'These damned politicians can't get off the platform. Did you see how
that old fool sawed the air when he talked of Ireland, and did you hear
how the other bleated when he mouthed of Poor Law Reform? They're on
show--always on show.... So are these infernal lakes. I can't stand
scenery that has stared at me for hours in a railway carriage.'
'It doesn't matter,' said Clara. 'You may be unjust to Lady Butcher,
but you mustn't be unjust to Rydal.'
'It is so still and out of date.... I can't think of it without
thinking of Wordsworth, and I don't want to think of Wordsworth....
Being with you makes me want to get on into the future, and there's
something holding us all back.'
All the same, their holiday swept up to a triumphant conclusion, and
they forgot the Butchers and their London elegance in going from inn to
inn in the lovely valleys, taking the car up and down breakneck hills
and making on foot the ascent of Great Gable and Scafell, upon whose
summit in the keen air and the gusty wind Clara let fly and danced
about, wildly gay, crying out with joy to be so high above the earth,
where human beings spied upon each other with jealous eyes lest one
should have more happiness than another.
'They can't spoil this,' she said.
'Who?'
'Oh, all the people down there. They can spoil Charles, and you and me
and silly old Sir Henry, but they can't spoil this.'
'In Switzerland,' said Verschoyle, 'there are mountains higher than
this, and they make railways up them, and at the top of the railways
English governesses buy Alpenstocks, and have the name of the mountain
burned into the wood.'
'If I were a mountain,' said Clara, 'and they did that to me I should
turn into a volcano and burn them all up, all the engineers and all the
English governesses.... I'm sure Lady Bracebridge was a governess.'
'Right in once,' said Verschoyle, staring at her with round boyish
eyes, as though he half expected her at once to turn into a volcano.
With Clara anything might happen, and her words came from so deep a
recess of her nature as almost to have the force of a prophecy.