Volume I Part 14 (1/2)
CHAPTER XVI.
LIPPENSTOCK BAY.
The next morning early, ere yet the last night's arrivals were astir, there was bustle in the hotel. Omnibuses, carriages, buggies, and a few saddle-horses, waited before the door, and soon a loquacious company of pleasure-seekers, comprising three-fourths of all the guests, came down and were borne away.
Joseph Naylor had the buggy which led, Rose Hillyard by his side, as nearly always happened now--though he had many compet.i.tors who strove hard to supplant him. His luck or good management was remarkable; for somehow, though the lady was conspicuously gracious and encouraging to the rest, it was nearly always to him that it fell to escort her. Lucy Naylor and Lettice Deane were provided each with a horse and a cavalier; Margaret, in her riding-habit, was following; Peter Wilkie sprang forward to hold her stirrup, but it felt so warm that she changed her mind and followed her mother into a carriage, which changeableness the latter was far from approving; but Mrs Petty was beside her, and young Walter on the box, so nothing could be said, and if Peter's mother muttered ”whimsical monkey,” and looked cross, n.o.body minded. In ten minutes every one had mounted or scrambled into a place, and the company started away.
The air was still. The sea stretched like a mirror beneath the limpid sky, repeating in livelier tones its cerulean blueness and the pearly brightness of the clouds, save near the sh.o.r.e, where the reflections grew troubled in the swinging of the gla.s.sy swell which broke and crumbled in a fringe of glittering surf. There was no breeze, but the sun was low as yet, and the coolness of night still lingered in the air with a pleasant saltness and the scent of fresh sea-wrack cast up along the sh.o.r.e. It was a charming drive, that summer morning, along the even firmness of the beach, so smooth, and free from noise, jolt, or rattle. The fall of the horses' feet was scarcely audible, and the air was astir with the plas.h.i.+ng of the breakers in faint monotonous resonance, a low and un.o.btrusive accompaniment to the blithesome voices of the merry-makers as they wended along.
The motion was smooth, but the progress was not rapid. The sand was heavy beneath the wheels and the horses' feet, and offered a dead impediment to speed. But speed was not a thing to be greatly desired.
The morning, with its brightness, its freshness, and its waxing warmth, was something to be lingered in, and breathed with long deep inspirations of enjoyment; and no one thought of haste or complained of delay, though it took an hour to do the five miles' distance which brought them to Lippenstock Bay and the wooden jetty, where a steamboat was waiting to take them on board. Out upon the water was a new and fresh sensation, and one which arrived just as the other was losing its charm. The sands, when they left them, were not as cool as they had been an hour before--the genial warmth was beginning to verge on heat; and the party crowded on board with enthusiasm, in haste to secure commodious corners and lounge at ease, inhaling new freshness as the boat put off from the sh.o.r.e with a screech like the cry of a sea-gull, and breasted the gla.s.sy waters on its voyage round the bay.
Lippenstock Bay is an inlet of eight miles' width, running deep into the land, and guarded at its mouth by a double row of islands, which shelter it from the outer ocean, breaking the lines of westward-driven billows, and rendering it a sheltered roadstead in all weathers. It cuts into the gently swelling country which comes down upon the sea, with its sandy pasture-tracks, and scattered farmhouses nestling in sheltered spots among meadows and shady trees, so snug and thrifty, but, alas for the landscape! so aglare with whitewash. If ever the spirit of the picturesque shall invade those sh.o.r.es, her first exploit, I fear, will be to scatter something of neglect, if not decay, upon the scene. In that transparent atmosphere, with its sharp uncompromising lights and shadows, the human element of the present is aggressively manifest. Each dwelling, in its flagrant paint or whiteness, obtrudes itself upon the eye, and insists on being counted in, one more residence of a citizen of the Great Republic. The fields and roads, the fences and blocks of bush, are scrupulously rectangular, without one softening curve: ill.u.s.trated in the varying greens and yellows of the different crops, the country looks as if it were covered with a vast patch bed-quilt.
The hills of the rougher country, backed by the blue outline of distant mountains, come into view at the upper end of the bay, basking sweetly in the light, and clothed in pearly greys where their verdure falls in shadow. They relieve the scene from the sense of vulgar commonplace which the rawness of nearer objects might impose, and above is the immeasurable vault filled with transparent air suffused with brightness, including all, and reducing stretches of monotonous country within symmetrical limits. The hills behind send down a spur across the lower levels to the sea. This ends in a ridge which enters the head of the bay, and on it stands the pretty old town of Lippenstock.
Lippenstock is one of the oldest settlements on the Atlantic coast; and being old, it is rich in the mellowness of tone so sadly wanting in other places. Having grown with the community, it harmonises like a natural production with surrounding nature, free from the harsh obtrusiveness of a brand-new construction, and might almost be a cutting from the Old World ingrafted on the still scarce-ripened New.
Cl.u.s.tered on its tongue of land, it stretches out into the blue deep water, a lesser bay margined with yellow sand confining and compacting it on either hand; fringed on three sides with wharfs, whose tar-black timbers lend a solid definition to the base from which it rises, in blocks of russet brown, red brick, and grimy stone, with roofs and steeples rising tier on tier in jagged outline backward and upward, spreading as they recede, in every tone of blue and purple grey, among the tops of the embowering elms which line the quiet streets. A s.h.i.+p or two is moored along the quays; for the drowsy place has considerable trade, and fis.h.i.+ng-boats, with half-reefed umber sails and their red-s.h.i.+rted crews, are sleeping on the water.
The throbbing of the steamer's engine sounded far and wide across the tranquil calm, the gurgling waters parting at its bow and speeding backward in a trail of troubled undulations. The air seemed quickened into life by the motion, and fanned the voyagers gently as they reclined upon the deck, steeping themselves in suns.h.i.+ne, which, now they were on the water, seemed less ardent than it had been ash.o.r.e.
