|Will you come for a walk this beautiful morning, Miss Graves?” asked
Frau Schultz.
Felicia had intended to pursue her study of scientific dressmaking under
Mrs. Stapleton's tuition, but she acceded graciously enough. She had
considered it her duty to like Frau Schultz; yet Frau Schultz remained
her pet aversion. Although she still winced under Mme. Popea's
innuendoes and Fraulein Klinkhardt's pretty free theories of life, yet
she managed to find something likeable in each. But Frau Schultz's red,
weather-beaten face, coarse habits and spiteful tongue, jarred upon her.
She smiled pleasantly, however, when she came down in her fur-trimmed
jacket, hat and muff, and met Frau Schultz on the landing outside the
salon.
“It will do you good. You sit too much in the house,” said Frau Schultz
magisterially.
It seemed a lovely day when the sunshine was looked at from the windows
of a warm room, but outside, the _bise_ was blowing, and caught the face
like a million razor-edges. Felicia put up her muff with a little cry,
as soon as they emerged into the open air. “Oh! this dreadful _bise!_”
“Ach! It is nothing,” said the other, who prided herself on her
pachydermaty. “You English girls would sacrifice everything to your
complexions. If your skin cracks you can put on some cold cream. But you
will have had your exercise.”
Frau Schultz wore an imitation sealskin jacket, a new crape hat with
broad strings tied under her chin, and thick grey woollen gloves.
Felicia wondered, with not unpardonable vindictiveness, how many cracks
would do her appreciable damage.
“I don't care a little bit about my complexion,” she replied stoutly,
resolved, for the honour of her countrywomen, to face a blizzard, if
called upon. “I have felt worse east winds than this in England.”
“Ah, your England! It is a wonderful place,” said Frau Schultz.
They walked along by the end of the Jardin Anglais, crossed the bridge
and proceeded by the Quai du Mont Blanc in the direction of the Kursaal.
Frau Schultz was evidently in an atrabiliar mood. Felicia began to be
rather grateful to the _bise_, which does not favour conversation. But
she had not reckoned with Frau Schultz's voice. As soon as it had found
the right pitch, by means of desultory remarks, it triumphed over mere
wind, and shrieked continuously.
“I asked you to come out because I wanted to talk to you.”
“Perhaps she prefers talking in a hurricane,” thought Felicia in comic
desperation. But all she said was,--
“Oh?”
“Yes. You are so young and inexperienced that I have thought it my duty
to advise you. Mme. Boccard is too busy. I am a mother. I brought up my
Lottchen excellently, and she married last year. I am clearly the only
one in the pension who knows what is suitable for a young girl and what
isn't.”
Felicia looked at her in some astonishment from under the wind depressed
hat brim.
“I am sure I am getting on very well.”
“Ah, you think so. But you are wrong. You cannot touch pitch without
stinking.” Frau Schultz's English was apt to fail her now and then.
“Really, I don't understand at all, Frau Schultz.”
“I will make myself quite plain. You have become too great a friend with
Mrs. Stapleton. She is the pitch.”
Felicia stopped short, her eyes watering with wind and indignation.
“If you say such things of my friends, Frau Schultz, I shall go home
again.”
“I did not hear,” said Frau Schultz coming closer.
Felicia repeated her observation, with an irritated little patting of
her foot.
“_Ach!_” cried the other impatiently, “I come to talk with you out
of motherly kindness, for your own good, and you get angry. It is
not polite either, as I am so much older than you. I repeat that Mrs.
Stapleton is a bad woman. If you do not like to walk with me, I will
walk with myself. But I have done my duty. Are you going to stand, Miss
Graves, or will you proceed?”
Felicia, in spite of her indignant resentment of Frau Schultz's tone,
hesitated for a moment. She had seen too many sordid squabbles in the
pension, in consequence of which women would not speak to each other for
a week, and asked each other vicariously to pass the salt, not to feel
a wholesome horror at the prospect of finding herself involved in one.
Hitherto she had escaped. So she checked her outburst of wrath.
“I shall be happy to go on, Frau Schultz, if you will drop the subject,”
she said.
“_Ach, so!_” replied Frau Schultz, enigmatically, and they continued
their walk. But after this, conversation was not cordial. At the Kursaal
they turned and retraced their steps.
On the Quai du Mont Blanc, where the steamers lay at their moorings,
Frau Schultz stopped and looked at the view. Things were vivid in their
spring freshness, and stood out clear in the wind-swept air. The larches
in Rousseau's Island had put on their green, and so had the clustering
limes in the Jardin Anglais, at the other end of the bridge. Above the
white, tree-hidden shops and cafés on the Grand Quai, the old town rose
sharply defined, around the grim cathedral. Straight in front was the
ever sea-blue lake, its fringe of trees on the other side, just hiding
the villas at the foot of the hills; and away in the intense distance
behind them rose the crest of Mont Blanc, shimmering like frosted silver
against the blue sky.
