The Hawtreys were ten days out from England, and were spending the day
in a trip up Lake Lucerne. Not as yet were the great caravansaries that
have well nigh spoiled Lucerne and converted the most picturesque town
in Europe into a line of brand new hotels that might just as well be at
Brighton, Ostend, or any other watering place, so much as thought of.
Not as yet had the whole of the middle class of England discovered that
a month on the Continent was one of the necessities of life, nor had the
great summer invasion from the other side of the Atlantic begun. Such
hotels as existed were, however, crowded when the season was over in
London, and those who had met so frequently during the last four months
came across each other at every turn, in steamboats, diligences, and in
hotels. Not as yet had the steam whistle seriously invaded Switzerland,
and travellers were content to jog quietly along enjoying the beauties
of Nature instead of merely rushing through them from point to point.
Mr. Singleton was with the Hawtreys. He had said good-bye when he left
them on their last evening at home, without a hint of his intention of
accompanying them, but he was quietly walking up and down the deck of
the boat at Dover when they went on board.
'Why, there is Mr. Singleton, father,' Dorothy exclaimed in surprise, as
her eye fell upon him as she went down the gangway. 'Why, he did not say
anything about coming over when we said good-bye to him last night.'
'Well, my dear,' her godfather said, as he came up to them, 'you did not
expect to see me.'
'No, indeed, Mr. Singleton. Why didn't you say yesterday when we saw you
that you were going across to-day?'
'I don't know that I had quite made up my mind, Dorothy. I had been
thinking about it; but I often think of things and nothing comes of it.
After I had left you I thought it over seriously. I had not been abroad
for some years, and I said to myself "If I don't go now I suppose I
shall never go at all. Here is a good opportunity. It is lonely work
when one gets the wrong side of sixty, to travel alone; at my age one
does not make acquaintances at every turn, as young fellows do. No doubt
I should meet men I know, but, as a rule, people one knows are not so
fond of each other's society as they are in London. I think my old
friend Hawtrey, and my little god-daughter, would not mind putting up
with me, and I can travel with them till they begin to get tired of me,
and then jog quietly back my own way."'
'Then you will stop with us all the time, Mr. Singleton. I am delighted,
and I am sure father is, too.'
'That I am,' Mr. Hawtrey said heartily, understanding perhaps better
than Dorothy did why his friend had at the last moment decided to go
with them. 'When did you come down?'
'I came by the same train you did. I came straight on board, for I have
brought my man with me and he is looking after my things. I have got
into regular old bachelor ways, dear, and am so accustomed to have my
hot water brought in of a morning, and my clothes laid out for me, and
my boxes packed and corded, that I should feel like a fish out of water
without them.'
'It is your first trip abroad, isn't it? At least, I know you went to
Paris last year, but I don't think you got any further?'
'No, we stayed there a fortnight, but that was all.'
'Well, you had better take your things down now,' Mr. Hawtrey broke in,
'in case you have to lie down. There seems to be a fresh wind blowing
outside.'
'Oh, I don't mean to be ill, father. I think it was a rougher day than
this last time, and I did not go below. Still, I may as well secure a
place.'
'This is awfully good of you, Singleton,' Mr. Hawtrey said; 'I know you
are doing it out of regard for her.'
'A little that way, perhaps, Hawtrey, and a good deal because I am sure
I shall enjoy myself greatly. As a rule, I should be very chary of
offering to join anyone travelling; a third person is often a nuisance,
just as much so in travelling as at other times. I own that I don't much
care for going about by myself, but I thought you really would be glad
to have me with you. Dorothy has had so much to try her of late that I
felt this was really a case where a third person would be of advantage.
I can help to keep up conversation and prevent her from thinking and
worrying over these things. Besides, there is no doubt you will be
running continually against people you know. The announcement that will
appear to-morrow of the breaking off of her engagement will set people
talking again. It is just one of the things that the last arrival from
England will mention, as being the latest bit of society news, and I
think, somehow, that three people together can face public attention
better than two can.'
'Thank you, old friend; it will be better for her in every way. I am not
a good hand at making conversation, and it will be the thing of all
others for Dorothy; she always chatters away with you more than with
anyone else, and I can assure you that I feel your coming a perfect
god-send. She scarcely said a word coming down this morning, and though
I tried occasionally to talk about our trip, she only answered with an
evident effort. I am afraid it will take some time to get all this out
of her mind.'
