When the train at night-fall brought them to their journey’s end at the
edge of one of the lakes, Lydia was glad that they were not, as usual,
to pass from one solitude to another. Their wanderings during the year
had indeed been like the flight of outlaws: through Sicily, Dalmatia,
Transylvania and Southern Italy they had persisted in their tacit
avoidance of their kind. Isolation, at first, had deepened the flavor of
their happiness, as night intensifies the scent of certain flowers; but
in the new phase on which they were entering, Lydia’s chief wish was
that they should be less abnormally exposed to the action of each
other’s thoughts.
She shrank, nevertheless, as the brightly-looming bulk of the
fashionable Anglo-American hotel on the water’s brink began to radiate
toward their advancing boat its vivid suggestion of social order,
visitors’ lists, Church services, and the bland inquisition of the
_table-d’hôte_. The mere fact that in a moment or two she must take her
place on the hotel register as Mrs. Gannett seemed to weaken the springs
of her resistance.
They had meant to stay for a night only, on their way to a lofty village
among the glaciers of Monte Rosa; but after the first plunge into
publicity, when they entered the dining-room, Lydia felt the relief
of being lost in a crowd, of ceasing for a moment to be the centre of
Gannett’s scrutiny; and in his face she caught the reflection of her
feeling. After dinner, when she went upstairs, he strolled into the
smoking-room, and an hour or two later, sitting in the darkness of her
window, she heard his voice below and saw him walking up and down the
terrace with a companion cigar at his side. When he came up he told her
he had been talking to the hotel chaplain--a very good sort of fellow.
“Queer little microcosms, these hotels! Most of these people live here
all summer and then migrate to Italy or the Riviera. The English are
the only people who can lead that kind of life with dignity--those
soft-voiced old ladies in Shetland shawls somehow carry the British
Empire under their caps. _Civis Romanus sum_. It’s a curious
study--there might be some good things to work up here.”
He stood before her with the vivid preoccupied stare of the novelist
on the trail of a “subject.” With a relief that was half painful she
noticed that, for the first time since they had been together, he was
hardly aware of her presence. “Do you think you could write here?”
“Here? I don’t know.” His stare dropped. “After being out of things so
long one’s first impressions are bound to be tremendously vivid, you
know. I see a dozen threads already that one might follow--”
He broke off with a touch of embarrassment.
“Then follow them. We’ll stay,” she said with sudden decision.
“Stay here?” He glanced at her in surprise, and then, walking to the
window, looked out upon the dusky slumber of the garden.
“Why not?” she said at length, in a tone of veiled irritation.
“The place is full of old cats in caps who gossip with the chaplain.
Shall you like--I mean, it would be different if--”
She flamed up.
“Do you suppose I care? It’s none of their business.”
“Of course not; but you won’t get them to think so.”
“They may think what they please.”
He looked at her doubtfully.
“It’s for you to decide.”
“We’ll stay,” she repeated.
Gannett, before they met, had made himself known as a successful writer
of short stories and of a novel which had achieved the distinction of
being widely discussed. The reviewers called him “promising,” and Lydia
now accused herself of having too long interfered with the fulfilment of
his promise. There was a special irony in the fact, since his passionate
assurances that only the stimulus of her companionship could bring out
his latent faculty had almost given the dignity of a “vocation” to
her course: there had been moments when she had felt unable to assume,
before posterity, the responsibility of thwarting his career. And, after
all, he had not written a line since they had been together: his first
desire to write had come from renewed contact with the world! Was it all
a mistake then? Must the most intelligent choice work more disastrously
than the blundering combinations of chance? Or was there a still more
humiliating answer to her perplexities? His sudden impulse of activity
so exactly coincided with her own wish to withdraw, for a time, from the
range of his observation, that she wondered if he too were not seeking
sanctuary from intolerable problems.
“You must begin to-morrow!” she cried, hiding a tremor under the laugh
with which she added, “I wonder if there’s any ink in the inkstand?”
