The little party travelled, as it is in the nature of the British
tourist to travel, when he is fairly started, developing suddenly a
perfect passion for sight-seeing, and for long and wearisome journeys.
Mrs. Anderson, though she was old enough and experienced enough to have
known better, took the plunge with the truest national enthusiasm. Even
when they paused in Paris, which she knew as well as or better than
anything in her own country, she still felt herself a tourist, and went
conscientiously over again and saw the sights--for Kate, she said, but
also for herself. They rushed across France with the speed of an express
train, and made a dash at Switzerland, though it was so early in the
year. They had it almost all to themselves, the routes being scarcely
open, and the great rush of travellers not yet begun; and who, that does
not know it, can fancy how beautiful it is among the mountains in May!
Kate was carried entirely out of herself by what she saw. The Spring
green brightening and enhancing those rugged heights, and dazzling peaks
of snow; the sky of an ethereal blue, all dewy and radiant, and
surprised into early splendour, like the blue eyes of a child; the paths
sweet with flowers, the streams full with the melting snow, the sense of
awakening and resurrection all over the land. Kate had not dreamed of
anything so splendid and so beautiful. The weather was much finer than
is usual so early in the year, and of course the travellers took it not
for an exceptional season, as they ought, but gave the fact that they
were abroad credit for every shining day. Abroad! Kate had felt for
years (she said all her life) that in that word ‘abroad’ every delight
was included; and now she believed herself. The novelty and movement by
themselves would have done a great deal; and the wonderful beauty of
this virgin country, which looked as if no crowd of tourists had ever
profaned it, as if it had kept its stillness, its stateliness and
grandeur, and dazzling light and majestic glooms, all for their
enjoyment, elevated her into a paradise of inward delight. Even Maryanne
was moved, though chiefly by her mistress’s many and oft-repeated
efforts to rouse her. When Kate had exhausted everybody else, she rushed
upon her handmaid.
‘Oh! Maryanne, look! Did you ever see--did you ever dream of anything so
beautiful?’
‘No, miss,’ said Maryanne.
‘Look at that stream rushing down the ravine. It is the melted snow. And
look at all those peaks above. Pure snow, as dazzling as--as----’
‘They looks for all the world like the sugar on a bride-cake, miss,’
said Maryanne.
At which Kate laughed, but went on--
‘Those cottages are called châlets, up there among the clouds. Look how
green the grass is--like velvet. Oh! Maryanne, shouldn’t you like to
live there--to milk the cows in the evening, and have the mountains all
round you--nothing but snow-peaks, wherever you turned your eyes?’
Maryanne gave a shudder.
‘Why, miss,’ she said, ‘you’d catch your death of cold!’
‘Wait till Mees Katta see my _bella Firenze_,’ said old Francesca.
‘There is the snow quite near enough--quite near enough. You zee him on
the tops of ze hills.’
‘I never, never shall be able to live in a town. I hate towns,’ said
Kate.
‘Ah!’ cried the old woman, ‘my young lady will not always think so. This
is pleasant now; but there is no balls, no parties, no croquée on ze
mountains! Mees Katta shakes her head; but then the Winter will come,
and, oh! how beautiful is Firenze, with all the palaces, and ze people,
and processions that pass, and all that is gay! There will be the
Opera,’ said Francesca, counting on her fingers, ‘and the Cascine, and
the Carnival, and the Veglioni, and the grand Corso with the flowers.
Ah! I have seen many young English Mees, I know.’
‘I never could have supposed Francesca would be so stupid,’ cried Kate,
returning to the party on the quarter-deck--for this conversation took
place in a steamer on the Lake of Lucerne. ‘She does not care for the
mountains as much as Maryanne does, even. Maryanne thinks the snow is
like sugar on a bride-cake,’ she went on, with a laugh; ‘but Francesca
does nothing but rave about Florence, and balls, and operas. As if I
cared for such things--and as if we were going there!’
‘But Francesca is quite right, dear,’ said Mrs. Anderson, with
hesitation. ‘When the Summer is over, we shall want to settle down
again, and see our fellow-creatures; and really, as Francesca has
suggested it, we might do a great deal worse. Florence is a very nice
place.’
‘In Winter, auntie? Are not we going home?’
‘My dear, I know your uncle would wish you to see as much as possible
before returning home,’ said Mrs. Anderson, faltering, and with
considerable confusion. ‘I confess I had begun to think that--a few
months in Italy--as we are here----’
Kate was taken by surprise. She did not quite know whether she was
delighted or disappointed by the idea; but before she could reply, she
met the eye of her cousin, whose whole face had kindled into passion.
