A Virginia Cousin & Bar Harbor Tales Part 7

In a landau with two horses,--a third to be annexed on the ascent,--they traversed the long street formed by the villages of San Giovanni, La Barra, Portici, and Resina, stretching from the parent city--a street suggesting in the matter of population a series of scattered ant-hills. Such a merry, dirty, shameless horde of all ages, who, abandoning the dens they called homes, had issued forth under the sun blazing even at that early hour of morning in his vault of blue, to bivouac in the open highway, was never seen! Marketing, chaffering, vending, gossiping, cooking, eating, drinking, performing the rites of religion and of the toilet, the hum of their voices was like the note of some giant insect. It was when a stranger's carriage came in sight that the air became suddenly vocal with shrill cries for alms; vehicles and horses were surrounded, escorted by noisy beggars, whose half-naked children offered flowers, or turned somersaults perilously near the wheels.

Resina pa.s.sed, they could breathe more freely. The street turmoil was succeeded by the peace of a country road mounting between lava walls, over which glimpses of sea, of deep-red clover in fields, of vineyard or lemon grove, were finally succeeded by glorious, un.o.bstructed views of the mountains, bay, and city. In the region of recent overflows, they saw the most curious spectacle, to the newcomer, of fertile garden-strips of green, where clung tiny houses, pink or whitewashed, daring the mute monster overhead, while close beside them the mountain-side was streaked with ominous stains marking the spots where other homes had defied him just one day too long.

Higher still, in the track of the overflow of 1872, they experienced the striking effect of entering into a valley of desolation between walls of living green. Here, the lava in settling had wreathed itself into the forms of dragons couchant, of huge serpents, and other monstrous shapes that lay entwined as if asleep. Up above, arose the main cone of the crater, smooth as a heap of gun-powder, vast, majestic, cloud-circled; taking upon itself in the intense light a blooming purple tint; the smoke issuing from its summit now soon melting into s.p.a.ce, now showing dense and threatening.

Evelyn, in whom the novelty as well as beauty of the scene had aroused fresh spirit, looked more like her old self than her fond father had seen her for many a long day. But it is fortunately not given to parents, however solicitous, to see all the workings of young minds; and the good gentleman would have been indeed surprised had he divined the mainspring of her animation. While he was indulging in a few mild objections to the length and slowness of the drive, the rapacity of wayside beggars, the heat of the sun, etc., such as naturally occur to the traveller unsupported by sentimental hopes, to our young lady the condition of motion was a necessity, and the act of getting upward a relief.

For the plain truth was that, since the last talk with Ralph, Evelyn had given rein to a thousand emotions repressed, during the months gone by, with stern self-chiding.

Until now, recalling the year before when Vance had left her to an unavailing sense of regret for her harsh judgment of him, she had hardly realized what their intercourse together had meant to her. But the period of his visit was, in fact, succeeded by one in which her salt of life had lost its savor; and Evelyn, to her dismay, found that her affections had gone from her keeping to this man's, acknowledged to have been the suitor of her friend.

That Katherine had refused Vance, and straightway married another lover, made very little difference to one of Eve's rigid creed in these matters. To her, love declared was love unchangeable; with air her heart she pitied Vance for his disappointment, and blamed herself for having repeatedly wounded him without reason. By means of this mode of argument, she had naturally succeeded in raising Townsend to the pedestal of a martyred hero, which, it may be conceived by those of colder judgment, did not lessen his importance in the girl's imagination.

As the months had gone on, and she had had nothing from him save packages of books and prints sent according to promise, as to a polite entertainer who is thus agreeably disposed of by the beneficiary of hospitality extended, her feelings had taken on the complexion of hopeless regret for an irrevocable past. What Eve had henceforth to do, according to her own strict ordinance, was to live down the impulse that made her give her heart unasked. The stress of these emotions had, in spite of her brave efforts, so worked upon her health that the Colonel, as fond of home as a limpet of his rock, determined to try for her the change of air and experience, resulting as we have seen.

And now, on this dazzling day, a "bridal of earth and sky" in one of the loveliest spots upon earth, she kept saying to herself, "By to-morrow--to-morrow, at latest--he will be with me! And then--and then--and _then_--!"

