ON a Sunday afternoon, early in February, Thorpe journeyed with his
niece and nephew from Bern to Montreux.
The young people, with maps and a guide-book open, sat close together at
the left side of the compartment. The girl from time to time rubbed the
steam from the window with a napkin out of the lunch-basket. They both
stared a good deal through this window, with frequent exclamations of
petulance.
“Isn't it too provoking!” cried the girl, turning to her uncle at last.
“This is where we are now--according to Baedeker: 'As the train proceeds
we enjoy a view of the Simmen-Thal and Freiburg mountains to the left,
the Moleson being conspicuous.' And look at it! For all one can see, we
might as well be at Redhill.”
“It is pretty hard luck,” Thorpe assented, passively glancing past her
at the pale, neutral-tinted wall of mist which obscured the view. “But
hang it all--it must clear up some time. Just you have patience, and
you'll see some Alps yet.”
“Where we're going,” the young man interposed, “the head-porter told me
it was always cloudier than anywhere else.”
“I don't think that can be so,” Thorpe reasoned, languidly, from his
corner. “It's a great winter resort, I'm told, and it rather stands to
reason, doesn't it? that people wouldn't flock there if it was so bad as
all that.”
“The kind of people we've seen travelling in Switzerland,” said the
girl--“they would do anything.”
Thorpe smiled, with tolerant good humour. “Well, you can comfort
yourself with the notion that you'll be coming again. The mountains'll
stay here, all right,” he assured her. The young people smiled back
at him, and with this he rearranged his feet in a new posture on the
opposite seat, lighted another cigar, and pillowed his head once more
against the hard, red-plush cushion. Personally, he did not in the least
resent the failure of the scenery.
For something more than three months, this purposeless pleasure-tour had
been dragging him about from point to point, sleeping in strange beds,
eating extraordinarily strange food, transacting the affairs of a
sight-seer among people who spoke strange languages, until he was
surfeited with the unusual. It had all been extremely interesting, of
course, and deeply improving--but he was getting tired of talking to
nobody but waiters, and still more so of having nothing to do which he
could not as well leave undone if he chose. After a few days more
of Switzerland--for they had already gazed with blank faces at this
universal curtain of mist from such different points of view as Lucerne,
Interlaken, and Thun--it was clear to him that they would, as he
phrased it, to himself, make a break for home. Unless, indeed, something
happened at Montreux. Ah, would anything happen at Montreux? For four
days his mind had been automatically reverting to that question; it
lurked continually in the background of his thoughts, now, as he smoked
and idly ruminated, on his way southward through the fog.
All the rest of the prolonged trip had been without any specific motive,
so far as he was concerned. The youngsters had planned all its routes
and halts and details of time and connections, and he had gone along,
with cheerful placidity, to look at the things they bade him observe,
and to pay the bills. Perhaps in all things their tastes had not been
his tastes. He would have liked more of Paris, he fancied, and less of
the small Dutch and North German towns which they seemed to fancy
so much. Still, the beer was good--and really their happiness, as a
spectacle, had given him more satisfaction than a thousand miles of
boulevards could have done.
He liked this niece and nephew of his more than he could ever have
imagined himself liking any young people. They had been shy with him at
the outset--and for the first week his experiment had been darkened by
the belief that, between themselves, they did not deem him quite good
enough. He had been wise enough, then, to have it out with the girl--she
was the one to whom he felt it easiest to talk frankly--and had
discovered, to his immense relief, that they conceived him to be
regarding them as encumbrances. At breakfast next morning, with tactful
geniality, he set everything right, and thereafter they were all
extremely happy together.
So far as he could judge, they were very superior young people, both
intellectually and spiritually. The girl spoke French, and her brother
German, with what seemed to him remarkable proficiency. Their young
minds were the repositories of an astounding amount of information:
they knew who Charles the Bold was; they pointed out to their uncle the
distinction between Gothic and Romanesque arches; they explained what
was the matter with the Anabaptists; they told him that the story of
the Bishop and the rats at Bingen was a baseless myth, and that probably
there had never been any such man as William Tell. Nor did they get all
this out of the guide-books which they pored over with such zest. It was
impossible not to see that they were familiar with large numbers of the
subjects that these books discussed, and that the itinerary which
they marked out had reference to desires and interests that they had
cultivated for themselves.
