IT did not happen until three days later that Thorpe's opportunity to
speak alone with Lady Cressage came.
In this brief period, the two parties seemed to have become fused in a
remarkable intimacy. This was clearly due to the presence of the young
people, and Thorpe congratulated himself many times each day upon the
striking prescience he had shown in bringing them.
Both the ladies unaffectedly liked Julia; so much so that they seemed
unwilling to make any plans which did not include her. Then it was only
a matter of course that where she went her brother should go--and a
further logical step quite naturally brought in their willing uncle. If
he had planned everything, and now was ordering everything, it could not
have gone more to his liking.
Certain side speculations lent a savour to the satisfaction with which
he viewed this state of affairs. He found many little signs to confirm
the suspicion that the two ladies had been the readier to make much of
Julia because they were not overkeen about each other's society. The
bright, sweet-natured girl had come as a welcome diversion to a couple
who in seclusion did battle with tendencies to yawn. He was not quite
convinced, for that matter, that the American lady always went to that
trouble. She seemed to his observation a wilful sort of person, who
would not be restrained by small ordinary considerations from doing the
things she wanted to do. Her relations with her companion afforded him
food for much thought. Without any overt demonstrations, she produced
the effect of ordering Lady Cressage about. This, so far as it went,
tended to prejudice him against her. On the other hand, however, she was
so good to Julia, in a peculiarly frank and buoyant way which fascinated
the girl, that he could not but like her. And she was very good to
Alfred too.
There was, indeed, he perceived, a great deal of individuality about the
friendship which had sprung up between Miss Madden and his nephew. She
was years his senior--he settled it with himself that the American could
not be less than seven-and-twenty,--yet Alfred stole covert glances of
admiration at her, and seemed to think of nothing but opportunities for
being in her company as if--as if--Thorpe hardly liked to complete the
comparison in his own thoughts. Alfred, of course, said it was all on
account of her wonderful hair; he rather went out of his way to
dilate upon the enthusiasm her “colour scheme”--whatever that might
mean--excited in him as an artist. The uncle had moments of profound
skepticism about this--moments when he uneasily wondered whether it was
not going to be his duty to speak to the young man. For the most part,
however, he extracted reassurance from Miss Madden's demeanour toward
the lad. She knew, it seemed, a vast deal about pictures; at least she
was able to talk a vast deal about them, and she did it in such a calmly
dogmatic fashion, laying down the law always, that she put Alfred in the
position of listening as a pupil might listen to a master. The humility
with which his nephew accepted this position annoyed Thorpe upon
occasion, but he reasoned that it was a fault on the right side. Very
likely it would help to keep the fact of the lady's seniority more
clearly before the youngster's mind, and that would be so much gained.
And these apprehensions, after all, were scarcely to be counted in the
balance against the sense of achieved happiness with which these halcyon
days kept Thorpe filled. The initiatory dinner had gone off perfectly.
He could have wished, indeed, that Julia had a smarter frock, and more
rings, when he saw the imposing costumes and jewelled throats and hands
of his guests--but she was a young girl, by comparison, he reflected,
and there could be no doubt that they found her charming. As for Alfred,
he was notably fine-looking in his evening-clothes--infinitely more like
the son of a nobleman, the gratified uncle kept saying to himself,
than that big dullard, the Honourable Balder. It filled him with a new
pleasure to remember that Alfred had visiting cards presenting his name
as D'Aubigny, which everybody of education knew was what the degenerate
Dabney really stood for. The lad and his sister had united upon this
excellent change long ago at Cheltenham, and oddly enough they had
confessed it to their uncle, at the beginning of the trip, with a show
of trepidation, as if they feared his anger. With radiant gayety he
had relieved their minds by showing them his card, with “Mr. Stormont
Thorpe” alone upon it. At the dinner table, in the proudest moment
of his life, he had made himself prouder still by thinking how
distinguished an appearance his and Alfred's cards would make together
in the apartment below next day.
But next day, the relations between the two parties had already become
too informal for cards. Julia went down to see them; they came up to see
Julia. Then they all went for a long walk, with luncheon at Vevey, and
before evening Alfred was talking confidently of painting Miss Madden.
Next day they went by train to St. Maurice, and, returning after dark,
dined without ceremony together. This third day--the weather still
remaining bright--they had ascended by the funicular road to Glion, and
walked on among the swarming luegers, up to Caux. Here, after luncheon,
they had wandered about for a time, regarding the panorama of lake and
mountains. Now, as the homeward descent began, chance led the two young
people and Miss Madden on ahead.
