The motion was smooth, but the progress was not rapid. The sand was heavy beneath the wheels and the horses' feet, and offered a dead impediment to speed. But speed was not a thing to be greatly desired. The morning, with its brightness, its freshness, and its waxing warmth, was something to be lingered in, and breathed with long deep inspirations of enjoyment; and no one thought of haste or complained of delay, though it took an hour to do the five miles' distance which brought them to Lippenstock Bay and the wooden jetty, where a steamboat was waiting to take them on board. Out upon the water was a new and fresh sensation, and one which arrived just as the other was losing its charm. The sands, when they left them, were not as cool as they had been an hour before--the genial warmth was beginning to verge on heat; and the party crowded on board with enthusiasm, in haste to secure commodious corners and lounge at ease, inhaling new freshness as the boat put off from the shore with a screech like the cry of a sea-gull, and breasted the glassy waters on its voyage round the bay.
Lippenstock Bay is an inlet of eight miles' width, running deep into the land, and guarded at its mouth by a double row of islands, which shelter it from the outer ocean, breaking the lines of westward-driven billows, and rendering it a sheltered roadstead in all weathers. It cuts into the gently swelling country which comes down upon the sea, with its sandy pasture-tracks, and scattered farmhouses nestling in sheltered spots among meadows and shady trees, so snug and thrifty, but, alas for the landscape! so aglare with whitewash. If ever the spirit of the picturesque shall invade those shores, her first exploit, I fear, will be to scatter something of neglect, if not decay, upon the scene. In that transparent atmosphere, with its sharp uncompromising lights and shadows, the human element of the present is aggressively manifest. Each dwelling, in its flagrant paint or whiteness, obtrudes itself upon the eye, and insists on being counted in, one more residence of a citizen of the Great Republic. The fields and roads, the fences and blocks of bush, are scrupulously rectangular, without one softening curve: illustrated in the varying greens and yellows of the different crops, the country looks as if it were covered with a vast patch bed-quilt.
The hills of the rougher country, backed by the blue outline of distant mountains, come into view at the upper end of the bay, basking sweetly in the light, and clothed in pearly greys where their verdure falls in shadow. They relieve the scene from the sense of vulgar commonplace which the rawness of nearer objects might impose, and above is the immeasurable vault filled with transparent air suffused with brightness, including all, and reducing stretches of monotonous country within symmetrical limits. The hills behind send down a spur across the lower levels to the sea. This ends in a ridge which enters the head of the bay, and on it stands the pretty old town of Lippenstock.
Lippenstock is one of the oldest settlements on the Atlantic coast; and being old, it is rich in the mellowness of tone so sadly wanting in other places. Having grown with the community, it harmonises like a natural production with surrounding nature, free from the harsh obtrusiveness of a brand-new construction, and might almost be a cutting from the Old World ingrafted on the still scarce-ripened New. Clustered on its tongue of land, it stretches out into the blue deep water, a lesser bay margined with yellow sand confining and compacting it on either hand; fringed on three sides with wharfs, whose tar-black timbers lend a solid definition to the base from which it rises, in blocks of russet brown, red brick, and grimy stone, with roofs and steeples rising tier on tier in jagged outline backward and upward, spreading as they recede, in every tone of blue and purple grey, among the tops of the embowering elms which line the quiet streets. A ship or two is moored along the quays; for the drowsy place has considerable trade, and fishing-boats, with half-reefed umber sails and their red-shirted crews, are sleeping on the water.
The throbbing of the steamer's engine sounded far and wide across the tranquil calm, the gurgling waters parting at its bow and speeding backward in a trail of troubled undulations. The air seemed quickened into life by the motion, and fanned the voyagers gently as they reclined upon the deck, steeping themselves in sunshine, which, now they were on the water, seemed less ardent than it had been ashore.
Mrs Naylor, being an invalid, had had her choice of places. Reclining near the bow, where the air was untainted by engine-room vapours, she sat in the shadow of her white umbrella in perfect comfort, Margaret beside her, with her book and fan and other paraphernalia at hand when wanted.
At Margaret's elbow, leaning against the bulwarks, stood Walter Petty in watchful patience, waiting for something to say when opportunity should arise, though his mind felt too blank to originate an observation, while he watched and admired in a worshipful silence which ought to have gratified her if she had understood it; but she did not. She liked him as a young fellow always kind and nice, but he bored her, rather, with his superfluity of still life and lack of initiative; or, to put it plainly, she found him much too diffident and young.
He was three years older than herself, it is true, and was looked on as a wonder of readiness and knowledge by his compeers among the budding lawyers of Toronto; but then he was in love, poor lad, in his first and earliest passion, which is like the measles, and deals more hardly with a man, when, having passed him by before, it falls on him out of season. He had studied hard, and his ambition had been so entirely in his profession that he had had no thought to waste upon young ladies; and often had he scoffed and pitied, to see the ridiculous figure his fellows cut in the ecstasies of their calf-love. He had listened to their idiotic raptures of hope and despair, and wondered how rational creatures could become such fools. Now, the fate had fallen on himself. It is decreed that man shall once in his life make an ass of himself in dealing with the other sex, however wise and prudent he may be in commerce with his own; and the man who never does so stumble must be a wiseacre, or worse, an imperfect organism, from whose construction the heart or the ideal impulses have been omitted.
Walter's hot fits and cold were like an ague, and left him as limp and powerless as an ague would. The briskest and most talkative of his set at other times, he found his mind under this new influence dried up and sterile, without an idea fit to put in words, now when he was most anxious to be amusing and to shine. His being seemed turned into a pool of receptivity, absorbing the worshipped image, but unable to give back a reflection. He was happy where he stood, within range of so much sweet influence, but he was scarcely agreeable; he had nothing to say, and he still retained sufficient common-sense to feel a little foolish.
Peter Wilkie, sitting beside him on a coil of rope, was under no such disadvantage. His feelings were in no wise overpowering, only sufficient to make him wish to be at his best. He had had both measles and calf-love in their appointed season, and in such easy form as his constitution allowed. He had been in love many times, according to his capacity--an easy-going and pleasant acceleration of the pulses, mental and bodily, without fever or foolishness of any kind. The thing ran its course, and went off again as judgment advised, leaving him none the worse, and ready to begin the pretty game again on proper occasion.