Julia, upon even first sight, made a much pleasanter impression than her
mother's hesitating description had prepared him for. As he came to know
her well, he ceased to remember that there was a question in any mind
as to her being a pretty girl. There was less colour in her face than he
could have wished. Her smooth, pallid skin, almost waxen in texture, had
a suggestion of delicate health which sometimes troubled him a little,
but which appealed to the tenderness in his nature all the time. The
face was unduly thin, perhaps, but this, and the wistful glance of the
large grey eyes in repose, made up an effect that Thorpe found touched
him a good deal. Even when she was in visibly high spirits, the look in
these eyes seemed to him to be laying claim to his protection. She
could be merry upon occasion, in a gentle and tranquil way, and as her
self-confidence expanded under the shelter of their growing intimacy,
she disclosed to her uncle plenty of initiative and individuality--but
what he felt in her most was a peculiarly sweet and girlish
trustfulness, which made him like himself more than he had ever
done before. He could feel that he was at his very best--a hitherto
unsuspected best--when Julia was about. He wanted to buy for her
everything in the windows upon which she bestowed the most casual
approving glance. It was a delight merely to look at her, and to
meditate upon the felicity of being able to do things for so charming a
girl.
Alfred made a less direct demand upon his uncle's admiration, but he
was a very good fellow all round. He was big and fair and muscular,
and nothing about him but his spectacles seemed in Thorpe's mind to be
related to his choice of art as a profession. That so robust and hearty
a young fellow should wish to put paint on a canvas with small brushes,
was to the uncle an unaccountable thing. It was almost as if he had
wanted to knit, or do embroidery. Of the idleness and impatience of
discipline which his mother had seemed to allege against him, Thorpe
failed to detect any signs. The young man was never very late in the
morning, and, beside his tireless devotion to the task of hunting up old
pictures in out-of-the-way places, did most of the steward's work of
the party with intelligence and precision. He studied the time-tables,
audited the hotel-bills, looked after the luggage, got up the
street-maps of towns and the like, to such good purpose that they never
lost a train, or a bag, or themselves. Truly, an excellent young man.
Thorpe noted with especial satisfaction his fine, kindly big-brother
attitude toward his sister Julia--and it was impossible for him to
avoid the conviction that Louisa was a simpleton not to appreciate such
children. They did not often allude to their mother; when they did, it
was in language the terms of which seemed more affectionate than the
tone--and Thorpe said often to himself that he did not blame them. It
was not so much that they had outgrown their mother's point of view.
They had never occupied it.
The journey, so far as Thorpe comprehended its character, had been
shaped with about equal regard for Julia's interest in the romance of
history, and Alfred's more technical and practical interest in art.
Each had sufficient sympathy with the tastes of the other, however, to
prevent any tendency to separation. They took their uncle one day to see
where William the Silent was assassinated, and the next to observe how
Rembrandt's theory of guild portrait-painting differed from Van der
Helst's, with a common enthusiasm. He scrutinized with patient loyalty
everything that they indicated to him, and not infrequently they
appeared to like very much the comments he offered. These were chiefly
of a sprightly nature, and when Julia laughed over them he felt that she
was very near to him indeed.
Thus they saw Paris together--where Thorpe did relinquish some of the
multiplied glories of the Louvre to sit in front of a cafe by the
Opera House and see the funny people go past--and thence, by Bruges and
Antwerp, to Holland, where nobody could have imagined there were as many
pictures as Thorpe saw with his own weary eyes. There were wonderful old
buildings at Lubeck for Julia's eyes to glisten over, and pictures at
Berlin, Dresden, and Dusseldorf for Alfred.
The assumption existed that the excursion into the Thuringenwald to see
the memorials of Luther was especially for the uncle's benefit, and he
tried solicitously to say or look nothing which might invalidate it.
There were other places in Germany, from Mainz to Munich, which he
remembered best by their different beers. They spent Christmas at
Vienna, where Julia had heard that its observance was peculiarly
insisted upon, and then they saw the Tyrol in its heaviest vesture of
winter snows, and beautiful old Basle, where Alfred was crazier about
Holbein than he had been at Munich over Brouwer. Thorpe looked very
carefully at the paintings of both men, and felt strengthened in his
hopes that when Alfred got a little older he would see that this picture
business was not the thing for a young gentleman with prospects to go
into.
It was at Basle that Thorpe received a letter from London which directly
altered the plans of the party. He had had several other letters
from London which had produced no such effect. Through Semple, he
had followed in outline the unobtrusive campaign to secure a Special
Settlement, and had learned that the Stock Exchange Committee,
apparently without opposition, had granted one for the first week in
February.
Even this news, tremendously important as it was, did not prompt Thorpe
to interfere with the children's projects. There was no longer any point
in remaining away from London; there were, indeed, numerous reasons
for a prompt return. But he was loth to deprive the youngsters of that
descent into smiling, sunlit Italy upon which they had so fondly dwelt
in fancy, and after all Semple could do all that was needful to be done
for another month.