'It would be strange if it didn't, Hawtrey. For a girl who has
practically never known a care to find herself suddenly suspected and
talked of, first as having compromised herself with some unknown person,
and then as being a thief, is enough to give her a tremendous shaking
up.
'Then the breaking off of her engagement was another trial. I don't say
that it was the same thing as if she had loved the man with a real
earnest love; still, it is a trial for any girl to break off a thing of
that sort, and to know that it will be a matter of general talk and
discussion, especially coming at the top of the other business.
'Here she comes again, and looking a hundred per cent. better than she
did before she caught sight of you, Singleton. I shall begin to be
veritably jealous of you.'
They had stopped two days in Paris, and as much at Basle, and had now
been four days at Lucerne, where they had met many of their own set. The
news had already been told, and Dorothy was conscious of being regarded
with a certain curiosity at the _table d'hote_ as the girl who had just
broken off a brilliant match, but she betrayed no signs of consciousness
that she was the object of attention, and those who had been most
intimate with her, and had been inclined to condole with her, felt that
in face of the light-hearted gaiety with which she chatted with her
father and Mr. Singleton, and the brightness of her looks, anything of
the kind would be out of place.
'She looks quite a different girl to what she did during the season,'
one of her acquaintances said to Mrs. Dean, who had arrived at Lucerne
the day before the Hawtreys. 'I suppose she never really cared for
Halliburn after all. No doubt those curious stories that there were
about had something to do with the affair being broken off. For my part
I think it would have been better taste for her----'
'To have gone about with a long face. I don't agree with you at all,'
Mrs. Dean replied warmly. 'I am an old friend of hers and am delighted
to see her look so much happier and better. I said a month ago that I
thought the marriage would never come off. I was at a dinner party with
them, and Halliburn was there. If I had been Dorothy Hawtrey I would
have given him his _conge_ that evening. His conduct was in the worst
taste. Instead of showing the world how entirely he trusted her and how
he despised these reports, he was so fidgety and irritable that it was
impossible to avoid noticing it. The man is a peer and a rising
politician, a clever man and a large landowner, but for all that he is
not a gentleman. I always said that he was not good enough for Dorothy,
and I am heartily glad she has broken it off. At any rate, it is quite
evident that she feels no regret about it, whatever was the actual cause
of the rupture. She might laugh and talk and try to look
unconcerned--any girl of spirit would do that under the
circumstances--but she couldn't have got her natural colour back again
or have made her eyes laugh as well as her lips, unless she had really
felt relieved at being free again.'
Mrs. Dean had been a good deal with the Hawtreys during their four days
at Lucerne, and Dorothy had felt her society a great assistance to her
in supporting the first brunt of public remark. She was the only person
who had spoken to Dorothy of what all the others were talking about.
They were standing together on the deck of a steamer going up the lake,
when Mrs. Dean said suddenly,
'I know, Dorothy, you will not mind an old friend speaking to you, and I
really want to congratulate you heartily on breaking off your match. I
don't know the exact reasons that influenced you, but I am sure that you
were right. I don't think you would ever have been really happy with
him; there would never have been any true sympathy between you. Some
women could be content with rank and wealth, but I am sure you could
not.'
'No. I think it was a mistake altogether, Mrs. Dean,' Dorothy said
thoughtfully. 'I did not become engaged to him for that--I mean for rank
and wealth. I don't say they did not count for something, but I honestly
did think I liked him, and there was no real reason for its being broken
off, except that I found that I had made a mistake. I should not say so,
of course, to anyone but an old friend like you. I shall never say
anything about it, but let people think what they like; and I know that
you will never repeat it.'
'Certainly not, Dorothy; but if you don't say it in words I think
everyone could see that, at least, there is no regret on your part at
the match being broken off. The wonder won't last long--another week and
something fresh will be talked of, and by next year the whole affair
will have died away. People have wonderfully short memories in society.
