Several summers had passed since that dramatic meeting on the
_Schiller_, and these swiftly flying, monotonous years, had left their
mark upon Les Plans and its belongings. One fine spring morning Mordi,
the queen of cows, had been driven from the orchard by a strange
man,--a butcher from Lucerne. In his company, Mordi took her first and
last trip upon the familiar lake, and her comrades knew her no more.
Karo, the farm’s brown and white guardian, had recently died, suddenly
and mysteriously. He was found at his post, the entrance door, stiff
and stark. Jan Jost was more bent and rheumatic than formerly; his
wife more wrinkled and shrewish; but naturally the most remarkable
change was to be seen in the two young people, Fritz and Mitli. Fritz
at twenty-three was well educated, and well thought of,--especially by
farmers with daughters, on account of his prospects; by the daughters,
because of his celebrated prowess in sports, his handsome face, and
lithe activity.
Since his course at Zurich was finished, Fritz had lived at home,
helping somewhat fitfully to work Les Plans. His mother seemed a
little grimmer and more taciturn,--indeed, her manner was occasionally
forbidding,--always working--or always knitting, with unceasing fury,
and always keeping her thoughts to herself;--these, were chiefly
occupied by her son, and Mitli.
Mitli, in her seventeenth year, was tall and fully developed; she
looked older than her age, and beyond a flawless complexion, ropes of
yellow hair, and a pair of gay blue eyes, was not endowed with the
usual attributes of ‘sweet seventeen.’ She took after the Blagdons in
figure and character, and was of a determined, masterful, and restless
disposition. Her intellectual faculties were dull; she evinced no taste
for literature or reading, beyond the daily paper, _Le Monde Amusant_,
and sundry and various French novels. As for her mother’s pursuits,
needlework, music, and gardening, she hated them impartially; sewing
tried her eyes, gardening gave her a backache, music was a bore.
Tennis, dancing, skating were more to her taste. She rowed on the lake,
and climbed the hills with Fritz, and accepted his love, his homage,
and his gifts, with radiant complacency. Such was Cara!
Of late, she had spent most of the year in Lucerne, not merely in
winter with her mother in the Weggisgasse, but in summer too. There
was such difficulty about coming and going from Les Plans; the hours
of the steamers, did not suit; the child’s education must not be
neglected, and after considerable demur, and pressure, it had been
arranged for Cara to board with the family of one of her friends, and
attend the convent as an _externe_, returning home for week-ends, and
all holidays. Her godmother had insisted on paying for her education,
and her mother reluctantly submitted; for in spite of good prices for
lace, the work was tedious, and Cara’s expenses for dress and amusement
had become surprisingly heavy. She displayed an extravagant fancy for
expensive hats and frocks and shoes,--and when she wanted money--an
overpowering seductiveness, that her mother was totally unable to
resist. Cara’s sweet kisses, caresses, and endearing epithets, were as
balm to a heart that was starving for love, and she plied her needle
bravely in order that the child should look nice, and--as a natural
sequence--be happy.
The ‘child’ ran accounts in her mother’s name at Schweizer’s and other
shops, and when the bills presented themselves in the shape of so many
shocks, Cara would excuse herself by saying, in an airy way:
“Well, darling Mum, it’s all your own fault! Ever since I was a baby
you have made a fuss about dressing me, and don’t I do you credit?”
She did; there was no denying the fact. In a beautifully cut
embroidered linen, and a simple French hat, Cara might be remarked at
Hurlingham or Ranelagh, but she was a little out of keeping with her
background in a farm kitchen--where, being in a hurry to catch the
boat, she gobbled her hasty _déjeuner_ of rice and stewed veal.
Cara’s independence and air of breezy emancipation, had come by
degrees, ever since she had gone to live with her friend Berthe Baer on
the slopes of the Drei Linden. This change of abode and surroundings
had given her an air of freedom and self-sufficiency, and she now
ruled her mother with an absolute sway. Grown up, her own mistress,
and on the threshold of life, she was resolved to make the best of
her youth and have a really good time; since hers was a hard, shrewd,
and absolutely pleasure-loving character. Cara was fond in a way of
her pretty girlish Mum,--who was so often and so annoyingly mistaken
for her sister--but the Mum was so tame, unenterprising, and easily
contented; her books and work and walks, were all _she_ asked for; but
Cara, notwithstanding her sharp sight, was mistaken. Her mother was far
from being contented. As she rambled alone, or sat at her lace cushion,
her thoughts, though inarticulate, were many and rebellious; they spoke
a plain language, and put many crucial questions to her heart, and
brain. In her life of thirty-five years, she humbly confessed to many
fatal errors. Her first mistake, was in marrying Hugo Blagdon--that was
an act of sheer cowardice. The second, her muddled runaway; the third,
in refusing Lancelot Lumley’s appeal made six years previously.