Thorpe found himself walking beside Lady Cressage. He had upon his arm
her outer wrap, which she said she would put on presently. To look at
the view he must glance past her face: the profile, under the graceful
fur cap, was so enriched by glowing colour that it was, to his thought,
as if she were blushing.
“How little I thought, a few months ago,” he said, “that we should be
mountaineering together!”
“Oh, no one knows a day ahead,” she responded, vaguely. “I had probably
less notion of coming to Switzerland then than you had.”
“Then you don't come regularly?”
“I have never seen either Germany or Switzerland before. I have scarcely
been out of England before.”
“Why now”--he paused, to think briefly upon his words--“I took it for
granted you were showing Miss Madden around.”
“It 's quite the other way about,” she answered, with a cold little
laugh. “It is she who is showing me around. It is her tour. I am the
chaperone.” Thorpe dwelt upon the word in his mind. He understood what
it meant only in a way, but he was luminously clear as to the bitterness
of the tone in which it had been uttered.
“No--it didn't seem as if it were altogether--what I might call--YOUR
tour,” he ventured. They had seen much of each other these past few
days, but it was still hard for him to make sure whether their freedom
of intercourse had been enlarged.
The slight shrug of the shoulders with which, in silence, she commented
upon his remark, embarrassed him. For a moment he said nothing. He went
on then with a renewed consciousness of risk.
“You mustn't be annoyed with me,” he urged. “I've been travelling with
that dear little niece of mine and her brother, so long, that I've
got into a habit of watching to notice if the faces I see round me are
happy. And when they're not, then I have a kind of fatherly notion of
interfering, and seeing what's wrong.”
She smiled faintly at this, but when he added, upon doubtful
inspiration--“By the way, speaking of fathers, I didn't know at Hadlow
that you were the daughter of one of my Directors”--this smile froze
upon the instant.
“The Dent du Midi is more impressive from the hotel, don't you think?”
she remarked, “than it is from here.”
Upon consideration, he resolved to go forward. “I have taken a great
interest in General Kervick,” he said, almost defiantly. “I am seeing to
it that he has a comfortable income--an income suitable to a gentleman
of his position--for the rest of his life.”
“He will be very glad of it,” she remarked.
“But I hoped that you would be glad of it too,” he told her, bluntly. A
curious sense of reliance upon his superiority in years had come to him.
If he could make his air elderly and paternal enough, it seemed likely
that she would defer to it. “I'm talking to you as I would to my niece,
you know,” he added, plausibly.
She turned her head to make a fleeting survey of his face, as if the
point of view took her by surprise. “I don't understand,” she said. “You
are providing an income for my father, because you wish to speak to me
like an uncle. Is that it?”
He laughed, somewhat disconsolately. “No--that isn't it,” he said, and
laughed again. “I couldn't tell, you know, that you wouldn't want to
talk about your father.” “Why, there's no reason in the world for not
talking of him,” she made haste to declare. “And if he's got something
good in the City, I'm sure I'm as glad as anyone. He is the sort that
ought always to have a good deal of money. I mean, it will bring out his
more amiable qualities. He does not shine much in adversity--any more
than I do.”
Thorpe felt keenly that there were fine things to be said here--but he
had confidence in nothing that came to his tongue. “I've been a poor man
all my life--till now,” was his eventual remark.
“Please don't tell me that you have been very happy in your poverty,”
she adjured him, with the dim flicker of a returning smile. “Very likely
there are people who are so constituted, but they are not my kind. I
don't want to hear them tell about it. To me poverty is the horror--the
unmentionable horror!”
“There never was a day that I didn't feel THAT!” Thorpe put fervour into
his voice. “I was never reconciled to it for a minute. I never ceased
swearing to myself that I'd pull myself out of it. And that's what
makes me sort of soft-hearted now toward those--toward those who haven't
pulled themselves out of it.”
“Your niece says you are soft-hearted beyond example,” remarked Lady
Cressage.
“Who could help being, to such a sweet little girl as she is?” demanded
the uncle, fondly.
“She is very nice,” said the other. “If one may say such a thing, I
fancy these three months with her have had an appreciable effect upon
you. I'm sure I note a difference.”
“That's just what I've been saying to myself!” he told her. He was
visibly delighted with this corroboration. “I've been alone practically
all my life. I had no friends to speak of--I had no fit company--I
hadn't anything but the determination to climb out of the hole. Well,
I've done that--and I've got among the kind of people that I naturally
like. But then there came the question of whether they would like me. I
tell you frankly, that was what was worrying the heart out of me when I
first met you. I like to be confessing it to you now--but you frightened
me within an inch of my life. Well now, you see, I'm not scared of you
at all. And of course it's because Julia's been putting me through a
course of sprouts.”