Do you know, I rather take credit to myself as a prophetess, for on the
evening of that dinner party where I last met you and Halliburn
together, I told Captain Hampton that I didn't think your match would
ever come off. By the bye, what a nice fellow he is. He is wonderfully
little changed since I knew him as a boy down in Lincolnshire, before he
went into the army. Sometimes boys change so when they become men, that
it is quite a pleasure to meet one who has grown up exactly as you might
have expected he would do. You saw a good deal of him I believe?'
'Yes, at the beginning of the season. We did not see so much of him
afterwards. I don't think he is so little changed as you do.'
Mrs. Dean gave a quick, keen glance at Dorothy, who was looking a little
dreamily at the mountains at the head of the lake.
'No?' she said carelessly. 'Well, of course, you knew him better than I
did; he was so often over at your father's. You were but a child then
and I daresay that you endowed him, as most young girls do boys older
than themselves, with all sorts of impossible qualities.'
'No; I don't know that it was that,' Dorothy said; 'but he seems to me
to be changed a good deal in many respects; he was almost like an elder
brother of mine then.'
'Yes, dear, but then, you see, when he came back he found that another
had stepped into a much closer place than even an elder brother's, and
he could hardly have assumed his former relationship. These brother and
sisterhoods are very nice when the young lady is twelve and the boy
eighteen or nineteen, but they are a little difficult to maintain when
the boy is a man of six-and-twenty and the girl eighteen, and is engaged
to somebody else who might, not unreasonably, object to the
relationship. A boy and girl friendship is not to be picked up again
after a lapse of six years just where it was dropped; it would be very
ridiculous to suppose that it could be so. It seems to me that you have
been expecting too much from him. For my part I think he has changed
very little.'
'I did not expect anything of him, Mrs. Dean, one way or the other. I
had often thought of him while he was away, because he was very kind to
me in the old days. I used to write to him when he first went out, and
he wrote to me. Of course that dropped. But when he came home, just at
first, it seemed to me that he was exactly what I expected, though I
found, in some respects, that he was changed. However, I don't know why
we are talking about him. Captain Hampton has gone to America, I
believe, and it is likely enough we may not see him again before he goes
back to India.' Then she changed her tone. 'It is rather a sore subject
to me, Mrs. Dean; it is the last of my illusions of childhood gone. I
quite agree with you that it was very foolish of me to think that we
could drop quite into our old relations, especially as things stood, but
at least I expected something and was disappointed. He has been very
kind and has taken an immense deal of trouble to assist my father to get
to the bottom of some of the things that have been troubling us. I have
not the least ground for complaint--on the contrary, I have every reason
to be grateful to him; but, as I say, I have, all the same, been
disappointed in some of my illusions, and I would rather not talk about
it. What a change it is to be on this quiet lake and among these great
silent hills after six months in London; there one always seemed to be
in a bustle and fever, here one feels as if nothing that happened could
matter.'
'The London season is pleasant enough,' Mrs. Dean said, 'and though this
is all very charming and delightful for a change, and very restful, I
fancy that before long we should get tired of this changeless calm of
Nature and begin to long for, I won't say excitement, but the pleasure
of society--of people you like. We only came up to town for three
months, and I own that I enjoyed it heartily, there is so much to look
at. I have no daughters to marry off, no personal interest in the
comedy, so I look on and like it, and enjoy my home during the other
nine months all the better for having been away. We do not often come
abroad. I suppose now these railways are being made everywhere there
will be a great deal more travelling about, but I don't think we should
often come. You talk of the bustle of life in London, it is nothing to
the bustle of travelling. As soon as one gets settled down at an hotel
it is time to be going on. If I come out again next year I shall
persuade my husband to take a little chalet high up on the hill there,
where one can rest and take one's fill of the view of those mountains. I
shall bring plenty of work with me, and my own maid; then I could sit in
the shade and pretend to embroider and talk to her while William read
his "Times" and amused himself in his own way, which lies chiefly in
going about with a hammer and collecting geological specimens.'
This last was addressed partly to Mr. Dean, who just then came up with
his friends.
