Читать книгу Love in Idleness - Francis Marion Crawford - Страница 5

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CHAPTER I.

'M going to stay with the three Miss Miners at the Trehearnes' place," said Louis Lawrence, looking down into the blue water as he leaned over the rail of the Sappho, on the sunny side of the steamer. "They're taking care of Miss Trehearne while her mother is away at Karlsbad with Mr. Trehearne," he added, in further explanation.

"Yes," answered Professor Knowles, his companion. "Yes," he repeated vaguely, a moment later.

​"It's fun for the three Miss Miners, having such a place all to themselves for the summer," continued young Lawrence. "It's less amusing for Miss Trehearne, I daresay. I suppose I'm asked to enliven things. It can't be exactly gay in their establishment."

Sappho.

"I don't know any of them," observed the Professor, who was a Boston man. "The ​probability is that I never shall. Who are the three Miss Miners, and who is Miss Trehearne?"

"Oh—you don't know them!" Lawrence's voice expressed his surprise that there should be any one who did not know the ladies in question. "Well—they're three old maids, you know."

"Excuse me, I don't know. Old maid is such a vague term. How old must a maid be, to be an old maid?"

"Oh—it isn't age that makes old maids. It's the absence of youth. They're born so."

"A pleasing paradox," remarked the Professor, his exaggerated jaw seeming to check the uneasy smile, as it attacked the gravity of his colourless thin lips.

His head, in the full face view, was not too large for his body, which, in the two dimensions of length and breadth, was well proportioned. The absence of the third dimension, that is, of bodily thickness, was very apparent when he was seen sideways, while the exaggeration of the skull was also noticeable only in profile. The forehead and the long delicate jaw were ​unnaturally prominent; the ear was set much too far back, and there was no development over the eyes, while the nose was small, thin, and sharp, as though cut out of letter paper.

"It's not a paradox," said Lawrence, whose respect for professorial statements was small. "The three Miss Miners were old maids before they were born. They're not particularly old, except Cordelia. She must be over forty. Augusta is the youngest—about thirty-two, I should think. Then there's the middle one—she's Elizabeth, you know—she's no particular age. Cordelia must have been pretty—in a former state. Lots of brown hair and beautiful teeth. But she has the religious smile—what they put on when they sing hymns, don't you know? It's chronic. Good teeth and resignation did it. She's good all through, but you get all through her so soon! Elizabeth's clever—comparatively. She's brown, and round, and fat, and ugly. I'd like to paint her portrait. She's really by far the most attractive. As for Augusta—"

​"Well? What about Augusta?" enquired the Professor, as Lawrence paused.

"Oh—she's awful! She's the accomplished one."

"I thought you said that the middle one—what's her name?—was the cleverest."

"Yes, but cleverness never goes with what they call accomplishments," answered the young man. "I've heard of great men playing the flute, but I never heard of anybody who was 'musical' and came to anything—especially women. Fancy Cleopatra playing the piano—or Catherine the Great painting a salad of wild flowers on a fan! Can you? Or Semiramis sketching a lap dog on a cushion!"

"What very strange ideas you have!" observed the Professor, gravely.

Lawrence did not say anything in reply, but looked out over the blue water at the dark green islands or the deep bay as the Sappho paddled along, beating up a wake of egg-white froth. He was glad that Professor Knowles was going over to the other side to dwell amongst the placid inhabitants of North East Harbour, where the ​joke dieth not, even at an advanced age; where there are people who believe in Ruskin and swear by Herbert Spencer, who coin words ending in 'ism,' and intellectually subsist on the 'ologies'—with the notable exception of theology. Lawrence had once sat at the Professor's feet, at Harvard, unwillingly, indeed, but not without indirect profit. They had met to-day in the train, and it was not probable that they should meet again in the course of the summer, unless they particularly sought one another's society.

They had nothing in common. Lawrence was an artist, or intended to be one, and had recently returned from abroad, after spending three years in Paris. By parentage he belonged to New York. He had been christened Louis because his mother was of French extraction and had an uncle of that name, who might be expected to do something handsome for her son. Louis Lawrence was now about five and twenty years of age, was possessed of considerable talent, and of no particular worldly goods. His most important and valuable possession, indeed, was his ​character, which showed itself in all he said and did.