The carriage halted at a little wayside booth for the sale of wines and fruit. A dark-skinned woman, bearing a tray of gla.s.ses, with flasks of the delusive _Lachrymae Christi_ (made from the grapes ripened upon these slopes) came forward to greet them. On Evelyn's side, a hawker, with sh.e.l.ls and strings of coral, and coins alleged to have been found imbedded in the lava near at hand, importuned her.

But, rejecting the others, she beckoned to a pretty, bare-legged boy carrying oranges garnished in their own glossy, dark-green leaves; and so busy was she in selecting the best of his refreshing fruit, she hardly observed that another claimant for her attention had appeared close beside the wheel.

"Please go away, my good man," she said at last, laughingly, without giving him a glance. "Indeed, I want nothing you can supply."

"That is a harsh a.s.sertion," Vance said, in a low tone meant for her ear, and then proceeded to greet both his cousins outspokenly.

He had reached Naples early that morning; had ascertained at their hotel that they were engaged to start for Vesuvius at a given hour; fearing collision with a party of strangers, had set out alone to walk up the mountain and take his chance of intercepting them; and had waited here for the purpose.

"After you had been journeying all night?" said the Colonel, with unfeigned surprise. "Why, my dear fellow, in your place I should have--"

Just then he intercepted, pa.s.sing between Evelyn and Vance, a look that startled him. That his sentence remained unfinished n.o.body observed. The Colonel drew back into his corner, as if he had been shot.

If she had divined her father's feeling, Eve could not have pitied any one who was gaining Vance. And Vance, at that moment, believed all the world to be as happy as himself!

To a love-affair so obvious, the ending naturally to be expected is of the old-fashioned and inevitable sort. In the beautiful Indian summer of the following autumn in Virginia, these two people were duly married at the Hall. From far and wide came relatives to wish them joy; it was like the gathering of a Scotch clan at the summons of the pipes. Prominent among the revellers at the dance following the nuptial ceremony was Cousin Josey, who, in a pair of antiquated leather pumps with buckles, led down the middle of a reel with his cherished "Lady-love." To please the old boy, Evelyn had worn the little string of pearls bought by him, years before, for a bride who was never to be. And so everybody was content, and one of the cousins said it was "exactly like a weddin' befo' the wah."

Out of Season

Chapter I

"No; no house-parties till the middle of July. Dear knows, what with a string of big dinners, my two little dances, and those tiresome Thursdays in January and February when everybody came, I have done all that could be expected by society from paupers like ourselves," said Mrs. Henry Gervase, settling herself in a wicker chair, on the veranda of her country home, and looking approvingly at her water-view.

"Paupers!" said a lady from a neighboring cottage, who had dropped in to call. Mrs. Gervase's friends rarely liked to commit themselves to positive comment upon her statements until certain which way the cat was meant to jump. Mrs. Luther Prettyman, the wife of the dry-goods magnate, whose good fortune it was to own the land adjoining the Gervase property at Sheepshead Point,--a recently famous resort for summer visitors on our far eastern coast,--now contented herself with a little deprecatory giggle that might mean anything, and waited for Mrs. Gervase to go on.

"Oh, well! everything is comparative; and on the scale by which people measure things in New York, to-day, we are simply grovelling in poverty. John,"--to her gardener,--"you have got that row of myosotis entirely out of line; and, remember, nothing but salvia behind the heliotropes. I like a blaze of scarlet and purple against a blue sea-line like this. Heavens! what a perfect afternoon! The atmosphere has been clarified, and those birches in the ravine 'twinkle with a million lights.' My dear woman, I make no apologies. Any one who wants me at this season of the year must take me as I am. After eight months of bricks and mortar, dirty streets, and stupid drives in the Park, I am fairly maudlin over Nature when I get her back in June.

