"What else was there?"

"Desperate flirting or earnest love-making, I wish I knew which."

"I wish I could tell you really, Mr. Dalton, but you seem to know more about the matter already than I do."

"I cannot help it Amey," he said in a m.u.f.fled tone, then looking up.

"It promises to be a stormy night," he added in an entirely new voice.

"I am afraid so" I answered, standing before our own gate. "Will you come in for a moment?"

"Thank you, I have an engagement, good afternoon."

"Good afternoon."

He raised his hat and turned away and I pa.s.sed into the house filled with the strangest emotions I had ever known. I went straight to my own room and threw myself into a capacious easy-chair near the fire.

The gray shadows of the early winter evening were just touching everything around me. I was in an excited mood and for what? A new suspicion had suddenly thrust itself in between me and a happy, satisfying conviction which I had cherished of late. The reader will not question whether there is one thing in life more annoying or more discouraging than to see one's settled belief in anything suddenly uprooted and tossed about by unexpected yet not unpleasant circ.u.mstances. Some small whispering voice from the farthest depths of my heart struggled to the surface now and asked me plainly and brusquely to come to an understanding with my inner self once for all, instead of leaning in this half-decided way, now towards one conviction, now towards another.

"I cannot help it, Amey." What was he going to say? What did he think?

Why did he stop there? "Desperate flirtation, or earnest love-making.

I wish I knew which." Queer thing to say, that. But what a queer man he was! What did it matter to him which it was? Did he mean to allude to Arthur Campbell and me, or was he perhaps thinking of himself and somebody? Why did I dismiss him summarily? If I had urged him to come in he would have consented, and we might have talked it out. We each thought a great deal more than we said, but after all, maybe it was well as it stood. What could he ever be to me more than an old friend--twice my age--and maybe I was too precipitate and presumptuous. How did I know he thought of me in any other light than the child he had always known me? I stood up with this impediment thrown voluntarily in the way, and took off my street apparel. In a quarter of an hour later dinner was served, and I went down cheerfully to the dining-room.

CHAPTER VIII.

To age and experience, I doubt not that this period of my life seems childish and aimless. There is something in a pair of spectacles, astride the wrinkled noses of maturity, that makes the world of sentiment seem a mere nursery where growing boys and girls amuse themselves carelessly before stepping into their manhood or womanhood.

Can it be that this glowing love of which poets sing, is, after all, survived by such a short, uncertain thing as a human life? When we are young it is so easy to believe our love will last unto the very end, and this conviction darts a golden sunbeam across the unborn years: a sunbeam in which our heaviest sorrows become dancing motes, a sunbeam which spans the full interval allotted us between this world and the next. But it is only rational to fear that some of those huge, black shadows which are ever flitting through the "corridors of time" will cross our sunbeam when we least expect it, and yet this is a warning we will not hear, until a personal experience teaches it to our hearts in sorrowful accents.

I had toyed with my own conjectures and speculations all through the gay season. Every where I went I met the same people. I saw the origin, progress, and final consummation of many a love-match, from the formal introduction of both parties, to the glittering tell-tale diamond on the finger of a dainty hand. I had learned many lessons both from pa.s.sive observation and active experience, and now as the season of feasting and flirting and merry-making was waning into the quietude of advancing spring, I had only to sit me down and rehea.r.s.e the wonderful little past which had come and gone, bringing wonderful changes to many another heart besides Amey Hampden's.

May came, with its dazzling sunshine and its whispers of summer warmth, and the birds carolled as birds have done every spring-time since the world began. June came, and the bare branches sent forth their tender buds to greet it. The birds flitted from bough to bough and carolled louder and l.u.s.tier than ever. It was the early summer-time; that short but blissful interval between the ravages of spring and the tyranny of scorching mid-summer. It is our misfortune in Canada to know nothing whatever of the beauty of that spring-time which has been flattered and idolized by poets' pens in every age.

