanted. Was there ever anything so +ungentlemanlike as his sneaking down here after us, although he had +been as good as forbidden the house at home? He had not the candour to +come to me and say, 'Mrs Naylor, I am here;' but slyly waylays you in +a crowded ball-room, to hold surreptitious interviews. I never heard +of anything so atrocious in my life. I could not have believed it. But +it rewards me for my imprudence in taking up a stranger, merely to +oblige your uncle Joseph, and being kind to him--warming a viper in my +bosom, that he might turn and sting me!" + +This was fine, and Mrs Naylor stopped for breath. + +"You have no right to say such things, mother," Margaret answered, +hotly. "Walter never was ungentlemanlike. He could not be, if he were +to try. And he is no sneak. He is as brave and honest as the day; and +I have heard you say as much yourself, formerly, when he used to visit +us. You often said he was the nicest young man of your acquaintance." + +"And this is the reward of my ill-judged hospitality--having him come +to me with your uncle, when you were both children! I see my +imprudence now; but at least my daughter might spare me," and Mrs +Naylor put her handkerchief to her eyes. "That a mother's solicitude +should be taunted thus, by the very child she is trying to shield from +the effects of her injudicious good-nature! Oh, Margaret, you are +cruel!" + +Margaret felt shocked with herself. To think that she should bring +tears to her mother's eyes! How hard and obdurate she must surely be! +She had never felt so wicked in all her life before. Yet how to mend +it? She would gladly do anything to pacify and soothe her wounded +mother--anything but give up Walter; and that was the only thing which +would be of any avail. She forbore to say more in his defence, +however--in fact she could not have trusted her voice to keep steady +or say anything just then; and as she saw the handkerchief still at +her mother's eyes, her own began to overflow. She was contrite, +without attempting to particularise on what account, and very unhappy. + +Mrs Naylor saw that her demonstration had told, and made haste to +improve the advantage. She put her handkerchief back in her pocket and +cleared her voice. + +"It is for your own sake I am so solicitous, Margaret. It is you he is +trying to marry. You can marry but once, remember. Think how momentous +is this step you are so blindly eager to take. Your whole future life +depends on it." + +"We are fond of one another, mother, and he is good and true. What +more can a girl want?" + +"Much, my dear. You talk like an inexperienced simpleton. How +differently you will look on things in ten years' time! People cannot +live--perhaps for fifty years--like turtles in a nest, in one +continued round of billing and cooing. They must eat and dress +themselves every day; and to do that nicely takes a deal of money, +more than your friend is likely ever to earn." + +"I do not want to be rich. The rich people we know are not so nice, I +am sure. Few of them are gentlemen." + +"I know, my dear. I understand you perfectly. Love in a cottage, and +that sort of thing. When I was a girl, the novels were full of it, and +it was very pretty. The novels are much more sensible nowadays, and it +is strange that the young people who read them should still be as +foolish as ever." + +"I do not think life without love would be worth the having." + +"Of course not, my shepherdess! It would be charming to sit in the +woods always, holding a crook tied with nice fresh blue satin ribbon, +and a straw hat cocked on one side, a pet lamb at one's feet, and a +swain beside one to whistle tunes upon a reed, like the Dresden-china +figures; but when a shower came, and the ribbons got wet, it would be +but a draggle-tailed diversion, believe me. Remember the old saying, +'When poverty comes in at the door, love flies out of the window.' You +can't make love on an empty stomach. Housekeeping knocks a deal of the +romance out of life." + +"Walter has money, mother. With mine added, we shall be quite well +off." + +"I think, Margaret, if I had been pleading a gentleman's cause, I +would not have put him in the invidious light of requiring a wife's +fortune to enrich him. It sounds mercenary. Not that I wish to speak +unkindly of your friend; but he lays himself open to the suspicion of +fortune-hunting, by running after a girl with your prospects. Your +uncle is not likely to marry, and you might look so very much higher, +if you only had common-sense." + +"I don't know where I should look for 'higher.' You have always said +that his people were an excellent family in England." + +"We are Canadians, my dear. Good connections in England will not help +him much with us, unless they are bankers. He is a younger son, and +his brother has children, so his prospect of ever coming to the family +property is not worth counting. He has got all they can afford to give +him, and is a fixture on this side the Atlantic for life." + +"He is better off than most young men. Yet see how quickly some of +them get on, and rise to the top." + +"_He_ will never rise, my dear. He has not been trained for getting on +in this country. He will not spend as little as our young men do, and +he has not the first idea of how to make a fortune." + +"He would not be half as nice if he had." + +"My dear, you talk like a child. When people advance into middle life, +mere lovemaking grows to be up-hill work. It would be grotesque, if it +had not become too insipid for people to attempt keeping it up. The +larger interests are needed to make middle life bearable. It is +gratifying then to find that one has married a man of note--some one +heard of everywhere, and spoken of by everybody. With your looks and +accomplishments and prospects, there is no man you may not have the +refusal of. How comfortable, when one grows elderly and uninteresting, +to be wife of the chief-justice, or of a senator, and receive as much +attention in old age as one has been accustomed to in youth! An +ex-beauty poorly married is a disappointed and a discontented woman, +let me tell you." + +"Walter could go into politics if he liked; and if he ever does, he +must rise to the top, he is so clever and well informed." + +"Not he. He will never be more than he is now. He is too much of an +Englishman, and too fixed in his notions, ever to catch the tone of +his neighbours." + +"He is a gentleman. Why should he take the tone of people less +cultured than himself?" + +"He won't. That's where the trouble is. And therefore his neighbours +will never really like him. They will fancy he looks down on them. +They will never send him to Parliament, mark my words, however hard he +may try. If they elect him reeve of his township, or a school-trustee, +it is the most they will ever do for him. + +"Playing country gentleman does not answer, my dear. It has been often +tried. I have seen so many half-pay officers and others buy land, and +start as country gentlemen, and it always ended the same way. In a few +years their ready money was spent, and they could not move away. Their +farms were worse cultivated than their neighbours', and less +productive; and their children, rough and unkempt, grew up neither one +thing nor another--neither gentle nor simple--with the pretensions of +a class which did not care to accept them, and without the industry +and thrift to keep them up in the one into which they were sinking. + +"Have nothing to do with the land in this country, my dear; or marry a +greedy and hard-working clown at once. Your children, at least, may +come to be somebody in that case, though you will lead a drudge's life +yourself." + +"I am ready to risk it, mother, however it may turn out. A crust in +the woods with the man of my choice, rather than all the splendour you +can mention, without him." + +"You are infatuated! Reason is thrown away on you. I wonder at my own +patience in attempting to argue with you so long. But at least you +shall not ruin your life if I can help it. If you will not send away +this pernicious young man, I must carry you away from him. He shall +find that however his persecution may inconvenience us, it shall +further his schemes not a jot.... You will pack up to-morrow, girls, +first thing. Come down to breakfast in your travelling dresses. We +leave by the first train tomorrow forenoon;" and so saying, she left +the room. + +"Oh, Margaret!" sighed Lucy in despair; "and we had the prospect of +such a good time before us." + +"What could I have said, Lucy, except what I did?" + +"I don't know; but it is awfully disgusting." + + + + + CHAPTER XII. + + TO NAHANT? + + +It was about three in the morning. The lights had been extinguished +in the ball-room, and the house was still. The casements of +sleeping-rooms were darkening one by one as their inmates composed +themselves to rest. A footfall on the gallery outside mingled with the +tick of the clock on the staircase, which, in the stillness of the +hour, sent monotonous vibrations through the timbers of the wooden +house. + +Backward and forward the walker paced, diffusing the thin smoke of his +cigar upon the salt-smelling air. It was cool and even chilly as +morning drew near. Already the sky had grown pale low down beyond the +sea. The waters by contrast had grown more black and forbidding; and +with the regular steady growl of the rollers breaking on the beach, it +seemed like a monster watching at the portals of the day. + +Backward and forth paced Joseph Naylor, too wakeful to sleep, and +without even a wish to turn in. There was nothing painful in his +ruminations, nothing to agitate; and no point of difficulty had arisen +on which it was necessary for him to decide. Looking at himself in +that state of divided consciousness in which one half the mind notes +and surveys the workings of the other, he appeared scarcely to think +at all. There was little of sequence or progress in the images among +which he drifted, and the faculties of judging, choosing, desiring, +intending, were not in use. There was rather a feeling of contented +fruition overhanging his spirit like a golden mist, in which he seemed +to bathe and be at rest. + +Far back, before he had learned sorrow, he had known this sense of +peace, a glimpse of Paradise from which he had been snatched away, and +the gates closed after him with a clang. Looking seaward, the black +expanse spread out, with low reverberating sound, seemed a symbol of +his long-drawn years of desolation, a barrier between him and the +faintly brightening east. To-night he seemed to overpass that gulf, +and feel again the blessedness of a young bridegroom--without a wish, +because he touched the goal of his desires, swimming in contentment, +and breathing the scent of orange-flowers and garlands. He seemed to +be inhaling it even now. + +There had been a time when to recall these feelings would have driven +him mad--when he had set his teeth, and turned his mind away from the +memory of what had grown to be an agony, and which dogged him night +and day like the remorse of some great crime. As time wore on, his +life had grown more tolerable, in grey and joyless wise, with the +aftermath of sober peace which sedulous virtue can rear even on the +stubble of youth's luxuriant crop cut down and borne away. Yet even +then, to finger the old wounds was to make them bleed anew--to +remember the past was to recall his sorrow. + +To-night, what change had come over him? He seemed living again in the +happiness of the bygone time. He felt young as he had not felt in +twenty years. He could dwell on the old joys and feel no sting; recall +the image of his lost without a pang--so young and tender, with her +soft brown eyes and clinging touch lingering still so kindly on his +retentive sense. There was no feeling of loss to-night, no raging pang +of impotent hungry jealousy. + +He seemed dwelling in the fragrance of her presence; and the image of +his new friend, his deliverer, was with him too, so like and yet so +different from the other. The sunny warmth in those full brown eyes +had beamed on him with a reviving and invigorating glow, which had +thawed and quickened his poor frost-bound nature like the coming of +another spring. How different the two images were! And yet, when he +strove to separate and compare them in his mind, how strangely they +ran together, and blended like fluid shapes into something vaguely +sweet and dear, which would not be resolved into either definite form! + +A hand was laid lightly on his shoulder, and he turned his head, +preoccupied still with the images of his waking dream. + +"I have found you at last, and at leisure," said a voice at his elbow. +"You have been so busy all the evening, and I could not turn in till I +had had a word with you." + +"Walter! You? What is it?" + +"What is this about going to Boston to-morrow? Margaret is as much +taken by surprise as I am." + +"Going to Boston? I know nothing of it. What do you mean?" + +"Mrs Naylor told Margaret in my hearing they were going to Boston +to-morrow." + +"We came here intending to remain a month at least. Our rooms are +only taken for a fortnight, to be sure, in case we should not like it; +but if we do--and I thought we were getting on nicely--we were to +stay. At least that was my idea. But--ah! I see--Walter, you scamp! +This comes of your unexpected appearance. You should be ashamed +of yourself--disturbing a quiet family in this fashion. What a +dangerous character you must be, when the sight of you frightens a +middle-aged lady so much that she is going to pack up and run away, +before--before----Bless my soul! how many days have we been here? It +seems a long time, but it is not a week, not four---- We have been +here only two days! + +"Yes; now I think of it, my sister has been hovering round me a good +deal this evening. I daresay she has been trying to get speech of me. +And I was conceited enough to think it was unwarrantable curiosity on +the part of Mrs Caleb, watching what I was about." + +"You _were_ a little different from your usual to-night, Mr Naylor. I +never saw you mind young ladies much before. Tonight it has been +impossible to get hold of you." + +"That may have been the young ladies' fault, my boy. It is not every +one of them who knows how to be good company. Naturally, a man at my +time of day is less susceptible to the pink and white in a +schoolgirl's face than you young fellows are. There is a time for +bread and butter, and a time for other things. Solomon says so." + +"I don't think any one should call Margaret a bread-and-butter miss," +Walter answered, hotly. + +"Margaret is a good girl, and smart--though perhaps I should not say +so, who remember her a squealing baby--but she would not care to waste +her evening in amusing an old uncle, when the fiddlers were around, +and so many young fellows to mind her." + +"And what about Boston, then? Do you mean to go? Or will you allow Mrs +Naylor to take her daughters there, and break up the very pleasant +party here?" + +"I do not see that Mrs Caleb's going to Boston would break up the +party here;" and there was a tone in Joseph's voice, as he said it, +which betokened a smile, though there was not light enough to see it. +"It is natural that she should want to get her girls away from a too +fascinating detrimental. + +"You are a sad fellow, Walter--running about the world to frighten +fond mothers, and compromise the prospects of young ladies." + +"I can afford to marry, Mr Naylor. You know it. You know all about my +circumstances and my connections. You have admitted to me that I might +fairly enough go in and win if I could." + +"I am not the girl's mother, my good fellow. If I recollect aright, I +said 'Wait.' That is what I would say to you again, after the lapse of +hardly three months. Your patience seems to me of the shortest. You +must wait, my boy--wait." + +"Wait till another fellow comes forward and unsettles her mind! Stand +aside, and let him step in and win her! Would you do that yourself?" + +"I don't know. You speak from the gentleman's point of view, you see. +It is from the lady's side, and with a view to her interests, that I +must consider things. Her mother's feeling is perfectly natural. It is +from no objection to yourself that she wishes to stave you off. +Margaret has seen nothing of the world. It is fair that she should +know what she is giving up if she marries a backwoodsman." + +"She does not object to the backwoods." + +"She has seen too little of life in the front to realise what she +would be giving up. You have influenced her fancy, and she sees with +your eyes for the moment. By-and-by she might think differently, and +if it were too late it would be bad for you both. You must really have +patience, and give her time." + +"But----" + +"Oh yes; there is plenty to say on the other side, Walter. You and I +might talk a long time, but I fear neither would convince the other. +Meanwhile, it is time we were both in bed. The lights are going out +all over the house. Good night." + +Joseph took his candle and went up-stairs. The light from a door ajar +fell on him as he threaded the dim corridor, bordered with boots of +sleeping guests. + +"Joseph!" in a vehement whisper reached his ears. He turned, and his +sister-in-law, in dressing-gown and shawl, stood before him. + +"How late you are of retiring! I have watched and waited for your +passing till I am completely knocked up. Ah! my poor back! and my head +aches dreadfully." + +"Get to bed. Late hours are always hurtful." + +"I could not lie down till I had seen you. I _must_ speak to you. And +you have lingered so long." + +"We cannot talk here--disturbing people, and being overheard. You are +scarcely in trim for the parlour. Besides, the lights are out. It is +very late, and I am awfully sleepy." + +"Come in here. Improper?