THE next morning had that luminous morning haze, not quite dense enough to be called a fog, which is often so lovely in Oldport. It was perfectly still; the tide swelled and swelled till it touched the edge of the green lawn behind the house, and seemed ready to submerge the slender pier; the water looked at first like glass, till closer gaze revealed long sinuous undulations, as if from unseen water-snakes beneath. A few rags of storm-cloud lay over the half-seen hills beyond the bay, and behind them came little mutterings of thunder, now here, now there, as if some wild creature were roaming up and down, dissatisfied, in the shelter of the clouds. The pale haze extended into the foreground, and half veiled the schooners that lay at anchor with their sails up. It was sultry, and there was something in the atmosphere that at once threatened and soothed. Sometimes a few drops dimpled the water and then ceased; the muttering creature in the sky moved northward and grew still. It was a day when every one would be tempted to go out rowing, but when only lovers would go. Philip and Hope went. Kate and Harry, meanwhile, awaited their opportunity to go in and visit Aunt Jane. This was a thing that never could be done till near noon, because that dear lady was very deliberate in her morning habits, and always averred that she had never seen the sun rise except in a panorama. She hated to be hurried in dressing, too; for she was accustomed to say that she must have leisure to understand herself, and this was clearly an affair of time.
But she was never more charming than when, after dressing and breakfasting in seclusion, and then vigilantly watching her handmaiden through the necessary dustings and arrangements, she sat at last, with her affairs in order, to await events. Every day she expected something entirely new to happen, and was never disappointed. For she herself always happened, if nothing else did; she could no more repeat herself than the sunrise can; and the liveliest visitor always carried away something fresher and more remarkable than he brought.
Her book that morning had displeased her, and she was boiling with indignation against its author.
“I am reading a book so dry,” she said, “it makes me cough. No wonder there was a drought last summer. It was printed then. Worcester’s Geography seems in my memory as fascinating as Shakespeare, when I look back upon it from this book. How can a man write such a thing and live?”
“Perhaps he lived by writing it,” said Kate.
“Perhaps it was the best he could do,” added the more literal Harry.
“It certainly was not the best he could do, for he might have died,—died instead of dried. O, I should like to prick that man with something sharp, and see if sawdust did not run out of him! Kate, ask the bookseller to let me know if he ever really dies, and then life may seem fresh again.”
“What is it?” asked Kate.
“Somebody’s memoirs,” said Aunt Jane. “Was there no man left worth writing about, that they should make a biography about this one? It is like a life of Napoleon with all the battles left out. They are conceited enough to put his age in the upper corner of each page too, as if anybody cared how old he was.”
“Such pretty covers!” said Kate. “It is too bad.”
“Yes,” said Aunt Jane. “I mean to send them back and have new leaves put in. These are so wretched, there is not a teakettle in the land so insignificant that it would boil over them. Don’t let us talk any more about it. Have Philip and Hope gone out upon the water?”
“Yes, dear,” said Kate. “Did Ruth tell you?”
“When did that aimless infant ever tell anything?”
“Then how did you know it?”
“If I waited for knowledge till that sweet-tempered parrot chose to tell me,” Aunt Jane went on, “I should be even more foolish than I am.”
“Then how did you know?”
“Of course I heard the boat hauled down, and of course I knew that none but lovers would go out just before a thunder-storm. Then you and Harry came in, and I knew it was the others.”
“Aunt Jane,” said Kate, “you divine everything: what a brain you have!”
“Brain! it is nothing but a collection of shreds, like a little girl’s work-basket,—a scrap of blue silk and a bit of white muslin.”
“Now she is fishing for compliments,” said Kate, “and she shall have one. She was very sweet and good to Philip last night.”
“I know it,” said Aunt Jane, with a groan. “I waked in the night and thought about it. I was awake a great deal last night. I have heard cocks crowing all my life, but I never knew what that creature could accomplish before. So I lay and thought how good and forgiving I was; it was quite distressing.”
“Remorse?” said Kate.
“Yes, indeed. I hate to be a saint all the time. There ought to be vacations. Instead of suffering from a bad conscience, I suffer from a good one.”
“It was no merit of yours, aunt,” put in Harry. “Who was ever more agreeable and lovable than Malbone last night?”