'I fancy you would be tired of that sort of life long before I should,
Sarah,' he said laughing. 'Women always seem to have an idea, Hawtrey,
that one rock is as good as another, and that if a man goes out with a
hammer it can make no difference to him whether he brings in twenty
specimens from a radius of a hundred yards from a house or the same
number collected during a fifty miles ramble. Personally I should not at
all mind making my head quarters for six weeks or so on this lake,
providing one did not go up too high. One wants to be within a
quarter-of-an-hour's walk of a village, where one can hire a boat, to
land where one likes, and make excursions among the hills. I should not
want to do any snow-climbing, but there are plenty of problems one would
be glad to go into, if one could investigate them, without that. It is
really a treat to me, after Lincolnshire, to get into a country where
you can go into geological problems without having to begin by digging.'
'I may frankly say that I know nothing about it,' Mr. Hawtrey replied.
'The only problem connected with digging that I have been interested in
is how to get the heaviest crops possible out of the ground. Well, here
we are at the head of the lake. It will be two hours before a steamer
goes back. I propose lunch in the first place, and then we shall have
time for a walk to Althorp, where we can examine the market-place where
William Tell shot at the apple; that is to say, if--as now seems
doubtful--William Tell ever had an existence at all.'
'I won't have it doubted, Mr. Hawtrey,' Mrs. Dean exclaimed. 'It would
be the destruction of another of one's cherished heroes of childhood,'
and she glanced with a little smile at Dorothy, who smiled back but
shook her head decidedly.
A group of people were gathered on the wharf to see the steamer come in.
'Why, there are the Fortescues--father, mother, and daughters,' Mrs.
Dean exclaimed, 'Captain Armstrong and Mr. Fitzwarren. One cannot get
out of London.'
A moment later they were exchanging greetings on the wharf. The
Fortescues had arrived that morning in a postcarriage from Milan.
Captain Armstrong and Fitzwarren had got in an hour before by diligence
from Como. Both parties were going down by the boat to Lucerne.
'It is too hot for anything in Italy,' Mrs. Fortescue said; 'it was
foolish of us trying it. Of course, we ought not to have gone over there
until the end of September, or else in May. May was out of the question
because of the House. September was equally so, because of the shooting;
so my husband paired till the end of the session, and we started early
last month. We have been doing Florence and Bologna and Venice, and the
places along to Milan, and then I struck. The heat was unbearable; so
now we shall spend a fortnight in Switzerland before we go back. I
suppose there are lots of people one knows at Lucerne?'
'But you won't be back in time for the 1st, Mrs. Fortescue, if you do
that.'
'No; we have lately settled to give up the idea. It would be such a pity
now we are here to deprive the girls of the pleasure of a ramble through
Switzerland. So Mr. Fortescue has made up his mind to sacrifice himself,
and we have promised faithfully that he shall be back in time for the
pheasants.'
Mr. Fortescue, a tall, powerfully-built specimen of English squiredom,
shrugged his shoulders unseen by his wife. He was not altogether
unaccustomed to sacrifices. His career as a legislator was altogether a
sacrifice. He hated London, he hated Parliament, where his voice was
never heard except upon some question connected with the agricultural
interest, and if he had had his own way he would never have been seen
outside his native county. But as Mrs. Fortescue held that it was
clearly his duty, for the sake of his family, that he should represent
his division, and that the season should be spent in town, he had in
this, as indeed in almost every other matter, to give way. Experience
had taught him that it was well to do so at once, for that it always
came to the same thing in the end. Upon the present occasion he had
indeed remonstrated. He hated travelling, and was longing to be at his
country seat; and to keep him out another five weeks was a clear and
distinct breach of the agreement that had been made before starting.
While they were talking with Mr. Hawtrey and Mrs. Dean, the girls and
Dorothy, who had been intimate in London, were holding a little colloquy
apart.
'Is it true, dear--the news we heard at Milan just before we started?'
the eldest asked.
'I suppose I know what you mean, Ada. Yes, it is quite true, and best
for all parties; so we need not say anything more about it.'
'You are looking wonderfully well, Dorothy,' Clara, the younger of the
two girls, remarked, to change the subject, which, she saw, was not to
be discussed. 'It is quite refreshing to see you. We are feeling quite
washed out. Talk about the season! I felt quite fresh when I left town
to what I do now; we have scarcely known what it is to be cool for the
last month, and there has been no sleeping at night, half the time,
because of the mosquitos. It is nice meeting Captain Armstrong and Mr.