The figure was lost upon Lady Cressage, but the spirit of the remarks
seemed not unpleasant to her. “I'm sure you're full of kindness,”
she said. “You must forget that I snapped at you--about papa.” “All I
remember about that is,” he began, his eye lighting up with the thought
that this time the opportunity should not pass unimproved, “that you
said he didn't shine much in adversity---any more than you did. Now on
that last point I disagree with you, straight. There wouldn't be any
place in which you wouldn't shine.”
“Is that the way one talks to one's niece?” she asked him, almost
listlessly. “Such flattery must surely be bad for the young.” Her words
were sprightly enough, but her face had clouded over. She had no heart
for the banter.
“Ah”--he half-groaned. “I only wish I knew what was the right way to
talk to you. The real thing is that I see you're unhappy--and that gets
on my nerve--and I should like to ask you if there wasn't something
I could do--and ask it in such a way that you'd have to admit there
was--and I don't know enough to do it.”
He had a wan smile for thanks. “But of course there is nothing,” she
replied, gently.
“Oh, there must be!” he insisted. He had no longer any clear notions as
to where his tongue might not lead him. “There must be! You said I might
talk to you as I would to Julia.”
“Did I?”
“Well, I'm going to, anyway,” he went on stoutly, ignoring the note of
definite dissent in her interruption. “You ARE unhappy! You spoke about
being a chaperone. Well now, to speak plainly, if it isn't entirely
pleasant for you with Miss Madden--why wouldn't you be a chaperone for
Julia? I must be going to London very soon--but she can stay here, or go
to Egypt, or wherever she likes--and of course you would do everything,
and have everything--whatever you liked, too.”
“The conversation is getting upon rather impossible grounds, I'm
afraid,” she said, and then bit her lips together. Halting, she frowned
a little in the effort of considering her further words, but there was
nothing severe in the glance which she lifted to him as she began
to speak. “Let us walk on. I must tell you that you misconceive the
situation entirely. Nobody could possibly be kinder or more considerate
than Miss Madden. Of course she is American--or rather Irish-American,
and I'm English, and our notions and ways are not always alike. But
that has nothing to do with it. And it is not so much that she has
many thousands a year, and I only a few hundreds. That in itself would
signify nothing--and if I must take help from somebody I would rather
take it from Celia Madden than anybody else I know--but this is the
point, Mr. Thorpe. I do not eat the bread of dependence gracefully. I
pull wry faces over it, and I don't try very much to disguise them. That
is my fault. Yes--oh yes, I know it is a fault--but I am as I am. And
if Miss Madden doesn't mind--why”--she concluded with a mirthless,
uncertain laugh--“why on earth should you?”
“Ah, why should I?” he echoed, reflectively. “I should like desperately
to tell you why. Sometime I will tell you.”
They walked on in silence for a brief space. Then she put out her hand
for her wrap, and as she paused, he spread it over her shoulders.
“I am amazed to think what we have been saying to each other,” she said,
buttoning the fur as they moved on again. “I am vexed with myself.”
“And more still with me,” he suggested.
“No-o--but I ought to be. You've made me talk the most shocking
rubbish.”
“There we disagree again, you know. Everything you've said's been
perfect. What you're thinking of now is that I'm not an old enough
friend to have been allowed to hear it. But if I'm not as old a friend
as some, I wish I could make you feel that I'm as solid a friend as
any--as solid and as staunch and as true. I wish I could hear you say
you believed that.”
“But you talk of 'friends,'” she said, in a tone not at all
responsive--“what is meant by 'friends'? We've chanced to meet
twice--and once we barely exchanged civilities, and this time we've been
hotel acquaintances--hardly more, is it?--and you and your young people
have been very polite to me--and I in a silly moment have talked to
you more about my affairs than I should--I suppose it was because you
mentioned my father. But 'friends' is rather a big word for that, isn't
it?”
Thorpe pouted for a dubious moment. “I can think of a bigger word
still,” he said, daringly. “It's been on the tip of my tongue more than
once.”
She quickened her pace. The air had grown perceptibly colder. The
distant mountains, visible ever and again through the bare branches,
were of a dark and cheerless blue, and sharply defined against the sky.