Mrs Naylor, being an invalid, had had her choice of places. Reclining near the bow, where the air was untainted by engine-room vapours, she sat in the shadow of her white umbrella in perfect comfort, Margaret beside her, with her book and fan and other paraphernalia at hand when wanted.
At Margaret's elbow, leaning against the bulwarks, stood Walter Petty in watchful patience, waiting for something to say when opportunity should arise, though his mind felt too blank to originate an observation, while he watched and admired in a wors.h.i.+pful silence which ought to have gratified her if she had understood it; but she did not. She liked him as a young fellow always kind and nice, but he bored her, rather, with his superfluity of still life and lack of initiative; or, to put it plainly, she found him much too diffident and young.
He was three years older than herself, it is true, and was looked on as a wonder of readiness and knowledge by his compeers among the budding lawyers of Toronto; but then he was in love, poor lad, in his first and earliest pa.s.sion, which is like the measles, and deals more hardly with a man, when, having pa.s.sed him by before, it falls on him out of season. He had studied hard, and his ambition had been so entirely in his profession that he had had no thought to waste upon young ladies; and often had he scoffed and pitied, to see the ridiculous figure his fellows cut in the ecstasies of their calf-love.
He had listened to their idiotic raptures of hope and despair, and wondered how rational creatures could become such fools. Now, the fate had fallen on himself. It is decreed that man shall once in his life make an a.s.s of himself in dealing with the other s.e.x, however wise and prudent he may be in commerce with his own; and the man who never does so stumble must be a wiseacre, or worse, an imperfect organism, from whose construction the heart or the ideal impulses have been omitted.
Walter's hot fits and cold were like an ague, and left him as limp and powerless as an ague would. The briskest and most talkative of his set at other times, he found his mind under this new influence dried up and sterile, without an idea fit to put in words, now when he was most anxious to be amusing and to s.h.i.+ne. His being seemed turned into a pool of receptivity, absorbing the wors.h.i.+pped image, but unable to give back a reflection. He was happy where he stood, within range of so much sweet influence, but he was scarcely agreeable; he had nothing to say, and he still retained sufficient common-sense to feel a little foolish.
Peter Wilkie, sitting beside him on a coil of rope, was under no such disadvantage. His feelings were in no wise overpowering, only sufficient to make him wish to be at his best. He had had both measles and calf-love in their appointed season, and in such easy form as his const.i.tution allowed. He had been in love many times, according to his capacity--an easy-going and pleasant acceleration of the pulses, mental and bodily, without fever or foolishness of any kind. The thing ran its course, and went off again as judgment advised, leaving him none the worse, and ready to begin the pretty game again on proper occasion.
Mr Peter considered Margaret a remarkably fine girl--handsome, clever, and with money--who would do him credit as a wife, if he should make up his mind to take her. He had very nearly done so. He would have done so, but that there was another, a competing beauty, as eligible, seemingly, in all respects, and still more attractive. Miss Hillyard was quite as handsome; and if Clam Beach knew less about her fortune, that was the natural consequence of her being from Chicago. Her dress and appointments betokened wealth; and he had gathered from the American boarders that the Deanes, with whom she travelled, were people of note, and very rich. Her complete self-possession showed both that she had lived in the world, and had held a good place in it; and, for herself, she was perhaps handsomer than the other. Their styles were so different that they could not be compared; but if anything, he preferred Miss Hillyard's. Being sandy-haired and pale-eyed himself, the brilliant brunette, with her rich colour, bright eyes, and abundant hair, had the attraction which lies in opposites; and then her conversation and manner were so much more formed and matured than were Margaret's. She was a woman, in fact, while the other was a girl, and, he fancied, would suit him better as a companion.
Miss Hillyard, however, was at the other end of the boat with Mr Naylor, as she so often was now--”Why did she waste so much of her company on that old cod?” he wondered--in the centre of a knot of young people, whose frequent laughter showed that the conversation was general.
Margaret was before him, and glancing up at her where she sat, he doubted if anything could be prettier than the picture she made, under the shadow of her broad-leafed hat, bound with a copious scarf. She had little colour; but the healthy pallor harmonised with the blueness of her violet eyes, and the brown hair escaping into suns.h.i.+ne behind her ear, and flas.h.i.+ng like ruddy gold. The colour of her eyes repeated itself in the handkerchief knotted at her throat; and her Holland riding-habit, fitting without a crease, displayed to perfection the lithe young figure, with arms so free and supple. ”C[oe]lebs in search of a wife” began to doubt if this damsel were not the better choice.
He coughed to clear his voice, and proceeded to make conversation in his best manner.
He talked about the scenery. The bay reminded him of the Bay of Salerno, and every other bay, seemingly, which he had ever seen in distant places--especially in the Mediterranean--which sounded picturesque and romantic to Margaret, who had never been out of Canada till now, and tended to impress her with his merit as an accomplished traveller and man of the world. He had maundered eastward as far as the Gulf of Corinth, and even alluded casually to the Golden Horn, with the intention of taking it next, waxing eloquent over the glories of Constantinople, and favouring her with recollections and anecdotes of Eastern life, when Petty, standing by disgusted at his exclusion from a conversation in which he could not gain standing-room, cried out--
”See! they are actually launching a big sail-boat up the cove yonder.
What can people want with a sail-boat in a calm like this?”
Margaret started and turned round, regardless of the coast of Greece, Dardanelles, and Bosphorus, about which she had been expecting to hear.
”Where are they launching a boat, Mr Petty? Pray show me;” and there came a flush to her cheek, and she looked at him so brightly with a grateful smile, that the young fellow's heart beat faster than before, and he was very happy.