THE FIRST EVENING.
When the sweltering hours of afternoon have passed on westward, and
the shadows creep out to meet the coming twilight in the east, there
is an arousing in the world comparable to the quickening which passes
across it at the opening of each new day. The air, too languid, an
hour since, to lift the drooping streamer on the flag-staff, awakens
into flutterings which set the aspen-leaves in the shrubbery spinning
gleefully upon their slender stalks. The watch-dog rattling his chain
emerges from his kennel, stretching and blinking, and yawning his
formidable jaws. The interest of living steals slowly back on him, and
ere long he is amusing himself with a half-gnawed bone, his eyes fixed
upon the kitchen-door, whence supper and the cook are wont to visit
him.
There are stirrings and rustlings in the long silent passages and
chambers of the hotel. The life of the inmates, which had burned low,
like charcoal-embers in the thick hot stillness, lights up in the
eddies of cooler air which flutter in, and brightens into flame. The
sleepers draw themselves together where they lie on swing, in hammock,
on couch, or deeply cushioned chair, and open their eyes and start and
are awake, inhale the freshness of the sea-salt air, and the house is
alive once more with the stirring of its inmates, like a clock which
had run down, but is now wound up and set agoing.
Old Mrs Wilkie had been surprised by sleep as she lay back in a long
cane chair, preliminary to getting up and seeking the privacy of her
chamber. Her feet had been raised on the further end of the seductive
invention for barely a second, when, with a sigh, her head fell
backward, leaving the lips apart, and plunging her in deep sweet
gurgling slumber, which echoed purlingly along the silent gallery,
like sounds of hidden brooks in shady dells.
She started now, and, wheeling round, sat bolt-upright, in haste to
hide among her skirts the broad prunella shoes which had stood up
before her like a massive screen, concealing her foreshortened figure
from intrusive eyes.
"Peter Wilkie! are you sleeping? Come here," were the first words she
spoke on opening her eyes. There was crossness in her voice, and her
face was aflush with anger, or perhaps with lingering sleep. "I wish
you would speak to that impertinent Yankee woman over there. What
business has she looking at me like that? It's my feet she's trying to
see, I do believe."
"They're big enough to be plainly seen without much trying, mother.
But never mind, I'll back them to gang their ain gate against hers or
anybody's. Why did you not go to your room, as I advised you, instead
of exhibiting yourself like a sleeping beauty before the whole house?"
"I just fell asleep before I knew; and it's like your father's son to
be jawing and jeering when I'm too poorly to take my own part," and
she pressed her side. "Sleeping beauty, quothy! It'll be telling ye,
my man, if any scart of a wife ye may pick up in this unwholesome
country keeps her looks half as well when she comes to my time of
life;" and having secured the last word, she withdrew to smooth her
tumbled hair and prepare for the next meal.
There was a general rolling up of awnings and opening of shutters all
over the house. Doors and windows were thrown open, and whisperings
from the sea stole in everywhere, bringing freshness and gaiety where
sloth and prostration had brooded all the afternoon. The sounds of
laughter and tripping feet echoed on the stairs, and presently the
whole body of guests come out from supper were assembled in the
parlours. There were three parlours, connected with each other by
folding-doors. Only one was carpeted, to be ready for rainy days at
the end of the season. The boards of the other two were bare, like the
holystoned deck of a steamer; and, with their open windows descending
to the floor, they had the appearance of sheltered continuations of
the gallery without, rather than of rooms, they were so sweet and
fresh and spacious.
Round the pianos, or rather one of them, the crowd gathered. A
Bostonian, the pet of the ladies and the aversion of the other young
men, seated himself before it and began to play. He played, as the
male amateur is wont to play, with abundant sound--eliciting admiring
whispers as to the energy of his touch, and acquitting himself
successfully, though by no means with the brilliancy he himself
supposed. Ere long he slid into a waltz, and then the crowd broke up
into its component parts. Those who could find a partner began to
dance, those who desired one looked about or waited to be asked, while
the elders withdrew to the carpeted drawing-room.
Those first to reach it having secured the rocking-chairs, the
remainder had to sit still,--all, that is, but Miss Maida Springer, a
school-ma'am, the gossips said, from Vermont--a lady of questionable
youth but indubitable independence of character, who tilted her chair
till its back touched the wall, and swung her feet in a plenitude of
sedentary exercise such as no rocker could afford.
Mrs Judge Petty was one of the first to reach the drawing-room and
install herself in a comfortable place. Having done so, she had
leisure to look round and consider how the places near her should be
filled. Her eye lighted on Mrs Wilkie drifting doubtfully on the
stream, and, fixing her with an encouraging smile, drew her forward,
and landed her with a turn of the eyelid on a sofa at her elbow.