There is something problematic about the existence of a young artist who is in earnest, which alone is an attraction in the eyes of women. The odds are ten to one, of course, that he will never accomplish anything above the average, but that one-tenth chance is not to be despised, for it is the possibility of a well-earned celebrity, perhaps of greatness. The one last step, out of obscurity into fame, is generally the only one of which the public knows anything, sees anything, or understands anything; and no one can tell when, if ever, that one step may be taken. There is a constant interest in expecting it, and in knowing of its possibility, which lends the artist's life a real charm in his own eyes and the eyes of others. And very often it turns out that the charm is all the life has to recommend it.

The young man who had just given Professor Knowles an account of his hostesses was naturally inclined to be communicative, which is a weakness, though he was also frank, which is ​a virtue. He was a very slim young man, and might have been thought to be in delicate health, for he was pale and thin in the face. The features were long and finely chiselled, and the complexion was decidedly dark. He would have looked well in a lace ruffle, with flowing curls. But his hair was short, and he wore rough grey clothes and an unobtrusive tie. The highly arched black eyebrows gave his expression strength, but the very minute, dark mustache which shaded the upper lip was a little too evidently twisted and trained. That was the only outward sign of personal vanity, however, and was not an offensive one, though it gave him a foreign air which Professor Knowles disliked, but which the three Miss Miners thought charming. His manner pleased them, too; for he was always just as civil to them as though they had been young and pretty and amusing, which is more than can be said of the majority of modern youths. His conversation occasionally shocked them, it is true; but the shock was a mild one and agreeably applied, so that they were willing to undergo it frequently.

​Lawrence was not thinking of the Miss Miners as he watched the dark green islands. If he had thought of them at all during the last half-hour, it had been with a certain undefined gratitude to them for being the means of allowing him to spend a fortnight in the society of Fanny Trehearne.

Professor Knowles had not moved from his side during the long silence. Lawrence looked up and saw that he was still there, his extraordinary profile cut out against the cloudless sky.

​"Will you smoke?" enquired Lawrence, offering him a cigarette.

"No, thank you—certainly not cigarettes," answered the Professor, with a superior air. "You were telling me all about the Miss Miners," he continued; for though he knew none of them, he was of a curious disposition. "You spoke of a Miss Trehearne, I think."

"Yes," answered the young man. "Do you know her?"

"Oh, no. It's an unusual name, that's all. Are they New York people?"

Lawrence smiled at the idea that any one should ask such a question.

"Yes, of course," he answered. "New York—since the Flood."

"And Miss Trehearne is the only daughter?" enquired the Professor, inquisitively.

"She has a brother—Randolph," replied Lawrence, rather shortly; for he was suddenly aware that there was no particular reason why he should talk about the Trehearnes.

"Of course, they're relations of the Miners," observed the Professor.

​"That's the reason why Miss Trehearne has them to stay with her. Excuse me—I can't get a light in this wind."

Thereupon Lawrence turned away and got under the lee of the deck saloon, leaving the Professor to himself. Having lighted his cigarette, the artist went forward and stood in the sharp head-breeze that seemed to blow through and through him, disinfecting his whole being from the hot, close air of the train he had left half an hour earlier.

Bar Harbour, in common speech, includes Frenchman s Bay, the island of Mount Desert, and the other small islands lying near it—an extensive tract of land and sea. As a matter of fact, the name belongs to the little harbour between Bar Island and Mount Desert, together with the village which has grown to be the centre of civilization, since the whole place has become fashionable. Earth, sky, and water are of the north—hard, bright, and cold. In artists slang, there is no atmosphere. The dark green islands, as one looks at them, seem to be almost before the foreground. The picture is beautiful, ​and some people call it grand; but it lacks depth. There is something fiercely successful about the colour of it, something brilliantly self-reliant. It suggests a certain type of handsome woman—of the kind that need neither repentance nor cosmetics, and are perfectly sure of the fact, whose virtue is too cold to be kind, and whose complexion is not shadowed by passion, nor softened by suffering, nor even washed pale with tears. Only the sea is eloquent. The deep-breathing tide runs forward to the feet of the over-perfect, heartless earth, to linger and plead love s story while he may; then sighing sadly, sweeps back unsatisfied, baring his desolate bosom to her loveless scorn.