It was not yet the sunset hour, and there were no mists, but the light
of day seemed to be going out of the heavens. He hurried on beside her
in depressed silence.
Their companions were hidden from view in a convolution of the winding
road, but they were so near that their voices could be heard as they
talked. Frequently the sound of laughter came backward from them.
“They're jolly enough down there,” he commented at last, moodily.
“That's a good reason for our joining them, isn't it?” Her tone was at
once casual and pointed.
“But I don't want to join them!” he protested. “Why don't you stay with
me--and talk?” “But you bully me so,” she offered in explanation.
The phrase caught his attention. Could it be that it expressed her
real feeling? She had said, he recalled, that he had made her talk. Her
complaint was like an admission that he could overpower her will. If
that were true--then he had resources of masterfulness still in reserve
sufficient to win any victory.
“No--not bully you,” he said slowly, as if objecting to the word rather
than the idea. “That wouldn't be possible to me. But you don't know me
well enough to understand me. I am the kind of man who gets the things
he wants. Let me tell you something: When I was at Hadlow, I had never
shot a pheasant in my life. I used to do tolerably well with a rifle,
but I hardly knew anything about a shot-gun, and I don't suppose I'd
ever killed more than two or three birds on the wing--and that was ages
ago. But I took the notion that I would shoot better than anybody else
there. I made up my mind to it--and I simply did it, that's all. I don't
know if you remember--but I killed a good deal more than both the others
put together. I give you that as an example. I wanted you to think that
I was a crack shot--and so I made myself be a crack shot.”
“That is very interesting,” she murmured. They did not seem to be
walking quite so fast.
“Don't think I want to brag about myself,” he went on. “I don't fancy
myself--in that way. I'm not specially proud of doing things--it's the
things themselves that I care for. If some men had made a great fortune,
they would be conceited about it. Well, I'm not. What I'm keen about is
the way to use that fortune so that I will get the most out of it--the
most happiness, I mean. The thing to do is to make up your mind
carefully what it is that you want, and to put all your power and
resolution into getting it--and the rest is easy enough. I don't think
there's anything beyond a strong man's reach, if he only believes enough
in himself.”
“But aren't you confusing two things?” she queried. The subject
apparently interested her. “To win one's objects by sheer personal force
is one thing. To merely secure them because one's purse is longer than
other people's--that's quite another matter.”
He smiled grimly at her. “Well, I'll combine the two,” he said.
“Then I suppose you will be altogether irresistible,” she said, lightly.
“There will be no pheasants left for other people at all.”
“I don't mind being chaffed,” he told her, with gravity. “So long as
you're good-natured, you can make game of me all you like. But I'm in
earnest, all the same. I'm not going to play the fool with my money and
my power. I have great projects. Sometime I'll tell you about them. They
will all be put through--every one of them. And you wouldn't object to
talking them over with me--would you?”
“My opinion on 'projects' is of no earthly value--to myself or anyone
else.”
“But still you'd give me your advice if I asked it?” he persisted.
“Especially if it was a project in which you were concerned?”
After a moment's constrained silence she said to him, “You must have
no projects, Mr. Thorpe, in which I am concerned. This talk is all very
wide of the mark. You are not entitled to speak as if I were mixed up
with your affairs. There is nothing whatever to warrant it.”
“But how can you help being in my projects if I put you there, and keep
you there?” he asked her, with gleeful boldness. “And just ask yourself
whether you do really want to help it. Why should you? You've seen
enough of me to know that I can be a good friend. And I'm the kind of
friend who amounts to something--who can and will do things for those he
likes. What obligation are you under to turn away that kind of a friend,
when he offers himself to you? Put that question plainly to yourself.”
“But you are not in a position to nominate the questions that I am to
put to myself,” she said. The effort to import decision into her tone
and manner was apparent. “That is what I desire you to understand. We
must not talk any more about me. I am not the topic of conversation.”
“But first let me finish what I wanted to say,” he insisted. “My talk
won't break any bones. You'd be wrong not to listen to it--because
it's meant to help you--to be of use to you. This is the thing, Lady
Cressage: You're in a particularly hard and unpleasant position. Like my
friend Plowden”--he watched her face narrowly but in vain, in the dull
light, for any change at mention of the name--“like my friend Plowden
you have a position and title to keep up, and next to nothing to keep
it up on. But he can go down into the City and make money--or try to. He
can accept Directorships and tips about the market and so on, from men
who are disposed to be good to him, and who see how he can be of use to
them--and in that way he can do something for himself. But there is the
difference: you can't do these things, or you think you can't, which
is the same thing. You're all fenced in; you're surrounded by
notice-boards, telling you that you mustn't walk this way or look that
way; that you mustn't say this thing or do the other. Now your
friend down ahead there--Miss Madden--she doesn't take much stock
in notice-boards. In fact, she feeds the gulls, simply because she's
forbidden to do it. But you--you don't feed any gulls, and yet you're
annoyed with yourself that you don't. Isn't that the case? Haven't I
read you right?”
