18 A Flying Visit
AN April evening. Westward the sun is dipping in Bay Chalette its very red face, and the cool, greenish waters take on roseate hues in consequence, that by no means belong to them. A soft, pinkish, windless haze, indeed, encircles as in a halo bay and town, Isle Perdrix, and the boats of the Gaspereaux fishers, out in force, for is not this “Gaspereaux Month,” the silver harvest of these toilers of the sea? “Ships, like lilies, lie tranquilly” at the grimy St. Gildas wharves; the quaint hilly town itself rests all a flush in the bath of ruby sunlight, the sound of evening bells—the Angels ringing out from Villa des Anges—floats sweetly over the hush, until listening, you imagine yourself for the moment in some far-off, old-world city of France.
Isle Perdrix rests, like the rocky emerald it is, in its lapis lazuli setting, its beacon already lit, and sending its golden stream of light far over the peaceful sea.
It is at this witching hour, of an April day, that a traveler stands on the St. Gildas shore, and waits for the ferry-boat to come and take him over to the island.
“You see, there ain’t no regular ferry, as you may say, betwixt this and Dree Island,” the landlady explains, at the little inn where he stops to make known his wishes; “and there ain’t no regular traffic. There’s only the doctor’s family and old Tim, that lives on the place for good like, and they rows over themselves when they come back and forrid, which is every day for that matter. We blows a horn when strangers come, and then old Tim, if he ain’t too busy, comes across and takes ’em off. I’ll blow the horn for you now, sir.”
“I can call spirits from the vasty deep,” quotes the gentleman, with a touch of humor. ” ‘But will they come when we call them? ‘ It’s a toss up then whether old Tim comes or not, madam?”
“Jest so, sir. You takes your chance. But the light’s lit I see, so he ain’t like to be none so busy that he can’t come. For he’s that near—old Tim is, and that fond of turning a penny, that he never misses a fare if he can help it.”
She lifts to her lips a sea-shell, and blows a blast that might wake old Charon himself and bring him across the Styx.
“You wait here a little, sir,” she says. “Old Tim will hear that, if he’s a mind to come. If you don’t see him in fifteen minutes you won’t see him at all.”
“Humph!” says the traveler, “primitive customs obtain here upon my word! I wonder if the other aborigines are like these two?”
But he stands and waits. Many boats glide swiftly past, the red sunlight glinting on brown oar blades, or white sails. One boat in particular he notices; so pretty, so white, so dainty is it—a name in gilt letters on the stern; he cannot read it from where he stands. It is manned by two youths; young men, perhaps, and one girl. The girl and one of the young men row, the third steers, all are singing. The spirited refrain of the Canadian Boat Song reaches him where he stands:
“Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast,
The rapids are near, and the daylight is past.”
At the sound of the horn they turn simultaneously to look, and the traveler in his turn takes a long look at the girl, who handles her oar with a skill and ease that only long practice can have given. A pretty, fair girl in a suit of yachting costume of dark blue flannel, and broad white braid trimmings, a sailor hat of coarse straw, and a redundance of very light, very loose hair. She rests on her oar, after that look at him, and addresses the steersman. A brief discussion follows—the twain ,who row seem to urge some point, to which the third objects, but the majority carry the question. Instinctively the traveler feels he is the subject of the consultation; perhaps they know he wishes to visit the island, and are good-naturedly disposed to take the place of the tedious Tim. His conjecture proves to be correct; the pretty white boat is headed for the St. Gildas shore, is run sharply up on the sands, and the steersman, raising himself from his recumbent position, somewhat indolently touches his cap, and speaks.
“Beg pardon, sir. You want to go to Dree Island?”
“If I can get there—yes. The good lady who keeps the inn, blew a blast that might have raised the dead, but it has not raised the ferryman of this river.”
“If you like to come with us, we will take you.”
“Ah! thanks very much,” availing himself with alacrity of the offer. “You are most kind. But will it not take you out of your way?”