--Dear me!" and Mrs Naylor smiled +sarcastically. "Our age will save our characters, Joseph, I should +think. However, I will leave the door open." + +"Well?" asked Joseph, following in reluctantly, "what is it--which +will not keep till morning? Let's cut it as short as possible." + +"Do you know that young Blount is here?" + +"Yes." + +"What are we to do?" + +"I see no occasion to do anything." + +"He may have Margaret engaged and committed any half-hour they are +alone together." + +"If she is willing, I do not see why he should not." + +"Joseph Naylor! Is that the interest you take in poor Caleb's +fatherless daughter? And you call yourself her guardian!" + +"Well? What would you have me do?" + +"Remove us at once. Then she is not compromised by any exhibition of +intimacy there may have been this evening. I have been thinking of +Nahant. It is an extravagant place, I know; but we can stop and have a +couple of days' shopping in Boston on the way. Will you arrange for +our starting by the forenoon train?" + +"To-morrow morning! Do you forget that your rooms here are engaged for +a fortnight?--could not have got them for a shorter time--and there +are still eleven days to run?" + +"I know. We must pay for the fortnight, of course. Another obligation +to add to the many we owe your favourite." + +"But you will find Nahant dull, I fear. It is not a place many +Canadians go to, and you have no New England friends. Will it not be +lonesome for you and the girls to look on at the gaieties, without +even a man to stand beside you in the crowd?" + +His sister-in-law turned and looked at him questioningly. Joseph, as +she knew, was not aggressively self-asserting, but this was +self-effacement beyond any modesty she could have believed. + +"You will do very nicely, Joseph," she said, encouragingly. "You are +presentable anywhere, and--well--almost distinguished-looking, let me +tell you; and you give our party far more weight than if you were +younger. And then you are so clever about making friends with the +nicest people within reach. We shall do capitally." + +Joseph opened his eyes and smiled, to hear his sister-in-law sum him +up to his face so patronisingly. "You are too appreciative of my small +merits, Susan. Pray spare me. But I had no idea of joining in your +escapade. Clam Beach is perfectly good enough for me. I shall not +dream of leaving it before my fortnight is up; and quite likely, if I +continue to like it, I shall stay on for three or four weeks longer." + +"Do you mean that you will let us roam away over the United +States--your poor dead brother's helpless widow and orphans--without a +protector? I could not have believed it, Joseph. But--ah! I can see it +all!--designing girl--this evening----" + +Mrs Naylor grew disjointed and confused, and finally stuck fast in the +middle of a sentence which she could not properly be said to have +begun; having merely betrayed, in her irritation, a wish "to carry the +war into Africa"--or at least, since Joseph was so unsympathetic in +her concerns, to discuss his own in a similar spirit. But there came +the look into his face of a man who will not be trifled with, and who +chooses to introduce the subject himself, when his affairs are to be +mentioned; and between surprise, and having nothing exactly to +say--though in another mood there would have been an opening for +banter and insinuation--the thread of her ideas gave way, and she +stopped short. + +Joseph's brow cleared as quickly as it had darkened, so soon as Susan +had checked herself; but he said nothing, and after waiting in silence +for a minute and a half, he turned on his heel, saying-- + +"That is all you have to tell me, I suppose? Good night." + +"Stop, Joseph! You have told me nothing. What am I to do? Do you +really mean that you will not come with us?" + +"That is what I mean." + +"You propose to keep us here against our will, and to hand that poor +misguided child Margaret over to such a fate? I would not have +believed it of you, Joseph." + +"I have no power to keep you here against your will, Susan, any more +than you have the right to drag me away against mine. If I can do +anything short of that to pleasure you, name it. My cheque-book is +freely at your service, if you insist on going to Nahant, where you +will find your expenses ten times as heavy as here." + +"I don't want your cheque-book. Poor Caleb took care we should be +provided for. And very fortunate it is, too,"--which was an ungracious +and uncalled-for observation; but all things, as Joseph thought, are +pardonable in an angry woman. + +"And what am I to do," she continued, "with this young man? He will +drive me distracted. I know he will." + +"Accept what you cannot prevent, Susan; and save yourself the worry of +struggling against the inevitable. Let them have their way. Do it +soon, and make a favour of it; and you will be in a position to +stipulate for long delay. When Walter is a year or two older, he will +have had enough of the wilds, and be willing to settle down in a +civilised neighbourhood." + +"But Margaret ought to do so much better. I cannot resign myself to +the idea of her sinking into a farmer's wife. I have a right to expect +position for her--the best the Province can afford. Why should she not +live in Toronto and lead society?"--which, perhaps, you may deem a +small ambition, my British reader; yet it is precisely what all +mankind are born to feel. Ambition is the same everywhere, but its +object varies with the latitude and longitude. There are actually +people as eager to be first in Timbuctoo and Bokhara, as any one you +may know to be of the best in London. + +"As Blount's wife," answered Joseph, "she will be all right socially; +and between what she has from her father, and what she may look for +from her uncle, she does not need to consider whether her husband is a +rich man or not." + +"I intended her to be in the middle of everything. For what else did I +take so much trouble with her education?" + +"She does not seem to mind about that herself." + +"And there were chances for her here, if Blount would have stayed +away. There is that clever Mr Wilkie, and young Walter Petty, both +evidently well inclined to her." + +"I think Margaret's preference shows good taste and good sense. Blount +is a gentleman, and his people have a property in Wales. If you want +connection, he is the best of the three." + +"He is a younger son. His prospects don't amount to much, or he would +have stayed at home; while Mr Wilkie----" + +"A worthy person. A rising man, if you like----" + +"Mrs Petty would give her eyes to get him for Ann." + +"Very likely. But he is not to compare with Blount; though I do not +blame him for that. There is a kind of person which must be born and +bred, though it is not the kind which makes its way in the world the +best. For myself, I sympathise with Margaret's taste." + +"I declare, I think that young fellow has turned your head! But he +_shan't_ be your nephew, for all his scheming, if I can prevent it.... +If you will not take us to Nahant, I suppose we must stay here. We +would have to invent so many excuses if we went straight back home; +though it would be serving Margaret just right if we did. But she +shall stay at my side and under my eye while we remain here; Mr Blount +shall gain nothing by it. The worry and botheration will injure me, I +know, and may even have the worst consequences; but it will be your +fault, Joseph Naylor, and some day, when it is too late, you will +regret it. I would not have believed that it was in you to be so +unkind." + +"Good night," said Joseph, getting away at last; and before many +minutes more, he too was one of the army of sleepers. + + + + + CHAPTER XIII. + + MAIDA SPRINGER. + + +The succeeding week was a time of depression, waiting, watching, and +general tantalisation for Margaret Naylor and Walter Blount. +Margaret's mother was more cross and more watchful than Argus or +duenna had ever been before. The only consolation--as Joseph, pitying +the lad's despair, found with some remorse that he had let fall--was, +that such preternatural vigilance could not last; or if it did, that +Margaret would be goaded to desperation and rebel. + +Interchange of glances even was denied the hapless lovers. Mrs Naylor +intercepted, so to speak, an [oe]illade in its flight across the +breakfast-room on the first morning of the siege, and sternly insisted +that her daughter should change places forthwith to the other side of +the table, and turn her back to the enemy. + +To save appearances, while acting jailer on the girl, Mrs Naylor made +a martyr of herself, and moved about under a load of superabundant +clothing--wrapping herself in shawls and wearing a wisp of knitting +upon her head on days when her brother-in-law was wishing himself a +wild Indian, that he might dress in a coat of paint. Mrs Naylor was +"poorly,"--she felt premonitions of ague, a threatening of neuralgia, +and, of course, severe "headache"; at least so the ladies agreed, on +comparing notes, after making tender inquiries--each anxious to make +sure there was nothing infectious, so as to steal away quietly before +the general panic and stampede which would ensue if there were. + +"Just a case of general all-overishness, my dears," said Mrs Carraway, +"arising from change to this bracing air, after the sickly heats of +Upper Canada. I had a touch of it myself, on coming first. There is so +much salt and ozone down here." + +"I should say it was a case of hypochondria," observed Mrs Chickenpip, +who, being serious and robust in her views, was given to cultivate +truth at the expense of charity. "I am sure we do wrong in encouraging +her to make-believe, by showing so much sympathy. If you had seen, as +I did, the breakfast she made this morning, you would think less of +her ailments." + +"That's not always a sign," said Mrs Wilkie. "Look at _me_ now. I eat +hearty. I'm always best at meal-times; but an hour after, I'm just +fairly done, and my heart thumpin' like a smiddie hammer." + +"Not at all to be wondered at," Mrs Chickenpip retorted, below her +breath. "If people will over-eat, they must expect to be +uncomfortable,"--a remark which passed unheard. + +"How do you feel to-day, Mrs Wilkie?" was more audible. It was Rose +Hillyard who spoke. + +"Ah, my dear, it's you? I'm glad to see you. I'm only so-so, between +the heat and the palpitations; but I think the homoeopathy is doing me +good. I think the lady we are speakin' about should try some of it." + +"Have you been taking any more powders?" asked Rose, smiling at the +recollection of the cloud of "poother" she had seen issue from the old +lady's mouth. + +"Just wan each day. I haven't forgot how kind you were to me the first +day. I have been better ever since." + +"You blew that one all away, I think." + +"It did me good all the same, my dear; and I won't forget your +kindness givin' it to me. And if ever I can say a good word for you, +I'll do it, ye may rely;" and the old thing actually winked, to Rose's +no small indignation--on which Lettice Deane gave her a pinch in the +arm, and ran away to hide her uproarious laughter. + +Mrs Wilkie having dispensed her morsel of patronage, drew herself up +and coughed behind her finger-tips; then, thinking that perhaps she +had shown too marked a preference among candidates, she turned to Mrs +Petty and inquired for Miss Ann, observing that she thought her a nice +girl. + +Mrs Naylor led Margaret a life which afforded her ample opportunity to +repent her perverseness, had that been possible. From the time she +left her room in the morning, she kept the girl at her side, to read +to her when she sat, or support her with an arm when she took a walk. +In the evening she kept her still at her elbow; and though she +sometimes allowed her to dance, she had her back again at her side the +moment the dance was ended. The other ladies were charmed and +impressed by these signs of so devoted an attachment between mother +and daughter, and both rose immensely in public esteem, which perhaps +consoled them in their utter boredom with one another. In her heart, +the mother would have liked to whip the intractable girl, while the +girl, in hers, was sorely tempted to run away; but public opinion and +the conventions kept both up to their pretty behaviour--and the +artist's satisfaction in doing a thing really well, and being +applauded for it, was assuredly an alleviation in the long and weary +game of make-believe. + +Mrs Wilkie praised Margaret as a good biddable girl, and confided to +every one who cared to listen, "that she would be quite pleased if +Peter would take a fancy to her; though, to be sure, there was that +Miss Hillyard, a most superior person,--and it was doubtful to which +he would incline." Mrs Petty thought her the sweetest-tempered heiress +she had ever seen, wished she could secure her for her boy Walter, and +became the inseparable companion of mother and daughter. + +By the third day of Mrs Naylor's sickness, she found herself the +recipient of so much attention, that she became quite reconciled to +her _rôle_--liked it almost--and might, I suppose, be taken as of that +curious class of people of whom it is recorded in newspapers that they +"enjoy poor health." Mrs Petty fairly laid siege to the regard of +mother and daughter, and old Mrs Wilkie sought the society of the two +mothers, who paid her unlimited attention in return, each protesting +to the other that it was quite a lark to quiz the simple soul, while +both were devoutly hoping that she would accept their blandishments in +good faith, and influence her son accordingly. Soon other ladies +joined the coterie--Mrs Deane with Lettice and Rose, and others; and +then bachelors began to hover on the confines of the circle--till the +sick lady's chair became a centre for whatever was going on. + +Walter Blount growled at being of those outside, and was very +down-hearted, though he struggled his best. He cultivated his favoured +rival Walter Petty, waylaid Lucy, who was not under surveillance, +several times a-day, and intrusted her with messages to her sister. +There was Joseph, too, from whom he could extract sympathy at least; +and then there was the sight of his charmer's back hair, always in +view at the dinner-table, reminding him how near she was, "if still so +far"--which was something, but