CHAPTER III.
[THE FIRST EVENING].
When the sweltering hours of afternoon have passed on westward, and the shadows creep out to meet the coming twilight in the east, there is an arousing in the world comparable to the quickening which passes across it at the opening of each new day. The air, too languid, an hour since, to lift the drooping streamer on the flag-staff, awakens into flutterings which set the aspen-leaves in the shrubbery spinning gleefully upon their slender stalks. The watch-dog rattling his chain emerges from his kennel, stretching and blinking, and yawning his formidable jaws. The interest of living steals slowly back on him, and ere long he is amusing himself with a half-gnawed bone, his eyes fixed upon the kitchen-door, whence supper and the cook are wont to visit him.
There are stirrings and rustlings in the long silent passages and chambers of the hotel. The life of the inmates, which had burned low, like charcoal-embers in the thick hot stillness, lights up in the eddies of cooler air which flutter in, and brightens into flame. The sleepers draw themselves together where they lie on swing, in hammock, on couch, or deeply cushioned chair, and open their eyes and start and are awake, inhale the freshness of the sea-salt air, and the house is alive once more with the stirring of its inmates, like a clock which had run down, but is now wound up and set agoing.
Old Mrs Wilkie had been surprised by sleep as she lay back in a long cane chair, preliminary to getting up and seeking the privacy of her chamber. Her feet had been raised on the further end of the seductive invention for barely a second, when, with a sigh, her head fell backward, leaving the lips apart, and plunging her in deep sweet gurgling slumber, which echoed purlingly along the silent gallery, like sounds of hidden brooks in shady dells.
She started now, and, wheeling round, sat bolt-upright, in haste to hide among her skirts the broad prunella shoes which had stood up before her like a massive screen, concealing her foreshortened figure from intrusive eyes.
"Peter Wilkie! are you sleeping? Come here," were the first words she spoke on opening her eyes. There was crossness in her voice, and her face was aflush with anger, or perhaps with lingering sleep. "I wish you would speak to that impertinent Yankee woman over there. What business has she looking at me like that? It's my feet she's trying to see, I do believe."
"They're big enough to be plainly seen without much trying, mother. But never mind, I'll back them to gang their ain gate against hers or anybody's. Why did you not go to your room, as I advised you, instead of exhibiting yourself like a sleeping beauty before the whole house?"
"I just fell asleep before I knew; and it's like your father's son to be jawing and jeering when I'm too poorly to take my own part," and she pressed her side. "Sleeping beauty, quothy! It'll be telling ye, my man, if any scart of a wife ye may pick up in this unwholesome country keeps her looks half as well when she comes to my time of life;" and having secured the last word, she withdrew to smooth her tumbled hair and prepare for the next meal.
There was a general rolling up of awnings and opening of shutters all over the house. Doors and windows were thrown open, and whisperings from the sea stole in everywhere, bringing freshness and gaiety where sloth and prostration had brooded all the afternoon. The sounds of laughter and tripping feet echoed on the stairs, and presently the whole body of guests come out from supper were assembled in the parlours. There were three parlours, connected with each other by folding-doors. Only one was carpeted, to be ready for rainy days at the end of the season. The boards of the other two were bare, like the holystoned deck of a steamer; and, with their open windows descending to the floor, they had the appearance of sheltered continuations of the gallery without, rather than of rooms, they were so sweet and fresh and spacious.
Round the pianos, or rather one of them, the crowd gathered. A Bostonian, the pet of the ladies and the aversion of the other young men, seated himself before it and began to play. He played, as the male amateur is wont to play, with abundant sound--eliciting admiring whispers as to the energy of his touch, and acquitting himself successfully, though by no means with the brilliancy he himself supposed. Ere long he slid into a waltz, and then the crowd broke up into its component parts. Those who could find a partner began to dance, those who desired one looked about or waited to be asked, while the elders withdrew to the carpeted drawing-room.
Those first to reach it having secured the rocking-chairs, the remainder had to sit still,--all, that is, but Miss Maida Springer, a school-ma'am, the gossips said, from Vermont--a lady of questionable youth but indubitable independence of character, who tilted her chair till its back touched the wall, and swung her feet in a plenitude of sedentary exercise such as no rocker could afford.
Mrs Judge Petty was one of the first to reach the drawing-room and install herself in a comfortable place. Having done so, she had leisure to look round and consider how the places near her should be filled. Her eye lighted on Mrs Wilkie drifting doubtfully on the stream, and, fixing her with an encouraging smile, drew her forward, and landed her with a turn of the eyelid on a sofa at her elbow.
