CHAPTER XIII.
[MAIDA SPRINGER].
The succeeding week was a time of depression, waiting, watching, and general tantalisation for Margaret Naylor and Walter Blount. Margaret's mother was more cross and more watchful than Argus or duenna had ever been before. The only consolation--as Joseph, pitying the lad's despair, found with some remorse that he had let fall--was, that such preternatural vigilance could not last; or if it did, that Margaret would be goaded to desperation and rebel.
Interchange of glances even was denied the hapless lovers. Mrs Naylor intercepted, so to speak, an œillade in its flight across the breakfast-room on the first morning of the siege, and sternly insisted that her daughter should change places forthwith to the other side of the table, and turn her back to the enemy.
To save appearances, while acting jailer on the girl, Mrs Naylor made a martyr of herself, and moved about under a load of superabundant clothing--wrapping herself in shawls and wearing a wisp of knitting upon her head on days when her brother-in-law was wishing himself a wild Indian, that he might dress in a coat of paint. Mrs Naylor was "poorly,"--she felt premonitions of ague, a threatening of neuralgia, and, of course, severe "headache"; at least so the ladies agreed, on comparing notes, after making tender inquiries--each anxious to make sure there was nothing infectious, so as to steal away quietly before the general panic and stampede which would ensue if there were.
"Just a case of general all-overishness, my dears," said Mrs Carraway, "arising from change to this bracing air, after the sickly heats of Upper Canada. I had a touch of it myself, on coming first. There is so much salt and ozone down here."
"I should say it was a case of hypochondria," observed Mrs Chickenpip, who, being serious and robust in her views, was given to cultivate truth at the expense of charity. "I am sure we do wrong in encouraging her to make-believe, by showing so much sympathy. If you had seen, as I did, the breakfast she made this morning, you would think less of her ailments."
"That's not always a sign," said Mrs Wilkie. "Look at me now. I eat hearty. I'm always best at meal-times; but an hour after, I'm just fairly done, and my heart thumpin' like a smiddie hammer."
"Not at all to be wondered at," Mrs Chickenpip retorted, below her breath. "If people will over-eat, they must expect to be uncomfortable,"--a remark which passed unheard.
"How do you feel to-day, Mrs Wilkie?" was more audible. It was Rose Hillyard who spoke.
"Ah, my dear, it's you? I'm glad to see you. I'm only so-so, between the heat and the palpitations; but I think the homoeopathy is doing me good. I think the lady we are speakin' about should try some of it."
"Have you been taking any more powders?" asked Rose, smiling at the recollection of the cloud of "poother" she had seen issue from the old lady's mouth.
"Just wan each day. I haven't forgot how kind you were to me the first day. I have been better ever since."
"You blew that one all away, I think."
"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 assuredly 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 rôle--liked it almost--and might, I suppose, be taken as of that curious class 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?" Fanny 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 nobody, 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 practitioner. 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 assault, 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 pass the butter. 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 shore, 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 passes them the apple-sarse 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 class of Metaphysics and Political Economy, and Miss Rolph, our principal, 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 glasses 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 glass. 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.