The boat floated out from the creek into the placid waters of the Broad, and the full beauty of the scene opened on the view.
On the northward and westward, as the boat reached the middle of the lake, the shore lay clear and low in the sunshine, fringed darkly at certain points by rows of dwarf trees; and dotted here and there, in the opener spaces, with windmills and reed-thatched cottages, of puddled mud. Southward, the great sheet of water narrowed gradually to a little group of close-nestling islands which closed the prospect; while to the east a long, gently undulating line of reeds followed the windings of the Broad, and shut out all view of the watery wastes beyond. So clear and so light was the summer air that the one cloud in the eastern quarter of the heaven was the smoke cloud left by a passing steamer three miles distant and more on the invisible sea. When the voices of the pleasure party were still, not a sound rose, far or near, but the faint ripple at the bows, as the men, with slow, deliberate strokes of their long poles, pressed the boat forward softly over the shallow water. The world and the world's turmoil seemed left behind forever on the land; the silence was the silence of enchantment--the delicious interflow of the soft purity of the sky and the bright tranquillity of the lake.
Established in perfect comfort in the boat--the major and his daughter on one side, the curate and his mother on the other, and Allan and young Pedgift between the two--the water party floated smoothly toward the little nest of islands at the end of the Broad. Miss Milroy was in raptures; Allan was delighted; and the major for once forgot his clock. Every one felt pleasurably, in their different ways, the quiet and beauty of the scene. Mrs. Pentecost, in her way, felt it like a clairvoyant--with closed eyes.
"Look behind you, Mr. Armadale," whispered young Pedgift. "I think the parson's beginning to enjoy himself."
An unwonted briskness--portentous apparently of coming speech--did certainly at that moment enliven the curate's manner. He jerked his head from side to side like a bird; he cleared his throat, and clasped his hands, and looked with a gentle interest at the company. Getting into spirits seemed, in the case of this excellent person, to be alarmingly like getting into the pulpit.
"Even in this scene of tranquillity," said the Reverend Samuel, coming out softly with his first contribution to the society in the shape of a remark, "the Christian mind--led, so to speak, from one extreme to another--is forcibly recalled to the unstable nature of all earthly enjoyments. How if this calm should not last? How if the winds rose and the waters became agitated?"