"I went to a concert where Paderewski played a night or two before he left America; and I give you my word that while the music was going on I put up my fan and plainly heard the babble of this little brook of mine, and the lap of the waves over the rocks at high tide, with, now and then, the notes of the song-sparrow that comes back every year and perches on my Norway pine. Somebody said of me afterwards, at supper, that I had been having a little nap. They may say anything of me, I believe, and some idiot will be found to credit it. But please don't accept the newspaper report that I am to have Mr. and Mrs. This, or Mr. That and Mrs. T'other, stopping with me at Stoneacres during June.

I am much too busy with my granger-work, and my husband too industrious doing nothing, to play host and hostess now."

"I did not know; I only thought--" ventured Mrs. Prettyman. "You see, everything is so dull here, socially, till August. And when one has a guest coming who is accustomed to a great deal of fashionable gaiety,--a young lady, a distinguished belle,--one naturally grasps at the idea of such pleasant house-parties as yours are known to be, dear Mrs. Gervase."

"We shall be dull as ditch-water," answered relentless Mrs. Gervase, turning around to survey the struggle of a fat-breasted robin to extract from the turf a worm that continued to emerge in apparently unending length. "And if you _will_ have a girl out of season, why, put her on bread and milk and beauty-sleep, give her plenty of trashy novels and a horse to ride, and she'll do well enough."

"But--perhaps I am wrong--surely Mr. Gervase told Mr. Prettyman, when they were smoking on our veranda last Sunday, that you are expecting your nephew, Mr. Alan Grove."

"That's just like Mr. Gervase,--a perfect sieve for secrets," quoth Mrs. Gervase, contemptuously; "when I particularly requested him to mention Alan's visit to n.o.body. The poor boy is completely used up with work, and has engaged to get a paper ready to read before some scientific congress next month, and finds himself unable to write a line of it in town. Here, I have promised him, he may have absolute quiet--not be called on to play civility or squire-of-dames for any one; and, I may as well warn you _now_, he's not to be expected to do a _hand's turn_ of entertainment for your girl. Besides, I happen to know that he can't abide 'society' young women. He is plunged up to the neck in electricity, is poor, ambitious, clever, on the way to sure success; and I'm going to back him all I can, not put stumbling-blocks in his path."

"How plunged up to his neck in electricity?" asked puzzled Mrs.

Prettyman.

"Electric law, my good soul; did you think it a new kind of capital punishment? The lucrative law of the future, I've heard wise men say.

Simpkins!" hailing, with irresistible command, a butcher's cart that seemed possessed of a strong desire to drive away in a hurry from a side entrance to the house. "_Simpkins!_ Oh! there you are; I meant to leave orders with the cook not to let you get away again to-day without a word from me. I noticed, on the book, that you had the effrontery to charge sixty cents a pound for spring chickens here in June. Now, don't tell me! The way all you natives do; you have a short season, and must make the most of it. This is not your season, or my season, either. Wait till August before you put on the screws. And your sweetbreads, eighty cents a pair, when _you know_ that when Mr.

Gervase and I first came here to live, you were _throwing sweetbreads away_, till we taught you the use of them! Now, mind, I shall get tired of sending friends to you to be fleeced in August, if this is what you do to me in June."

"I must be running off," said Mrs. Prettyman, arising from her spot of shade and luxurious comfort in the deep veranda filled, though not enc.u.mbered, with picturesque belongings, with stands and pots of blooming plants in every nook. "I'll declare, n.o.body's flowers do as well as yours. And the wages we pay our head gardener! It makes me really envious."

This, be it known, was a clever stroke on the part of neighbor Prettyman. Secretly resentful of the tepid interest in the personality of her expected guest,--who, in the eyes of the house of Prettyman, was an event,--she yet did not dare attempt to bring the greater lady to yield sympathy upon the spot. Mrs. Gervase's weakest side was for her flowers. She possessed the magic touch that alone nurtures them to perfection, and with it the proud love of a parent for children that grow inclined according to her will.

"Hum! We do pretty well, considering this house is built on the ragged edge of nothing over the sea, and is swept by all the winds of heaven, in turn, and sometimes all together. And, in a climate where one goes to bed in the Tropics and wakes up at the North Pole, what would you have? John, there, though I'll not set him up by telling him so, has learned all I know about flowers, and picks up new ideas every day. By August, now, these beds and stands will be worth looking at. What did you say is the name of the young person who's coming to stop with you?