The village, the chief centre, lies by the water's edge, facing the islands which enclose the natural harbour. It was and is a fishing village, like many another on the coast. In the midst of it, vast wooden hotels, four times as high as the houses nearest to them, have sprung up to lodge fashion in six-storied discomfort. The effect is astonishing; for the blatant architect, gesticulating in soft wood and ranting in paint,

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Old Indian Village.

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as it were, has sketched an evil dream of mediævalism, incoherent with itself and with the very commonplace facts of the village street. There, also, in Mr. Bee's shop window, are plainly visible the more or less startling covers of the newest books, while from on high, frowns down the counterfeit presentment of battlements and turrets, and of such terrors as lent like interest when novels were not, neither was the slightest idea of the short story yet conceived.

But behind all and above all rise the wooded hills, which are neither modern nor ancient, but eternal. And in them and through them there is secret sweetness, and fragrance, and much that is gentle and lovely—in the heart of the defiantly beautiful earth-woman with her cold face, far beyond the reach of her tide-lover, and altogether out of hearing of his sighs and complaining speeches. There grow in endless greenness the white pines and the pitch pines, the black spruce and the white; there droops the feathery larch by the creeping yew, and there gleam the birches, yellow, white, and grey; the sturdy red oak spreads his arms to the scarlet ​maple, and the witch hazel rustles softly in the mysterious forest breeze. There, buried in the wood s bosom, bloom and blossom the wild

flowers, and redden the blushing berries in unseen succession, from middle June to late September—violets first, and wild iris, strawberries and raspberries, blueberries and

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Beehive Mountain.

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blackberries; short-lived wild roses and tender little blue-bells, red lilies, golden-rod, and clematis, in the confusion of nature s loveliest order.

All this Lawrence knew, and remembered, guessing at what he could neither remember nor know, with an artist's facility for filling up the unfinished sketch left on the mind by one impression. He had been at Bar Harbour three years earlier, and had wandered amongst the woods and pottered along the shore in a skiff. But he had been alone then and had stopped in the mediæval hotel, a rather solitary, thinking unit amidst the horde of thoughtless summer nomads, designated by the clerk at the desk as 'Number a hundred and twenty-three,' and a candidate for a daily portion of the questionable dinner at the hotel table. It was to be different this time, he thought, as he watched for the first sight of the pier when the Sappho rounded Bar Island. The Trehearnes had not been at their house three years ago, and Fanny Trehearne had been then not quite sixteen, just groping her way from the schoolroom to the world, and quite beneath his young importance—even had she ​been at Bar Harbour to wander among the woods with him. Things had changed, now. He was not quite sure that in her girlish heart she did not consider him beneath her notice. She was straight and tall—almost as tall as he, and she was proud, if she was not pretty, and she carried her head as high as the handsomest. Moreover, she was rich, and Louis Lawrence was at present phenomenally poor, with a rather distant chance of inheriting money. These were some of the excellent reasons why fate had made him fall in love with her, though none of them accounted for the fact that she had encouraged him, and had suggested to the Miss Miners that it would be very pleasant to have him come and stay a fortnight in July.

The Sappho slowed down, stopped, backed, and made fast to the wooden pier, and as she swung round, Lawrence saw Fanny Trehearne standing a little apart from the group of people who had come down to meet their own friends or to watch other people meeting theirs. The young girl was evidently looking for him, and he took off his hat and waved it about erratically to ​attract her attention. When she saw him, she nodded with a faint smile and moved one step nearer to the gangway, to wait until he should come on shore with the crowd.

She had a quiet, business-like way of moving, as though she never changed her position without a purpose. As Lawrence came along, trying to gain on the stream of passengers with whom he was moving, he kept his eyes fixed on her face, wondering whether the expression would ​change when he reached her and took her hand. When the moment came, the change was very slight.

"I like you—you're punctual," she said. "Come along!"

"I've got some traps, you know," he answered, hesitating.

"Well—there's the expressman. Give him your checks."