not enough; and after a week, he +removed his base of operations to Lippenstock, a few miles along the +coast, where, being out of sight, he could mitigate the severity of +Margaret's durance, though still within touch of whatever went on at +Clam Beach. + +He might have had others, who would have been happy to distract his +thoughts, but he could think only of the one, and was indifferent to +other society; whence it arose that he spent a good deal of his time +alone, and interested many a tender heart in his behalf. + +"Who can he be?" Fanny Payson asked Lettice Deane. "And what is the +matter with him? Did you ever see so young a fellow, so handsome and +so down in the mouth, at a watering-place before? _I_ never did. He +should turn hermit, or join the Shakers. They live quite near. He is +no sort of use here, and quite out of place. He minds nobody, and I am +sure I have given him every chance." + +"He is not altogether a stranger. He has friends here. He knows the +Naylors. I see him sometimes with Lucy, and he is often with the +uncle, whom Rose Hillyard has chosen to inthral. I suspect he is only +a retiring young man, and painfully shy. What would you say to our +taking him in hand, and teaching him how nice he might become? He is a +fine manly-looking fellow, and our hands are not very full just now. +It would make us feel 'kind o' useful in our generation,' as my uncle +Zebedee says, to draw him out. Suppose you and I form ourselves into a +Geneva Red Cross Branch Society, to cure his bashfulness, and teach +him how to flirt." + +"It can't be done, Lettice. I have tried, and I guess you'll allow I'm +a qualified practitioner. The trouble I've taken! And all for nothing. +I should feel downright mean about it, if I wasn't sure the man's a +loon." + +"What brings him to Clam Beach, I wonder?" + +"That I can't imagine. But he's of no account here. He evidently +believes his eyes were only given him to see with; as for _looking_, +he has no more notion of it than a stone wall. I have given him the +very nicest and most varied opportunities--you know he sits opposite +me at table. I have tried every variety of assault, from pensive up to +arch, and he seems absolutely impervious. I doubt even if he could +distinguish me from the chair I sit on, and yet I have gone so far as +actually to ask him to pass the butter. He just looks steadily past +me, as if his attention was fixed on what went on at the table +behind." + +Maida Springer likewise observed the young misanthrope, felt +interested in him, and discussed him with Mrs Denwiddie. "He has a +history, that young man," she would say; and she would sigh as she +said it, as if to imply that there were others who had histories as +well. "It's a heart history too, and not a happy one; and he has just +come here, I do believe, to try if he can't learn to bear it. He is +seeking to drown memory with sounds of mirth and fashionable +dissipation; but he finds it a hollow mockery, just as others have +done, and he wanders down upon the wave-beat shore, and listens to the +ever-sounding sea, and it kind o' calms him, and he comes back feelin' +better--just like the rest. Ah yes!--as I have done myself." + +"You, my dear, with a history? Ah yes! to be sure. You mentioned it +one day. Your friend went away without proposin', I think you said? +It may have been mean of him--I can't say; or it may have been a +mistake of your own. Girls are so ready to fool themselves that way. +It don't folly that the man was in fault. If a man only passes them +the apple-sarse with a smile, there are women who will call it a +particular attention." + +"I didn't mention anything of the kind," the other answered tartly, +turning to go away; but no one of her friends whom she could join was +in sight, so she changed her intention, and proceeded to bestow on her +cross-grained companion "a bit of her mind." + +"You appear to think it a grand thing to have been able to get +yourself married, Mrs Denwiddie, and you seem disposed to look down on +every young woman who is still single; but you don't tell what _kind_ +of man you got, and you forget that if everybody was willing to take +what offered, there would be no single folks left. We may have been +too particular, we single women, but the married ones have no call to +despise us for that." + +"No offence, my dear," said Mrs Denwiddie, who really could not afford +to quarrel with her chief intimate. "I was just speaking in the +gineral." + +"And so was I, ma'am; and don't you forget it. I'm going home on +Friday, and as there's few you are likely to pick up with much when +I'm gone, except the single ladies, I would strongly recommend you to +respect their feelin's, and not brag too much about havin' been +married. They could have been married too, if they'd have took what +offered--like some others." + +"Hoity-toity, my dear! I said 'no offence.' But you're all that +tetchy, you old--hm--but never mind. I'm sorry you're going. I for one +will miss you. I did not think the schools at Montpelier took up so +soon. I expected that you and me would have been leaving at the same +time, in about three weeks." + +"I have arrangements to make at our ladies' college. They are adding a +class of Metaphysics and Political Economy, and Miss Rolph, our +principal, says I would get it if I wasn't so young." + +"And well you would teach economy too, my dear, to judge by the neat +way your gloves and slippers is mended. And it's a thing girls have +much need to learn, if only there was some one who knew it; but the +mothers of town-bred girls are ez extravagant mostly ez themselves. +But how old must a woman be before she is qualified to teach economy? +Strikes me, if they don't know it when they're young, they'll never +know it." + +"This is metaphysics and political economy. That means running the +State, not household management. Miss Rolph's establishment is devoted +to the higher culture. We leave the affairs of common life to +elementary schools. Miss Rolph says a woman should be forty and a +formed character before she ventures to instil these grand subjects +into the American woman of the future. I won't be thirty till my next +birthday." + +"You don't mean that, my dear? You'll be a married woman, I hope, +before you're old enough to go lecterin' about physic, on them terms. +And I don't hold with women-doctors, let me tell you. They hain't got +strength in their arms to pull out a good-sized tooth; and as for +intelleck, I can't abide a woman of intelleck. But you're different, +my dear, and you're young yet--in a way; and you do yourself +injestice, let me tell you. What makes you dress so severe? A veil +would save your eyes as good as them blue glasses you wear out of +doors, and be a sight more becomin'. You can't expect to fetch a young +man with a look that comes filterin' to him through coloured glass. +And I'd put on more style, if I was as young as you, my dear, and buy +me a new _jupong_ out of Bosting. There's nothing like stylish +clothes, my dear, when you're young; and you'll never be younger." + +Maida felt positively grateful and soothed at the old woman's prattle. +It takes so very small a crumb of personal interest to cheer and warm +the hearts of lonely ones. The schoolma'am was by herself in the +world, earning her own living, and battling her solitary way in life. +Those among whom she lived employed her at what she could do, paid +her, and that was the end of it. They had their own concerns and +interests. When Maida's work was done, they let her go her way,--a +drop in the river, a unit in the crowd, into whose life they were not +called on to intrude, and who would have shrunk from pushing herself +into theirs. She could have kissed Mrs Denwiddie, had the situation +been more favourable; as it was, she drew closer to her in their walk +upon the sands, rubbing against her dumbly, as the animals do when +they find a friend, and felt warmed in doing it. + +Mrs Denwiddie understood, and a motherly instinct awoke within her, +which was new and pleasant--a fresh interest in the monotony of a life +in which the bells for meals had been the only landmark. + + + + + CHAPTER XIV. + + SUNSET AND MOONSHINE. + + +Friday arrived, the omnibus came round to the door, and Maida Springer +bade Mrs Denwiddie farewell. Circumstances had made these two +intimate, though they had little in common. Both were solitary, and +neither had the talent of attracting strangers. They were a mutual +resource, keeping each other in countenance, and enabling both to mix +in the general company without the apologetic feeling which either +would have experienced had she been alone. They had grown to have a +kindness for each other; and it was with quite a warm embrace and a +moistening of the eye that they parted, each feeling the world emptier +for the absence of the other. + +The omnibus started in the afternoon, trundling leisurely along the +quiet country roads, stopping here and there by the way to put down or +take up baskets and an occasional passenger; and on reaching Narwhal +Junction it remained there for some hours, till a train from the +North, another from the South, and a third going West, should all have +come in. + +Maida procured a paper at the bookstall, and sat down on the platform +to await her train, which was the latest of the three. There was not +much in the paper--there never is, when one tries to read it against +time; but there were a few arrivals and departures by the other +trains, to break the tedium; and as the dusty afternoon wore by, and +the lengthening purple shadows stole out from their lurking-places in +the woods and under the hill-tops, there was enough to interest any +one who had eyes to see. + +The Junction stood on a middle level, near the edge of a wide extent +of cultivated land which sloped down towards a quiet river flowing +away behind; and beyond that were low swelling hills, covered with +woods, shining like bronze where they caught the slanting light, and +melting into waves of blue below the horizon. In front, toward the +south-west, the land sloped up to meet the shadows of overhanging +thickets, dipping down on the right where a brook in its rocky dell +escaped from the mountain country farther back, filling the air with +sound, and babbled onward to the river among the fields. Hills shaggy +with bush and boulder concealed the streamlet's source; and behind, a +heaven-piercing peak lifted its reddened profile to the light, while +blue dim greyness veiled its storm-scarred bosom. A mile distant, on +the right, the village of Narwhal, with its little tin steeple +twinkling like a star, was seated where the brook and river met, +weltering with its surrounding fields in a haze of gold and crimson, +with purpled woods behind, and all the glorious pomp of sinking day +above it and beyond--the saffron-coloured sky, the waiting flakes of +cloud, flashing in scarlet fire to let the sun-god pass, and then to +draw the curtain on his exit. + +The level crimson rays shot for a space along the glorified valley, +kindling the distant reaches of the river into flame, and impurpling +the long-drawn shadows with the hue of violets; and then the pageant +vanished like a dream. Cool, low-toned greys stole out along the +river; the rosy day-dream of the village paled into common wreaths of +thin blue smoke; the starry twinkle of the steeple-vane went out in a +moment, like an extinguished spark. The cirrhus clouds high up in the +zenith, or far off in the cool east, still showed a rosy tint; but +excepting these, the war of the giants--the ever-recurring tragedy of +light and darkness--had played itself to an end. Already the shadows +of the night were out among the hills, and stealing down in troops to +overspread the land. + +Maida stood and watched the spectacle. She was abundantly read in the +literature of the magazines. The Solar Myth had always impressed her, +and now the pomp of sunset recalled the story of Herakles, enthralled +in Nessus' shirt, leaping on the altar and vanishing in flame. "The +end of a hero!" she whispered to herself, there being no one else to +hear--though, if there had been, it would have made no difference. +Being a free-born American, she felt no false shame about giving +utterance to her thoughts, however high-stepping they might sound at +times. If her auditor did not appreciate, it only showed his dulness. + +She had removed her spectacles some time before, when the daylight +grew less glaring. Her hat was pushed back, and her hair rumpled out +of its usual primness. The pinched, worn, and disappointed set of her +features--the livery of hard-worked governesses--was lost for the +moment in the sweet light reflected from the rosy clouds, and the +natural intelligence always dwelling in her eyes was now warmed into +enthusiasm over the drama of the elements. She looked pleasing, and +even pretty, for the moment--her figure slight and girlish, rather +than skinny, as it had appeared at times under the trying contrasts of +the crowded hotel. In the elation of her feelings she stood erect with +head well up, and altogether different from the neglected schoolma'am +of other times. Wherever the divine gift of intelligence resides, +there are possibilities of beauty; and the mantle of the flesh at +times will fall into graceful lines, even though the bufferings of +circumstance may toss and twist it awry in the general. We are lamps +of clay through which the inner brightness shines more or less +clearly; and it is or the flame's being trimmed, or burning low, that +good looks worth the having mostly depend. + +There was a whistle up the track, and presently, with a tempestuous +rush which made the station tremble, a train swept up to the platform +and stopped. A big bell was jangled in front of the dining-room, +and nasal voices yelled--"Narwhal Junction! Twenty minutes for +ree-freshment!" The passengers alighted and hurried across the +platform, and Maida bade adieu to her musings and hastened to get her +luggage checked for her journey. + +A gentleman was coming from the distant end of the train. He too was +hastening, but in the opposite direction. Both were intent on their +own affairs, the platform was crowded, and ere they knew it, each was +in the other's arms. Both recoiled, and stood to recover breath and +apologise. Both looked. Both started in surprise. + +"Gilbert Roe!" It was the lady who was the first to speak. + +"Maida----?" responded the gentleman, and then he looked apologetic. +He might be taking a liberty, he thought, and looked about to see if +there was a husband to resent so familiar a use of his wife's name. +"Are you travelling alone?" he asked, after a minute's silence, during +which the lady's eyes had been so intently busy with him that she +forgot to speak. + +"You look older," she said at last. "Of course you must, after ten +years' absence; but you are only improved--broad-chested and +prosperous-looking;" and she wrung his hand in an intensity of +welcome. "Where are you travelling to? What a strange place to meet +in! Were you coming to----" but she did not finish her sentence. It +occurred to her that it was her friend's turn to say something now. + +"I am on my way to Clam Beach," he answered. "I shall put in a few +days there, and then try some of the other places along the coast. +Have been at several already. Not much account, any of them; but this +is the season for being away. Nothing astir in Chicago at this time of +year." + +"Clam Beach? I've come from there. You'll find it pleasant. The house +is full; but of course they can put up a single gentleman." + +"You are there? Come, that's nice! I declare I'm in luck at last. My +trip has been real lonesome, so far. I have been so long West that I +have lost sight of my old friends, and can't scare up one, now I want +'em." + +"You don't deserve to, if you serve them all as you did me. How many +years is it since you wrote last, do you think? It's eight." + +"Eight years? Ah, well, but that is different," he answered, with a +laugh. "Who is with you at Clam Beach?" + +"Who would be? The teachers at