* * * * *
Whatever else they had at the Hotel Bellosguardo, they had, as Miss
Pinsent said, “a certain tone.” It was to Lady Susan Condit that they
owed this inestimable benefit; an advantage ranking in Miss Pinsent’s
opinion above even the lawn tennis courts and the resident chaplain. It
was the fact of Lady Susan’s annual visit that made the hotel what
it was. Miss Pinsent was certainly the last to underrate such a
privilege:--“It’s so important, my dear, forming as we do a little
family, that there should be some one to give _the tone_; and no one
could do it better than Lady Susan--an earl’s daughter and a person of
such determination. Dear Mrs. Ainger now--who really _ought_, you know,
when Lady Susan’s away--absolutely refuses to assert herself.” Miss
Pinsent sniffed derisively. “A bishop’s niece!--my dear, I saw her once
actually give in to some South Americans--and before us all. She gave
up her seat at table to oblige them--such a lack of dignity! Lady Susan
spoke to her very plainly about it afterwards.”
Miss Pinsent glanced across the lake and adjusted her auburn front.
“But of course I don’t deny that the stand Lady Susan takes is not
always easy to live up to--for the rest of us, I mean. Monsieur
Grossart, our good proprietor, finds it trying at times, I know--he has
said as much, privately, to Mrs. Ainger and me. After all, the poor man
is not to blame for wanting to fill his hotel, is he? And Lady Susan is
so difficult--so very difficult--about new people. One might almost say
that she disapproves of them beforehand, on principle. And yet she’s had
warnings--she very nearly made a dreadful mistake once with the Duchess
of Levens, who dyed her hair and--well, swore and smoked. One would
have thought that might have been a lesson to Lady Susan.” Miss Pinsent
resumed her knitting with a sigh. “There are exceptions, of course. She
took at once to you and Mr. Gannett--it was quite remarkable,
really. Oh, I don’t mean that either--of course not! It was perfectly
natural--we _all_ thought you so charming and interesting from the first
day--we knew at once that Mr. Gannett was intellectual, by the magazines
you took in; but you know what I mean. Lady Susan is so very--well, I
won’t say prejudiced, as Mrs. Ainger does--but so prepared _not_ to like
new people, that her taking to you in that way was a surprise to us all,
I confess.”
Miss Pinsent sent a significant glance down the long laurustinus alley
from the other end of which two people--a lady and gentleman--were
strolling toward them through the smiling neglect of the garden.
“In this case, of course, it’s very different; that I’m willing to
admit. Their looks are against them; but, as Mrs. Ainger says, one can’t
exactly tell them so.”
“She’s very handsome,” Lydia ventured, with her eyes on the lady, who
showed, under the dome of a vivid sunshade, the hour-glass figure and
superlative coloring of a Christmas chromo.
“That’s the worst of it. She’s too handsome.”
“Well, after all, she can’t help that.”
“Other people manage to,” said Miss Pinsent skeptically.
“But isn’t it rather unfair of Lady Susan--considering that nothing is
known about them?”
“But, my dear, that’s the very thing that’s against them. It’s
infinitely worse than any actual knowledge.”
Lydia mentally agreed that, in the case of Mrs. Linton, it possibly
might be.
“I wonder why they came here?” she mused.
“That’s against them too. It’s always a bad sign when loud people come
to a quiet place. And they’ve brought van-loads of boxes--her maid told
Mrs. Ainger’s that they meant to stop indefinitely.”
“And Lady Susan actually turned her back on her in the _salon?_”
“My dear, she said it was for our sakes: that makes it so unanswerable!
But poor Grossart _is_ in a way! The Lintons have taken his most
expensive _suite_, you know--the yellow damask drawing-room above the
portico--and they have champagne with every meal!”
They were silent as Mr. and Mrs. Linton sauntered by; the lady
with tempestuous brows and challenging chin; the gentleman, a blond
stripling, trailing after her, head downward, like a reluctant child
dragged by his nurse.
“What does your husband think of them, my dear?” Miss Pinsent whispered
as they passed out of earshot.
Lydia stooped to pick a violet in the border.
“He hasn’t told me.”
“Of your speaking to them, I mean. Would he approve of that? I know how
very particular nice Americans are. I think your action might make a
difference; it would certainly carry weight with Lady Susan.”
“Dear Miss Pinsent, you flatter me!”
Lydia rose and gathered up her book and sunshade.
“Well, if you’re asked for an opinion--if Lady Susan asks you for one--I
think you ought to be prepared,” Miss Pinsent admonished her as she
moved away.