Ombra sprang to her feet, and drew Kate aside with a nervous haste that
startled her. She grasped her arm tight, and whispered in her ear, ‘We
are to be kept till you are of age--I see it all now--we are prisoners
till you are of age. Oh! Kate, will you bear it? You can resist, but I
can’t--they will listen to you.’
It is impossible to describe the shock which was given to Kate’s loyalty
by this speech. It was the first actual suggestion of rebellion which
had been made to her, and it jarred her every nerve. She had not been a
submissive child, but she had never plotted--never done anything in
secret. She said aloud, in painful wonder--
‘Why should we be prisoners?--and what has my coming of age to do with
it?’ turning round, and looking bewildered into her cousin’s face.
Ombra made no reply; she went back to her seat, and retired into herself
for the rest of the day. Things had gone smoothly since the journey
began up to this moment. She had almost ceased to brood, and had begun
to take some natural interest in what was going on about her. But now
all at once the gloom returned. She sat with her eyes fixed on the shore
of the lake, and with the old flush of feverish red, half wretchedness,
half anger, under her eyes. Kate, who had grown happy in the brightening
of the domestic atmosphere, was affected by this change in spite of
herself. She exchanged mournful looks with her aunt. The beautiful lake
and the sunny peaks were immediately clouded over; she was doubly
checked in the midst of her frank enjoyment.
‘You are wrong, Ombra,’ said Mrs. Anderson, after a long pause. ‘I don’t
know what you have said to Kate, but I am sure you have taken up a false
idea. There is no compulsion. We are to go only when we please, and to
stay only as long as we like.’
‘But we are not to return home this year?’
‘I did not say so; but I think, perhaps, on the whole, that to go a
little further, and see a little more, would be best both for you and
Kate.’
‘Exactly,’ said Ombra, with bitterness, nodding her head in a derisive
assent.
Kate looked on with wistful and startled eyes. It was almost the first
time that the idea of real dissension between these two had crossed her
mind; and still more this infinitely startling doubt whether all that
was said to her was true. At least there had been concealment; and was
it really, truly the good of Ombra and Kate, or some private arrangement
with Uncle Courtenay, that was in her aunt’s mind. This suggestion came
suddenly into her very heart, wounding her as with an arrow; and from
that day, though sometimes lessening and sometimes deepening, the cloud
upon Ombra’s face came back. But as she grew less amiable, she grew more
powerful. Henceforward the party became guided by her wayward fancies.
She took a sudden liking for one of the quietest secluded places--a
village on the little blue lake of Zug--and there they settled for some
time, without rhyme or reason. Green slopes, with grey stone-peaks
above, and glimpses of snow beyond, shut in this lake-valley. I agree
with Ombra that it is very sweet in its stillness, the lake so blue, the
air so clear, and the noble nut-bearing trees so umbrageous, shadowing
the pleasant châlets. In the centre was a little white-washed village
church among its graves, its altar all decked with stately May lilies,
the flowers of the Annunciation. The church had no beauty of
architecture, no fine pictures--not even great antiquity to recommend
it; but Ombra was fond of the sunshiny, still place. She would go there
when she was tired, and sit down on one of the rush-bottomed chairs, and
sometimes was to be seen kneeling furtively on the white altar steps.
Kate, who roamed up and down everywhere, and had soon all the facility
of a young mountaineer, would stop at the open church-door as she came
down from the hills, alpenstock in hand, sunburnt and agile as a young
Diana.
‘You are not going to turn a Roman Catholic, Ombra?’ she said. ‘I think
it would make my aunt very unhappy.’
‘I am not going to turn anything,’ said Ombra. ‘I shall never be
different from what I am--never any better. One tries and tries, and it
is no good.’
‘Then stop trying, and come up on the hills and shake it off,’ said
Kate.
‘Perhaps I might if I were like you; but I am not like you.’
‘Or let us go on, and see people and do things again--do all sorts of
things. I like this little lake,’ said Kate. ‘One has a home-feeling. I
almost think I should begin to poke about the cottages, and find fault
with the people, if we were to stay long. But that is not your
temptation, Ombra. Why do you like to stay?’
‘I stay because it is so still--because nobody comes here, nothing can
happen here; it must always be the same for ever and for ever and ever!’
cried Ombra. ‘The hills and the deep water, and the lilies in the
church--which are artificial, you know, and cannot fade.’