Fitzwarren here, isn't it?'
Dorothy said 'Yes,' but she did not feel at all sure about it. Captain
Armstrong, who was in the Blues, had been among her most persistent
admirers at the beginning of the season, and she had refused him a month
before her engagement to Lord Halliburn. Doubtless, he also would have
heard of her engagement being off, and might renew his attentions. He
was a very popular man, and she was conscious that she liked him, and
had said no, if not less decidedly, at least after more hesitation and
doubt than she had done to any of her previous admirers. She felt sure
that she should give the same answer if he ever repeated the question,
but she did not want it repeated, and she wished that they had not met
again, just at this time.
The awkwardness of the rejection had long since passed, they had met and
danced together a score of times since. She had said when she rejected
him, 'Let us be friends, Captain Armstrong; I like you very much, though
I don't want to marry you;' and they had been friends, and had met and
chatted just as if that interview had not taken place. The only allusion
he had ever made to it had been when they met for the first time after
her engagement had been announced, and he had said, 'So Halliburn is to
be the lucky man, Miss Hawtrey. I don't think it quite fair that he
should have all the good things of life,' and she had replied, 'There
are good things for us all, Captain Armstrong, if we do but look for
them, and not, like children, set our minds on what we can't get.' 'I
think I would rather see you marry him than most people, Miss Hawtrey,
perhaps because he is altogether unlike myself.'
She had made no answer at the time, but had thought afterwards of what
he had said. Yes, the two men were very unlike and there was, no doubt,
something in what Captain Armstrong had said. She thought that if she
loved a man she could bear better to see him marry a woman altogether
unlike herself in every respect than one who resembled her closely,
though perhaps she could hardly explain to herself why this should be
so.
They were a merry party on board the steamer going down the lake, and
the new comers took rooms at the same hotel as the Hawtreys.
'Well, what do you mean to do, Armstrong?' Fitzwarren asked, as they
strolled out to smoke a cigar by the lake after the rest of the party
had gone to bed. 'You know what I mean. You told me the other day about
your affair with Miss Hawtrey.'
'I should not have said anything about it,' the other returned, 'if I
had had any idea that her engagement with Halliburn would come to
nothing. We had been talking over that business of hers, and I expressed
my opinion pretty strongly as to Halliburn's behaviour to her in public
and said that I wondered she stood it. Then getting heated I was ass
enough to say that had I been in his position, I should have behaved in
a different sort of way, and generally expressed my contempt for him.
Then you asked why hadn't I put myself in his position, and I told you
it was no fault of mine, for that I had tried and failed, when you made
some uncomplimentary remarks as to her taste, and we nearly had a row.
'You ask me what I am going to do. Of course, if we had not heard that
news when we got to Milan I should have gone this afternoon, directly we
arrived here, to take my place in the first diligence that started, no
matter where. Now I shall stay and try my luck again. It is quite
evident by her manner that she never really cared for the fellow, and
that this breaking off of the engagement is a great relief to her. I
never saw her in higher spirits, and I am sure there was nothing forced
about them. I am sure she would not have accepted him unless she thought
she liked him; she is not the sort of girl to marry for position alone,
though I dare say if it had not been for the other business she would
have married him, and would have believed all her life that he was a
very fine fellow. Well, you see, he came very badly out of it, and
showed himself to her in his true light as a selfish, cold-hearted,
miserable little prig, and, you see, directly her eyes were opened she
threw him over. So it seems to me that there is a chance.'
'One could not have met her again under more favourable circumstances.
One gets ten times the opportunities travelling about together that one
does in a London season. However, I think my chance is worth very
little. She said honestly that she liked me very much before, and I
could see it really pained her to refuse me. I don't think it was
Halliburn who stood in the way, although he was attentive at that time.'
'I should have thought that would have been all in your favour if she
acknowledged that she liked you very much, and was cut up at refusing
you. Why should she not like you better when she sees more of you?'
'Because, Fitzwarren, it was not the right sort of liking. We were, if I
may so express it, chums; and I am afraid we shall never get beyond that
on her side. You see, a woman wants something ideal. Now there is
nothing ideal about me. I suppose I may say I am a decent, pleasant sort
of fellow, but there are no what you may call possibilities about me.