At the sight of the latter, Frau Schultz drew a long, rapt breath.
“_Wunderschon!_”
She would not trust herself to speak English. She looked at Felicia for
responsive enthusiasm. But Felicia was angry, and she could not help
feeling a little resentment against Mont Blanc, for affording Frau
Schultz pleasurable sensations. But she replied politely that it was
very pretty.
“How few of you English have any soul!” said Frau Schultz, as they went
on again.
“I think it is that we are not sentimental,” said Felicia.
“I never could quite understand what that 'sentimental' is, that you are
all so afraid of.”
“It is making the same fuss about little emotions as one only could
about big ones.”
“So you think I am sentimental because I admire the glorious nature?”
“I did not say so, Frau Schultz.”
“Ah, but you thought so. It is the way you all have. Nothing is good but
what you put your seal to.”
It was decidedly not a pleasant walk. Frau Schultz took up the parable
of the narrow-minded Englishman, and expounded it through the _bise_.
Felicia longed for home. To try to turn the conversation into a calmer
channel, she took advantage of a lull, and inquired after Frau Schultz's
daughter. The ingenious device succeeded.
Lottchen's early history lasted until they reached their own street.
Felicia did not know whether to hate Lottchen for being such a paragon,
or to pity her for being so parented. At last she made a rash remark.
“I don't think you gave Frâulein Schultz much chance of doing anything
wrong.”
“I was her mother,” replied Frau Schultz with dignity, “and in Germany
young girls obey their mothers and respect the mothers of other young
girls. If I had spoken to a German girl as I did to you this morning,
she would have been grateful.”
“I am very sorry, Frau Schultz, but I don't like to hear my friends
spoken ill of.”
“I wanted to save you from those friends. I say again, Mrs. Stapleton is
not the person I should let my innocent daughter associate with.”
Felicia fired up. They were within a few yards of the entrance to the
pension. “You know nothing whatever against Mrs. Stapleton. I think it
very unkind of you.”
“_So!_ Ask her where her husband is.”
“She is a widow.”
Frau Schultz looked at her and broke into derisive laughter. It jarred
through the girl as if she had trodden upon an electric eel. She left
Frau Schultz at the foot of the staircase, and ran up by herself,
tingling with anger and disgust.
Six months ago she would scarcely have divined Frau Schultz's
insinuations. Now she did. Her mental range had widened considerably
since she had lived in the pension. A less refined nature might have
been to some extent coarsened by the experience, but her knowledge only
brought her keener repugnance. She was no longer puzzled or frightened,
but disgusted--sometimes revolted. It seemed as if she could never get
free from the taint. Even Katherine, whose society, since they had
grown more intimate, she had sought more and more, and to whom she had
gone for comfort and pure breath, when the air had been close with lax
talk or unsavoury recrimination--even Katherine was now declared by this
vulgar, domineering woman to be infected by what, in the girl's eyes,
was the same leprosy. She did not believe it. In other matters Felicia
had seen Frau Schultz convicted as a liar. But the imputation seemed
like a foul hand laid upon their friendship.
It was a relief when she went into Katherine's room and saw the
welcome on the quiet, delicate face that looked up from the needlework.
Katherine's room, too, always cheered her. Like Katherine herself, it
was different from the others. Mme. Popea's, for instance, struck one
with a pervading sense of soiled dressing-gowns; Miss Bunter's was all
primness, looking as if made to match the stiff wires of her canary
cages. But this sunny little retreat, with all its bedroom suggestions
curtained off, and cosy with piano and comfortable easy chairs and rugs,
was essentially a lady's room that had assimilated some of the charm of
its owner. By the time the gong went for _déjeuner_, Felicia was
cheered and comforted, and she entered the dining-room, her arm around
Katherine's waist, darting a rebellious glance at Frau Schultz.
The days went on uneventfully. The only incident was the return of old
Mr. Chetwynd from a month's holiday in Italy, when the whole pension
united to do him honour and welcome him. On the day of his arrival
Felicia laid a pair of slippers she had worked for him in his room,
which delighted the old man so much that he came down to the salon in
the evening to offer them for general admiration. But otherwise there
was no departure, no arrival all the spring. Every one sighed for
the summer and fresh faces. They looked forward with the longing that
chrysalises must have for butterflydom. Felicia joined in the general
anticipation. She had not forgotten Raine, though he gradually grew
to be but a wistful memory. But she felt convinced, with the fervid
conviction of twenty, that she could never love any man again.