If you've nothing better, suppose you and she and Mr. Prettyman come over to dinner Sat.u.r.day. Alan has promised me not to work at night, and by that time my plants will all be in the ground and my mind at rest."

"Thank you so much," said the lesser luminary. "It is always a treat to dine with you _en famille_; and it is--didn't I mention her?--Gladys Eliot who is coming to us to-morrow."

"Gladys Eliot! Why, she's gone with her people to London for two months. I saw her name in the _Teutonic's_ list last Thursday. Those Eliots would never in the world let slip another chance for her to make the great match they've set out to get."

"Nevertheless," said Mrs. Prettyman, with some show of spirit, "Mrs.

Eliot, who is my old school-friend, wrote me, the day before they sailed, that Gladys had taken it into her head to stay behind, and begged me to keep her till her aunt can come up from Baltimore in July and take the girl in charge."

"Three weeks of Gladys Eliot!" remarked Mrs. Gervase. "My poor woman, I pity you. By the end of the month there will be no health in you. A professional beauty, who has run the gauntlet of four or five years of incessant praises, has been advertised like 'Pear's Soap,' in England and America, and has failed to make her _coup_! I remember what Alan Grove said about her no longer ago than Christmas of last year: 'I haven't the advantage of Miss Eliot's acquaintance, but her and her kind I hold in abhorrence,--denationalized Americans; hangers-on of older civilizations that make a puppet-show of them; spoiled for home, with no rightful place abroad; restless, craving what no healthy-minded husband of their own kind can give them.' Bless me--and _those two_ are going to _meet here_!"

"I think Mr. Alan Grove need not concern himself," said Mrs.

Prettyman, driven to bay. "Mrs. Eliot mentioned in her letter that Gladys--it is no secret, evidently--is nearly, if not quite, engaged to marry some one the family feels is _in all respects_ all they could have hoped for her."

"Then it must be either that Colonel Larkyns, the very rude man with large feet, who walked all over my velvet gown at the Egertons', last winter,--came over with Lord Glenmore, whom the Eliots tried for and couldn't get,--or else McLaughlin, the Irishman who made such a lot of money in Montana. The two men were running evenly, 'twas said. Let me think--didn't I see her at Claremont on McLaughlin's coach, last month? Pray, my dear, are we to congratulate you on having Mr.

McLaughlin, also, as a member of your household, before long?"

"Oh dear, dear!" continued the plain-spoken lady to herself, when poor Mrs. Prettyman, fairly routed, had retired without honors from the field. "Why is nature so heavenly kind to us in American places of resort, and 'only man is vile'? Why does this struggle for place, this pride of vogue, these types of our worst social element--I hate that word 'social,' it sounds vulgar; but what else expresses this for me?--follow one into this earthly Paradise? Here I have got myself into a pretty kettle of fish with Alan Grove. He will be bored to death and his visit broken up, for we can't rid ourselves of people who sit in our pocket, like the Prettymans in summer; and he will be running upon this Eliot creature perpetually. If Henry would help me, we might--but he is so abominably friendly and cordial with country neighbors, there's no hope from him. Besides, if a girl is pretty, it makes no earthly difference to my good man whether she is a fiend of calculation and cold-heartedness. I declare, I've no patience with Henry, anyhow."

So saying, Mrs. Gervase went out to drive with the offender in question, behind a pair of sleek cobs, in a little buckboard of tawny wood with russet leather cushions and harness,--his latest present,--and soon, in cheerful companionship, forgot all sorrows amid such views of land and water as Sheepshead Point people think only Sheepshead Point can offer.

Chapter II

To reach Sheepshead Point, a boat steams daily, and several times a day, from a station on the line of a great railway skirting the eastern Atlantic coast. Issuing from a drawing-room car there, a young woman, dressed in a tight-fitting skirt and jacket of sailor blue, with a loose shirt of red silk belted around a taper waist, her small head with its sailor-hat half shrouded from view in a blue tissue veil, walked lightly ahead of Mr. Alan Grove and, attended by an elderly maid, went far forward to stand in the bows of the boat.