"The best part of it is the hunt, isn"t it?"
"I"ll take your opinion on that after supper."
Mr. Lenox laughed, and he and his wife sauntered round to the front again. The freshness, the sweetness, the bright rich colouring of sky and water and land, the stillness, the strangeness, the novelty, all moved Mr. Lenox to say,
"I would not have missed this for a hundred dollars!"
"Missed what?" asked his wife.
"This whole afternoon."
"It"s one way that people live, I suppose."
"Yes, for they really do live; there is no stagnation; that is one thing that strikes me."
"Don"t you want to buy a farm here, and settle down?" asked Mrs. Lenox scornfully. "Live on hymns and long clams?"
Meanwhile the interior of the bathing-house was changing its aspect.
Part of the part.i.tion of boards had been removed and a long table improvised, running the length of the house, and made of planks laid on trestles. White cloths hid the rudeness of this board, and dishes and cups and viands were giving it a most hospitable look. A whiff of coffee aroma came now and then through the door at the back of the house, which opened near the place of cookery; piles of white bread and brown gingerbread, and golden b.u.t.ter and rosy ham and new cheese, made a most abundant and inviting display; and, after the guests were seated, Mr. Sears came in bearing a great dish of the clams, smoking hot.
Well, Mrs. Lenox was hungry, through the combined effects of salt air and an early dinner; she found bread and b.u.t.ter and coffee and ham most excellent, but looked askance at the dish of clams; which, however, she saw emptied with astonishing rapidity. Noticing at last a striking heap of sh.e.l.ls beside her husband"s plate, the lady"s fastidiousness gave way to curiosity; and after that,--it was well that another big dishful was coming, or _somebody_ would have been obliged to go short.
At ten o"clock that evening Mr. and Mrs. Lenox took the night train to Boston.
"I never pa.s.sed a pleasanter afternoon in my life," was the gentleman"s comment as the train started.
"Pretty faces go a great way always with you men!" answered his wife.
"There is something more than a pretty face there. And she is improved--changed, somehow--since a year ago. What do you think now of your brother"s choice, Julia?"
"It would have been his ruin!" said the lady violently.
"I declare I doubt it. I am afraid he"ll never find a better. I am afraid you have done him mistaken service."
"George, this girl is _n.o.body_."
"She is a lady. And she is intelligent, and she is cultivated, and she has excellent manners. I see no fault at all to be found. Tom does not need money."
"She is n.o.body, nevertheless, George! It would have been miserable for Tom to lose all the advantage he is going to have with his wife, and to marry this girl whom no one knows, and who knows n.o.body."
"I am sorry for poor Tom!"
"George, you are very provoking. Tom will live to thank mamma and me all his life."
"Do you know, I don"t believe it. I am glad to see _she"s_ all right, anyhow. I was afraid at the Isles she might have been bitten."
"You don"t know anything about it," returned his wife sharply. "Women don"t show. _I_ think she was taken with Tom."
"I hope not!" said the gentleman; "that"s all I have to say."
CHAPTER x.x.xII.
A VISITOR.
After that summer day, the time sped on smoothly at Shampuashuh; until the autumn coolness had replaced the heat of the dog days, and hay harvest and grain harvest were long over, and there began to be a suspicion of frost in the air. Lois had gathered in her pears, and was garnering her apples. There were two or three famous apple trees in the Lothrop old garden, the fruit of which kept sound and sweet all through the winter, and was very good to eat.
One fair day in October, Mrs. Barclay, wanting to speak with Lois, was directed to the garden and sought her there. The day was as mild as summer, without summer"s pa.s.sion, and without spring"s impulses of hope and action. A quiet day; the air was still; the light was mellow, not brilliant; the sky was clear, but no longer of an intense blue; the little racks of cloud were lying supine on its calm depths, apparently having nowhere to go and nothing to do. The driving, sweeping, changing forms of vapour, which in spring had come with rain and in summer had come with thunder, had all disappeared; and these little delicate lines of cloud lay purposeless and at rest on the blue. Nature had done her work for the year; she had grown the gra.s.s and ripened the grain, and manufactured the wonderful juices in the tissues of the fruit, and laid a new growth of woody fibre round the heart of the trees. She was resting now, as it were, content with her work. And so seemed Lois to be doing, at the moment Mrs. Barclay entered the garden. It was unusual to find her so. I suppose the witching beauty of the day beguiled her.
But it was of another beauty Mrs. Barclay thought, as she drew near the girl.
A short ladder stood under one of the apple trees, upon which Lois had been mounting to pluck her fruit. On the ground below stood two large baskets, full now of the ruddy apples, shining and beautiful. Beside them, on the dry turf, sat Lois with her hands in her lap; and Mrs.
Barclay wondered at her as she drew near.
Yet it is not too easy to tell why, at least so as to make the reader get at the sense of the words. I have the girl"s image before my eyes, mentally, but words have neither form nor colour; how shall I paint with them? It was not the beauty of mere form and colour, either, that struck Mrs. Barclay in Lois"s face. You may easily see more regular features and more dazzling complexion. It was not any particular brilliance of eye, or piquancy of expression. There was a soundness and fulness of young life; that is not so uncommon either. There was a steadfast strength and sweetness of nature. There was an unconscious, innocent grace, that is exceedingly rare. And a high, n.o.ble expression of countenance and air and movement, such as can belong only to one whose thoughts and aims never descend to pettinesses; who a.s.similates n.o.bility by being always concerned with what is n.o.ble. And then, the face was very fair; the ruddy brown hair very rich and abundant; the figure graceful and good; all the spiritual beauty I have been endeavouring to describe had a favouring groundwork of nature to display itself upon. Mrs. Barclay"s steps grew slower and slower as she came near, that she might prolong the view, which to her was so lovely.
Then Lois looked at her and slightly smiled.
"Lois, my dear, what are you doing?"
"Not exactly nothing, Mrs. Barclay; though it looks like it. Such a day one cannot bear to go in-doors!"
"You are gathering your apples?"
"I have got done for to-day."
"What are you studying, here beside your baskets? What beautiful apples!"
"Aren"t they? These are our Royal Reddings; they are good for eating and cooking, and they keep perfectly. If only they are picked off by hand."
"What were you studying, Lois? May I not know?" Mrs. Barclay took an apple and a seat on the turf beside the girl.
"Hardly studying. Only musing--as such a day makes one muse. I was thinking, Mrs. Barclay, what use I could make of my life."
"What _use?_ Can you make better use of it than you are doing, in taking care of Mrs. Armadale?"
"Yes--as things are now. But in the common course of things I should outlive grandmamma."
"Then you will marry somebody, and take care of him."
"Very unlikely, I think."
"May I ask, why?"
"I do not know anybody that is the sort of man I could marry."