Read Ebook: Love in Idleness: A Bar Harbour Tale by Crawford F Marion Francis Marion

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Ebook has 553 lines and 20206 words, and 12 pages

"Why were you so unkind to Mr. Brinsley to-night?" she asked in a low voice.

Fanny glanced at her before she answered. The eldest Miss Miner's face had once been almost beautiful. In the moonlight, the delicate, clearly chiselled features were lovely still, but a little ghostly, and the young girl saw that the fixed smile had disappeared for once, leaving a look of pain in its place.

"I didn't mean to be unkind," Fanny began. "That is," she added quickly, correcting herself, "I'm not quite sure of what I meant. I think I did mean to hurt him. He's so strong, and he's always showing that he despises Mr. Lawrence, because he isn't an athlete. As though a man must be a prize-fighter to be nice!"

"Well--but--Mr. Lawrence doesn't mind. You see how he takes it all. Why should you fight battles for him?"

"Perhaps I shouldn't. But--why should you take up the cudgels for Mr. Brinsley? He's quite able to take care of himself, if he will only tell the truth."

"If!" exclaimed Miss Cordelia, in ready resentment. "He's the most truthful man alive."

"Oh! And he told you he had been in the English navy."

"What has that to do with it? Of course he has, if he says so."

"He's unwise to say so, because he hasn't," answered Fanny, in her usual direct way.

"How in the world can you say that a man like Mr. Brinsley--an honourable man, I'm sure--is telling a deliberate falsehood? I'm surprised at you, Fanny--indeed I am! It isn't like you."

"Did you ever know me to tell you anything that wasn't exactly true?" asked the young girl, looking down into her elderly cousin's sweet, sad face, for she was much the taller.

"No--of course not--but--"

"Well, Cousin Cordelia, I tell you that your Mr. Brinsley has never been in the English navy. I don't say that I think so. I say that I know it. Will you believe me, or him?'

"Oh, Fanny!" Miss Cordelia raised her eyes with a frightened glance.

"Not that it matters," added Fanny, looking away across the moonlit lawn again. "Who cares? Only, it's one of those lies that go against a man," she continued after a short pause. "A man may pretend that he has shot ten million grisly bears in his back yard, or hooked a salmon that weighed a hundred-weight--people will laugh and say that he's a story-teller. It's all right, you know--and nobody minds. But when a man says he's been in the army or the navy, and hasn't--people call him a liar and cut him. I don't know why it's so, I'm sure, but it is--and we all know it."

"Yes," answered Cordelia, almost tremulously; "but you haven't proved that Mr. Brinsley isn't telling the truth--"

"Oh yes, I have! There never was a deep-sea sailor yet who had never heard of club-hauling a ship to save her. I know about those things. I always make navy officers talk to me about those things whenever I get a chance. Besides, I can prove it to you. Ask the first captain of a fishing-schooner you meet down at the landing what it means. But don't tell me I don't know--it's too absurd."

Miss Cordelia looked down. Her hand still rested on Fanny's arm, and it trembled now so that the young girl felt it.

"What does it mean, then?" asked Cordelia, faintly.

"Oh, it's a long operation to tell about. It's when you've got a lee-shore in a gale, and you want to go about and can't, because you miss stays every time, and you let go an anchor, and the ship swings to it, and just as she begins to get way on, you slip your chain, and she pays off on the other tack. Of course you lose your anchor."

"Oh--you lose the anchor? To save the ship? I see."

"Exactly."

"You lose the anchor to save the ship," repeated Cordelia, softly, as though she were trying to remember the words for future use. "Shall we go back?" she suggested, rather abruptly.

"I wish you'd answer me one question first," said Fanny.

"Yes. What is it?"

"Why are you so awfully anxious to stand up for Mr. Brinsley? You're not in love with him, are you?"

Cordelia started very perceptibly, and turned her face away. Then, all at once, she laughed a little hysterically.

"In love? At my age?"

And she laughed again, and laughed, strange to say, till she cried, clinging all the time to the young girl's strong arm. Fanny did not ask any more questions as they walked slowly back to the house.

"Come with me into the village, and help me to do errands," said Fanny on the following morning, just as Lawrence was feeling for his pipe in his pocket after breakfast. "You can smoke till we get there. It wouldn't hurt you to smoke less, anyway."

They went down through the garden, fresh and dewy still from the short, cool night, towards the sea. The path to the village lies along a low sea-wall, just high enough and strong enough to keep the tide from the lawns. But the tide was beginning to run out at that hour, and was singing and rocking itself away from the shore, leaving the big loose stones and the chocolate-coloured rocks all wet and shining in the morning sun. The breeze was springing up in the offing and would reach the land before long, kissing each island as it passed softly by, and gently breaking with dark blue the smoothly undulating water.

The sun was almost behind the pair as they walked along the sands, and shone full upon the harbour as it came into view, lighting up the deep green of the islands between which passes the channel, and bringing up the warm brown of the soil through thick weaving spruces. The graceful yachts caught the sunshine, too, their hulls gleaming darkly, or dazzlingly white, their slender masts pencilled in light, against the trees, and standing out like threaded needles when they showed against the pale, clear sky. In the bright northern air, the artist would have complained that there was no atmosphere--no 'depth,' nor 'distance,' but only the distinct farness of the objects a long way off--nothing at all like 'atmospheric perspective.'

"Isn't it a glorious day!" exclaimed Fanny, looking seaward at a white-sailed fishing-schooner, which scarcely moved in the morning air.

"It's a little bit too swept and garnished," answered Lawrence. "That is--for a picture, you know. It's better to feel than to look at, if you understand what I mean. It feels so northern, that when you look at it, it seems bare and unfinished without a little snow."

"But you like it, don't you?" asked the young girl, in prompt protest.

"Of course I do. What a question! I thought I'd been showing how much I liked it, ever since I got here."

"I'm not sure that you show what you like and don't like," said Fanny, in a tone of reflexion. "Perhaps it's better not to."

"You don't, at all events. At least--aren't you rather an inscrutable person? Of course I don't know," he added rather foolishly, pulling his woollen cap over his eyes and glancing at her sideways.

"Inscrutable! What a big word! 'The inscrutable ways of Providence'--that's what they always say, don't they? Still--if you mean that I don't 'tell,' you're quite right. I don't--when I can keep my countenance. Do you? It's always far better not to tell. Besides, if you commit yourself to an opinion, you're committing yourself to gaol."

"What a way of putting it! But it's really true. I should so much like to ask you a question about one of your opinions."

"Why don't you?" asked Fanny, turning her eyes to his.

"Oh--lots of reasons: I'm afraid, in the first place; and then, I'm not sure you have one, and then--"

"Say it all--I hate people who hesitate!"

"Well--no. There's a great deal more to say than I want to say. Let's talk about the landscape."

"No. I want to know what the question is which you wished you might ask," insisted Fanny.

"It's about Mr. Brinsley," said Lawrence, plunging.

"Well, what about him?" Fanny's tone changed perceptibly, and her expression grew cold and forbidding.

"Nothing particular--unless it's impertinent--so I won't ask it."

"You won't?" asked Fanny, slackening her pace and looking hard at him. "Not if I ask you to?"

"No," answered Lawrence. "I'd oblige you by asking a different question, but not that one. You wouldn't know the difference."

"That's ingenuous, at all events." She looked away again and laughed.

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