“Lovable!” burst out Aunt Jane, who never could be managed or manipulated by anybody but Kate, and who often rebelled against Harry’s blunt assertions. “Of course he is lovable, and that is why I dislike him. His father was so before him. That is the worst of it. I never in my life saw any harm done by a villain; I wish I could. All the mischief in this world is done by lovable people. Thank Heaven, nobody ever dared to call me lovable!”
“I should like to see any one dare call you anything else,—you dear, old, soft-hearted darling!” interposed Kate.
“But, aunt,” persisted Harry, “if you only knew what the mass of young men are—”
“Don’t I?” interrupted the impetuous lady. “What is there that is not known to any woman who has common sense, and eyes enough to look out of a window?”
“If you only knew,” Harry went on, “how superior Phil Malbone is, in his whole tone, to any fellow of my acquaintance.”
“Lord help the rest!” she answered. “Philip has a sort of refinement instead of principles, and a heart instead of a conscience,—just heart enough to keep himself happy and everybody else miserable.”
“Do you mean to say,” asked the obstinate Hal, “that there is no difference between refinement and coarseness?”
“Yes, there is,” she said.
“Well, which is best?”
“Coarseness is safer by a great deal,” said Aunt Jane, “in the hands of a man like Philip. What harm can that swearing coachman do, I should like to know, in the street yonder? To be sure it is very unpleasant, and I wonder they let people swear so, except, perhaps, in waste places outside the town; but that is his way of expressing himself, and he only frightens people, after all.”
“Which Philip does not,” said Hal.
“Exactly. That is the danger. He frightens nobody, not even himself, when he ought to wear a label round his neck marked ‘Dangerous,’ such as they have at other places where it is slippery and brittle. When he is here, I keep saying to myself, ‘Too smooth, too smooth!’”
“Aunt Jane,” said Harry, gravely, “I know Malbone very well, and I never knew any man whom it was more unjust to call a hypocrite.”
“Did I say he was a hypocrite?” she cried. “He is worse than that; at least, more really dangerous. It is these high-strung sentimentalists who do all the mischief; who play on their own lovely emotions, forsooth, till they wear out those fine fiddlestrings, and then have nothing left but the flesh and the D. Don’t tell me!”
“Do stop, auntie,” interposed Kate, quite alarmed, “you are really worse than a coachman. You are growing very profane indeed.”
“I have a much harder time than any coachman, Kate,” retorted the injured lady. “Nobody tries to stop him, and you are always hushing me up.”
“Hushing you up, darling?” said Kate. “When we only spoil you by praising and quoting everything you say.”
“Only when it amuses you,” said Aunt Jane. “So long as I sit and cry my eyes out over a book, you all love me, and when I talk nonsense, you are ready to encourage it; but when I begin to utter a little sense, you all want to silence me, or else run out of the room! Yesterday I read about a newspaper somewhere, called the ‘Daily Evening Voice’; I wish you would allow me a daily morning voice.”
“Do not interfere, Kate,” said Hal. “Aunt Jane and I only wish to understand each other.”
“I am sure we don’t,” said Aunt Jane; “I have no desire to understand you, and you never will understand me till you comprehend Philip.”
“Let us agree on one thing,” Harry said. “Surely, aunt, you know how he loves Hope?”
Aunt Jane approached a degree nearer the equator, and said, gently, “I fear I do.”
“Fear?”
“Yes, fear. That is just what troubles me. I know precisely how he loves her. Il se laisse aimer. Philip likes to be petted, as much as any cat, and, while he will purr, Hope is happy. Very few men accept idolatry with any degree of grace, but he unfortunately does.”
“Unfortunately?” remonstrated Hal, as far as ever from being satisfied. “This is really too bad. You never will do him any justice.”
“Ah?” said Aunt Jane, chilling again, “I thought I did. I observe he is very much afraid of me, and there seems to be no other reason.”
“The real trouble is,” said Harry, after a pause, “that you doubt his constancy.”
“What do you call constancy?” said she. “Kissing a woman’s picture ten years after a man has broken her heart? Philip Malbone has that kind of constancy, and so had his father before him.”
This was too much for Harry, who was making for the door in indignation, when little Ruth came in with Aunt Jane’s luncheon, and that lady was soon absorbed in the hopeless task of keeping her handmaiden’s pretty blue and white gingham sleeve out of the butter-plate.