What would Mrs Naylor, sitting complacently within touch of her daughter, and accepting the conversation of her friends, have said, had she known the suspicion which had crossed the mind of Peter? Margaret was safe at her elbow, and receiving the attentions of the two most eligible young men on board. She would not have believed that her girl, open as the day, truehearted and candid to a fault, could be signalling to a man--a man unrecognisable for the distance--out there in an open boat on Lippenstock Bay. A proceeding on her part so bold and so underhand was impossible. And yet, if it were true, whose fault was it but her own? Oppression, it has been said, will drive a wise man mad. And this was only a girl, pushed, by nagging and injudicious curbing, after a course of equally imprudent liberty, to take her own way. She had but herself to thank, whatever might happen.
Mothers can remember their children as babies; they have tended and ruled them through the years of growth with undisputed sway, and maturity arrives so imperceptibly that it is natural they should not perceive when the term of their reign has come--that the sceptre has withered like a reed, and the children have grown to be women, with wills and rights and aspirations of their own.
CHAPTER XVII.
[FESSENDEN'S ISLAND].
The steamer throbbed and snorted on its voyage round the bay, like some big amphibian of palæozoic times, parting the glassy waters right and left, and leaving a long regurgitating trail of swelling waves and eddies in its wake. The sun, now overhead, shed down his beams with an unmitigated ardour, and the water cast back the glare with blistering intensity. There really had arisen a languid air-current from the shore, as Walter Petty had predicted; but the boat was now heading down the bay towards the open sea, and travelling with the breeze, so that on board it seemed to have fallen calm, and was hot and stifling to a degree.
The chat among the voyagers flickered low, and then went out, like the flame of candles in an unwholesome well. Every one sought for shade, and gasped beneath an umbrella, or in some darkened corner of the saloon, collapsed and listless. But the steamer snorted on its way, regardless of their comfort, and gleeful, as it seemed, in the increasing heat; for now she belched forth smoke, and weltered in it, letting it curl and twist about her fore and aft, borne on the chasing breeze--as though the sportive monster were shaking out her mane, as is said to be the wont of the sea-serpent when he rises from the deep to fright lone mariners. She had grown fiendish in her mood, that misguided steamer, filling the air with foulness, and showering smuts on the white umbrellas, the fresh toilets, and even the dainty nose of beauty. It grew intolerable, and the passengers might have risen in mutiny and altered the vessel's course, but that the heat had left them limp and lacking energy. They only groaned and imprecated; while the steersman stood like a wooden image by the wheel, one turn of which would have blown away the mischief, looking at their misery with unwinking eyes, and laughing mayhap down deep within his wooden ribs.
The mouth of the bay was reached in time, and the islands with their straits and narrows, and winding channels running in between; and beyond, the blue Atlantic. A new life breathed on them the moment they passed the cape which terminates the bay. Like pent-up invalids escaping from a sickroom, they held up their faces to the sky to drink great breaths of freshness. Out there it is always cool, however the sun may beat. They threaded the channels among the islands, and then sailed out into the far-extending blue, and were refreshed.
Noon was long passed, although they had breakfasted early, before it occurred to any one to feel hungry; but at length the idea of luncheon presented itself to many minds about the same time, as something which would be agreeable. The steamer was put about, and they returned back among the islands. One of them, Fessenden's Island by name, lay most open to the ocean, and farther out than the others. On this they landed. It seemed intended by nature for their purpose, having a little cove with shelving bottom which admitted their vessel, and a seaward boundary of rocky ledges sinking perpendicularly in deep water on the inward side, so that they could moor themselves to the shore as comfortably as at a wharf, without the inconvenient intervention of the boats.
The hotel servants quickly got their hampers landed, and soon the repast was spread in the slowly broadening shadow of neighbouring rocks, while the party encamped beneath their umbrellas on the scrubby sea-grass, or fetched themselves seats from the ship hard by. The clatter of knives and plates, the popping of corks, and the din of voices, startled the sea-fowl where they perched overhead; they screeched and fluttered angrily at the unwonted disturbance, and taking to the wing, they wheeled and circled in the air above, surveying the intruders, and eyeing the meats which fear alone prevented their pouncing down on and bearing away, and finally, with a parting scream, flew seaward in a long white trail and disappeared.
The tide had turned. Two hours were allowed to spend on shore. After that, the steamer was to blow its whistle, and they must re-embark and get away, or the ship would be left stranded by the ebb, to await the following tide. The party having refreshed, broke up, and wandered apart as chance directed, to explore the island. Mrs Naylor found herself comfortable in her chair. Uneven walking over rocks presented no attractions. Digestion and fresh air, combined with snatches of light reading and chit-chat, seemed a more rational enjoyment. "But, Margaret, my dear, I will not interfere with your more energetic tastes," she said; "you can go, if you like, and scramble on the rocks like the rest. I shall do nicely with these ladies. Mr Wilkie, I am sure, will kindly see that you do not fall over a precipice."