Now Halliburn, you see, was full of possibilities. He had the reputation
of being somehow a superior sort of young man--and there is no doubt he
is clever in his way--he will probably some day be in the Cabinet, and
the idea of one's husband being a ruler of men is fascinating to the
female mind. I suppose there was no woman ever married a curate who had
not a private belief that he would some day be an archbishop. Now there
is not a shadow of this sort of thing about me. I may possibly get to
command the regiment some day, and then when I have held the command for
the usual time I shall be shelved, and shall, I suppose, retire
gracefully to my estate in Yorkshire. I suppose I am good enough for the
ruck of girls, but I feel sure that I am not up to Dorothy Hawtrey's
ideal, and that though this may end by our being greater friends than
before, I doubt whether there is much chance of anything else coming of
it.'
'It is no use your running yourself down in that way, Armstrong. When a
man stands six foot two and is one of the best-looking fellows in
London, and one of the most popular men, and is not only a captain of
the Blues, but has a fine estate down in Yorkshire, he ought to have a
fair chance with almost any girl.'
'Even accepting all you say as gospel, Fitzwarren, it comes to the same
thing. It might succeed with most women, as you say, but I don't think
it will with her. It may make her like me, but I don't think it will
make her love me. I don't think she is a bit worldly, and I know by what
she let drop one day when we were chatting together, when we got rather
confidential at the beginning of the season, that she had got the idea
in her head that a woman ought to respect her husband, and look up to
him, and had in fact formed a distinct notion of the sort of man she
should choose; and I felt at the time, though there was nothing whatever
personal in our talk, I was the very last sort of fellow she would
choose for her husband. Well, I shall try again; I have won more than
one steeplechase after a horse going down with me at a bad fence. This
is the same sort of thing after all; it is of no use mounting and going
on again when you see another fellow sailing away ahead, and close to
the winning post, but if he has fallen too, and nothing seems to have a
better chance than you have, a man who gives up the race because he has
had an awkward purler is no better than a cur.'
'As it does not make much difference to me which way we go, Armstrong, I
am willing enough to keep with you for a bit, and see how things go; but
I don't suppose I shall be able to stand it long, and I shall reserve to
myself the right of striking off on my own account, or joining someone
else if I find your society insupportable.'
'That is all right, old fellow; our arrangement was to travel together.
Of course, if I give up travelling and take to loitering about, you are
free to do what you like, and I am the last man to wish you to alter
your plans because I have changed my mind. As a rule, I think it is
always wise to steer clear of people one knows when one is travelling,
and to be free to do exactly as one likes, which one never can if one
gets mixed up with a party. I have always been dead against that. They
want to see things you don't want to see, they want to stay in towns and
to potter about picture galleries and churches, while you want to go
right away up a hill----'
'That is not the worst of it, Armstrong, it is the danger.'
'The danger? What do you mean?'
'The danger of going too far. A flirtation means nothing in town, but it
is apt to become a very serious matter when you are travelling about
together. A row in a boat on an evening like this, or, as you say, going
about to churches and picture galleries, when you are dead certain to
get separated from the rest of the party, or a climb through a pine
forest--these things are all full of peril, and you are liable to find
yourself saying things that there is no getting out of, and there you
are--engaged to perhaps the last girl that you would, had you calmly and
patiently thought the matter out, have gone in for.'
Captain Armstrong laughed.
'Ah, it is all very well for you to laugh. In the first place you have
been what is called a general flirt for years, and would not be
suspected of serious intentions, unless you went very far indeed; and in
the second place you could afford to marry a girl without a penny if you
had any inclination to do so. It is a different thing altogether with
fellows like myself, who have no choice between remaining single and
marrying a wife with some money. There are some luxuries I absolutely
cannot afford, and among them I may reckon travelling about in a party
in which are some tocherless damsels--for instance the Fortescues, who,
I daresay, will for the next ten days or a fortnight travel with the
Hawtreys. They are nice, unaffected girls, pretty and pleasant, but they
have three elder brothers. I could not afford one of them. My line in
life is clearly chalked out. Not for me is the gilded heiress; her
friends will look after her too sharply for that. I have pictured to
myself that in another eight or ten years I may be able to secure the
affections of the relict of some respectable man who has left her with a
snug jointure. She will not be too young, but just approaching nearly
enough to middle age to begin to fear being laid on the shelf. Then in
the comfortable home that she will provide for me I can journey
pleasantly and contentedly down the vale of life.'