our college are mostly home with their +friends. I'm an orphan, as you know, and I don't make very free with +strangers; so I come to the shore, like other folks who have no +friends to visit;" and she heaved a little sigh, but not a painful +one. If life had been rather empty for her, that was forgotten now; +"over," I daresay she would have said just then, if her feelings had +fallen into words, for her eyes were on his face, her lips were +parted, and her countenance was alight, more brightly than when the +sunset clouds had lit it up a while ago. This was a rosier, warmer +light, shining from within. It transfigured her for the moment, +casting back the gathering years with their encrusting vapours, and +disclosed her again as the enthusiastic maiden from whom the young man +had parted ten years before, but purified and brightened by the +struggles, and the victories, and the wisdom painfully acquired--for +the moment, that is: there are no tabernacles or abiding-places on our +mounts of transfiguration, and their glories are evanescent. + +"You mean that you are still unmarried? Strange!" + +"Strange that a woman should keep her troth, Gilbert? There came no +word of your death. I only had patience--only waited, just as any +right woman would have done." + +"Hm----" It was not the answer which Gilbert had anticipated, if +indeed he anticipated any. It startled him, and made him look more +carefully in her face. Illuminated by the momentary exaltation of her +nerves, she really looked attractive then, and there was a glowing +warmth in her eyes resting on his own which thrilled him, and held him +in a spell not to be shaken off, though he tried. It turned back the +pages of his memory and opened a far-back chapter where ardent +passages were inscribed--a chapter broken off in the middle; and then +a leaf had been turned, and new chapters with new interests and new +ardours had written themselves in--the stirring interests and eager +ardours of an intenser life--and the old chapter had remained +unfinished, and even the part written had been forgot. + +Now, the old passage was again before him, and he felt a drawing back +to the old-time idyl, and an impulse to carry it on and complete it. +Yet there was a thinness in this proffered draught of love, which did +not now as of old attract his sophisticated palate. It seemed like +whey to the shepherd's son who has sojourned in cities and revelled in +stronger drinks--wholesome, but not exhilarating. The bowl was at his +lips, but he hesitated to drink. His glance waxed unsteady beneath the +gaze of blissful trust which beamed on him. He coughed again to break +the confusing silence, and would have spoken, but he could think of +nothing to say. + +And then the damsel's look grew clouded, in sympathy with, or in +consequence of, his confusion; and with a little gasping sob and a +tighter clutch at his hand, which she still was holding, she spoke, +half whispering-- + +"And you? You--you are not married, Gilbert?" and her eyes rose +shrinkingly to his face, with an eager frightened look, as if she +dreaded to hear his answer. + +"N--no--that is--no--certainly not! What makes you suppose such +things? I have no thought----Tush! you put me out asking ridiculous +questions. I forget what I am saying;" and he laughed uneasily, +looking most unnecessarily confused over so simple an avowal. + +His confusion was unnoticed, however. Maida looked up in his face once +more, as trustingly as ever; or more so, for now there was the triumph +of proud possession. Her ten years' waiting was accomplished; her love +was come to claim her. The stony road she had been travelling so +wearily and alone, was behind her now. It grew radiant in retrospect +by the light of the joy she had now attained, even as the toils of +battle seem glorious in the lustre of the victory which they have +achieved. Her love was come to claim her! She stood up closer and +looked into his face, with upturned lips, awaiting the seal of their +reunion. + +It did not come. The omnibus was drawing up at the platform, and +Gilbert, calling a porter, turned away to point out his luggage. Maida +went in pursuit of her own, and to the surprise of the driver, had it +restored to the place on the roof whence it had been lifted an hour or +two before, and then followed Gilbert inside, to return to Clam Beach. + + + + + CHAPTER XV. + + IN AN OMNIBUS. + + +The daylight was stealing swiftly yet imperceptibly away. There was no +moon, and the occupants of the omnibus were speedily wrapped in gloom. +Besides the two we know of, there were others sitting in silence, and +in wait for anything to amuse them on the monotonous journey. The +vehicle rolled easily along the sandy road, without noise or jar to +drown the sound of conversation, and Maida dared not give voice to the +many things with which her happy heart was overflowing, before the +inquisitive strangers, while Gilbert was far from indisposed to hold +his tongue. + +To participate with enthusiasm in a _réchauffé_ of feeling, after ten +years, and in other scenes and circumstances, demands an effort. If +the feeling has been one merely of friendship, such participation is +no doubt possible--nay, the long interval lends an atmosphere of +pensive charm to the revival, clothes it in roseate hues, and tempts +one, in looking down the vista of the years, to see the bond as closer +than it really was. But if the friendship was one "touched with +emotion," as it mostly is when the parties are a young man and a maid, +it is different. The aroma of such a tie is far too subtile and +evanescent to survive much keeping. Cherish the memories ever so +carefully, as Maida had done, it is only like the storing away of +roseleaves. The perfume waxes even stronger, but it is not the same; +it is musty and heavy, like spice or drugs--a mummy of the old sweet +breath of flowers. Cherish not, as was Gilbert's case, and what is +left? The roses have withered, the petals crumbled and blown away, and +what remains but the memory of a remembrance? + +Had this meeting come ten years later, when the effervescence of the +emotions, and the expectation of new sweetness still to be extracted +from the dregs of youth, had subsided, then doubtless it would have +been pleasant to recur to a tender friendship, and to trick it out in +such shreds of sentiment as could be picked from out the lumber of the +past. Self-love and self-pity would have delighted to dwell on such a +memento of departed youth, when the time for new attachments had +passed away. But at thirty a man is still young, except to his +juniors. There may yet be loves and friendships to come, more precious +than any which have gone before. He looks back upon his past as a mere +introduction to his full-fledged present--the raw and callow time of +his probation--and early kindnesses seem pale, watery, and insipid. + +Gilbert was pleased enough to meet an old friend; especially just +then, when he was bound for a pleasure resort, where, as always, those +who have friends are tempted to season their social enjoyments with as +much exclusiveness as they can afford, and enhance the satisfaction of +being within the ring, by keeping as many as possible outside. But +this new-found friend claimed so much for their intimacy in the +past--so much which was special and particular, and for which he +really doubted in himself if there had been warrant. It was an affair +of ten years ago. Since then he had led a busy life, overflowing with +all the excitements; and he wondered now if there could have been +ground for the meaning she appeared to attribute to it. There might +have been once, or there nearly might have been--and if the intimacy +had lasted longer, perhaps there _would_ have been; but they had now +been ten years apart, and who could resurrect a sentiment buried under +ten years of oblivion? There had been time for many another tenderness +since then. And were not attachments like the herbage of the fields, +of which each season produces its own luxuriant crop? Besides, +since then a plant more vigorous than any had sprung up, one with +deeper-reaching root and wider branches, which had usurped the space +and choked all weaker growths. It was a plant whose fruit had been +tart as well as sweet; but the complex flavour of it had made his +palate critical, and anything more luscious would be mawkish now. +Again, had she not been a little abrupt? Was it nice in her to speak +so openly--to step so unhesitatingly across the chasm of a ten years' +separation, into a past as to which he really had forgotten the +particulars? He doubted if that past had been as she would represent +it; and even if it had, was it maidenly in her to be the first to +speak of it? + +Still, he was going amongst strangers. This old friend would be a +resource, and would help to break the ice for him; and no doubt, with +judgment, he would be able to lead her into seeing things as they +were, instead of as she wished them to be. And after all, it was a +kindly trait in her to have remembered him so long, poor girl! He +hoped it had not interfered with her prospects, much, or made her +measure others who were candidates for her favour by too high a +standard. Yet it was well, perhaps, to have a high standard, "a noble +ideal." That was the way it was expressed by the winter-evening +lecturers, and the magazine writers; who, as far as he recollected, +always spoke of it as "precious." And he spread himself a little wider +in his dark corner of the omnibus, expanded his chest, and felt +pleased with himself in the new character of "element in a woman's +higher culture." Ah! what a fellow he was, to be sure! If the girls +did see his perfections, poor things, it was not his fault. It showed +only that they had eyes to see, and he could not wish them blind. It +was impossible, of course, that he could be in love with them all; but +it was consoling to think that, in being a "noble ideal," he was +conferring a moral benefit on those whose attachment he could not +return. And through his mind there ran the familiar lines-- + + + "'Tis better to have loved and lost, + Than never to have loved at all." + + +And he sighed contentedly, feeling very kindly towards poor Maida +Springer. + +Maida sat in the opposite corner of the omnibus, tumultuously happy. +She felt garrulous at first in her elation, but the presence of +fellow-passengers--staid country folks, who did not speak, but looked +inquisitively at her and her friend, as strangers in those parts, and +then communicated with each other in interjectional observations about +the crops--compelled her to silence; and she had so much to fill her +thoughts, that soon she fell into a delightful reverie, and had no +wish to converse. + +As the daylight grew more dim, she lost sight of her recovered +Gilbert; but there he sat before her, all the same--his outline clear +against the quiet sky seen through the open window, broad-shouldered, +tall and strong, a very rock of manhood; and every thread and tendril +of her heart seemed to go out and twine itself around him, as she sat +nestled in spirit within his shadow, in a passion of trusting +adoration. + +How fine of him to have kept true through all the years!--through +vicissitudes and seductions such as she could not imagine or +particularise, but which yet must have been most trying. And now they +were re-united. And yet, how diffident and even shy he had seemed, at +meeting her! and with so little to say. Depth of feeling!--to which +language was too poor to give expression. It was beautiful. And what a +joy for her, by-and-by, to lend his dumb soul language!--and to +encourage his faltering emotions to body themselves in words. + +"Douglas! Douglas! tender and true!" were the words which kept hymning +themselves through her brain in a continuous rapture. Ah, what a hero! +and how goodly was his shadow! It seemed but yesterday that they had +parted. Ten years of dreariness, the worries and petty scufflings, +small aims and smaller disappointments, which had seemed so long and +dull and wearing in their passage, were all forgot and put away, like +the flatness of a rainy afternoon, when it is over. She was in her +teens again, strolling in the fields with Gilbert on Sunday +afternoons, or reading with him on winter nights in the parlour of his +uncle's homestead, when the children, her charges, were gone to bed. + +The air from the fields blew in through the open windows, as the +omnibus lumbered on, dewy and cool, and sweet with the scent of +second-growth clover; and she thought of the humming of bees, and the +sunshine and the peace of the long vacation, when Gilbert was home +from college, and their talks about the world, and books, and college +lore, which had been so inspiring, and had filled her with ambitions, +and tempted her to break from rustic life, and work and struggle, till +now she was a professor in the Female College of Montpelier. What poor +dry husks it had all appeared to her but that very morning! And now it +was past, clean vanished out of her life; and she felt like a moth +when it casts the chrysalis and spreads its wings to sport upon the +scented air. The wonder of it all! and the beauty! Now that they were +past, she would not have had the times of dark probation shortened by +a day. + +The omnibus jogged tranquilly on its way in the sweet summer night, +diverging here and there to drop a passenger at his own gate, and then +resuming its course, no one remonstrating at delay or seeking to +quicken the pace. The casuals were all and severally deposited at +last. A little longer, and the journey was completed; the dark bulk of +the hotel, with its countless lights in ranges long-drawn-out and +twinkling tier on tier, a garish illumination intruding on the +stillness and mystery of night, loomed up before them, and the +travellers drew rein before the entrance at Clam Beach. + +It was almost with regret that the two found themselves at their +journey's end, so pleasant had it been; and yet they had not exchanged +a word. Their musings, different as they were, had been alike +pleasurably engrossing, and alike productive in each of kindness for +the other. No two people could have been mutually better disposed than +were Gilbert and Maida as he handed her out, and waving the porter +aside, insisted on carrying in her rugs with his own hands. + +"Maidy Springer! you back!" was ejaculated, as Maida reached the +hall-way landing; and out of the darkness of the outside gallery +swooped Mrs Denwiddie in a whirlwind of flapping drapery, enveloping +Maida in a cloud of kisses and black grenadine. + +"So glad to have you back again, my dear. It's been real lonesome this +afternoon without you. But what has brought you? I thought you were +gone to be made a doctoress of philosophy,--and here you are again; +and not alone either! Is that the philosophy we study? No better than +the rest, for all your learning. It's woman's subjick you incline to +after all--a young man--when you can get him. Sly-boots! And me never +to suspect it. It's not an hour since I was argying with that stuck-up +old Mrs Wilkie, and insistin' that you was all intelleck; and here you +are, back with a gentleman to disprove my words." + +Maida felt doubtful how she should reply, and but for the joy which +filled her she would have resented the other's inquisitive freedom. It +seemed to her at that moment, however, that nothing could ever vex her +more, and a reproachful look was all she could call up, by way of +self-assertion. + +"Well, yes, my dear," the widow answered to the look, "I'll own to it. +I _am_ making free. But it comes of the interest I feel in you; though +many's the spat you and me has had together. But who's the gentleman? +A mighty fine man. Is it HIM? the one you kind of let on about, that +was away making a fortune to marry you on? Sakes alive, now! Ain't +that pretty! If this ain't true love, there's no sich thing. And so +little as you said! And so despondent-like you used to seem! I reely +thought the whole a flam, and you just makin' believe a bit, because +the