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 œillade 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.