The entrance of the Naylors made a welcome diversion. As they took their places the old woman's tears dried up of themselves, her eyes being withdrawn from the inward contemplation of her own distresses to the lace cap of Mrs Naylor and the gowns of her daughters. Unconsciously she sat up more squarely in her chair, prinked out her cap-strings, and wondered if Mrs Naylor's hair could be all her own; while her son and the gentleman exchanged an observation on the journey they had made together.
Mrs Naylor was not only of the Provinces, but provincial at that. Like other "leading ladies" of Jones's Landing, she was wont to inform strangers that she was "very exclusive," with the gratifying result of taking away their breath; though perhaps, if she had but known, it was the stupendous conceit which could imagine herself or her circle in the smallest degree desirable, rather than the splendour of her position which astonished them. She had no small opinion of her "position," but, like other rural great ones, she bowed in her heart before the superiority of dwellers in the capital. There was a grandeur in their way of accepting her pretensions, while setting them calmly aside, which filled her with admiring awe on her rare visits to Toronto--made her rave about its elegance, and try to play off in Jones's Landing some of the mannerisms she had found so impressive. And here it may be observed that, in its way, Toronto is a capital, even as New York is, or London, and quite as accustomed as either to put on metropolitan airs, so far as circumstances permit; and seeing that all mankind are made of one kind of clay, there may be less difference in the spirit which animates the small community and the great one than would appear. A cock-boat is built of the same materials as a man-of-war, and it is floated and steered in accordance with the same laws of nature.
At a distant table Mrs Naylor descried Mrs Justice Petty, Mrs Vice-Chancellor Chickenpip, and Mrs Carraway--the very cream of Toronto society. Ice-cream, alas! they were likely to prove to Mrs Naylor, as she did not know them, and they made a point of not thawing to unknown fellow-country-women whom they met in American hotels--it being difficult to shake them off afterwards, especially the undesirable ones. So far, indeed, did those ladies' prudence carry them, that they would only bathe at eccentric hours and in secretly arranged parties. The very sea should not receive them in the same embrace with persons from Canada who were not in Society. As for Americans, it did not matter: they might never meet them again, and Americans are held to be a peculiar people, without social degrees or defined lines of demarcation. Everybody among them may be anybody, and each is expected to have a spice of everything. Among them, vulgarity, if they have any, is overlooked. They are generally amusing, often rich, and cannot compromise a Canadian.
Mrs Naylor's eye, surveying the company, lighted on her distinguished compatriots. She knew them, although she had not the happiness of being acquainted with them--a humbling thought, which made her approach with more meekness than otherwise she might have felt, the two people from Toronto who shared her table. If not the rose, they at least grew near it, and might--who knew?--be woven into a link of connection with the queen of flowers. She addressed a polite observation to the old lady, who, accepting it as a tribute to her clever son and her own good looks, responded affably, as not unwilling to confer the favour of her notice, though aware that it was a thing of value.
And so it came about that, when dinner was over, the Naylor party and the Wilkies had coalesced, and strolled together to a shady corner of the galleries, where broad awnings, flapping in fitful air-currents, lent a little freshness to the languor of the hot and drowsy afternoon.
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.