“On the contrary, we were just going there. We have only been drifting about. Rush off, Johnny. If you like to steer, Snowball, I’ll take your oar. You ought to be tired by this time.”
Snowball! The traveler gives a great and sudden start, and sits down on the thwart with more precipitation than grace.
“Thank you, Rene, dear,” responds the pretty girl, in the yachting suit, with much demureness. “I would row until my arms dropped off, I am sure, sooner than tire your poor dear muscles. No. Johnny and I will take Boule-de-neige home. Come on, Johnny.”
Johnny comes on. The boat glides off like a great swan, out into the river, propelled by two pair of strong, willing young arms. The sun has quite dipped out of sight by this time, and the moon, “bright regent of the heavens,” floats up in pearly luster. The long, mystic, silvery twilight of northern climes wraps them in its dreamy haze.
“A blazing red sunset, Snowball,” says the young gentleman addressed as “Johnny,” a strikingly handsome big fellow of eighteen or more, with a pair of large, deep, sea-gray eyes. “You will have a capital day for your trip to Moose Head to-morrow. Is Innocente Desereaux going?”
“Of course,” responds the pretty girl, promptly, “and Armand—but he goes as a matter of course.”
“Why a matter of course?” demands, rather peremptorily, the other young gentleman, darker, slighter, older than “Johnny.” “You must be fond of the society of fools, Snowball, when you take so readily to the continual companionship of Armand Desereaux.”
“A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind,” quotes Mlle. Snowball, still demurely. “I get so overpowered with intellect and ‘tall talking,’ Rene, when you are at home, that, do you know, Armand’s mild imbecilities are a positive relief. Besides, he is so very, very good-looking, poor fellow. Did you ever notice his dark, pathetic eyes?”
There is a disgusted growl from the austere-looking M. Rene—a smothered laugh from Johnny.
“Exactly like the eyes of a pathetic poodle, when he stands on his hind legs and begs!” this latter says. “I have noticed his dark pathetic eyes, Snowball, and always feel like taking him gently and sweetly by the collar to the nearest butcher’s. They’re ever so much, in expression, like old Tim’s little terrier’s, Brandy.”
It is an impertinent speech, but, her back being turned to Rene, the young lady rewards it with her sweetest smile. And her smile is very sweet. She is, without exception, the prettiest girl, the stranger thinks, he has ever seen.
Whatever other opinion may be held of Snowball Trillon, there can be but one on the subject of her beauty. No eyes more coldly critical, better disposed to find fault, could easily be found; but fault there simply seems to be none. He sits at his leisure and takes the picture in. She appears to regard him no more than the thwart on which he sits. The head is small, and set with the much admired “stag-like ” poise on the fair, firm throat—a head crowned with a chevelure doree, such as he has never looked on before. The figure is tall, very erect, very slender, as becomes sixteen years, its contour even now giving promise of getting well over that with a dozen more years. The face is oval, the eyes of turquois blue—blue to their very depths; fearless, flashing, fun-loving, wide-open eyes. A complexion of flawless fairness, white teeth, and a rounded dimpled chin. And—he thinks this with an inward shudder—it is also like a living likeness of a waxen, dead face, and rigid eyes of the same forget-me-not blue, seen once and never to be forgotten, thirteen years ago!
As he sits and stares his fill, he is quite unconscious that some one else is staring at him, and staring with a frown that deepens with every instant. It is the young man who steers, whose dark brows are knitted angrily under the visor of his cap.
“Confound the fellow!” he is thinking, with inward savagery; “one would think she was sitting to him for her portrait! Hang his impudence! Snowball!” authoritatively; “you have handled that oar long enough. Come and take my place, and give it to me.”
Snowball looks at him, and reads in his face that he means to be obeyed. In his place she will be out of eye shot of the ill-bred stranger, unless he has eyes in the back of his head.
There are some tones of Rene’s voice Snowball never cares to disobey; this is one. Perhaps, too, she suspects. She gets up obediently, smiling saucily in his darkling face, and takes the stern seat.
