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.
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!
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.