April Hopes

by William Dean Howells

  XIV.

  The day of the picnic struggled till ten o'clock to peer through the fogthat wrapt it with that remote damp and coolness and that nearer drouthand warmth which some fogs have. The low pine groves hung full of it,and it gave a silvery definition to the gossamer threads running fromone grass spear to another in spacious networks over the open levels ofthe old fields that stretch back from the bluff to the woods. At lastit grew thinner, somewhere over the bay; then you could see the smoothwater through it; then it drifted off in ragged fringes before a lightbreeze: when you looked landward again it was all gone there, andseaward it had gathered itself in a low, dun bank along the horizon. Itwas the kind of fog that people interested in Campobello admitted as aptto be common there, but claimed as a kind of local virtue when it beganto break away. They said that it was a very dry fog, not like Newport,and asked you to notice that it did not wet you at all.

  Four or five carriages, driven by the gentlemen of the party, held thepicnic, which was destined for that beautiful cove on the Bay of Fundywhere the red granite ledges, smooth-washed by ages of storm and sun,lend themselves to such festivities as if they had been artificiallyfashioned into shelves and tables. The whole place is yet so new to menthat this haunt has not acquired that air of repulsive custom which theegg shells and broken bottles and sardine boxes of many seasons give.Or perhaps the winter tempests heap the tides of the bay over the ledge,and wash it clean of these vulgar traces of human resort, and enable itto offer as fresh a welcome to the picnics of each successive summer asif there had never been a picnic in that place before.

  This was the sense that Mavering professed to have received from it,when he jumped out of the beach wagon in which he had preceded the othercarriages through the weird forest lying between the fringe of farmfields and fishing-villages on the western shore of the island andthese lonely coasts of the bay. As far as the signs of settled humanhabitation last, the road is the good hard country road of New England,climbing steep little hills, and presently leading through long tractsof woodland. But at a certain point beyond the furthest cottageyou leave it, and plunge deep into the heart of the forest, vaguelytraversed by the wheel-path carried through since the island was openedto summer sojourn. Road you can hardly call it, remembering its curiouspauses and hesitations when confronted with stretches of marshy ground,and its staggering progress over the thick stubble of saplings throughwhich it is cut. The progress of teams over it is slow, but there issuch joy of wildness in the solitudes it penetrates that; if the horseshad any gait slower than a walk, one might still wish to stay them. Itis a Northern forest, with the air of having sprang quickly up in thefierce heat and haste of the Northern summers. The small firs are setalmost as dense as rye in a field, and in their struggle to the lightthey have choked one another so that there is a strange blight of deathand defeat on all that vigour of life. Few of the trees have won anylofty growth; they seem to have died and fallen when they were aboutto outstrip the others in size, and from their decay a new sylvangeneration riots rankly upward. The surface of the ground is thinlyclothed with a deciduous undergrowth, above which are the bare, sparestems of the evergreens, and then their limbs thrusting into one anotherin a sombre tangle, with locks of long yellowish-white moss, like thegrey pendants of the Southern pines, dripping from them and drainingtheir brief life.

  In such a place you must surrender yourself to its influences,profoundly yet vaguely melancholy, or you must resist them with whatevergaiety is in you, or may be conjured out of others. It was concededthat Mavering was the life of the party, as the phrase goes. Hislight-heartedness, as kindly and sympathetic as it was inexhaustible,served to carry them over the worst places in the road of itself. Hejumped down and ran back, when he had passed a bad bit, to see if theothers were getting through safely; the least interesting of the partyhad some proof of his impartial friendliness; he promised an early andtriumphant emergence from all difficulties; he started singing, andsacrificed himself in several tunes, for he could not sing well; hislaugh seemed to be always coming back to Alice, where she rode latein the little procession; several times, with the deference which hedelicately qualified for her, he came himself to see if he could not dosomething for her.

  "Miss Pasmer," croaked her friend Miss Anderson, who always began inthat ceremonious way with her, and got to calling her Alice furtheralong in the conversation, "if you don't drop something for that poorfellow to run back two or three miles and get, pretty soon, I'll do itmyself. It's peyfectly disheaytening to see his disappointment when youtell him theye's nothing to be done."