Mr. Vane Valentine comes to himself at once, and is conscious that he has given the dark and dignified young Monsieur Rene cause of offense. He hastens by pleasant commonplaces to make his peace.
“Very interesting town, St. Gildas—quaint, old world, and that. Is that a Martello tower he sees over yonder, on these heights? Ah! rare birds, these round towers—built, no doubt, in times of French and British warfare. Reminds him of Dinan, in Brittany, with its Angelus bell, and its convents, and priests in the streets, dressed in soutanes. Yes (to Johnny), he has been abroad; has been a great traveler now for years. Charming scenery, this! Is that Isle Perdrix, with the beacon lights shining? A pretty island—very pretty, no doubt. They know Isle Perdrix well?”
“Well enough, since we live there,” Johnny answers, with a shrug; “too well, we think sometimes. Life on an island, be it never so charming, is apt to grow a stale affair after a score of years. We are Dr. Macdonald’s sons, and he is at home, if you want to see him. It’s not much of a show place, Dree Island, but tourists mostly do it. If you don’t wish particularly to return to-night, sir, my father will be happy to offer you a room.”
Johnny makes this hospitable proposal, in much simplicity, quite ignoring his brother’s warning frown.
Rene has taken a sudden dislike and distrust of this dark, staring stranger, and his patronizing talk. He may spend his own shining hours—and he does spend a good many of them—in judicious repression of Miss Trillon, but he is singularly intolerant of any other male creature presuming to take the smallest liberty.
He sits absolutely silent, until they land, and then restrains Snowball, by a look, from leaving her place.
“We will row down as far as Cape Pierre,” he says, peremptorily, “the evening is much too fine to go in. Tim,” to that aged retainer, appearing on the shore, his pipe in his mouth, his hands in his pockets, his dog Brandy at his heels, “show this gentleman up to the cottage, will you?”
And then Mr. Vane Valentine finds himself on the shore of Isle Perdrix, old Tim inspecting him, with two rheumy, red eyes, Brandy smelling in an alarming manner at the calves of his legs, and the Boule-de-neige floating like a fairy bark down the moonlit stream.
“Two handsome young fellows, my friend,” he remarks to Tim, following that faithful henchman up the rocky paths.
“Faix ye may say that. I’m sayin’, ye may well say that. Divil their aquil ye’ll find anywhere in these parts. Av ye want to stan’ well wid the owl docther, ye’ll spake a civil word for the byes. I say ye’ll——”
“And a very pretty girl,” interrupts the stranger, carelessly. “Their sister, I take it? although she doesn’t resemble them,”
Timothy groans.
“The gerrel! O well, thin, ’tis nothing bad I’ll be sayin’ av the gerrel, but upon me honor and conscience, ’tis nothin’ good anybody can say! The divilment av that gerrel—the thricks and the capers av her—mortial man cudn’t be up to. No, thin, she isn’t their shister, not a dhrop’s blood to thim, but a sort o’ fonlin the ould docther’s bringin’ up. I’m sayin’—arrah shure here’s the docther for ye himsel.”
Dr. Macdonald appears, and Mr. Valentine approaches, and presents himself.
The presentation is not so facile a matter as he usually finds it, for the reason that he has made up his mind not to give his name. But the gentle, genial old doctor is simplicity itself—he sees a stranger at his gate, and asks no more. To give him of his best, and ask no questions, is his primitive and obsolete idea of hospitality. Mr. Valentine is invited in, is refreshed, and pressed to spend the night, and accepts graciously the invitation. Dr. Macdonald personally offers to show him over the island, seen at its most picturesque by this light, relates its history—a tragic history, too, of bloodshed once upon a time, of plague later, of terror and sudden death. Nine tolls from the steeples of St. Gildas; the little island, all bathed in moonlight, lies as in a sea of pearl—a sea so still that the soft lapping of the incoming tide has the sound of a muffled roar.