gentlemen here didn't much mind you. And now, perhaps, you'll be +married the first, for all the airs some tries to put on." And again +she pumped Maida's hands up and down by way of congratulation. + +"And now, my dear," the widow resumed, "you must make me acquainted +with the gentleman himself. I'm fairly dyin' to know him. So true and +so constant! I wonder if there's more like him where he comes from. I +never saw the man myself would be so faithful. But maybe it's +yourself, Maidy Springer, has some knack of bindin' them to you; +though that's a notion never struck me before." + +Maida smiled and held up her chin, while her eyes modestly sought the +ground. She mentioned that she and her friend were going to supper, +and if Mrs Denwiddie cared to accompany her to the dining-room, she +would introduce Mr Roe. That gentleman reappearing at the moment, the +three went in together, and Mrs Denwiddie's sentimental tendencies had +a treat in watching over the reunion and refreshment of two faithful +lovers. Her eyes dwelt on the face of the gentleman with smiles of +motherly solicitude, and she ministered to his wants whenever the +waiter turned his back, passing him the sugar-basin, handing him jam +and pickles, and pointing out the nicest kinds of cake, in a way as +troublesome as it was well intended. + +Maida was in glory--too happy to eat or drink. Her credit among women +was vindicated at last. Evidence of her prowess was there present; the +victim, a man of six feet stature, acknowledging her silken fetters. +No one would ever say "old maid" to her again, or think it. She was +transferred from the forlorn to the triumphant division of her sex, +and it was altogether "just too delightful." Her merit, even in her +own eyes, took new proportions. How true she must have been, and +constant! And she began to perceive what a very superior nature was +hers, to have cherished this beloved image for ten long years. And +yet, in her modesty, she had been as little aware of the tenacity of +her affection as of the enduring influence of her conquering charms. +To think that she could have loved and waited so long! As if, poor +soul, there had since appeared in her life any man on whom to bestow +the treasure of her love. She had not hoped, far less expected, this +felicity. The memory of ten years back had been but the remembered +gleam of sunshine in a clouded existence, to be recurred to when other +women flaunted their successes before her eyes--a testimony that she, +too, had had her sip of love. Her soul overflowed with gratitude to +this champion who had vindicated her equality with other women to +herself and them, with humble trustful devotion. + +The sensations were all so new as yet. By-and-by, doubtless, when +ideas had had time to ferment, it would be different. Victorious +beauty would as usual demand its dues, trifle with the captive's +chains, and play at being imperious and exacting. For the present the +game was all too new; she was too happy for common food, and pastured +her eyes on the goodly proportions of her hero--his noble brow, his +moustache, his nose, and all his manifold perfections. Timidly she +pushed the buttered toast within his reach, and the anchovy paste, and +watched the carefully divided mouthfuls of his meal as they were made +away with. + +Maida's heart was too full for speech, Gilbert's jaws were employed in +mastication; wherefore they sat in silence, and Mrs Denwiddie, facing +them with attentive eyes, was forced to feed her curiosity with +sympathetic fancies. + +"How much the poor dears must be thinking, when they speak so little! +and how devoted Maida is, to be sure, pressing toast and anchovy upon +her companion, and never touching a morsel herself! And what a very +fine man the gentleman is, to be sure! And as for Maida herself, she +really is not at all amiss--quite spry, in fact, and with a good +colour, if she do be a little thin. But that will mend soon. There's +nothing like a good heart to put flesh on the bones." + + + + + CHAPTER XVI. + + LIPPENSTOCK BAY. + + +The next morning early, ere yet the last night's arrivals were astir, +there was bustle in the hotel. Omnibuses, carriages, buggies, and a +few saddle-horses, waited before the door, and soon a loquacious +company of pleasure-seekers, comprising three-fourths of all the +guests, came down and were borne away. + +Joseph Naylor had the buggy which led, Rose Hillyard by his side, as +nearly always happened now--though he had many competitors who strove +hard to supplant him. His luck or good management was remarkable; for +somehow, though the lady was conspicuously gracious and encouraging to +the rest, it was nearly always to him that it fell to escort her. Lucy +Naylor and Lettice Deane were provided each with a horse and a +cavalier; Margaret, in her riding-habit, was following; Peter Wilkie +sprang forward to hold her stirrup, but it felt so warm that she +changed her mind and followed her mother into a carriage, which +changeableness the latter was far from approving; but Mrs Petty was +beside her, and young Walter on the box, so nothing could be said, and +if Peter's mother muttered "whimsical monkey," and looked cross, +nobody minded. In ten minutes every one had mounted or scrambled into +a place, and the company started away. + +The air was still. The sea stretched like a mirror beneath the limpid +sky, repeating in livelier tones its cerulean blueness and the pearly +brightness of the clouds, save near the shore, where the reflections +grew troubled in the swinging of the glassy swell which broke and +crumbled in a fringe of glittering surf. There was no breeze, but the +sun was low as yet, and the coolness of night still lingered in the +air with a pleasant saltness and the scent of fresh sea-wrack cast up +along the shore. It was a charming drive, that summer morning, along +the even firmness of the beach, so smooth, and free from noise, jolt, +or rattle. The fall of the horses' feet was scarcely audible, and the +air was astir with the plashing of the breakers in faint monotonous +resonance, a low and unobtrusive accompaniment to the blithesome +voices of the merry-makers as they wended along. + +The motion was smooth, but the progress was not rapid. The sand was +heavy beneath the wheels and the horses' feet, and offered a dead +impediment to speed. But speed was not a thing to be greatly desired. +The morning, with its brightness, its freshness, and its waxing +warmth, was something to be lingered in, and breathed with long deep +inspirations of enjoyment; and no one thought of haste or complained +of delay, though it took an hour to do the five miles' distance which +brought them to Lippenstock Bay and the wooden jetty, where a +steamboat was waiting to take them on board. Out upon the water was a +new and fresh sensation, and one which arrived just as the other was +losing its charm. The sands, when they left them, were not as cool as +they had been an hour before--the genial warmth was beginning to verge +on heat; and the party crowded on board with enthusiasm, in haste to +secure commodious corners and lounge at ease, inhaling new freshness +as the boat put off from the shore with a screech like the cry of a +sea-gull, and breasted the glassy waters on its voyage round the bay. + +Lippenstock Bay is an inlet of eight miles' width, running deep into +the land, and guarded at its mouth by a double row of islands, which +shelter it from the outer ocean, breaking the lines of westward-driven +billows, and rendering it a sheltered roadstead in all weathers. It +cuts into the gently swelling country which comes down upon the sea, +with its sandy pasture-tracks, and scattered farmhouses nestling in +sheltered spots among meadows and shady trees, so snug and thrifty, +but, alas for the landscape! so aglare with whitewash. If ever the +spirit of the picturesque shall invade those shores, her first +exploit, I fear, will be to scatter something of neglect, if not +decay, upon the scene. In that transparent atmosphere, with its sharp +uncompromising lights and shadows, the human element of the present is +aggressively manifest. Each dwelling, in its flagrant paint or +whiteness, obtrudes itself upon the eye, and insists on being counted +in, one more residence of a citizen of the Great Republic. The fields +and roads, the fences and blocks of bush, are scrupulously +rectangular, without one softening curve: illustrated in the varying +greens and yellows of the different crops, the country looks as if it +were covered with a vast patch bed-quilt. + +The hills of the rougher country, backed by the blue outline of +distant mountains, come into view at the upper end of the bay, basking +sweetly in the light, and clothed in pearly greys where their verdure +falls in shadow. They relieve the scene from the sense of vulgar +commonplace which the rawness of nearer objects might impose, and +above is the immeasurable vault filled with transparent air suffused +with brightness, including all, and reducing stretches of monotonous +country within symmetrical limits. The hills behind send down a spur +across the lower levels to the sea. This ends in a ridge which enters +the head of the bay, and on it stands the pretty old town of +Lippenstock. + +Lippenstock is one of the oldest settlements on the Atlantic coast; +and being old, it is rich in the mellowness of tone so sadly wanting +in other places. Having grown with the community, it harmonises like a +natural production with surrounding nature, free from the harsh +obtrusiveness of a brand-new construction, and might almost be a +cutting from the Old World ingrafted on the still scarce-ripened New. +Clustered on its tongue of land, it stretches out into the blue deep +water, a lesser bay margined with yellow sand confining and compacting +it on either hand; fringed on three sides with wharfs, whose tar-black +timbers lend a solid definition to the base from which it rises, in +blocks of russet brown, red brick, and grimy stone, with roofs and +steeples rising tier on tier in jagged outline backward and upward, +spreading as they recede, in every tone of blue and purple grey, among +the tops of the embowering elms which line the quiet streets. A ship +or two is moored along the quays; for the drowsy place has +considerable trade, and fishing-boats, with half-reefed umber sails +and their red-shirted crews, are sleeping on the water. + +The throbbing of the steamer's engine sounded far and wide across the +tranquil calm, the gurgling waters parting at its bow and speeding +backward in a trail of troubled undulations. The air seemed quickened +into life by the motion, and fanned the voyagers gently as they +reclined upon the deck, steeping themselves in sunshine, which, now +they were on the water, seemed less ardent than it had been ashore. + +Mrs Naylor, being an invalid, had had her choice of places. Reclining +near the bow, where the air was untainted by engine-room vapours, she +sat in the shadow of her white umbrella in perfect comfort, Margaret +beside her, with her book and fan and other paraphernalia at hand when +wanted. + +At Margaret's elbow, leaning against the bulwarks, stood Walter Petty +in watchful patience, waiting for something to say when opportunity +should arise, though his mind felt too blank to originate an +observation, while he watched and admired in a worshipful silence +which ought to have gratified her if she had understood it; but she +did not. She liked him as a young fellow always kind and nice, but he +bored her, rather, with his superfluity of still life and lack of +initiative; or, to put it plainly, she found him much too diffident +and young. + +He was three years older than herself, it is true, and was looked on +as a wonder of readiness and knowledge by his compeers among the +budding lawyers of Toronto; but then he was in love, poor lad, in his +first and earliest passion, which is like the measles, and deals more +hardly with a man, when, having passed him by before, it falls on him +out of season. He had studied hard, and his ambition had been so +entirely in his profession that he had had no thought to waste upon +young ladies; and often had he scoffed and pitied, to see the +ridiculous figure his fellows cut in the ecstasies of their calf-love. +He had listened to their idiotic raptures of hope and despair, and +wondered how rational creatures could become such fools. Now, the fate +had fallen on himself. It is decreed that man shall once in his life +make an ass of himself in dealing with the other sex, however wise and +prudent he may be in commerce with his own; and the man who never does +so stumble must be a wiseacre, or worse, an imperfect organism, from +whose construction the heart or the ideal impulses have been omitted. + +Walter's hot fits and cold were like an ague, and left him as limp and +powerless as an ague would. The briskest and most talkative of his set +at other times, he found his mind under this new influence dried up +and sterile, without an idea fit to put in words, now when he was most +anxious to be amusing and to shine. His being seemed turned into a +pool of receptivity, absorbing the worshipped image, but unable to +give back a reflection. He was happy where he stood, within range of +so much sweet influence, but he was scarcely agreeable; he had nothing +to say, and he still retained sufficient common-sense to feel a little +foolish. + +Peter Wilkie, sitting beside him on a coil of rope, was under no such +disadvantage. His feelings were in no wise overpowering, only +sufficient to make him wish to be at his best. He had had both measles +and calf-love in their appointed season, and in such easy form as his +constitution allowed. He had been in love many times, according to his +capacity--an easy-going and pleasant acceleration of the pulses, +mental and bodily, without fever or foolishness of any kind. The thing +ran its course, and went off again as judgment advised, leaving him +none the worse, and ready to begin the pretty game again on proper +occasion. + +Mr Peter considered Margaret a remarkably fine girl--handsome, clever, +and with money--who would do him credit as a wife, if he should make +up his mind to take her. He had very nearly done so. He would have +done so, but that there was another, a competing beauty, as eligible, +seemingly, in all respects, and still more attractive. Miss Hillyard +was quite as handsome; and if Clam Beach knew less about her fortune, +that was the natural consequence of her being from Chicago. Her dress +and appointments betokened wealth; and he had gathered from the +American boarders that the Deanes, with whom she travelled, were +people of note, and very rich. Her complete self-possession showed +both that she had lived in the world, and had held a good place in it; +and, for herself, she was perhaps handsomer than the other. Their +styles were so different that they could not be compared; but if +anything, he preferred Miss Hillyard's. Being sandy-haired and +pale-eyed himself, the brilliant brunette, with her rich colour, +bright eyes, and abundant hair, had the attraction which lies in +opposites; and then her conversation and manner were so much more +formed and matured than were Margaret's. She was a woman, in fact, +while the other was a girl, and, he fancied, would suit him better as +a companion. + +Miss Hillyard, however, was at the other end of the boat with Mr +Naylor, as she so often was now--"Why did she waste so much of her +company on that old cod?" he wondered--in the centre of a knot of +young people, whose frequent laughter showed that the conversation was +general. + +Margaret was before him, and glancing up at her where she sat, he +doubted if anything could be prettier than the picture she made, under +the shadow of her broad-leafed hat, bound with a copious scarf. She +had little colour; but the healthy pallor harmonised with the blueness +of her violet eyes, and the brown hair escaping into sunshine behind +her ear, and flashing like ruddy gold. The colour of her eyes repeated +itself in the handkerchief knotted at her