With us this intermediate season is nothing more nor less than an eminently uninteresting transition, invariably announced by such harbingers as bare and brown and dirty roads; slushy pathways, running with melted snow and ice; a warm, wet and foggy atmosphere, with great drops falling constantly from the twigs of the trees and the drenched, black eaves of the houses. It is a time for macintoshes and sound rubbers; a golden age for patent cough mixtures and freckles, the sworn destroyer of artificial curls and long clothes. It is true that a glad, golden sunshine floods the earth at times, but what of that, when sullied, muddy streams are rushing and bubbling on with a roaring speed, plunging into hollow drains at every street-corner; when sulky foot-pa.s.sengers pick their uncomfortable way through all the debris of what had been the beauty of the dead season. Fashionable young men, with the extremities of their expensive tweeds turned carefully up, choose their steps over the treacherous crossways, leaning upon their silk umbrellas with an unfeigned expression of utter disapproval, and ladies in trim ulsters and very short skirts pilot themselves along the unclean thoroughfares, with very emphatic airs of impatience and disgust. This is certainly not the season, in those Canadian cities whose winters are so severe, when "the young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." If there is a time in the year when this worthy sentiment is ignored, and I may say deliberately ostracised, by Canadian youth, it is in the spring. But like all earthly circ.u.mstances, this, too, dies a natural death, and is succeeded by a truly enjoyable and suggestive period, that of early summer. It has been my experience to meet with many people who become the victims of a depressing melancholy in the spring. Some acknowledge that it is a presentiment, and resign themselves to many morbid feelings about the uncertain issue of this period of the year; but common sense rejects this theory. It is only natural that after having indulged our every energy while the air was bracing and cold, after having walked and talked, and feasted and danced, and made merry without interruption day and night during the winter months, we should feel a physical prostration in the end, and as a consequence something of a mental depression as well. For my own part, I have always had a reflective and serious spell in the spring-time. Those things that a few months before would have dazzled my eyes and tempted my senses, seem empty and vapid and worthless, and I go on wondering over my recent follies and weaknesses as if I were never to commit them again. It is true that the contemporary season of Lent has something to do with these effects. "Remember, man, thou art but dust," is not the most enlivening of warnings which can be submitted to us for moral digestion, and we who carry these solemn words back from church on Ash-Wednesday morning need not be surprised if our gayer inclinations desert us almost immediately.

All these changes had followed fast upon the receding items of my interesting season, and it was now summer time. My half-brother came back from college, an altered youth, as uninteresting in his transition as the season I have just described. He was an overgrown boy, of that age when boys are seldom interesting except to one another; that age of physical, mental and moral conflict, when the anxious mother can scarcely trust the testimony of her confidence in the future greatness of her growing son; when the calculating father becomes agitated in his eagerness to know if his bashful heir will favor religious, professional, or commercial tendencies, and when the grown-up sister tries to antic.i.p.ate in a grown-up sisterly way what sort of a drawing room item her now unsophisticated relative will prove to be. This last is the most trying speculation of all. How big a boy's feet invariably look in a fashionable sister's eyes! how long his arms, and how shapeless his hands! Poor blushing youth, is not the ordeal worst for himself, at that period when he scarcely dares trust the most modest of monosyllabic discourses to be articulated by those lips that are warning a waiting public of the dawn of whiskerdom!

Freddy, once so lithe and graceful and pretty, had been transformed into an ungainly being, all length, without breadth or thickness. He had not even the advantage of the average immatured youth, he had neither muscle nor physical bulk. He was still a delicate boy with a nervous cough and a fretted look. He was more than ever peevish and self-willed, with this only difference. In his earlier years his selfishness was at least manifested in a dependent sort of way; his thousand wants were made known in impatient requests. Now, it spoke in imperative accents and decided in its own favor, regardless of the comfort or concern of any other person. Of course I was not surprised, for "as the twig is bent so is the tree inclined," but my step-mother was disappointed with the results of all her anxious solicitude, and began to see when it was vain, how thankless such indulgent efforts prove in the end. Freddy's soul was altogether absorptive, taking in whatever offerings gratified him, but yielding no return, and I ask, is there anything so discouraging to an ardent love as this cold neutrality, which proves, without a scruple, that all affection lavished upon it is an irretrievable waste.

As fortune or accident would have it, I was destined to see very little of this relation. Before he had been a fortnight at home I received a letter from Hortense de Beaumont's mother, informing me of the serious illness of my little friend, and entreating me, if it were at all possible or convenient, to go to them for a little while, as my name was constantly on the lips of the dear invalid.

I had begun to wonder at the breach in the correspondence between Hortense and myself, but it had not then been so protracted as to have excited my fears. I attributed her delay to a thousand and one possible impediments, and went on, hoping each day would put an end to my vague conjectures. That day was come at length but the tidings were not what I had prepared myself to hear. I persuaded myself that her mother's excessive love had exaggerated the unfortunate condition of my little friend's health, but, nevertheless determined to go to her as soon as possible. I showed the letter to my father, who had long ago become familiar with the name and attributes of this loved companion, and having obtained his sanction to my eager proposals, I set about making immediate preparations for my journey.