Captain Armstrong burst into a loud laugh. 'You will never do it,
Fitzwarren, never. There is a vein of romance in your composition that
will be too much for you. It is always young men who fancy they are
prudent who end by falling victims to some nice girl without a penny.
You may take all the precautions you like, walk as circumspectly as you
will, but when the time comes you will succumb without a struggle.
However, do not let me lead you into the net of the fowler; keep away
from the snare as long as you can; when your fate comes upon you you
will be captured, and I doubt whether you will make as much as a
struggle.'
'We shall see, Armstrong; at present you serve as a terrible example.
Well, I suppose we may as well turn in.'
There was a great consultation after breakfast the next morning. Mr.
Hawtrey had already marked out his own line of travel and had arranged
for a carriage by which they would travel by easy stages through Brienz,
Interlaken, Thun, Freyburg, and then on to Lausanne. They would stay for
a week by the Lake of Geneva and then take another carriage to Martigny.
Beyond that nothing was at present settled, but they would make Martigny
their head quarters for some little time. The Fortescues had no
particular plan and were quite ready to fall into that of their friends,
though, as they had as yet seen nothing of Lucerne, and intended to make
some excursions from there, they said that they must stop there for a
few days, but would join the others at Martigny.
The girls indeed would gladly have gone forward at once, being really
fond of Dorothy, and thinking that it would be nice to travel together,
but their mother overruled this.
'No, no, my dears, we must see what there is to be seen, and it would be
a great pity to hurry away at once. We shall all meet again at Martigny,
and may, perhaps, have a fortnight there together. Besides, there are
inconveniences in two parties travelling together. One may happen to
have faster horses than the other, and be kept waiting for their meals
until the other arrives; then they don't always want to stop at the same
places, or for the same time. Whoever gets in first may be able to find
accommodation at an inn, while the second one may find it full. Don't
you think so, Mr. Singleton?'
'Yes, I quite agree with you. Two parties are apt to be a tie upon each
other. I think that your plan that we should all meet at Martigny is the
wisest.'
'What are your plans, Captain Armstrong?'
'Beyond the fact that we have a month to wander about before we are due
in London we have no particular plans. We, of course, stick to diligence
routes; bachelors do not indulge in the luxury of posting, and, indeed,
I greatly prefer the banquette of a diligence to a carriage--you get a
better view, you meet other people, and learn more of the country. We
intend to do a little climbing--I don't mean high peaks, I have no
ambition that way whatever, but some of the passes and glaciers. I was
at Martigny last year; it is, perhaps, the best central position for the
mountains, and I think it is very likely that we shall be there while
you are.'
'I hope you will,' Mr. Hawtrey said cordially. 'These three young ladies
will be only too glad of two stalwart guides. As far as carriages can
go, or even donkeys, we elders can accompany them, but when it comes to
scrambling about on glaciers, or doing anything like climbing, we are
getting past that.'
'Nonsense, father,' Dorothy exclaimed. 'Why, you are often out for eight
or ten hours over the turnip fields with a gun, you know; you could walk
four times as far as I could.'
'Not twice as far, Dorothy. I have known you walk fifteen miles more
than once, and I certainly should not care about walking thirty. But
that has nothing to do with climbing, which is a question of weight and
wind. You have only half my weight to carry. I am sure that after
dancing through a London season your lungs ought to be in perfect order.
However, I dare say I shall be able to go with you if your views are not
too ambitious; but the mania for climbing always seems to seize young
people when they get among mountains, though for my part I prefer the
view in a valley to one on the top of a hill. At any rate we shall be
glad to see you both, Captain Armstrong, at Martigny, whether we
requisition your services as guides or not. I am sorry, Dorothy, the
Deans are not coming our way. He told me yesterday they were going to
Zurich, and then by Constance into Bavaria.'
'I am sorry, too, father; I like them so much, and it would have been
very pleasant indeed if they had been with us.'