throat; and her Holland +riding-habit, fitting without a crease, displayed to perfection the +lithe young figure, with arms so free and supple. "C[oe]lebs in search +of a wife" began to doubt if this damsel were not the better choice. +He coughed to clear his voice, and proceeded to make conversation in +his best manner. + +He talked about the scenery. The bay reminded him of the Bay of +Salerno, and every other bay, seemingly, which he had ever seen in +distant places--especially in the Mediterranean--which sounded +picturesque and romantic to Margaret, who had never been out of Canada +till now, and tended to impress her with his merit as an accomplished +traveller and man of the world. He had maundered eastward as far as +the Gulf of Corinth, and even alluded casually to the Golden Horn, +with the intention of taking it next, waxing eloquent over the glories +of Constantinople, and favouring her with recollections and anecdotes +of Eastern life, when Petty, standing by disgusted at his exclusion +from a conversation in which he could not gain standing-room, cried +out-- + +"See! they are actually launching a big sail-boat up the cove yonder. +What can people want with a sail-boat in a calm like this?" + +Margaret started and turned round, regardless of the coast of Greece, +Dardanelles, and Bosphorus, about which she had been expecting to +hear. + +"Where are they launching a boat, Mr Petty? Pray show me;" and there +came a flush to her cheek, and she looked at him so brightly with a +grateful smile, that the young fellow's heart beat faster than before, +and he was very happy. + +"Do you think they will make out to sail to-day? I wish there would +spring up a little wind. Do you not think they will manage to get +along, Mr Petty, with skilful steering?" + +"I fear, if they do not get under way, they will have little +opportunity to steer. When a boat is lying at rest in the water, it +does not make any difference how you turn the helm. But see! they are +taking out the oars. They will kill themselves in this hot weather. +Two men to go rowing a heavy boat like that!" + +"Ah, poor fellows! And how they tug and strain to get the great +unwieldy thing in motion! They will kill themselves, toiling in the +heat--get sunstroke perhaps. How I wish----" but here she stopped +short. Perhaps she knew in her heart that she did not wish the thing +she had been going to say, or perhaps she thought best to keep her own +counsel. She clutched her hands, and wrung them a little, but not +enough to be remarkable, and watched the boat. + +"What makes her take such interest in the boat?" said Peter within +himself. "It sounded as if she wished they had not gone out. But who +are they, that she should wish about them? Or perhaps she was wishing +that she had not made them go. Ha! that must be it. How eagerly she +turned to look when Petty spoke! And who could recognise any one at +this distance? Aha! I smell a rat--a lover--a rival. Have a care, +Master Peter, or you will miss your footing. Propose and be refused, +and look like a fool! Take time, and make sure before you leap." + +Walter Petty had heard Margaret's exclamation likewise, but it +affected him differently. Either he was too much interested in the +young lady, or he was too little interested and hopeful for himself. +He had always thought of himself as but a poor creature by the side of +Margaret. All that he perceived was, that Margaret took an interest in +the boat which he had pointed out, and seemed uneasy about its men +working so hard. Why she should be uneasy he did not stop to inquire. +It might be the holy pity of her nature, which sympathised with the +toils and sufferings of all mankind in a way beyond his ken. It might +be anything. He only saw that she was troubled and anxious about that +boat and its occupants, and he hastened to mitigate her anxiety. + +"It will not be so very hard when they get the boat under way," he +said. "Already it goes easier; and see how well they row! They are +experienced hands. No; never fear. They will not hurt themselves. And +see, out there upon the bay, those moving clouded places! 'Cats'-paws' +the sailors call them. They are caused by a puff of air striking the +water. When the boatmen get out there, their sail will help them, and +I should not wonder but a breeze is springing up, which causes those +cats'-paws. Never fear; the boat will do well enough." + +He had his reward in the grateful smile with which Margaret regarded +him, in looking past his ear at the evolutions of the boat in +question, and which made him feel more adult than he had felt in her +presence since his lunacy began. The climax of his satisfaction came +when she began to speak-- + +"How much you know about sailing and the sea, Mr Petty! and how +interesting it is, to be sure! Yes, really; I must watch that boat to +see it work into the breezy water. But of course; there is breeze even +here. See how my handkerchief flutters when I hold it out;" and it +seemed to Peter Wilkie, looking on, that one of the boatmen thereupon +drew out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. + +"Hm," he muttered below his breath. "Look out, Peter Wilkie!" + +Walter Petty explained to Margaret that the breeze which stirred her +handkerchief arose not from the motion of the air, but from their own +motion through it. + +"You seem to know everything, Mr Petty, about boats and sailing; +and I am so ignorant. Tell me all you know. It seems so mysterious +that--that pressing the tiller, for instance, to one side should make +the boat go to the other;" and Margaret turned round full front to +Petty--it _may_ have been past his ear that she was looking--with her +profile towards Wilkie, whose countenance fell a little as he asked +himself-- + +"Does she guess that I have been smelling out her little game?" + +The "smelling out" had seemed droll to him the moment before; but now, +when this slight sign of displeasure--if it were a sign--might be +taken as confirmation, it was not so amusing. And yet the girl seemed +a finer girl than ever, now that he suspected a rival, and perhaps a +favoured rival, in her regard. He was not going to be allowed to play +sultan, it appeared, throwing his handkerchief as he pleased, without +fear of refusal; wherefore he ceased to question the value of the +prize, and began really to think that he desired it. + +What would Mrs Naylor, sitting complacently within touch of her +daughter, and accepting the conversation of her friends, have said, +had she known the suspicion which had crossed the mind of Peter? +Margaret was safe at her elbow, and receiving the attentions of the +two most eligible young men on board. She would not have believed that +her girl, open as the day, truehearted and candid to a fault, could be +signalling to a man--a man unrecognisable for the distance--out there +in an open boat on Lippenstock Bay. A proceeding on her part so bold +and so underhand was impossible. And yet, if it were true, whose fault +was it but her own? Oppression, it has been said, will drive a wise +man mad. And this was only a girl, pushed, by nagging and injudicious +curbing, after a course of equally imprudent liberty, to take her own +way. She had but herself to thank, whatever might happen. + +Mothers can remember their children as babies; they have tended and +ruled them through the years of growth with undisputed sway, and +maturity arrives so imperceptibly that it is natural they should not +perceive when the term of their reign has come--that the sceptre has +withered like a reed, and the children have grown to be women, with +wills and rights and aspirations of their own. + + + + + CHAPTER XVII. + + FESSENDEN'S ISLAND. + + +The steamer throbbed and snorted on its voyage round the bay, like +some big amphibian of palæozoic times, parting the glassy waters right +and left, and leaving a long regurgitating trail of swelling waves and +eddies in its wake. The sun, now overhead, shed down his beams with an +unmitigated ardour, and the water cast back the glare with blistering +intensity. There really had arisen a languid air-current from the +shore, as Walter Petty had predicted; but the boat was now heading +down the bay towards the open sea, and travelling with the breeze, so +that on board it seemed to have fallen calm, and was hot and stifling +to a degree. + +The chat among the voyagers flickered low, and then went out, like the +flame of candles in an unwholesome well. Every one sought for shade, +and gasped beneath an umbrella, or in some darkened corner of the +saloon, collapsed and listless. But the steamer snorted on its way, +regardless of their comfort, and gleeful, as it seemed, in the +increasing heat; for now she belched forth smoke, and weltered in it, +letting it curl and twist about her fore and aft, borne on the chasing +breeze--as though the sportive monster were shaking out her mane, as +is said to be the wont of the sea-serpent when he rises from the deep +to fright lone mariners. She had grown fiendish in her mood, that +misguided steamer, filling the air with foulness, and showering smuts +on the white umbrellas, the fresh toilets, and even the dainty nose of +beauty. It grew intolerable, and the passengers might have risen in +mutiny and altered the vessel's course, but that the heat had left +them limp and lacking energy. They only groaned and imprecated; while +the steersman stood like a wooden image by the wheel, one turn of +which would have blown away the mischief, looking at their misery with +unwinking eyes, and laughing mayhap down deep within his wooden ribs. + +The mouth of the bay was reached in time, and the islands with their +straits and narrows, and winding channels running in between; and +beyond, the blue Atlantic. A new life breathed on them the moment they +passed the cape which terminates the bay. Like pent-up invalids +escaping from a sickroom, they held up their faces to the sky to drink +great breaths of freshness. Out there it is always cool, however the +sun may beat. They threaded the channels among the islands, and then +sailed out into the far-extending blue, and were refreshed. + +Noon was long passed, although they had breakfasted early, before it +occurred to any one to feel hungry; but at length the idea of luncheon +presented itself to many minds about the same time, as something which +would be agreeable. The steamer was put about, and they returned back +among the islands. One of them, Fessenden's Island by name, lay most +open to the ocean, and farther out than the others. On this they +landed. It seemed intended by nature for their purpose, having a +little cove with shelving bottom which admitted their vessel, and a +seaward boundary of rocky ledges sinking perpendicularly in deep water +on the inward side, so that they could moor themselves to the shore as +comfortably as at a wharf, without the inconvenient intervention of +the boats. + +The hotel servants quickly got their hampers landed, and soon the +repast was spread in the slowly broadening shadow of neighbouring +rocks, while the party encamped beneath their umbrellas on the scrubby +sea-grass, or fetched themselves seats from the ship hard by. The +clatter of knives and plates, the popping of corks, and the din of +voices, startled the sea-fowl where they perched overhead; they +screeched and fluttered angrily at the unwonted disturbance, and +taking to the wing, they wheeled and circled in the air above, +surveying the intruders, and eyeing the meats which fear alone +prevented their pouncing down on and bearing away, and finally, with a +parting scream, flew seaward in a long white trail and disappeared. + +The tide had turned. Two hours were allowed to spend on shore. After +that, the steamer was to blow its whistle, and they must re-embark and +get away, or the ship would be left stranded by the ebb, to await the +following tide. The party having refreshed, broke up, and wandered +apart as chance directed, to explore the island. Mrs Naylor found +herself comfortable in her chair. Uneven walking over rocks presented +no attractions. Digestion and fresh air, combined with snatches of +light reading and chit-chat, seemed a more rational enjoyment. "But, +Margaret, my dear, I will not interfere with your more energetic +tastes," she said; "you can go, if you like, and scramble on the rocks +like the rest. I shall do nicely with these ladies. Mr Wilkie, I am +sure, will kindly see that you do not fall over a precipice." + +Mr Wilkie rose alertly, and Margaret followed. She had meant to go +away more quietly, later on, under the care of Walter Petty, whom she +noticed lingering within call. He was so devotedly kind and +respectful, that the girl could not but have a kindness for him. He +would have liked to go, she saw, and he would have answered better for +the purpose she had in view; though it was not, as he might fondly +hope, to purr soft nothings in sequestered nooks. However, fate and +her mother had imposed the more self-satisfied and confident gallant, +and she must submit; though she felt a qualm of self-reproach in +meeting the other's glance, in which disappointment seemed blended +with a shade of remonstrance. Had she not shown a preference for +him in the boat over that long-tongued rival, whom he cordially +detested?--turned away from his longwinded rigmarole about travel, to +ask sensible information from himself? There was no understanding +those girls, and no use trusting them. And yet this one was +so--so--what was she not, in fact? But it was desolating, all the +same. He could not bring himself to join any one else, though there +were "fellows" as well as girls who would have been glad of his +company. There was his pipe, however, that silent friend, so soothing +and so unobtrusive in its consolations. He would have recourse to +that; and scrambling out to the extremity of the ledge beyond the +steamboat, he sat him down beside the sad sea wave and blew a +melancholy cloud. + +Margaret and Wilkie scrambled along the shore, made difficult with +rocks and heaped-up boulders. They clambered briskly enough until they +had doubled a promontory which secluded them from observation, and +then Mr Peter heaved a sigh of mingled relief and exhaustion. + +"What an abominable way we have come, Miss Naylor! I am fairly blown. +Here is a smooth rock at last; let us sit and enjoy the view." + +"I am not tired at all, Mr Wilkie. Let us get on." + +"I do not think we can, Miss Margaret. The shore grows steeper. We +should have to take to those rocks lower down, all wet and slimy. It +is scarcely safe. Look at the view from here! Look at the expanse of +sea! It might be the Mediterranean, so blue and sunny. And those banks +of cloud along the horizon--are they not fine?" + +"Very fine, Mr Wilkie, but I want to see the island." + +"My dear young lady, islands are all the same, and one part of one of +them is just like another part. We need not flounder farther than +we have come already, to know this one by heart. It is ditto all +over--rocks sticking out of the water to support a little earth and a +few sea-birds." + +"But I have never been upon an island before, except those wooded ones +on the St Lawrence, which do not at all answer to your description. +They are nests floating on the water, and simply lovely. I want to see +more of this one. Our St Lawrence islands are covered with trees. Are +there none here?" + +"Too exposed here, you may be sure. A gooseberry-bush would be blown +down in the winter gales, not to speak of a tree. Besides, we really +cannot go farther along this detestable shore. The sharp stones will +cut the boot-soles off your feet." + +"Then let us go inland. Why should we keep to the shore? The ground +slopes up easily enough; let us go to the top and gain a bird's-eye +view of the island. No, really, I could not think of sitting down. We +shall have more than enough of that in the steamboat before we get +home." + +And so the young man, finding he could not persuade, had perforce to +let himself be persuaded, and follow when he would have led--or +rather, sat down. + +The slope was