The hour, the light, the silence, has a strange, eerie charm even for this man, hard and sordid, and but little susceptible to charm of the kind.
“I cannot think what keeps my children,” the doctor says, as they turn to go back; “they seldom stay on the water so late. The beauty of the night, I suppose, tempts them. Ah! they are here.”
His face lights. The white boat grates on the sand, and the three young people come up the craggy slope, the gay voices and young laughter coming to where they linger and wait.
“ ‘Prithee, why so sad, fond lover? prithee, why so pale?’ ” sings the girl, and slips her hand through Rene’s arm, and gives him a shake. ” ‘Sure, if looking glad won’t win her, will looking sad avail?’ I don’t know whether I’ve got it right or not, but that’s the sense. Johnny, do you know if Innocente Desereaux has been trampling on our Rene more than usual to-day? Be cause——”
“Hush! can’t you?” retorts Johnny, giving her a fraternal dig with his elbow, “don’t you see? The Marble Guest!”
“Con-found him!” mutters Rene. “Snowball, have nothing to say to him! Go up to your room and go to bed. YOU must be up at dawn to-morrow morning, remember.”
“Good little girls ought to be in bed at nine o’clock anyhow,” chimes in Johnny, severely, “do, Snowball. Get some bread and milk in the kitchen, like a little dear, and Rene will go up and tuck you in!”
Snowball receives this proposal with a shout of derisive laughter, which if a trifle louder than Mère Maddelena would approve of, is altogether so sweet, so joyous, that the two men waiting smile involuntarily from sympathy.
“My little girl!” the old doctor says, and lays a loving hand on her curls. She has snatched off her sailor hat, and is swinging it as she walks. “My boys, and my little Snowball, sir,” he says to the silent man who stands beside him, “but you have met before. You rowed this gentleman over, didn’t you, Snowball?”
Snowball drops the son’s arm, and takes that of the father. The stranger falls back with Johnny. Rene walks on ahead, wishing his father and brother were a little more discriminating in their unbounded hospitality.
“I don’t like that fellow,” he thinks, “and,” rather irrelevantly this, “Snowball will be asked to play and sing for his amusement, no doubt! Hospitality is a virtue, perhaps—but even a virtue may be carried to excess.”
He is right—Snowball is asked to sing and play, and does both, and quite brilliantly too for a schoolgirl of sixteen, but then they are musical or nothing at Villa des Anges. The instinct of coquetry is there, and flashes out—no, let us be correct; not coquetry, malicious mischief, and not for the captivation of the stranger, but for the aggravation of the silent and watchful Rene, who sits in a corner, with a ponderous tome—Lives of Artists and Sculptors—held up as a shield, and keeps watch and ward jealously behind it.
“Did you ever read the thrilling romance of the Dog in the Manger, Snowball?” whispers Johnny, in a pause of one of their concerted pieces; “just cast an eye at Rene, and behold the tableau vivant!”
The stranger observes as well as the speaker. His keen, half-closed, black eyes, take in everything. The pretty, homely, lamp-lit parlor, whose only costly piece of furniture is the piano, the white, benign head of the doctor, the stalwart, handsome Johnny, like a model for an athlete or a Greek god, as you choose, the silent, grave, intellectual Rene, and the brilliant young beauty, with the golden mane falling to her slim waist, the white hands flying over the keys, and the blue eyes laughing over at Rene’s “grumpy” face.
“Is that glum-looking youth in the corner in love with her?” Vane Valentine wonders; “if so, why should she not marry him and stay here all her life? That would be a way out of the difficulty; madam would never trouble herself with the wife of M. Rene Macdonald. And he is handsome too, if he would only light up a bit, in a different way, of course, from his brother. Why not?”