Cara, she now realised, was capable of standing alone, and successfully
fighting her own battles. Her determination to live in Lucerne, had
proved this most decisively; and now she and her girl were no longer so
much to one another. Cara demanded a separate bedroom. “Two in a room
was so stuffy,” and there were no nightly talks and confidences, and
any hold she ever had on her child, was imperceptibly slipping away;
the girl had her own friends, Luisa Maas, Hilda Vorgen, and the Baers,
with whom she boarded.
She and Berthe were inseparable, and Berthe, a simple-minded,
giggling, good-tempered girl of eighteen, could do her darling no
harm. One question repeatedly thrust itself forward with irrepressible
pertinacity:
“Had she brought Cara up wisely? Had she not been _too_ indulgent?”
In the most serious contentions between them, she had frequently given
way. Now Cara was full grown and talked as a woman--a woman with
weighty authority. Where had she acquired her experience?--from books?
Since Mrs. Hesketh’s visit, witnessing the nakedness of the land, she
had kept Letty well supplied with literature, English papers, and
various small matters, that made life more easy and refined. Each year
she most solemnly pledged herself to pay a visit to Lucerne, and each
year, the promised visit was postponed; but now an event had occurred
that made her presence absolutely essential. The two young people at
Les Plans had grown up under the same roof, and their mothers were
secretly anxious respecting their future; Frau Hurter was particularly
perturbed; gloomier, and more silent than ever; since she did not fail
to note how slyly the beautiful Mitli played with, and fascinated her
distracted boy. Oh, it was a cat-and-mouse affair! Fritz was crazy, he
was under a witch’s spell, he could settle to nothing. If Mitli was in
Lucerne, so was he; if she was at home, he hung about aimlessly, or
took the girl on the lake. He had become unmanageable, idle, unfilial,
ill-tempered. What would the end be,--and when?
Of late Mitli’s popularity had cooled. Jost’s wife openly hated her,
and even Freda admitted that the ‘kindli’ never cared how much work she
gave anyone.
One afternoon, as Frau Hurter stood in the doorway watching the young
couple descending the well-beaten track, she suddenly made up her mind
to speak; and walking over to where Frau Glyn sat in the shade absorbed
in her lace pillow, she began:
“You see those two, _meine Frau_?” indicating the rapidly disappearing
pair. “Your girl and my boy.”
Letty looked up, followed the direction of the speaker’s hand, and
nodded and smiled--yet the air and expression of Frau Hurter was
portentous.
“They have grown up together in thirteen years under the same roof--and
now”--she paused, and added with a dramatic gesture--“one of them must
go--and it cannot be my son.”
“Of course not,” agreed Letty, raising a bewildered face to the stern
and iron-willed Frau. “But I don’t think I understand.”
“Have you then no eyes?” demanded the other in a voice vibrating with
passion, “not even the mother’s eyes! My Fritz is madly--wickedly--in
love with your Mitli!”
Letty gave a stifled exclamation, hastily put aside her work, and rose
to her feet.
“Yes, he is; and more and more, and worse and worse every time
he comes home,” continued his mother hoarsely; “and no wonder. Is
there another such face in the Four Cantons? But they are not for
one another--no, _never_!” and she stamped her heavy foot upon the
gravel. “She does not care for him,” stooping to pick up an apple, “no,
not this!” flinging it away with a vicious jerk. “She does not care
for anyone. My tongue is quiet--but I use my eyes. As for Fritz, he
shall marry one of his own country, a girl of his own class, strong,
hard-working, with a fortune--such there are. His cousin Gertrud, in
the Oberland, will suit me--and it has been arranged. Meanwhile Mitli,
whom he sees daily, goes to his head like new beer, and the boy is
as one drunken, and mad! and so, _mein liebe Frau_, after many years
together, and I may say friendship, I must give you notice to leave.”
For a moment or two Letty made no answer. Her little world had been
suddenly dissolved and was whirling about her. She looked across the
garden, and its tall, white lilies and standard roses, to the familiar
brown house, with green shutters, then up at her own open window--with
its accustomed sponge,--her haven for so long.
At last she said:
“Very well, I see your point of view, and I am afraid Cara is inclined
to be a flirt. The child likes to make herself pleasant to everyone.”
“No, not to everyone,” corrected the other bitterly.
“I am really very, very sorry if Fritz is attracted. I honestly
believed it was just the old boy-and-girl liking.”