She seemed to have submitted to his choice of a topic. There was no
touch of expostulation in the voice with which she answered him. “I see
what you think you mean,” she said.
“Think!” he responded, with self-confident emphasis. “I'm not
'thinking.' I'm reading an open book. As I say, you're not
contented--you're not happy; you don't try to pretend that you are.
But all the same, though you hate it, you accept it. You think that you
really must obey your notice-boards. Now what I tell you you ought to do
is to take a different view. Why should you put up all this barbed
wire between yourself and your friends? It doesn't do anybody else any
good--and it does you harm. Why, for example, should Plowden be free to
take things from me, and you not?”
She glanced at him, with a cold half-smile in her eye. “Unfortunately I
was not asked to join your Board.”
He pressed his lips tightly together, and regarded her meditatively as
he turned these words over in his mind. “What I'm doing for Plowden,”
he said with slow vagueness meanwhile, “it isn't so much because he's on
the Board. He's of no special use to me there. But he was nice to me at
a time when that meant everything in the world to me--and I don't forget
things of that sort. Besides, I like him--and it pleases me to let him
in for a share of my good fortune. See? It's my way of enjoying myself.
Well now, I like you too, and why shouldn't I be allowed to let you in
also for a share of that good fortune? You think there's a difference,
but I tell you it's imaginary--pure moonshine. Why, the very people
whose opinion you're afraid of--what did they do themselves when the
South African craze was on? I'm told that the scum of the earth had
only to own some Chartered shares, and pretend to be 'in the know' about
them--and they could dine with as many duchesses as they liked. I knew
one or two of the men who were in that deal--I wouldn't have them in my
house--but it seems there wasn't any other house they couldn't go to in
London.”
“Oh yes, there were many houses,” she interposed. “It wasn't a nice
exhibition that society made of itself--one admits that,--but it was
only one set that quite lost their heads. There are all kinds of sets,
you know. And--I don't think I see your application, in any event. The
craze, as you call it, was all on a business basis. People ran after
those who could tell them which shares were going up, and they gambled
in those shares. That was all, wasn't it?”
Still looking intently at her, he dismissed her query with a little
shake of the head. “'On a business basis,'” he repeated, as if talking
to himself. “They like to have things 'on a business basis.'”
He halted, with a hand held out over her arm, and she paused as well,
in a reluctant, tentative way. “I don't understand you,” she remarked,
blankly.
“Let me put it in this way,” he began, knitting his brows, and
marshalling the thoughts and phrases with which his mind had been busy.
“This is the question. You were saying that you weren't asked to join my
Board. You explained in that way how I could do things for Plowden,
and couldn't do them for you. Oh, I know it was a joke--but it had its
meaning--at least to me. Now I want to ask you--if I decide to form
another Company, a very small and particular Company--if I should decide
to form it, I say--could I come to you and ask you to join THAT Board?
Of course I could ask--but what I mean is--well, I guess you know what I
mean.”
The metaphor had seemed to him a most ingenious and satisfactory vehicle
for his purpose, and it had broken down under him amid evidences of
confusion which he could not account for. All at once his sense of
physical ascendancy had melted away--disappeared. He looked at Lady
Cressage for an instant, and knew there was something shuffling and
nerveless in the way his glance then shifted to the dim mountain chain
beyond. His heart fluttered surprisingly inside his breast, during the
silence which ensued.
“Surely you must have said everything now that you wished to say,” she
observed at last. She had been studying intently the trodden snow at her
feet, and did not even now look up. The constraint of her manner, and a
certain pleading hesitation in her words, began at once to restore his
self-command. “Do not talk of it any further, I beg of you,” she went
on. “We--we have been lagging behind unconscionably. If you wish to
please me, let us hurry forward now. And please!--no more talk at all!”
“But just a word--you're not angry?”
She shook her head very slightly.
“And you do know that I'm your friend--your solid, twenty-four-carat
friend?”
After a moment's pause, she made answer, almost in a whisper--“Yes--be
my friend--if it amuses you,”--and led the way with precipitate steps
down the winding road.