Kate did not understand this little bitter jibe at the end of her
cousin’s speech; but was overwhelmed with surprise when Ombra next
morning suggested that they should resume their journey. They were
losing their time where they were, she said; and as, if they were to go
to Italy for the Winter, it would be necessary to return by Switzerland
next year, she proposed to strike off from the mountains at this spot,
to go to Germany, to the strange old historical cities that were within
reach. ‘Kate should see Nuremberg,’ she said; and Kate, to her
amazement, found the whole matter settled, and the packing commenced
that day. Ombra managed the whole journey, and was a practical person,
handy and rational, until they came to that old-world place, where she
became _reveuse_ and melancholy once more.
‘Do you like this better than Switzerland?’ Kate asked, as they looked
down from their windows along the three-hundred-years-old street, where
it was so strange to see people walking about in ordinary dresses and
not in trunkhose and velvet mantles.
‘I don’t care for any place. I have seen so many, and one is so much
like another,’ said Ombra. ‘But look, Kate, there is one advantage.
Anything might happen here; any one might be coming along those streets
and you would never feel surprised. If I were to see my father walking
quietly this way, I should not think it at all strange.’
‘But, Ombra--he is dead!’ said Kate, shrinking a little, with natural
uneasiness.
‘Yes, he is dead, but that does not matter. Look down that hazy street
with all the gables. Any one might be coming--people whom we have
forgotten--even,’ she said, pressing Kate’s arm, ‘people who have
forgotten us.’
‘Oh! Ombra, how strangely you speak! People that care for you don’t
forget you,’ cried Kate.
‘That does not mend the matter,’ said Ombra, and withdrew hurriedly from
the window.
Poor Kate tried very hard to make something out of it, but could not;
and therefore she shrugged her shoulders and gave her head a little
shake, and went to her German, which she was working at fitfully, to
make the best of her opportunities. The German, though she thought
sometimes it would break her heart, was not so hard as Ombra; and even
the study of languages had to her something amusing in it.
One of the young waiters in the hotel kept a dictionary in the staircase
window, and studied it as he flew up and down stairs for a new word to
experiment with upon the young ladies; and another had, by means of the
same dictionary, set up a flirtation with Maryanne; so fun was still
possible, notwithstanding all; and whether it was by the mountain paths,
or in those hazy strange old streets, Kate walked with her head, as it
were, in the clouds, in a soft rapture of delight and pleasantness,
taking in all that was sweet and lovely and good, and letting the rest
drop off from her like a shower of rain. She even ceased to think of
Ombra’s odd ways--not out of want of consideration, but with the
facility which youth has for taking everything for granted, and
consenting to whatever is. It was a great pity, but it could not be
helped, and one must make the best of it all the same.
And thus the Summer passed on, full of wonders and delights. Mrs.
Anderson and her daughter, and even Francesca, were invaluable to the
ignorant girl. They knew how everything had to be done; they were
acquainted alike with picture-galleries and railway-tickets, and knew
even what to say about every work of art--an accomplishment deeply
amazing to Kate, who did not know what to say about anything, and who
had several times committed herself by praising vehemently some daub
which was beyond the reach of praise. When she made such a mistake as
this, her mortification and shame were great; but unfortunately her
pride made her hold by her opinion. They saw so many pictures, so many
churches, so much that was picturesque and beautiful, that her brain was
in a maze, and her intellect had become speechless.
They took their way across the mountains in Autumn, getting entangled in
the vast common tide of travellers to Italy; and, after all, Francesca’s
words came true, and it was a relief to Kate to get back into the
stream--it relieved the strain upon her mind. Instead of thinking of
more and lovelier pictures still, she was pleased to rest and see
nothing; and even--a confession which she was ashamed to make to
herself--Kate was as much delighted with the prospect of mundane
pleasures as she had been with the scenery. Society had acquired a new
charm. She had never been at anything more than ‘a little dance,’ or a
country concert, and balls and operas held out their arms to her. One of
the few diplomatic friends whom Mrs. Anderson had made in her consular
career was at Florence; and even Mr. Courtenay could not object to his
niece’s receiving the hospitalities of the Embassy. She was to ‘come
out’ at the Ambassador’s ball--not in her full-blown glory, as an
heiress and a great lady, but as Mrs. Anderson’s niece, a pretty, young,
undistinguished English girl. Kate knew nothing about this, nor cared.
She threw herself into the new joys as she had done into the old. A new
chapter, however it might begin, was always a pleasant thing in her
fresh and genial life.