Before ten days had elapsed I was nearing my destination and Hortense de Beaumont's home. My father had entrusted me to the wife of a professional friend of his who was travelling with her son, and whose route opportunely corresponded with mine at this particular time. But I may say with truth that I travelled alone, for with the exception of a few crude observations now and then, the silence of discretion was unbroken between us. The lady was old, bulky, and the victim of a prolonged bilious attack all the way. The son was a red-haired gentleman with very new gold-rimmed spectacles and a scented silk handkerchief. We travelled by rail to Prescott, keeping our peace in contemplative sullenness all the while. The day was hot and dusty, and the car as uncomfortable as it could possibly be.

I sheltered my tell-tale face behind a friendly paper, and distracted myself with an impartial view of the surrounding country. It was early in the afternoon, and the full sunshine lay hot and strong upon the tilled and furrowed fields that stretched away as far as the eye could see on either side. Picturesque little farm houses skirted the road here and there, and stalwart men with their bronzed arms bared to the elbows rested pleasantly on their instruments of toil as the train rushed past them, shouting and waving their broad-rimmed hats until we had left them far behind. Immediately in front of me propped up by innumerable coats and bundles, my lady patron dozed heavily. The thick green veil that screened her bilious expression from the general view quivered and heaved as each deep-drawn breath escaped her powerful nostrils. In her fat lap lay her folded hands with their half-gloves of thick black lace, the pitiful victims of countless flies. The exertion of eating a sandwich had sent her to sleep. The remnants of this popular refreshment were now being actively appreciated by a hungry, buzzing mult.i.tude that made their very best of their golden opportunity. Her hopeful heir sat at a little distance on the same seat twirling his thumbs with an apparently decided purpose. Once or twice he drew his scented handkerchief from his side pocket with an artful flourish and frightened the troublesome swarm away from his parent's sleeping form, but seeing their undaunted determination to restore themselves almost immediately, he respectfully stowed the scented article away with a final flourish and re-applied himself to the interrupted pleasure or task of twirling his thumbs with an apparent purpose.

Busied with my own intimate thoughts I escaped an _ennui_ that would otherwise have proved almost unbearable, and was pleasantly enough distracted until the first monotony of fields and farm houses was broken by the outskirts of the romantic town of Prescott--romantic, because to the traveler who steps from the dusty afternoon train and alights amid its unpropitious surroundings, it suggests itself strongly as a living ill.u.s.tration of a "deserted village," as melancholy to look upon as ever sweet Auburn could have been. My drowsy chaperone was awakened too suddenly, and was therefore very cross and ill-humored for some time after. It was with difficulty we persuaded her to follow us along the track, at the end of which loomed up a dismal wooden building whither we directed our vagrant steps, not knowing what better to do. Here we deposited our sundry parcels and awaited some crisis, we hardly knew what. We were informed that our boat would not reach there before evening, and to escape the monotony of our new surroundings we decided to board the ferry which was now nearing sh.o.r.e, and spend the intervening hours with our neighbors across the line. The comfort and compensation which my drowsy chaperone found in a capacious rocking-chair on the upper deck of the ferry restored her ruffled temperament to its original neutrality, much to her hopeful heir's gratification, and sinking into its sympathetic depths, she made a worthy effort to repair her recent rudely broken slumbers.

Her son, with alarming gallantry, placed an easy-chair near the railing of the deck for me, paid the triple fare and discreetly kept at a distance. His bashfulness and timid reserve recommended him to my genuine admiration as much as if it had been pure amiability, or a desire to do me a good turn that had prompted him to leave me to myself.

I was gathering experience on new grounds and I feared interruption from any one. The briny odor of the St. Lawrence carried on the soft summer breeze was grateful and refreshing to me. The brightest sunlight I ever saw was dancing and riding on the green sparkling ripples that wrinkled the broad surging surface before me. Beside me on a bench under the awning sat a party of American ladies from the other side--at least so I conjectured, and with reason. A look decided it. They were clad in p.r.o.nouncedly cool costumes, dresses that would make a full ball toilet in Canada, but which exposed much prettiness to the ruthless action of the sun and wind on this hot midsummer afternoon. They were using their lips and tongues in a violent manner, accompanying commonplace remarks with the most exaggerated varieties of facial expressions I ever saw. But they were only harbingers of what one meets on landing. These strangely attired damsels in elaborate head-gear and high-heeled shoes strutted about the streets of Ogdensburg in any number. They give life to the pretty town I must admit, and excite the interest of the uninitiated tourist who is accustomed to judge women, especially, according to the standard peculiar to Canada. It is a wonder to me that the drowsy and vapid condition of Ogdensburg's _vis-a-vis_ does not check, in some measure, the animation and spirit of that busy town. There was more life there on that sleepy summer afternoon than I have seen in a month in some of our cities, with all their pretensions. It is only fair to the United States to admit that the spirit of progress and enterprise underlies every square inch of its soil and animates every fibre of its const.i.tution.