  "He seems to get over it," said Alice evasively. She smiled withpleasure in Miss Anderson's impeachment, however.

  "Oh, he keeps coming, if that's what you mean. But do drop anumbrella, or a rubber, or something, next time, just to show a properappreciation."

  But Mavering did not come any more. Just before they got to the cove,Miss Anderson leaned over again to whisper in Alice's ear, "I told youhe was huyt. Now you must be very good to him the rest of the time."

  Upon theory a girl of Alice Pasmer's reserve ought to have resented thisintervention, but it is not probable she did. She flushed a little, butnot with offence, apparently; and she was kinder to Mavering, and lethim do everything for her that he could invent in transferring thethings from the wagons to the rocks.

  The party gave a gaiety to the wild place which accented its propercharm, as they scattered themselves over the ledges on the bright shawlsspread upon the level spaces. On either hand craggy bluffs hemmedthe cove in, but below the ledge it had a pebbly beach strewn withdrift-wood, and the Bay of Fundy gloomed before it with small fishingcraft tipping and tilting on the swell in the foreground, and dim sailmelting into the dun fog bank at the horizon's edge.

  The elder ladies of the party stood up, or stretched themselves on theshawls, as they found this or that posture more restful after their longdrive; one, who was skilled in making coffee, had taken possession ofthe pot, and was demanding fire and water for it. The men scatteredthemselves over the beach, and brought her drift enough to roast anox; two of them fetched water from the spring at the back of the ledge,whither they then carried the bottles of ale to cool in its thrillingpool. Each after his or her fashion symbolised a return to nature bysome act or word of self-abandon.

  "You ought to have brought heavier shoes," said Mrs. Pasmer, with aserious glance at her daughter's feet. "Well, never mind," she added."It doesn't matter if you do spoil them."

  "Really," cried Mrs Brinkley, casting her sandals from her, "I will notbe enslaved to rubbers in such a sylvan scene as this, at any rate."

  "Look at Mrs. Stamwell!" said Miss Cotton. "She's actually taken her hatoff."

  Mrs. Stamwell had not only gone to this extreme, but had tied a lightlyfluttering handkerchief round her hair. She said she should certainlynot put on that heavy thing again till she got in sight of civilisation.

  At these words Miss Cotton boldly drew off her gloves, and put them inher pocket.

  The young girls, slim in their blues flannel skirts and their broadwhite canvas belts, went and came over the rocks. There were somechildren in the party, who were allowed to scream uninterruptedly in thegames which they began to play as soon as they found their feet aftergetting out of the wagons.

  Some of the gentlemen drove a stake into the beach, and threw stones atit, to see which could knock off the pebble balanced on its top. Severalof the ladies joined them in the sport, and shrieked and laughed whenthey made wild shots with the missiles the men politely gathered forthem.

  Alice had remained with Mavering to help the hostess of the picniclay the tables, but her mother had followed those who went down tothe beach. At first Mrs. Pasmer looked on at the practice of thestone-throwers with disapproval; but suddenly she let herself go inthis, as she did in other matters that her judgment condemned, and beganto throw stones herself; she became excited, and made the wildest shotsof any, accepting missiles right and left, and making herself dangerousto eve
rybody within a wide circle. A gentleman who had fallen a victimto her skill said, "Just wait, Mrs. Pasmer, till I get in front of thestake."

  The men became seriously interested, and worked themselves red and hot;the ladies soon gave it up, and sat down on the sand and began to talk.They all owned themselves hungry, and from time to time they lookedup anxiously at the preparations for lunch on the ledge, where whitenapkins were spread, with bottles at the four corners to keep them fromblowing away. This use of the bottles was considered very amusing; theladies tried to make jokes about it, and the desire to be funny spreadto certain of the men who had quietly left off throwing at the stakebecause they had wrenched their shoulders; they succeeded in beingmerry. They said they thought that coffee took a long time to boil.

  A lull of expectation fell upon all; even Mavering sat down on the rocksnear the fire, and was at rest a few minutes, by order of Miss Anderson,who said that the sight of his activity tired her to death.

