I was sometimes disappointed in Mrs. March's mysteries when I came up
close to them; but I was always willing to take them on trust; and I
submitted to the postponement of a solution in this case with more than
my usual faith. She found time, before Mr. Glendenning reappeared, to
ask me if I had noticed a mother and daughter on the boat, the mother
evidently an invalid, and the daughter very devoted, and both decidedly
ladies; and when I said, "No. Why?" she answered, "Oh, nothing," and
that she would tell me. Then she drove me away, and we did not meet till
I found her in our state-room just before the terrible mid-day meal they
used to give you on the _Corinthian_, and called dinner.
She began at once, while she did something to her hair before the morsel
of mirror: "Why I wanted to know if you had noticed those people was
because they are the reason of his being here."
"Did he tell you that?"
"Of course not. But I knew it, for he asked if I had seen them, or could
tell him who they were."
"It seems to me that he made pretty good time to get so far as that."
"I don't say he got so far himself, but you men never know how to take
steps for any one else. You can't put two and two together. But to my
mind it's as plain as the nose on his face that he's seen that girl
somewhere and is taking this trip because she's on board. He said he
hadn't decided to come till the last moment."
"What wild leaps of fancy!" I said. "But the nose on his face is
handsome rather than plain, and I sha'n't be satisfied till I see him
with the lady."
"Yes, he's quite Greek," said Mrs. March, in assent to my opinion of his
nose. "Too Greek for a clergyman, almost. But he isn't vain of it. Those
beautiful people are often quite modest, and Mr. Glendenning is very
modest."
"And I'm very hungry. If you don't hurry your prinking, Isabel, we shall
not get any dinner."
"I'm ready," said my wife, and she continued with her eyes still on the
glass: "He's got a church out in Ohio, somewhere; but he's a
New-Englander, and he's quite wild to get back. He thinks those people
are from Boston: I could tell in a moment if I saw them. Well, now, I
_am_ ready," and with this she really ceased to do something to her
hair, and came out into the long saloon with me where the table was set.
Rows of passengers stood behind the rows of chairs, with a detaining
grasp on nearly all of them. We gazed up and down in despair. Suddenly
Mrs. March sped forward, and I found that Mr. Glendenning had made a
sign to her from a distant point, where there were two vacant chairs for
us next his own. We eagerly laid hands on them, and waited for the gong
to sound for dinner. In this interval an elderly lady followed by a
young girl came down the saloon toward us, and I saw signs, or rather
emotions, of intelligence pass between Mr. Glendenning and Mrs. March
concerning them.
The older of these ladies was a tall, handsome matron, who bore her
fifty years with a native severity qualified by a certain air of wonder
at a world which I could well fancy had not always taken her at her own
estimate of her personal and social importance. She had the effect of
challenging you to do less, as she advanced slowly between the wall of
state-rooms and the backs of the people gripping their chairs, and eyed
them with a sort of imperious surprise that they should have left no
place for her. So at least I read her glance, while I read in that of
the young lady coming after, and showing her beauty first over this
shoulder and then over that of her mother, chiefly a present amusement,
behind which lay a character of perhaps equal pride, if not equal
hardness. She was very beautiful, in the dark style which I cannot help
thinking has fallen into unmerited abeyance; and as she passed us I
could see that she was very graceful. She was dressed in a lady's
acceptance of the fashions of that day, which would be thought so
grotesque in this. I have heard contemporaneous young girls laugh at the
mere notion of hoops, but in 1870 we thought hoops extremely becoming;
and this young lady knew how to hold hers a little on one side so as to
give herself room in the narrow avenue, and not betray more than the
discreetest hint of a white stocking. I believe the stockings are black
now.
They both got by us, and I could see Mr. Glendenning following them with
longing but irresolute eyes, until they turned, a long way down the
saloon, as if to come toward us again. Then he hurried to meet them, and
as he addressed himself first to one and then to the other, I knew him
to be offering them his chair. So did my wife, and she said, "You must
give up your place too, Basil," and I said I would if she wished to see
me starve on the spot. But of course I went and joined Glendenning in
his entreaties that they would deprive us of our chances of dinner (I
knew what the second table was on the _Corinthian_); and I must say that
the elder lady accepted my chair in the spirit which my secret grudge
deserved. She made me feel as if I ought to have offered it when they
first passed us; but it was some satisfaction to learn afterwards that
she gave Mrs. March, for her ready sacrifice of me, as bad a half-hour
as she ever had. She sat next to my wife, and the young lady took
Glendenning's place, and as soon as we had left them she began trying to
find out from Mrs. March who he was, and what his relation to us was.
The girl tried to check her at first, and then seemed to give it up, and
devoted herself to being rather more amiable than she otherwise might
have been, my wife thought, in compensation for the severity of her
mother's scrutiny. Her mother appeared disposed to hold Mrs. March
responsible for knowing little or nothing about Mr. Glendenning.
"He seems to be an Episcopal clergyman," she said, in a haughty summing
up. "From his name I should have supposed he was Scotch and a
Presbyterian." She began to patronize the trip we were making, and to
abuse it; she said that she did not see what could have induced them to
undertake it; but one had to get back from Niagara somehow, and they had
been told at the hotel there that the boats were very comfortable. She
had never been more uncomfortable in her life; as for the rapids, they
made her ill, and they were obviously so dangerous that she should not
even look at them again. Then, from having done all the talking and most
of the eating, she fell quite silent, and gave her daughter a chance to
speak to my wife. She had hitherto spoken only to her mother, but now
she asked Mrs. March if she had ever been down the St. Lawrence before.
When my wife explained, and asked her whether she was enjoying it, she
answered with a rapture that was quite astonishing, in reference to her
mother's expressions of disgust: "Oh, immensely! Every instant of it,"
and she went on to expatiate on its peculiar charm in terms so
intelligent and sympathetic that Mrs. March confessed it had been part
of our wedding journey, and that this was the reason why we were now
taking the trip.
The young lady did not seem to care so much for this, and when she
thanked my wife in leaving the table with her mother, and begged her to
thank the gentlemen who had so kindly given up their places, she made no
overture to further acquaintance. In fact, we had been so simply and
merely made use of that, although we were rather meek people, we decided
to avoid our beneficiaries for the rest of the day; and Mr. Glendenning,
who could not, as a clergyman, indulge even a just resentment, could as
little refuse us his sympathy. He laughed at some hints of my wife's
experience, which she dropped before she left us to pick up a meal from
the lukewarm leavings of the _Corinthian's_ dinner, if we could. She
said she was going forward to get a good place on the bow, and would
keep two camp-stools for us, which she could assure us no one would get
away from her.
We were somewhat surprised then to find her seated by the rail with the
younger lady of the two whom she meant to avoid if she meant anything by
what she said. She was laughing and talking on quite easy terms with her
apparently, and "There!" she triumphed as we came up, "I've kept your
camp-stools for you," and she showed them at her side, where she was
holding her hand on them. "You had better put them here."
The girl had stiffened a little at our approach, as I could see, but a
young girl's stiffness is always rather amusing than otherwise, and I
did not mind it. Neither, that I could see, did Mr. Glendenning, and it
soon passed. It seemed that she had left her mother lying down in her
state-room, where she justly imagined that if she did not see the rapids
she should suffer less alarm from them; the young lady had come frankly
to the side of Mrs. March as soon as she saw her, and asked if she might
sit with her. She now talked to me for a decent space of time, and then
presently, without my knowing how, she was talking to Mr. Glendenning,
and they were comparing notes of Niagara; he was saying that he thought
he had seen her at the Cataract House, and she was owning that she and
her mother had at least stopped at that hotel.