"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 a.s.suredly 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 _role_--liked it almost--and might, I suppose, be taken as of that curious cla.s.s 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?" f.a.n.n.y 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 n.o.body, 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 pract.i.tioner. 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 a.s.sault, 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 pa.s.s the b.u.t.ter. 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 pa.s.ses them the apple-sa.r.s.e 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 cla.s.s of Metaphysics and Political Economy, and Miss Rolph, our princ.i.p.al, 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 gla.s.ses 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 gla.s.s.

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. Circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.senger; 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 s.h.a.ggy 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-G.o.d pa.s.s, and then to draw the curtain on his exit.

The level crimson rays shot for a s.p.a.ce 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 circ.u.mstance 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 pa.s.sengers 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."