She could scarcely believe her eyes. Joseph was forty-seven. She knew the date of his birth. He had never cared to dance within her recollection, and she had known him almost since her marriage. She remembered his coming home from sea about that time, a sad-eyed youth, who avoided company, and lived in a sort of patient gloom, finding his sole distraction in close application to business. Her husband whispered that he had met with a disappointment into which they must not pry, but rather strive by unspoken sympathy and kindness to reconcile him to his lot, and wean him from his sorrow.
In time the cloud upon his spirits had seemed to lift. He was too kind-hearted not to take interest in the people among whom he lived; and, sympathising with them in their joys, his own depression by degrees was lightened. A man's capacity, even for suffering, is limited. Divide his attention, and you mitigate the intensity of his woes. It is the self-centred egotist whose troubles kill him, or may drive him mad, because he is incapable of distraction. To Joseph the better part of his life had seemed over, and work his only remaining resource. Yet he had never closed his heart against the cares and pleasures of his fellows, and he felt a wholesome interest in all that went on around him, like a father watching the opening hopes of children, who have not learnt to misgive, or dread the nipping frosts of disappointment.
His sister-in-law, not being addicted to moral analysis, probably did not consider this; but she had seen his despondency clear away, and knew that he was the kindest, most cheerful, and most popular man she had ever met--ready to join in every pastime, and differing from the rest only in a premature middle-aged benevolence, setting in before he was thirty, which found pleasure in amusing others, without seeking anything for himself. He had seemed impervious to female charms through all the years she had known him, and especially he had avoided dances--or if by chance he found himself at one, only joining when charity led him to the side of some neglected wallflower. And here he was to-night, when there was no benevolent occasion for it whatever, leading out the best-dressed woman in the room, with an ardour which would have seemed more natural in him twenty years before. True, the lady had saved his life; but it seemed a droll way of manifesting gratitude to dance with her, at his age. Her eyebrows made a satirical twitch upwards, and she sighed impatiently at men's lack of common-sense. The present was no time to unburden her anxieties--that was plain; and meanwhile she would saunter round the crowd, and watch him in his new character of middle-aged youngster.
The evening was warm, but in the dancing-room it was positively hot. The atmosphere quivered with the blare of sounding brass, and the whirling figures, chasing the fleeting strains, raised a sirocco of sultry air and dust. Still the young people seemed to like it, and Mrs Naylor looked on in wonder, forgetting that she had once been young herself. But who were those in the farthest corner, keeping themselves so well clear of the hurrying hubbub?--revolving dreamily on the outer edge, in perfect sympathy and time, and in an orbit of their own--avoiding collision with the meteors and comets of the greater system, spinning calmly and smoothly on the flood of sound, engrossed with themselves, and indifferent to all the world beside.
She looked again. The girl was her own daughter Margaret; but who was the man in whose arms she was so restfully and intimately revolving? Her self-reliant daughter was not wont to dance in that clinging fashion, and she could not imagine what dweller at Clam Beach could have won her to such unaccustomed softness. What masterful bird could so have won upon the fancy of her favourite chick? Was he one of the proper sort? But Margaret was too high-spirited to take up with a cross-breed, and she felt less solicitous than had it been that featherhead Lucy. Still she was curious to know who could have tamed proud Meg to so mild a demeanour. It was not young Petty. She could have wished that it had been. This one was not so tall, neither was he raw-looking, as--candour compelled the admission--was Mr Walter Petty--just a little; but then he was young yet, and it would soon wear off, with his prospects and assured position. This one was thoroughly in possession of himself and all his limbs. How deftly he steered and threaded their way, without stop or collision, among the less skilful dancers! How strong he looked, and calm, without heaviness! She could have wished herself young again, to be danced with by a partner such as he. In their continuous whirling, and the perpetual intervening of other couples, she could not make out or recognise his face. After a while they stopped, and she moved from where she had been standing, to get a better view. How intimately Margaret stood up to him and talked, with her flapping fan interposed between them and the rest of the world!
Mrs Naylor's curiosity increased, and she drew nearer. "What!" she almost cried out aloud. "Walter Blount! How comes he here? This must not be!" And flushing, and tightening her lips, she walked across to where they stood. To think that after all the management she had expended in making her brother-in-law bring them to the seaside, and so remove her girl for a while beyond the reach of the "detrimental" whose fascinations threatened to ruin her prospects, the aggravating youth should have followed them! It was too provoking. She sniffed indignantly, and bore down on the offenders, tightening her lace shawl about her shoulders, and looking tall and stately with all her might.
"Margaret, my dear," she said, "you are dancing a great deal too much. You will be knocked up to-morrow, and I mean you to accompany me to Boston."
Margaret was taken aback. Her mother's habitual seat was in the conversation-room, at the other end of the suite, with two pairs of folding-doors and all the dancers between. It was to avoid her observation that they had been confining their career to this far-off corner, and her sweeping thus down on them was altogether unexpected. She let go her partner's arm, and with drooping eye and pouting lip prepared to follow her mother, like a naughty child detected in the act.
"Mrs Naylor," said Blount, "will you not speak to me?"
"How d'ye do, Mr Blount? I was not aware you were at Clam Beach."