So they went to Basle, and here it was that another kind of letter came.
It was in a strange hand, at once cramped and fluttering, which puzzled
the recipient a good deal; it was a long time before even the signature
unravelled itself. Then he forced himself to decipher it, sentence by
sentence, with a fierce avidity. It was from General Kervick.
The next morning Thorpe astonished his young companions by suggesting
an alteration in their route. In a roundabout and tentative fashion--in
which more suspicious observers must have detected something
shamefaced--he mentioned that he had always heard a great deal about
Montreux as a winter-resort. The fact that he called it Montroox raised
in Julia's mind a fleeting wonder from whom it could be that he had
heard so much about it, but it occurred to neither her nor her brother
to question his entire good faith. Their uncle had displayed, hitherto,
a most comforting freedom from discrimination among European towns; he
had, indeed, assured them many times that they were all one to him. That
he should suddenly turn up now with a favourite winter-resort of his
own selection surprised them considerably, but, upon reflection, it also
pleased them. He had humoured all their wishes with such unfailing
and bountiful kindness, that it was a delight to learn that there was
something he wanted to do. They could not finish their breakfast till
the guide-book had been brought to the table.
“Oh! How splendid!” Julia had cried then. “The Castle of Chillon is
there!”
“Why of course!” said Thorpe, complacently.
They laughed gayly at him for pretending that he had known this, and he
as good-humouredly accepted their banter. He drew a serious long breath
of relief, however, when their backs were turned. It had gone off much
better than he had feared.
Now, on this Sunday afternoon, as the train made its sure-footed way
across the mountains, the thought that he was actually to alight at
Montreux at once fascinated and depressed him. He was annoyed with
himself for suffering it to get such a hold upon his mind. What was
there in it, anyway? There was a big hotel there, and he and his
youngsters were to stop at it, and if he accidentally encountered a
certain lady who was also stopping there--and of course the meeting
would bear upon its face the stamp of pure chance--what of it?
And if he did meet her, thus fortuitously--what would happen then? No
doubt a lady of her social position met abroad great numbers of people
that she had met at home. It would not in any way surprise her--this
chance encounter of which he thought so much. Were there sufficient
grounds for imagining that it would even interest her? He forced his
mind up to this question, as it were, many times, and invariably it
shied and evaded the leap.
There had been times, at Hadlow House, when Lady Cressage had seemed
supremely indifferent to the fact of his existence, and there had
been other times when it had appeared manifest that he pleased her--or
better, perhaps, that she was willing to take note of how much she
pleased him. It must have been apparent to her--this fact that
she produced such an impression upon him. He reasoned this out
satisfactorily to himself. These beautiful women, trained from
childhood for the conquest of a rich husband, must have cultivated an
extraordinary delicacy of consciousness, in such matters. They must have
developed for themselves what might be called a sixth sense--a power of
feeling in the air what the men about were thinking of them. More than
once he had caught a glimmer of what he felt to be the operation of this
sense, in the company of Lady Cressage. He could not say that it had
been discernible in her glance, or her voice, or her manner, precisely,
but he was sure that he had seen it, somehow.
But even assuming all this--admitting that in October, on a wet Sunday,
in the tedium of a small country-house party, she had shown some
momentary satisfaction in the idea that he was profoundly impressed by
her--did it at all follow that in February, amid the distractions of a
fashionable winter-resort, and probably surrounded by hosts of friends,
she would pay any attention to him whatever? The abject fear that she
might not even remember him--might not know him from Adam when he stood
before her--skulked about in the labyrinths of his mind, but he drove it
back whenever it showed itself. That would be too ignominious.
The young people at the other side of the compartment, forever wiping
the window with the napkin, and straining their eyes to see the
invisible, diverted his unsettled attention. A new perception of how
much he liked them and enjoyed having them with him, took hold of his
thoughts. It had not occurred to him before, with any definiteness, that
he would be insupportably lonely when the time came to part with them.
Now, when he dwelt upon it, it made him feel sad and old.
He said to himself at once, with decision, that there need be no parting
at all. He would take a house without delay, and they should live with
him. He could not doubt that this would be agreeable to them; it would
solve every problem for him.
His fancy sketched out the natural and legitimate extensions of this
project. There would be, first of all, a house in town--a furnished
house of a modest sort, having no pretension save to provide a cheerful
temporary shelter for three people who liked one another. Here the
new household would take shape, and get its right note of character.