There seems to be no why not. It seems the most natural thing in the world, sitting in his room, later on, thinking it all over—that the girl should marry one of these Macdonald lads, and become socially extinct for ever after. If left to themselves it will inevitably happen, but who is to tell whither this new craze may not lead Madam Valentine? She still retains the picture of the dashing little girl-soldier, still broods in secret over her new-found dream. The woman who hesitates is lost—she is but hesitating, he feels, before taking the final plunge that may ruin his every hope for life.
He is here now without her knowledge. He has found the spring heats down there at St. Augustine too much for him, and has come North, ostensibly to see that everything is gotten ready for her reception—in reality to pay a flying visit to Isle Perdrix, and behold for himself this formidable rival. He has seen her, and finds her more dangerous than his worst fears. If madam once looks on that winning face, that enchanting smile, that youthful grace, all is over—her old heart will be taken captive at once. She does not allure him—he is not susceptible, and his heart—all the heart he has ever had to give—went out of his possession many years ago.
He rises late, descends, and finds breakfast and the doctor awaiting him. It is ten o’clock. He apologizes, pleads late habits, and the evil custom of sitting up late. The doctor waives all excuses-his time is his guest’s.
“I must be going before noon,” Mr. Valentine remarks ; “there is a train leaves St. Gildas about eleven, I find. I owe you a thousand thanks for your kind hospitality, my dear doctor. My visit to Isle Perdrix will long remain delightfully in my memory.”
“Very pretty talk, but where the duse,” he is thinking, “are the rest?”
The doctor sees the wondering glance.
“My young people started on an excursion down the bay at daylight,” he says, “and will not return before night. They left their adieux with me.”
Which is a polite fiction on the doctor’s part, no one having given the stranger within their gates so much as a thought. Well, it does not signify—he has seen her, and found her a foeman worthy his steel.
He departs. Old Tim prosaically rows him on the return trip, and he takes the eleven express, and steams out of gray St. Gildas, with the memory of a sparkling, laughing blonde face to bear him company, “a dancing shape, an image gay, to haunt, bewilder, and waylay” all the way he goes.
Two weeks later. Madam Valentine and her attendants are located with their penates in that luxurious domicile that is called for the time, “home.” But the end of May has in store for Mr. Vane Valentine a still greater change. Sir Rupert Valentine dies. It has taken him many years to do it, but it is done at last.
The baronet is dead—live the baronet! Sir Rupert is gathered to his fathers, and other relations, and Sir Vane steps into his shoes—his title—his impoverished estate, his gray, ivy-grown, ancestral manor. It is sudden at last—is death ever anything else?—and Miss Dorothea writes him to come without delay. The family solicitor also writes, his presence is absolutely needed things are in a terrible tangle—Sir Vane must come and see if the muddle can be set straight. He lays those letters—his brown complexion quite chalky with emotion before his aunt and arbiter.
“Certainly, my good Vane, certainly,” that great lady says, with more cheerful alacrity than the melancholy occasion seems to demand; “go by all means, and at once. Any money that may be needed, for repairs, &c., shall be forthcoming, of course. Remember me to your sister and Miss Camilla Rooth.”
Time has been when Vane Valentine would have hailed this as the apex of all his hopes. That time is no more and her fortune for many weeks—months, it may be, who can, at this critical juncture, tell what may not happen in the interval? She may do as she has done—she may visit St. Gildas. Once let her see that girl and all is lost! What is an empty title, a handful of barren acres, a mortgaged manor-house, compared with the fortune he risks? But the risk must be run. Madam herself is peremptory in urging him to go.
“The honor of the family demands it,” she says, severely. “You must go. Why do you hesitate?”
Ah! Why? He looks at her almost angrily, and would “talk back” if he dared. But discretion is the better part of valor—the risk must be run. With a gloomy brow, and a foreboding spirit, the new Lord of Valentine and his portmanteau depart.
And then, what he most fears, comes straight to pass. Ere the good ship that bears him has plowed half the Atlantic, Madam Valentine, attended by her maid, is on her way, as fast as express trains can whirl her, to St. Gildas, to see with her own eyes the original of the daring photograph she looks at every day.