The whole course of her thoughts was altered on one morning in May. The
hour for _dejeuner_ had been put earlier than usual, for some domestic
reason, and the English post arrived during the meal. Mr. Chetwynd
glanced over his envelopes, selected one, and courteously asked
Katherine and Felicia permission to open it. His eyes sparkled as he
read.
“I have had pleasant news,” he said radiantly, laying down the letter
and addressing Mme. Boccard at the other end of the table. “My son is
coming here for the first part of the Long Vacation.”
There was a general chorus of satisfaction. Tongues were set on the wag.
Mme. Popea and Frau Schultz conversed with simultaneous unmodulation.
Mme. Boccard explained volubly to Mr. Chetwynd the pleasure he would
derive from his son's visit. But all was a distant buzz in Felicia's
ears. The announcement was like an electric shock, vivifying the fading
love into instant life. Her heart gave a great leap, and things swam
before her eyes, causing her to close them for a second. She opened
them to a revelation--Katherine's face, which was as white as paper, and
Katherine's eyes fixed upon her with an almost terrified intelligence.
The exchanged glance told each the other's secret. But all was so sudden
that only they two knew.
Katherine recovered her composure instantly, and the reaction brought
the blood back into her cheeks. She said with a smile to the old
man,--“It will be charming to see Mr. Chetwynd again.”
Felicia envied her. She could not have trusted her voice whatever had
been at stake.
When they rose from the table, the old man motioned to Felicia to come
with him on to the balcony, which ran continuously past the dining-room
and salon windows.
“Is it not good news?”
She hung her head, and faltered out,--
“Yes.”
“Will you still be glad to see Raine again?”
“You know--how can I tell you?”
“My dear child,” he said, laying his hand on hers, as it rested on the
iron balustrade, “do you know what I hope Raine is coming for?”
Felicia shook her head.
“Oh, I dare not think it--we must not speak of it. I don't think I shall
be able to meet him.”
“Can I help you?” asked the old man, tenderly. “You can tell an old man
things without shame that you cannot tell a young one. I have grown very
fond of you, my child. To part with you would be a great wrench. And
that this other should be has become one of the dearest wishes of my
life.”
“Ah! you are good--dear, and good, and kind,” replied the girl; “but--”
“Well, perhaps you can explain a little enigma in Raine's letter!”
She looked up at him quickly. For the first time, her cheek flushed with
a ray of hope.
“Can you explain this?” he asked, taking the letter from his pocket, and
placing it so that they both could read as they leant over the balcony.
He pointed to a sentence.
_“I am coming on my own account as well as yours. This, so that you
should not be conceited, and think you are the only magnet in Geneva
that draws_
_Your loving_
_“Raine.”_
“There!” he said, hastily withdrawing it. “Perhaps I ought not to have
shown it to you. But Raine never talks idly; and I have ventured to
believe that Miss Felicia Graves is the magnet in question. Goodbye, my
dear. I think I have committed enough indiscretion for one day.”
She gave his hand a little caressing squeeze, and, when he had gone,
remained a long time on the balcony, deep in troubled thoughts. Who was
the magnet--she or Katherine?
She strove not to think of it, to busy herself with whatever interests
she could find to hand. With this end in view, she took out for a long
walk little Miss Bunter, who had been in low spirits for some days. She
strove to cheer her. But Miss Bunter folded her drapery of depression
all the more closely around her, and poured into Felicia's ears the
history of her engagement with the man in Burmah.
“Our marriage has just been put off for another year,” she said. “I
thought I had come to the end of my waiting. But he can't afford it yet;
and you have no idea how expensive living is there.”
“Oh! I shouldn't have thought so,” said Felicia.
“My dear!” said Miss Bunter, straightening her thin shoulders
reproachfully, “Mr. Dotterel says so, and he has been living there
fifteen years.”
“It is strange that you have remained so fond of one another all this
long time.”
“Do you think so? Oh, no!” replied Miss Bunter, with a convinced shake
of her head. “When one loves really, it lasts for ever. But,” she added,
sighing, “it has been a long engagement.”
So Felicia parted with Miss Bunter rather more depressed than before.
She had thought to get outside the range of such things, but she had
been brought only the closer within it.
She could not sleep that night. Many things troubled her, causing her
cheek to burn in the darkness--the sudden rekindling within her of
feelings against which her young maiden pride had ever revolted; the
shame at having revealed them for the second time; the hope suggested by
Raine's letter, to which it seemed a joy and a humiliation to cling; the
discovery of Katherine's love.
She buried her face in her pillow, trying to hide from herself her
self-abasement. So does it happen to many women, when their sudden
investiture of womanhood comes to them, with its thoughts and sorrows,
and, unaware, they still regard it with the eyes of a young girl.