Apparently Louisa would not be urged to form part of this household. He
said to himself with frankness that he didn't want her, and there had
been nothing to indicate that her children would pine for her. She
showed good sense when she said that her place was in the shop, and
in her ancestral home over the shop. No doubt there would be a certain
awkwardness, visible to others if not to themselves, about her living in
one part of London and her children in another. But here also her good
sense would come on;--and, besides, this furnished house in town would
be a mere brief overture to the real thing--the noble country mansion
he was going to have, with gardens and horses and hounds and artificial
lakes and deer parks and everything. Quite within the year he would be
able to realize this consummation of his dreams.
How these nice young people would revel in such a place--and how they
would worship him for having given it to them for a home! His heart
warmed within him as he thought of this. He smiled affectionately at the
picture Julia made, polishing the glass with vehement circular movements
of her slight arm, and then grimacing in comic vexation at the deadly
absence of landscape outside. Was there ever a sweeter or more lovable
girl in this world? Would there have to be some older woman to manage
the house, at the beginning? he wondered. He should like it immensely if
that could be avoided. Julia looked fragile and inexperienced--but she
would be twenty-one next month. Surely that was a mature enough age for
the slight responsibility of presiding over servants who should be the
best that money could buy. Many girls were married, and given households
of their own to manage, when they were even younger.
This reflection raised an obstacle against the smooth-flowing current
of his thoughts. Supposing that Julia got the notion of marrying--how
miserable that would make everything. Very likely she would never do any
such thing; he had observed in her no shadow of a sign that a thought of
matrimony had ever crossed her brain. Yet that was a subject upon which,
of course, she could not be asked to give pledges, even to herself.
Thorpe tried to take a liberal view of this matter. He argued to himself
that there would be no objection at all to incorporating Julia's husband
into the household, assuming that she went to the length of taking one,
and that he was a good fellow. On this latter point, it was only the
barest justice to Julia's tastes and judgment to take it for granted
that he would be a good fellow. Yet the uncle felt uneasily that
this would alter things for the worse. The family party, with that
hypothetical young man in it, could never be quite so innocently and
completely happy as--for instance--the family party in this compartment
had been during these wonderful three months.
Mechanically he rubbed the window beside him, and turned to look out
with a certain fixedness--as if he might chance to catch a glimpse of
the bridegroom with whom Julia would have it in her power to disturb
the serenity of their prospective home. A steep white cliff, receding
sullenly against the dim grey skyline; a farmhouse grotesquely low for
its size, crouching under big shelving galleries heaped with snow;
an opening in front, to the right, where vaguely there seemed to be a
valley into which they would descend--he saw these things. They remained
in his mind afterward as a part of something else that he saw, with
his mental vision, at the same moment--a strikingly real and vivid
presentment of Lady Cressage, attired as he had seen her in the saddle,
her light hair blown about a little under her hat, a spot of colour
in the exquisite cheek, the cold, impersonal dignity of a queen in the
beautiful profile.
The picture was so actual for the instant that he uttered an involuntary
exclamation--and then looked hastily round to see whether his companions
had heard it. Seemingly they had not; he lolled again upon the
comfortless cushion, and strove to conjure up once more the apparition.
Nothing satisfactory came of the effort. Upon consideration, he grew
uncertain as to whether he had seen anything at all. At the most it was
a kind of half-dream which had visited him. He yawned at the thought,
and lighted a fresh cigar. All at once, his mind had become too indolent
to do any more thinking. A shapeless impression that there would be a
good many things to think over later on flitted into his brain and out
again.
“Well, how are the mountains using you, now?” he called out to his
niece.
“Oh, I could shake them!” she declared. “Listen to this: 'A view of
singular beauty, embracing the greater part of the Lake of Geneva, and
the surrounding mountains, is suddenly disclosed.' That's where we are
now--or were a minute ago. You can see that there is some sort of valley
in front of us--but that is all. If I could only see one mountain with
snow on it----”
“Why, it's all mountains and all snow, when you come to that,” Thorpe
insisted, with jocose perversity. “You're on mountains yourself, all the
time.”
“You know what I mean,” she retorted. “I want to see something like the
coloured pictures in the hotels.”
“Oh, probably it will be bright sunlight tomorrow,” he said, for perhaps
the twentieth time that day.
“There--that looks like water!” said Alfred. “See? just beyond the
village. Yes, it is water. There's your Lake of Geneva, at all events.”
“But it isn't the right colour,” protested Julia, peering through the
glass. “It's precisely like everything else: it's of no colour at all.
And they always paint it such a lovely blue! Really, uncle, the Swiss
Government ought to return you your money.”
“You wait till you see it tomorrow--or next day,” said the uncle,
vaguely. He closed his eyes, and welcomed a drowsy mood. As he went off
to sleep, the jolting racket of the train mellowed itself into a murmur
of “tomorrow or next day, tomorrow or next day,” in his ears.