not very steep, though it was longer than Peter would +have expected a walk on so small an island could be; but at length +they reached the rounded flatness of the summit, and looked around. +The island spread out beneath on every side, and the sister islands +were marshalled north and south like sentinels to guard the inner +waters. Lippenstock Bay lay within them, a burnished glass throwing +back the sunshine; and the country beyond looked higher, more varied +and important than when seen from the water-level. An unmistakable +breeze had now sprung up, and was carrying straggling wreaths of cloud +before it, the vanguard of more solid masses which were creeping up +the sky from the distant west. Eastward the ocean now had lost its +sapphire blueness and grown dull and grey, while far out toward the +horizon it lowered beneath the oncome of the rising clouds, great +cumulus masses lifting themselves in heaven and advancing against the +breeze. They caught the rays of the opposing sun upon their breasts, +and flashed them back, and sprinkled them on the sea, turning its +lively blue to a white sickly grey. + +"What splendid clouds!" cried Margaret. "But there will be a storm. +When those clouds from the east meet the clouds in the west, we shall +have thunder." + +"I remember a sky the day I crossed the St Gothard, going down into +the plains of Italy. Very fine it was----" + +"Yes; I daresay it would be. The Old World must be a very superior +place to this poor continent of ours. Even the sun and moon must shine +better over there, by all accounts. The wonder is, how any of you +travelled folks ever cared to come here at all. But say! there is +quite a breeze coming down the bay; where can that sail-boat we were +watching have gone? I cannot make out a sail anywhere. Is it the +dazzle from the water that conceals it, do you think? Or can it be hid +behind one of the islands, I wonder?" + +"I see something white flapping behind that promontory down there, +where the channel narrows between this island and the next. There it +falls! They have taken it down. The men must be landing." + +"Where? Ah! let us run down and see." + +Peter would have liked to bite his tongue. Found guilty of that +offence unpardonable in trans-Atlantic eyes, of praising the Old World +at the expense of the New, he had thought to make his peace by +discovering for his companion the object for which her eyes were +searching the prospect; and he had done it with a vengeance. Not only +was the offence forgotten, but himself seemed likely to be forgotten +or overlooked as well. To think that he could be _gauche_ enough to +conduct his fair one into the arms of the very rival who had aroused +his suspicion that morning! He had forgotten since then; things had +gone so smoothly and pleasantly. What an awakening! "Duffer!" he +muttered below his breath, and felt humbled indeed. But he made one +poor struggle with destiny ere he yielded. He pulled out his watch, +and asked his companion with a start if she had any idea what was the +hour. + +"The tide is turning, you must remember," he added. "We shall hear the +whistle within fifteen minutes, and the steamer cannot wait. The +skipper says she will be grounded by the ebb if we are not off by +four. And a storm is coming on. I declare I hear distant thunder +already. How dim the light is getting, too! It will take all we can do +to be back in time. We have only twenty minutes." + +"Your watch must be fast," and Margaret pulled out her own. "Ten +minutes past three I make it, and I know mine is fast. See the groups +scattered all over the island! No one has thought of turning yet. +There is Judge Petty with his hammer pounding specimens out of yon +cliff. Yonder is my sister with somebody picking flowers for her. +Nobody thinks of gathering _me_ a bouquet, ever. There is a party down +there in the hollow, and I can distinguish Lettice Deane's voice quite +plainly; and far over are two people standing on the edge of a cliff +showing like silhouettes against the open sea. Uncle Joseph is one of +them. No one is thinking of turning back." + +"But, Miss Naylor, the storm will be on directly. Observe how dim it +grows. You will get drenched with rain." + +"I don't think it will rain till evening." + +"Indeed it will. See how the clouds are coming up! Hear to the +rumbling thunder!" + +"I am not afraid. But if you think otherwise, I should not like to +spoil your pleasure with the prospect of a wetting. Good-bye. You can +tell them to expect me shortly." And she skipped away. + +There was nothing for Peter but to follow, little as he could expect +his presence to be welcome when they should come on that rival at the +bottom of the hill. He hated the fellow, of course, and wished him +"far enough," but he could not help feeling curious to see him. Yet he +followed without alacrity. For the sake of argument, he had spoken of +the light as growing dim; now he felt it to be so indeed. The warmth +and brightness had gone out of the day for him, and it was become a +common thing. Not that he would have said so. The poet's trick of +drawing voices from inanimate nature to express or sympathise with +his momentary emotions was none of his. He was matter-of-fact and +common-sensical to a degree, if at the same time lucid-minded and +intelligent: but still he was human like the rest of us; and for that +matter so is the poet, "fed with the same food, hurt with the same +weapons, subject to the same diseases." If he were not, what would his +utterances be worth? His gift is utterance, but the thing he utters +must be within the possibility of all to feel. And Peter felt, though +the influence had stolen on him unawares. He had been in Margaret's +company through successive hours, and she was a flower too fresh and +sweet for any insect to have fluttered round so long without becoming +intoxicated somewhat with the fragrance. + +At the bottom of the hill, behind an intervening rock, they came +upon a sandy beach, the extremity of a bar which runs across to the +nearest island, connecting the two at low water, and forming the only +landing-place other than that of which the steamer had possession. The +boatmen were securing their craft as the two came in view. One of them +with a shout sprang forward and bounded up the steep to meet them. He +seized both Margaret's hands and shook them rapturously; then, +remembering that she had a companion, to be accepted as a necessary +evil, he turned round to Peter, raised his hat, and ceremoniously +wished him good-day. + +Peter returned the salute, and looked curiously in the other's face to +divine what manner of man this favoured one might be, if haply he +might yet be dealt with, outman[oe]uvred, or supplanted, and +recognised with astonishment that it was "that" young Blount who had +spent a few days at Clam Beach. His feelings expressed themselves in a +low, scarce audible whistle; and circumstances, looks, tones, details +from the week before, so trivial that he had not been conscious of +remembering them, sprang suddenly into knowledge and arranged +themselves; as when a thread is dropped into a chemical solution, +crystals gather from the fluid, and shape themselves with mathematical +precision round the nucleus. The circumstances strung themselves in an +induction amounting to demonstration, that Margaret Naylor had +bestowed her regards, and that he had come too late into the field. + +The young people were assiduously polite to Mr Peter. They did not +wish that unkind rumours of their meeting should circulate in the +hotel, and they would not request him to keep a secret for them--their +feelings would not permit them to do that--so both endeavoured to +conciliate his goodwill. They did what they could to include him in +their conversation; but he was inattentive, answering at random or not +at all. The sudden revelation had confused him like a blow, and his +thoughts kept wandering back to the details on which his induction was +based, trying them and endeavouring to shake their consistency, +wondering that he had not read the truth before, and pitying himself +in what now seemed his disappointment. + +His answers were made at random, but they did not observe it. They +were feeding their eyes upon each other's faces, after a three days' +separation, and they had no thought for anything but the delight of +being together. How good it was! They babbled, scarcely knowing what +they spoke of, and any observation which Peter chose to interject was +perfectly good as conversation in their eyes, sitting there together +on the shore, touching one another, looking shyly in each other's +eyes, hearing each other's voices, and being happy. Peter lounged +beside them on the ground, twisting his awkward limbs into uncouth +knots, and feeling dull and flattened out, defeated and humbled, +though nobody had done anything to him whatever. + +And time and tide went on their wonted course, but no one of the three +took notice of their passing. + + + + + CHAPTER XVIII. + + AN ADIEU. + + +The cloud-masses in the east had risen over half the sky. They now +presented only a rim of flashing white along the upper edge towards +the sun. The concave vault within was dim and lowering, and was +advancing visibly upon the darkened sea. Low sighing voices came +across the water, with the continuous flickering of far-off lightning +and the grumble of distant thunder. The sea was no longer asleep, as +it had been an hour ago beneath the placid light. A rolling glassy +swell, which momentarily grew heavier and higher, was coming in from +the ocean. The steamer at its mooring no longer lay firm and still +like part of the adjacent rocks. It rose and fell obedient to the +undulations, and strained upon its cables. The tide was ebbing. Not +many inches now interposed between the bottom and its keel; and as the +swell grew higher, there was danger that ere long she would bump upon +the rocks. + +The captain, watch in hand, grew restless and impatient. The +passengers' time ashore was hardly yet run out, but every minute +had grown precious, and he longed to be afloat. He tugged the +whistle-chain, and startled the still air with loud discordant yells, +then ran, gesticulating and shouting, to the poop, to warn those at +hand that they must hurry on board, as there was no time to lose. The +loungers rose and stretched themselves, unwilling to be disturbed; but +there was something imperious in the short shrill screeches of the +whistle, and they obeyed. The strollers heard and turned, and even ran +when they came in sight and saw the excited skipper swinging his arms, +and the men already preparing to cast loose from the shore. + +In a wonderfully short space the deck was alive with passengers and +the shore deserted. The skipper cast a searching look along the higher +grounds within sight. There was no sign of human presence remaining on +the island. The whistle uttered a last long melancholy scream of +parting, and was silent, the steamer lurched upon the swell, and they +were out in deep water. + +The passengers separated into groups and rested, like the sediment of +troubled water in a pool, watching the oncoming of the storm, as to +which there could now be no mistake. Already the first eddies of the +rising wind were coming from the east, and the sea was rising rapidly, +making landsmen feel sedate in anticipation of that worst evil of the +deep, the qualms of sickness. + +There was one, however, on whom the heavings had no effect. Her mind +was disturbed; bodily discomfort was forgot, or only added to her +anxiety. She got up from her seat and reeled across the deck to Mrs +Naylor, who sat buried in pathetic silence, awaiting whatever might be +in store. + +"Mrs Naylor, what ever has come of my Peter?" she said. "I cannot see +him anywhere. He always comes to look after his old mother. Where is +he now?" + +"I do not know, Mrs Wilkie. This motion is dreadful. Oh, how could I +be so foolish as venture out to sea on this horrid little boat!" + +"But you _must_ know, Mrs Naylor; I saw that girl of yours taking him +away, and I have not seen sight of him since. What has she done with +him? Oh, those girls! they will be the death of me." + +"He certainly took Margaret for a walk, but I have not seen them +since. No doubt they are in the cabin lying down. I wish I were there. +I wish I were anywhere rather than here. This see-saw motion is +dreadful." + +"What a woman! And she calls herself a mother! I wonder ye don't think +shame, ma'am, sitting there at your ease, and never minding what comes +of your own daughter. But she's foisted her on my poor Peter, and +that's all she cares for. And she's not minding what I say wan bit. +Oh, thae Canadian women!" + +Mrs Naylor was too poorly to rejoin. Engrossed in her own misery, she +probably did not hear. + +"Here you! Steward, waiter, whatever ye are," cried Mrs Wilkie, "go +down to the cabin. I would break my neck if I ventured through this +feckless crowd. See if ye can find Mr Wilkie--a big handsome +gentleman. Ye can't mistake him. Tell him his mother's up here, and +wants him." + +The messenger went, and returned, and was sent over all the ship, in +vain. The missing man was neither to be found nor heard of, and it was +discovered that Margaret Naylor was missing likewise. + +"Oh, captain, captain! put back--put back! You've left Mr Wilkie +behind." + +"Impossible, ma'am. We couldn't get in at the landing now. The weather +is growing worse, and we must make what speed we can back into the +bay. This is not a sea-going craft." + +"But you've left my boay on a desert island, and ye'll have murder or +marrich on your soul. Ye _must_ go back; or I'll have the law of ye as +soon as ever I get my fut on dry land." + +"We might never reach dry land at all, if we were to put back in the +weather that is coming on. The gentleman is quite safe. The fishermen +have a cabin, round the island at the other landing. He'll be all +right, and comfortable." + +"Why will ye not go to the other landing, and see? to ease a mother's +feelin's." + +"There's a sand-bar there. We could not get near the shore." + +"Ye might try. Ye could send your boat for them.... Yonder! I see a +black thing moving.... He'll be dead or married before morning. Oh, +captain!... Turn!... For pity's sake!" + +The captain turned and looked in the old woman's face, whose eyes, +already full, were on the point of brimming over. The alternative she +named seemed rather an anticlimax, and not so very harrowing. He would +have liked, himself, to be offered such a choice, but fate had never +so favoured him. + +"He'll do, ma'am. She ain't half bad, the craft he has in tow. She's +right and tight. I saw them steering off together." + +"He'll be done for, ye scoffin' reprobate! Ye think it fine fun, I +daresay; but it's no joke to a man in his poseetion. The girl's well +enough, for anything I know. In fack, I thought her not amiss. But +marryin's an expurriment ye can try but wance; and I want to make sure +before I give my leave.... Do you no see yon black thing movin', +captain? It's him! I'm sure of it. Turn!... like a lamb!" and she held +out her hands. + +The lamb smiled within his beard; but the blandishment was unavailing. +"There's nothing moving but the ship, ma'am; and she'll have to move +faster, or worse will happen;" and so saying, he escaped to the +engine-room to crack on more steam. + +Mrs Wilkie was in despair. She clasped her hands and staggered to the +taffrail, to gaze her last and fondest on the retreating island. She +clung to the flagstaff, with eyes streaming tears, and her short grey +curls draggling in the wind. She even waved her parasol in sad adieu; +but the wind, ere long, caught hold of that, and spread it out, and +twitched it from her grasp, and sent it spinning through the air away +to leeward. Anon she waved her handkerchief, when she could spare it +from its duty at her eyes, clinging to her flagstaff, swaying and +swinging, heaving and falling, with the motion of the vessel, till the +pitiless ocean asserted its cruel rights, and she sank a sea-sick +Niobe upon