Mrs Naylor followed close upon her new acquaintance, and Mrs Petty,
feeling no desire to know _her_, would fain have staved her off with a
chilling stare; but Mrs Naylor could play burr on occasion, and knew
how to disregard what it would be inconvenient to see. She stuck to
her friend, and made small-talk whilst settling herself by her side;
and Mrs Wilkie, though eager to meet the advances of the more
worshipful lady, was too unskilful to refrain from answering her
assiduous companion. It was tantalising. Circumstances through life
had kept her far off from the judges and magnates of her native land;
and now, when she was abroad, and at last in clover--when great ones
were actually seeking her acquaintance--to think that a quite ordinary
person should intrusively interfere! It made her cross, and her
replies grew short and dry; but, alas! to no good purpose--for though
Mrs Naylor could be silenced by taciturnity, Mrs Petty had turned away
her head in the meantime, and was interesting herself in other things.
Mrs Wilkie flushed and fretted; Mrs Naylor sat and bided her time. She
had two girls to bring out and marry well--enterprises in which
patience and ability to eat humble-pie speed better than more
brilliant qualities. She sat by Mrs Wilkie, keeping her company,
though neither spoke. Their eyes were occupied with the moving crowd
of dancers in the distance, as they whirled and floated on the tide of
sound.
After a while Mrs Petty turned round to her neighbour and observed, "I
think I see Mr Wilkie--your son, is he not?--dancing with my daughter
Ann. A good height, are they not, for each other? They really look
very well."
"Most girls look well dancing with my Peter--Mr Wilkie, I ought to
say, for we can't look on a young man in his fine position as just a
boy; though, to be sure, he will always be a boy to me. Eh!--the
trouble I had with him in his teething! I can never forget that, and
the day we put on his first pair of little trousers. I made them
myself out of a bit of black-and-red tartan. And now, to see him
'dancing in the hall,' as the song says, with all the finest girls in
the room just scuffling to get a catch of him."
Mrs Petty was scarcely gratified at the remark, but she was amused;
and as we grow older on this humdrum planet, to be amused befalls one
so seldom that it compensates for much, even for a lack of proper
respect--so she acquiesced.
"Yes," she said, "Mr Petty--Judge Petty, you know, my husband--says he
thinks highly of your son, and expects him to do very well. I too have
met him, and like the little I have seen; and now apparently he has
made the acquaintance of Ann, and they seem to get on together very
nicely."
"Oh yes," chuckled the mother, "he's a great boy with the girls, our
Peter. They're all pulling caps to see who's going to get him. I
just----"
"Hm!" coughed Mrs Petty, in haste to interrupt before anything worse
had been said of the girls, among whom her own daughter seemed
audaciously to be included. "Oh yes, an excellent young man. I have
scarcely met him, but I hope to see more of him next winter, and I am
very pleased to meet his mother."
Whereat the other bridled and was happy. How well it would read in her
next letter to her husband--hid away somewhere in Scotland, and never
alluded to--to mention Mr Justice Petty and his family among her
intimate friends!
"Don't you think my daughter Ann is looking her best this evening?"
the younger mother went on. "So animated. She is perhaps too tranquil
in general. 'Statuesque' was how young Lord Norman described her, when
he passed through Toronto last spring. And really she is clever,
though ill-natured people say she has no conversation. When she gets
hold of a clever man who can understand, see! she positively rattles."
"Oh yes, Peter generally makes the girls rattle. He's very quick about
sounding them. Terrible empty, though, he says he generally finds
them;" which was a remark she should have spared her new friend, in
view of the elation she felt in making the acquaintance; but Peter was
her monomania. With his name on her lips, the words would come of
themselves, without judgment or consideration.
"There is my son Walter, too," Mrs Petty continued, taking no notice.
"Dancing, I declare, instead of smoking out of doors. A positive
achievement on the part of that young lady, if she only knew. A very
handsome girl, and nicely dressed; but I do not seem to have observed
her before--must have arrived to-day."
"So she did," answered Mrs Wilkie. "That's--dear me! how bad my memory
is growing!"
"Miss Naylor," volunteered her mother. "Niece of Joseph Naylor of
Jones's Landing."
"The great lumberman? In--deed!" said Mrs Petty, interested and
impressed. "I did not hear of her arrival. I wonder if _he_ is coming!
The richest bachelor in Upper Canada, I understand. It is a risky
business, but still----. One likes to see a celebrity."
"He is here," his sister-in-law observed. "We arrived this afternoon."
Mrs Petty turned her eyes, and for the first time permitted them to be
seen resting on the stranger, addressing her with much politeness at
the same time. "Then perhaps you are related to the beautiful girl who
is dancing with my son?"
"She is my daughter Margaret. I am Mrs Caleb Naylor."
"So happy to know you, Mrs Naylor," and forthwith the mothers
conversed freely across Mrs Wilkie and over her head, on subjects in
which it was impossible for her to join, though many were her abortive
attempts to put in an oar. Even Mrs Naylor, whose chit-chat she had
stifled with her taciturnity half an hour before, was now grown deaf
and unresponsive to anything she could say.