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."