Mrs Naylor followed close upon her new acquaintance, and Mrs Petty, feeling no desire to know her, would fain have staved her off with a chilling stare; but Mrs Naylor could play burr on occasion, and knew how to disregard what it would be inconvenient to see. She stuck to her friend, and made small-talk whilst settling herself by her side; and Mrs Wilkie, though eager to meet the advances of the more worshipful lady, was too unskilful to refrain from answering her assiduous companion. It was tantalising. Circumstances through life had kept her far off from the judges and magnates of her native land; and now, when she was abroad, and at last in clover--when great ones were actually seeking her acquaintance--to think that a quite ordinary person should intrusively interfere! It made her cross, and her replies grew short and dry; but, alas! to no good purpose--for though Mrs Naylor could be silenced by taciturnity, Mrs Petty had turned away her head in the meantime, and was interesting herself in other things.
Mrs Wilkie flushed and fretted; Mrs Naylor sat and bided her time. She had two girls to bring out and marry well--enterprises in which patience and ability to eat humble-pie speed better than more brilliant qualities. She sat by Mrs Wilkie, keeping her company, though neither spoke. Their eyes were occupied with the moving crowd of dancers in the distance, as they whirled and floated on the tide of sound.
After a while Mrs Petty turned round to her neighbour and observed, "I think I see Mr Wilkie--your son, is he not?--dancing with my daughter Ann. A good height, are they not, for each other? They really look very well."
"Most girls look well dancing with my Peter--Mr Wilkie, I ought to say, for we can't look on a young man in his fine position as just a boy; though, to be sure, he will always be a boy to me. Eh!--the trouble I had with him in his teething! I can never forget that, and the day we put on his first pair of little trousers. I made them myself out of a bit of black-and-red tartan. And now, to see him 'dancing in the hall,' as the song says, with all the finest girls in the room just scuffling to get a catch of him."
Mrs Petty was scarcely gratified at the remark, but she was amused; and as we grow older on this humdrum planet, to be amused befalls one so seldom that it compensates for much, even for a lack of proper respect--so she acquiesced.
"Yes," she said, "Mr Petty--Judge Petty, you know, my husband--says he thinks highly of your son, and expects him to do very well. I too have met him, and like the little I have seen; and now apparently he has made the acquaintance of Ann, and they seem to get on together very nicely."
"Oh yes," chuckled the mother, "he's a great boy with the girls, our Peter. They're all pulling caps to see who's going to get him. I just----"
"Hm!" coughed Mrs Petty, in haste to interrupt before anything worse had been said of the girls, among whom her own daughter seemed audaciously to be included. "Oh yes, an excellent young man. I have scarcely met him, but I hope to see more of him next winter, and I am very pleased to meet his mother."
Whereat the other bridled and was happy. How well it would read in her next letter to her husband--hid away somewhere in Scotland, and never alluded to--to mention Mr Justice Petty and his family among her intimate friends!
"Don't you think my daughter Ann is looking her best this evening?" the younger mother went on. "So animated. She is perhaps too tranquil in general. 'Statuesque' was how young Lord Norman described her, when he passed through Toronto last spring. And really she is clever, though ill-natured people say she has no conversation. When she gets hold of a clever man who can understand, see! she positively rattles."
"Oh yes, Peter generally makes the girls rattle. He's very quick about sounding them. Terrible empty, though, he says he generally finds them;" which was a remark she should have spared her new friend, in view of the elation she felt in making the acquaintance; but Peter was her monomania. With his name on her lips, the words would come of themselves, without judgment or consideration.
"There is my son Walter, too," Mrs Petty continued, taking no notice. "Dancing, I declare, instead of smoking out of doors. A positive achievement on the part of that young lady, if she only knew. A very handsome girl, and nicely dressed; but I do not seem to have observed her before--must have arrived to-day."
"So she did," answered Mrs Wilkie. "That's--dear me! how bad my memory is growing!"
"Miss Naylor," volunteered her mother. "Niece of Joseph Naylor of Jones's Landing."
"The great lumberman? In--deed!" said Mrs Petty, interested and impressed. "I did not hear of her arrival. I wonder if he is coming! The richest bachelor in Upper Canada, I understand. It is a risky business, but still----. One likes to see a celebrity."
"He is here," his sister-in-law observed. "We arrived this afternoon."
Mrs Petty turned her eyes, and for the first time permitted them to be seen resting on the stranger, addressing her with much politeness at the same time. "Then perhaps you are related to the beautiful girl who is dancing with my son?"
"She is my daughter Margaret. I am Mrs Caleb Naylor."
"So happy to know you, Mrs Naylor," and forthwith the mothers conversed freely across Mrs Wilkie and over her head, on subjects in which it was impossible for her to join, though many were her abortive attempts to put in an oar. Even Mrs Naylor, whose chit-chat she had stifled with her taciturnity half an hour before, was now grown deaf and unresponsive to anything she could say.