In the evening we boarded our boat for the West, and began our journey in earnest. I shall never forget this trip, and I cannot but wonder why. I was alone, for the most part, with my thoughts, which were far from being cheerful companions; still, whenever I steal into the adytum of my memory I find it there to greet me with its peculiar a.s.sociations.

The evening being warm and sultry we remained on deck for many hours after supper. There was no moon, but heaven's vault was alive with twinkling stars. I sat a little apart from my friends, leaning over the railing, looking abstractedly into the dark restless water. I was disturbed once by my considerate cavalier, who brought me a shawl, saying the night air was likely to provoke rheumatism or neuralgia, or such other inconveniences to which our flesh is heir.

I took it with a grateful smile, made a limited remark upon the beauty of the panorama before us, enquired solicitously about the old lady's comfort and spirits, and then considering my duty accomplished, I wrapped myself warmly in the folds of my shawl and settled myself cosily for another reverie.

With a wonderful ac.u.men, the gaunt gentleman seized the insinuating situation, and considering himself summarily dismissed, he edged away by stealthy strides and left me to my cogitations once again.

Strangely enough, I began to think of Mr. Dalton, and my several interviews with him. He had puzzled me, that was all, there was no harm in wondering about him, surely, if I did not give too much time and attention to the possibly dangerous subject. After all, there was something in him so different from other men, even from Arthur Campbell. There was always some deep, happy meaning to his simplest words, and his most commonplace conceptions of things were flavored with this mystifying attraction whatever it was.

That he had had some peculiar experience was evident in his every look, and tone, and word. His very reserve betrayed him and excited people's curiosity about his past career. I had known him all my life, and he had always been the same. I had sat upon his knee with my tiny arms twined about his neck, he had told me thrilling tales, had played with me, and had kissed me--not often--but on two or three occasions the last time was just before I went to school. Then, when I came back--how strange it was--he seemed surprised to see me grown and matured, while he apparently had remained the same.

I suppose he saw that I was no longer the dependent child who confided to him her petty joys and sorrows, but a young lady, self-conscious and reserved to a certain extent; a young lady with her own p.r.o.nounced tastes and settled opinions, whose life had drilled out into an independent channel away from the early source which he had been pleased to control and guide.

Perhaps he was taking the right course, and that I had no need to feel disappointed over his att.i.tude towards me, but I was disappointed all the same. I thought he would always be a dear friend, on whom I could lean and rely, but here my thought was checked. Would I have been satisfied with his _friendship_? Could I have kept within its narrow limits and been content to see him lavish something still more precious upon another?

We are frank at the tribunal of our own most intimate thought, and I know what answer came whispering itself into my heart at this crisis.

I roused myself from my reverie and looked out at the changing scenery before us. We were among the Thousand Islands.

Dark broken outlines of trees and rock, with here and there the glimmer and twinkle of a light, the murmur of broken wavelets touching the sh.o.r.e on every side, and the faint sound of happy human voices somewhere in the misty distance, were what greeted my eyes and ears. I could see nothing defined in the wild panorama about me, only that the darkness was broken here and there, by a darker something, from which tall pine-tops reared themselves majestically, less shrouded than the rest. It was a soul-stirring sight, so gloomy, so misty, so silent. I was almost sorry later to have looked upon the same scene by daylight, although the hand of man has put an artificial touch here and there, which, by the light of day, improves the general view.

After all, what are nature's grandest phases to us unless they suggest something of our own selves? I have never been able to look upon mountain or valley with other than my corporal eyes, and I have always admired those places in a half-regretful way, where the print of human footsteps is unknown. There is no perfect beauty in the external world without the presence of man, and all that silent waste of prairie land and towering mountain, which stretches away in an unbroken monotony towards our northern limits, is to me a lifeless, useless ma.s.s, and will be so until it has submitted every inch of its wild, untrodden surface to the honest industry of toiling humanity. When these giant mountain-tops look down in friendly patronage upon the gables and towers, and curling smoke-wreaths of some struggling hamlets lying at their feet, I shall see their grandeur and admire it, but where dumb nature sits in lone and pensive solitude away from the hum of golden industry, beyond the reach and influence of civilization, it has for me only a cold surface of beauty like the sleep of death.