the deck. + + + + + CHAPTER XIX. + + STORM-STAYED. + + +His niece's eyesight was not at fault when she thought that she +recognised Joseph Naylor's figure silhouetted against the horizon. It +was he indeed, and he was not alone. That was the sweetest walk, he +told himself, which he had ever taken. It was the happiest day; and he +looked back in his tranquil bliss, standing with eyes which rested +dreamily upon the sea; and, forgetting to converse, he wondered if the +unreasoning transports he had known in youth were to be compared to +this. + +It seemed like the warm radiance of an unclouded afternoon succeeding +a day of rain which has been ushered in by deceitful sun-bursts, sent, +as it were, to deepen the succeeding gloom. The peace and trust, and +the contented sense of basking, without a wish left unfulfilled, were +inexpressibly sweet. The sense of doubleness, which had disturbed his +earlier intercourse with his companion, had disappeared. His spiritual +eyes had focussed themselves into agreement, and now the two images +were blended into one. It was the first and only tenderness of his +life, stifled though still smouldering beneath the years of widowhood, +on which this stranger had chanced to let in air; and the spark divine +had awoke among its ashes, and was again aflame. + +Words he had none just then. His being was strung too high for the +vibrations to be made audible in common utterance. He was only +receptive now, drinking in influence from her presence, but making no +response. They had been together all the day. In the morning they had +been gay at the cheerful starting. They had been conversational as the +day waxed warmer, companionable when it threatened to grow oppressive, +and they had felt like very old friends who understood each other +thoroughly, when they set out to walk. + +The extreme tranquillity at which they had now arrived was a little +more complete than Rose Hillyard altogether enjoyed. Fortunately she +was sympathetic by nature, and understood a great deal more than was +conveyed to her by words. She appreciated the silence--felt, indeed, +that it was the highest compliment, or rather something immeasurably +beyond compliment; but ere long she began to wish that it would not +last much longer. + +The mind of Rose was not altogether so utterly at ease as it appeared, +though she would not for the world that any one should have so +suspected. She would have done violence to herself, even, sooner than +acknowledge in her heart that she was not at peace; but still there +was a fever in her blood, making her restless, and eager to be doing, +and drown an inarticulate yearning for something she would not name. + +The silence drove her back upon herself, and gave voices opportunity +to make themselves audible within--voices she had endeavoured to +silence, and forbidden to be there. "If the man would only say +something! If he would even flirt!" That was a pretty game which she +believed she understood and could play with the best. But this was not +flirtation: it was right down solemn earnest; and she was pleased in +thinking that it was. A good man's happiness was in her hands; and +more, she liked the man, and believed, I dare affirm--though we must +not say "intended to accept" what has not yet been offered--that when +he declared himself she would lend a friendly ear. + +And yet she had rather he would have flirted. The stir and interest of +the game would have afforded the excitement for which she craved. It +was but a game, and could be played without a second thought. The +serious thing was different. So much depends on it, that people play +it slower; and they play it with the heart, and not the head, which is +the more nimble member. It was movement and excitement for which her +fibres ached; though peace, if that had been attainable, had been far +more precious. + +"How fond you must be of the sea!" she said at last. "We seem to have +been standing here a long time." + +Joseph started, and turned. Her voice had broken in upon a reverie +which could not be called a day-dream. It had been too passive for +succession of ideas, and was rather a receptive bathing in the +blissfulness of the situation. But yet no waking could have been +sweeter than the sound of that voice which now addressed him. It was +the same which he remembered long ago, whose echoes had thrilled him +in his dreams, and made his wakings sorrowful to find it was not +there. It was with a smile and a deep full breath of satisfaction that +he turned to his companion. + +"Forgive me," he said. "It is so pleasant being here, that I forgot +about passing time.... Yes, I am fond of the sea. I always was. I left +home to go to sea when I was a boy--could not stay away from it. It is +so big and so even, and it changes under one's very eye, you can't +tell how. It feels as if it were alive--a being that could understand +your thoughts without your telling them." + +"So it does. I know the feeling, although I never attempted to put it +into words.... The sea is company--when one is alone; but now----?" +and she looked up in his eyes with the flicker of a smile which was +scarcely reproachful, yet not quite humorous. + +"Most true," he answered, smiling in reply. "The silent communion with +Nature is not a sociable observance; and, as you say, we must have +stood here a good while. Let's follow this footpath. It seems to run +round the island on the inner side. The walking will be easier, and we +shall get back sooner than by crossing the hill as we came." + +The path ran for a time along the edge of cliffs, which stood some +forty or fifty feet above the sea, and sank sheer down into deep +water, fretting the smooth green billows rolling by into a fringe of +foam. Turning with the rounding of the land, the path struck down upon +the leeward side of the island and ran along the shore. + +"Should we not hurry?" Rose Hillyard observed. "The tide must have +sunk a long way since we left the steamer. See those rocks covered +with wet sea-weed. They must have been under water this last tide, and +now they are feet above it. The captain spoke about the tide, and his +fear of stranding, and being forced to wait twelve hours for next high +water. Must we not make haste?" + +"I do not see why we should disturb ourselves. There are three of our +people yonder, sitting on a sandhill and at ease. Had we not better do +likewise? They seem happy.... As for me, I have no watch, and no care +for time. Let us be guided by _them_." + +"And my watch has stopped, or something. Well!... I hope those others +are keeping track of the time.... Yes, it is nice here. The air is +more still than it was on the cliffs, and yet not so hot. But is the +light not growing dim? This is pleasanter than the glare of mid-day. +Why can it not be always afternoon? Yet, has it not come on us rather +suddenly?" + +They were sitting now, and their talk was dribbling along in an easy, +drowsy way, such as might be expected from people who had been for so +many hours in each other's company. It was after luncheon, after a +walk, after a day whose heat and blazing brightness had only been made +tolerable by fresh sea-air, in itself a form of stimulation. Their +nerves, all day kept tense, were relaxing now, and a restful feeling, +born of harmonious companionship, was extending from the mind into the +physical system, and producing a tranquillity in which content was +verging towards lethargy. In fact, they were a little tired, and more +than a little sleepy. Head propped on hand, and that supported on the +extended elbow, they reclined upon the bent which clothed a swelling +sandhill. Conversation grew intermittent and monosyllabic, and then +ceased--their eyelids growing momentarily heavier without their being +aware. + +A shrill reverberation broke upon the air. It stopped, and began anew, +and ended in a volley of shrill, short, barking shrieks. Joseph lifted +his head and looked about. He had forgot about the steamboat, and the +idea of its whistling a recall did not occur to him It was sea-fowl he +thought of in that solitary place, and he wondered drowsily at the +harshness of their cry, and their strength of lung. He threw a +listless glance aloft, but not a wing was visible over all the sky; +only the sun was veiled now in a cloud, and did not dazzle--which was +comfortable, and made the restful feeling more complete. + +The next sensation he was conscious of was damp. Big drops of rain +were lighting on his face, and wetting his limbs through the thin +summer clothing. He started now. Yes, he must have slept. The sky was +black, and the scene grown dim like twilight. Like twilight for an +instant, and then a blinding flash made everything intensely visible, +and the heavens seemed to crack above the trembling earth with loud +reverberating thunder. + +He started and laid his hand on his companion's shoulder. + +"Rosa!"--How sweet the name felt on his lips, even in his hurry! It +was his first time to use it. But had he the right?--"Miss Hillyard! +Arouse! A storm is coming on. You will be drenched. Arouse!" + +Rose opened her eyes. She looked straight in his, and with a pleasant +smile. It was an instant before she was fully conscious of the +situation--so sweet an instant! Then she was herself, and sprang to +her feet. + +"We must run! But where? How wrong of me to sleep!" It was Joseph who +spoke. "Ha! down yonder on the beach I see a boat. We may find shelter +for you near there." + +The lightning flashed incessantly. The air quivered with the +resounding thunderclaps succeeding one another without interval or +pause. The rain streamed down. The windows of heaven were opened, and +the waters of the firmament descended in sheets, as if to overwhelm +the earth. + +He took her hand, and they hurried along the sands towards the boat, +as quickly as they could, by the gleam of the intermittent flashes, +which blinded while they lasted, and yet made the intervals between +seem dark as night by contrast. + +A halloo reached them as they stumbled on, and made them turn aside, +where, in a sheltered corner, stood the fishermen's hut. They were +inside in a moment, still dazed and panting from the buffeting storm, +and streaming with rain, though the time they had been exposed to it +was shorter than it has taken to relate. Grateful for the shelter, +they recognised that it was Blount and Wilkie who had hailed them, +while Margaret stood within, coaxing some dying embers into flame with +the aid of a fan and some fresh fuel, preparatory to drying herself; +for she too had been caught in the rain, though she had not been +drenched as Rose was. The men, watching the storm from the open door, +had seen the others hurrying by, and had hailed them to the shelter +they would otherwise have missed. + +"You?" cried Walter Blount, in a tone which betrayed perhaps a shade +of disappointment as well as the natural surprise. He had known of the +expedition to Fessenden's Island, and had sailed thither in hopes of +what would scarcely be an accidental meeting, and he had been +fortunate beyond his expectation. When the whistle of the steamer had +sounded, he had heard, but Margaret had taken no heed, and Wilkie in +his discomfiture, had seemingly not observed. It would have been +gratuitous on his part, he thought, to disturb the harmony and +precipitate a parting, seeing that he had a boat of his own, in which +they could return at any time. If Wilkie would have gone, it would +have been better still, only that Margaret must have accompanied him; +wherefore he exerted himself to brighten the talk, and keep their +thoughts as far as possible from the subject of the steamer; and to +his own surprise he succeeded, for he could not understand why "_that +fellow Wilkie_" should feel engrossed. + +And perhaps the "fellow" was not, but only mortified and squelched at +the unwonted neglect into which he, who had come to look on himself as +an invincible lady-killer, had fallen. Anything seemed better to him +than the shame of returning to the steamer alone. How would he feel +when asked what he had done with his companion? And, foolishly, he had +a misgiving that if he proposed to return, she would not accompany +him. Her attention was now transferred entirely to the rival, and he +found himself nowhere. But he would stick to her like a burr. One can +sometimes spoil a game which one cannot join in. He was sure the rival +wished him away; and that was reason enough for sticking fast and +showing no sign. By-and-by, when the other was gone, the lady would be +more amenable to his displeasure, and then would be his time to show +it. + +As time wore on, the sky grew dark, and presently the storm was upon +them. They retreated to the hut, and then Margaret remembered about +the steamboat. Wilkie looked at his watch, and said they had outstayed +their time; but the deluge of rain made it impossible now to set out +on the return. Blount's man was despatched to warn the skipper, and +they resigned themselves to await the subsidence of the storm. The +last users of the hut had left a fire behind them, of which a coal or +two still smouldered in the ashes; and Margaret, uneasy at the account +she should have to render by-and-by, made busy in rekindling the +blaze, rather than resign herself to forebodings of a maternal +lecture. + +"You?" was Blount's exclamation, repeated a second time, when the +newcomers entered the hut; and the tone of disappointment verged +closely on disgust. Joseph Naylor was his friend, but at that moment +he would have preferred almost any other intruder. He was his friend, +but he was also Margaret's uncle, and therefore the most unwelcome man +who could have appeared. Standing by the open door and listening to +the thunder and the falling rain, after despatching his boatman to the +steamer, he had been building himself a castle in the air. The +steamboat would be gone when his messenger reached the landing. The +man, while obeying, had assured him of that, as it was only at the +height of the tide that she was able to approach the island. The +steamboat being gone, Margaret must take passage back with him in his +sail-boat. Landed at Lippenstock together, it would not be hard to +give Wilkie the slip; and then, behind a lively trotter, they could +start for parts unknown. It would be days before the family could +overtake them. Ere then they would be man and wife, and the family +would gladly make the best of what it could no longer prevent. He had +never known Margaret so soft and sweetly amenable to influence as she +had been these last two hours. Fortune seemed to have softened her +mood on purpose to assist him. He felt sure he could persuade her; and +here, at the very turning-point of his fate, appeared uncle Joseph, +"_a god out of a machine_," to spoil all. It was unspeakably grievous. + +Wilkie cried "You!" at the same moment as Walter; but the tone was +different. There was hope and relief in both his face and voice, in +marked contrast with the other. Consolation, hope, indemnity for +slights, all shone before his view in the appearance of Rose Hillyard. +She was escorted, to be sure, but only by "old Naylor"--a man half as +old again as himself, and not nearly so polished or agreeable. "The +Hillyard" had often struck him as in many respects superior to +Margaret Naylor. At the worst, to form one in a quintet could not but +be pleasanter than he had found the part of supernumerary in a trio. +He positively beamed upon the newcomers, and would willingly have +heaped wood on the fire, and even assisted Rose to make herself +comfortable; but she assured him that Margaret Naylor and herself +could do everything, and he must rejoin the men in the porch without, +or, like Peeping Tom of Coventry, he might find himself struck blind +on the spot. + + + + + END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. + + + + + PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS. + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's True to a Type, Vol. I (of 2), by Robert Cleland + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40324 *** |