Love in Idleness: A Bar Harbour Tale

by F. Marion Crawford

"She has a brother—Randolph," replied Lawrence, rather shortly; for he was suddenly aware that there was no particular reason why he should talk about the Trehearnes.

"Of course, they're relations of the Miners," observed the Professor.

"That's the reason why Miss Trehearne has them to stay with her. Excuse me—I can't get a light in this wind."

Thereupon Lawrence turned away and got under the lee of the deck saloon, leaving the Professor to himself. Having lighted his cigarette, the artist went forward and stood in the sharp head-breeze that seemed to blow through and through him, disinfecting his whole being from the hot, close air of the train he had left half an hour earlier.

Bar Harbour, in common speech, includes Frenchman's Bay, the island of Mount Desert, and the other small islands lying near it,—an extensive tract of land and sea. As a matter of fact, the name belongs to the little harbour between Bar Island and Mount Desert, together with the village which has grown to be the centre of civilization, since the whole place has become fashionable. Earth, sky, and water are of the north,—hard, bright, and cold. In artists' slang, there is no atmosphere. The dark green islands, as one looks at them, seem to be almost before the foreground. The picture is beautiful, and some people call it grand; but it lacks depth. There is something fiercely successful about the colour of it, something brilliantly self-reliant. It suggests a certain type of handsome woman—of the kind that need neither repentance nor cosmetics, and are perfectly sure of the fact, whose virtue is too cold to be kind, and whose complexion is not shadowed by passion, nor softened by suffering, nor even washed pale with tears. Only the sea is eloquent. The deep-breathing tide runs forward to the feet of the over-perfect, heartless earth, to linger and plead love's story while he may; then sighing sadly, sweeps back unsatisfied, baring his desolate bosom to her loveless scorn.

The village, the chief centre, lies by the water's edge, facing the islands which enclose the natural harbour. It was and is a fishing village, like many another on the coast. In the midst of it, vast wooden hotels, four times as high as the houses nearest to them, have sprung up to lodge fashion in six-storied discomfort. The effect is astonishing; for the blatant architect, gesticulating in soft wood and ranting in paint, as it were, has sketched an evil dream of mediævalism, incoherent with itself and with the very common-place facts of the village street. There, also, in Mr. Bee's shop window, are plainly visible the more or less startling covers of the newest books, while from on high frowns down the counterfeit presentment of battlements and turrets, and of such terrors as lent like interest when novels were not, neither was the slightest idea of the short story yet conceived.

But behind all and above all rise the wooded hills, which are neither modern nor ancient, but eternal. And in them and through them there is secret sweetness, and fragrance, and much that is gentle and lovely—in the heart of the defiantly beautiful earth-woman with her cold face, far beyond the reach of her tide-lover, and altogether out of hearing of his sighs and complaining speeches. There grow in endless greenness the white pines and the pitch pines, the black spruce and the white; there droops the feathery larch by the creeping yew, and there gleam the birches, yellow, white, and grey; the sturdy red oak spreads his arms to the scarlet maple, and the witch hazel rustles softly in the mysterious forest breeze. There, buried in the wood's bosom, bloom and blossom the wild flowers, and redden the blushing berries in unseen succession, from middle June to late September—violets first, and wild iris, strawberries and raspberries, blueberries and blackberries; short-lived wild roses and tender little blue-bells, red lilies, goldenrod and clematis, in the confusion of nature's loveliest order.

All this Lawrence knew, and remembered, guessing at what he could neither remember nor know, with an artist's facility for filling up the unfinished sketch left on the mind by one impression. He had been at Bar Harbour three years earlier, and had wandered amongst the woods and pottered along the shore in a skiff. But he had been alone then and had stopped in the mediæval hotel, a rather solitary, thinking unit amidst the horde of thoughtless summer nomads, designated by the clerk at the desk as 'Number a hundred and twenty-three,' and a candidate for a daily portion of the questionable dinner at the hotel table. It was to be different this time, he thought, as he watched for the first sight of the pier when the Sappho rounded Bar Island. The Trehearnes had not been at their house three years ago, and Fanny Trehearne had been then not quite sixteen, just groping her way from the schoolroom to the world, and quite beneath his young importance—even had she been at Bar Harbour to wander among the woods with him. Things had changed, now. He was not quite sure that in her girlish heart she did not consider him beneath her notice. She was straight and tall—almost as tall as he, and she was proud, if she was not pretty, and she carried her head as high as the handsomest. Moreover, she was rich, and Louis Lawrence was at present phenomenally poor, with a rather distant chance of inheriting money. These were some of the excellent reasons why fate had made him fall in love with her, though none of them accounted for the fact that she had encouraged him, and had suggested to the Miss Miners that it would be very pleasant to have him come and stay a fortnight in July.

The Sappho slowed down, stopped, backed, and made fast to the wooden pier, and as she swung round, Lawrence saw Fanny Trehearne standing a little apart from the group of people who had come down to meet their own friends or to watch other people meeting theirs. The young girl was evidently looking for him, and he took off his hat and waved it about erratically to attract her attention. When she saw him, she nodded with a faint smile and moved one step nearer to the gangway, to wait until he should come on shore with the crowd.

She had a quiet, business-like way of moving, as though she never changed her position without a purpose. As Lawrence came along, trying to gain on the stream of passengers with whom he was moving, he kept his eyes fixed on her face, wondering whether the expression would change when he reached her and took her hand. When the moment came, the change was very slight.