  "I wonder why always boiled ham at a picnic!" said the lady who took afinal plate of it from a basket. "Under the ordinary conditions, few ofus can be persuaded to touch it."

  "It seems to be dear to nature, and to nature's children," said Mrs.Brinkley. "Perhaps because their digestions are strong."

  "Don't you wish that something could be substituted for it?" asked Miss.Cotton.

  "There have been efforts to replace it with chicken and tongue insandwiches;" said Mrs. Brinkley; "but I think they've only measurablysucceeded--about as temperance drinks have in place of the real strongwaters."

  "On the boat coming up," said Mavering, "we had a troupe of genuinedarky minstrels. One of them sang a song about ham that rather took me--

  "'Ham, good old ham! Ham is de best ob meat; It's always good and sweet;You can bake it, you can boil it, You can fry it, you can broil it--Ham,good old ham!'"

  "Oh, how good!" sighed Mrs. Brinkley. "How sincere! How native! Go on,Mr. Mavering, for ever."

  "I haven't the materials," said Mavering, with his laugh. "The rest wasda capo. But there was another song, about a coloured lady--"

  "'Six foot high and eight foot round, Holler ob her foot made a hole inde ground.'"

  "Ah, that's an old friend," said Mrs. Brinkley. "I remember hearingof that coloured lady when I was a girl. But it's a fine flight of theimagination. What else did they sing?"

  "I can't remember. But there was something they danced--to show how arheumatic old coloured uncle dances."

  He jumped nimbly up, and sketched the stiff and limping figure he hadseen. It was over in a flash. He dropped down again, laughing.

  "Oh, how wonderfully good!" cried Mrs. Brinkley, with frank joy. "Do itagain."

  "Encore! Oh, encore!" came from the people on the beach.

  Mavering jumped to his feet, and burlesqued the profuse bows of an actorwho refuses to repeat; he was about to drop down again amidst theirwails of protest.

  "No, don't sit down, Mr. Mavering," said the lady who had introduced thesubject of ham. "Get some of the young ladies, and go and gather someblueberries for the dessert. There are all the necessaries of life here,but none of the luxuries."

  "I'm at the service of the young ladies as an escort," said Maveringgallantly, with an infusion of joke. "Will you come and pick blueberriesunder my watchful eyes, Miss Pasmer?"

  "They've gone to pick blueberries," called the lady through her tubedhand to the people on the beach, and the younger among them scrambled upthe rocks for cups and bowls to follow them.

  Mrs. Pasmer had an impulse to call her daughter back, and to makesome excuse to keep her from going. She was in an access of decorum,naturally following upon her late outbreak, and it seemed a verypronounced thing for Alice to be going off into the woods with the youngman; but it would have been a pronounced thing to prevent her, and soMrs. Pasmer submitted.

  "Isn't it delightful," asked Mrs. Brinkley, following them with hereyes, "to see the charm that gay young fellow has for that serious girl?She looked at him while he was dancing as if she couldn't take her eyesoff him, and she followed him as if he drew her by an invisible spell.Not that spells are ever visible," she added, saving herself. "Thoughthis one seems to be," she added further, again saving herself.

  "Do you really think so?" pleaded Miss Cotton.

  "Well, I say so, whatever I think. And I'm not going to be caught upon the tenter-hooks of conscience as to all my meanings, Miss Cotton. Idon't know them all. But I'm not one of the Aliceolaters, you know."

  "No; of course not. But shouldn't you--Don't you think it would be agreat pity--She's so superior, so very uncommon in every way, that ithardly seems--Ah, I should so like to see some one really fine--not acoarse fibre in him, don't you know. Not that Mr. Mavering's coarse. Butbeside her he does seem so light!"

  "Perhaps that's the reason she likes him."

  "No, no! I can't believe that. She must see more in him than we can."

  "I dare say she thinks she does. At any rate, it's a perfectly evidentcase on both sides; and the frank way he's followed her up here, anddevoted himself to her, as if--well, not as if she were the only girl inthe world, but incomparably the best--is certainly not common."

  "No," sighed Miss Cotton, glad to admit it; "that's beautiful."