This thought came back to me on the following day, when we were riding the restless waters of Lake Ontario. As far as the eye could see in any direction nothing was visible but waves and sky. I tried to imagine myself doomed to live alone with nature's reckless beauty, such as I saw it then above and around me, and my heart shivered at the mere thought of such a terrible destiny. I know "there is society where none intrude," but I prefer to believe "it is not good for man to be alone." All the richest and rarest charms of Nature or of Art have never had more than a relative value for me, but give me one short moment of sympathetic human companionship, and with its borrowed light I see beauty above and around me everywhere. Yet how hard it is for us to find this influence that gifts the hours of time with golden opinions, and bears them away as if to the measure of some hallowed strains. There were human souls of every nature beside me, while I leaned over that sunny deck, looking vacantly out upon miles and miles of heaving water, and yet it was to me as if I stood alone calling after friends that could not hear my far-off voice, no bond of mutual interest, care or devotion united me to any one among that motley crowd. To them perhaps, I was not even a definite individual, but only a fraction of the bulk that moved about the boat in moody silence.

If circ.u.mstances such as these did not cross our daily lives at certain intervals, I wonder what would become of all the wholesale moralising and reflections which they engender for most of us. We, who are the playthings of the moods of fate, what would we do with ourselves if these moments of quiet reverie and placid realizations were taken away from us altogether? One thing is certain. Many a n.o.ble generous deed, the outgrowth of one pensive hour, would never have been performed; many lives now re-united and happy on account of some calm impartial meditation, would be drifting in lonely wretchedness asunder, the victims of some hasty, ill-explained impediment, that a little reason could easily have removed.

Thus busily entertained by my own peculiar cogitations, time sped without bringing me as much _ennui_ as I had feared. When night fell again we were in view of Toronto City and looked upon our journey as well nigh accomplished. So much is suggested by the distant prospect of giant towers and steeples, the glimmer of countless lights and the m.u.f.fled buzz of active reality, as one sees and hears them from the deck of a steamer nearing the sh.o.r.e. There were the l.u.s.ty shouts of boatmen on the wharf, rising above the ringing of discordant bells, and the rumble of railway trains. There was clanging and clashing of metal on every side, hauling of ropes, pitching and heaving of merchandise, with now a shrill scream from the throat of some dainty craft hard by, and again a hoa.r.s.e sepulchral response from a larger vessel as it came or went. There was a buzz of human voices expressive of every sort of agitation and confusion, and quietly through it all, the great waves slapped against the sh.o.r.e with a heavy monotonous splashing, and bounded back in sullen fury into the depths beyond.

The half-hour after ten rang clearly out from an illuminated clock in a distant tower, as we picked our steps along the narrow gangway, and deposited ourselves with a sense of infinite relief on _terra firma_ once more.

CHAPTER IX.

Hortense was very ill and Madame de Beaumont very disconsolate, when I reached them. The lively, sparkling look was all gone from the pretty face I had learned to love so dearly, only a wasted remnant of her former beauty remained. Who could detect the change more keenly than I? I, who had feasted upon every line and curve that const.i.tuted her physical perfection, whose memory had been fed upon the recollection of their rare loveliness, and whose hope had lived upon this expectation of seeing her soon again.

When I arrived she was sleeping, the still quiet sleep of an infant, her breast scarcely heaving as the feeble breath came and went. Her mother was standing by the open doorway in an adjoining room looking in upon the peaceful invalid with tearful eyes. She advanced on tip-toe to meet me, and twining her arms around me led me away down a dimly-lit corridor into a cosy sitting-room at the end, where a cheerful gas-light greeted us. Our noiseless entrance disturbed the solitary occupant, who, as we crossed the threshold, rose up abruptly from where he sat by a small table near the window, and gathering up the books which he had been reading, strode eagerly towards a curtained doorway opposite, and vanished behind the waving drapery, just as we pa.s.sed into the room.

There was an uneasy look in Madame de Beaumont's eyes for a second or two as they followed the receding figure. Then with an affectation of ordinary solicitude she turned and said to me,