“Boy-and-girl liking, _Jesu Maria_! I’ve seen Fritz kiss her empty
shoes, I’ve known him watch her window till dawn; these are the follies
of his Italian blood. I hoped Zurich would end them, but he is worse.
_Ach ye!_ he is ten times worse! So now I send him to a relative near
Adelboden for some time; there he will learn farming and good sense.
When he returns----” She paused expressively.
“We shall have left, and to tell you the truth, Frau Hurter, this move
has been in my mind; but I love Les Plans, and hate the idea of a
change. I have lately come into a legacy which brings me in one hundred
and fifty pounds a year, and as Cara believes herself grown up, it is
time that we go to where she can mix with her own country-people. I am
undecided where to live, or what to do. I have been rooted here for so
long, that Les Plans seems like my home.”
“Dear lady, it would, and gladly, be your home for always--but for our
two children. Young people, will be young!”
“Well, to-day I shall write to Mrs. Hesketh and ask her advice,” said
Letty, collecting her work. “How soon must we move--in a week?”
“Oh, no; this is July--the end of September would suit. Fritz will be
away helping with the harvest.” After a moment’s silence she added,
“In my mind I’ve long had this to say to you, _liebe Frau_, and now,
thanks be to God, it’s said,” and she turned about, and went slowly
indoors.
Letty followed her and ascended to her room,--there to collect her
ideas and make plans. She would be glad to go, and yet here was the
old weakness--sorry. At Les Plans she had outward peace, occupation,
her walks, her books, and her letters from Lancelot. These were mere
pleasant epistles, such as a man would send to a woman-friend, aunt,
or sister-in-law, yet how she treasured them. Accounts of balls and
race meetings, she read them over and over again, jealously searching
for a clue to some girl, the happy, happy, fortunate girl, who would
one day, take her place.--Then she loved Switzerland and its beautiful
scenery--with the affection of a native. Cara, on the contrary, hated
the country and expressed herself to her mother with scornful vehemence.
“I loathe these blue skies, blue mountains, blue lake,” she announced.
“They give me the blues! As for the wonderful view, you rave about, I’d
sooner look at a picture postcard--_much_ less fag!”
Letty presently sat down at her deal table, and wrote to Mrs. Hesketh.
“Do try and come at once, best of friends, for I want you urgently;
and you know you promised to be here this month, _sans faute_. Frau
Hurter has just given me notice to leave in September. Cara is now a
young lady, and full of ideas and ambitions. I implore you to advise
me, as to what will be best for her? where we are to live? and what
we are to do?”
Meanwhile Cara and Fritz had gone upon the lake in a superior new
boat--a recent purchase. As he rowed towards the Nasen, and she
reclined luxuriously in the stern, he told her of his mother’s plans
respecting himself and Gertrud, to which news Cara listened with loud,
derisive laughter, and a beaming face. He also related how he was to
lead a pastoral life on the farm of a patriarchal relative--in order to
learn all the new methods.
“But when I come back in September you will be here, Mitli, won’t you?”
“Why, of course,” she answered impatiently. “Am I not always here?”
“And you will write often--often--as before? Swear it!”
“Yes--often.”
“If I thought you would ever care for anyone else,”--and here the
passion of jealousy flamed in his Italian eyes--“I’d kill myself--if
I had the least doubt of _you_--I’d”--and he paused and leant on his
oars, and stared at Cara fiercely--“I’d upset the boat, and drown us
both, yes, in five minutes!”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Fritz! You know I am fond of you. As to the
drowning--you forget that I can swim!”
“Not if you are out here in the middle,--and in your clothes--the
water is too cold, and as to the depth, the lake is bottomless.”
“Don’t talk like this, it bores me!” said Cara,--secretly uneasy for
all her sang-froid. She was aware that Fritz was capable of mad, rash
actions, carried out on the impulse of the moment. To-day he looked
strange, very strange! The veins on his forehead stood out like cord,
and there was an odd light in his eyes.
“Come,” she continued authoritatively, “it is time we are getting back;
the sun is slipping behind Pilatus. Keep out of this steamer’s wash,
and row to the landing,” and without another word he obeyed.
As the two slowly mounted the hill hand in hand, half-way in the
ascent, they halted on a little plateau where, under some ancient pine
trees, there was a rough wooden bench,--a thoughtful provision not
uncommon in a land of views. Here Fritz said:
“My mother is all eyes, like the dog in the fairy tale. She sees
everything; but she will see me, my own master before long. In a week
I go,--and the sooner I depart, the sooner I return to you, my Mitli,
and for always,” and he snatched her into his arms, and kissed her
passionately.
“Well, it pleased him, poor boy,” said Cara to herself; “he was
certainly extraordinarily handsome, and what, after all, were a few
kisses?”