‘I MAY NOT DON AS EVERY PLOUGHMAN MAY.’
A chambermaid brought Daphne a letter at half-past six o’clock next
morning. She had fallen asleep in the summer sunlight after a night of
almost utter sleeplessness; the warm air blowing in upon her across
the hills on the opposite side of the river; the noises of the early
awakened town floating up from the valley below.
She started from her pillow, scared and agitated at the sound of
the chambermaid’s knock, and took the letter with a trembling hand.
Gerald’s writing! She knew it too well; yet this was the first letter
he had ever addressed to her.
‘How dare he write to me?’ she exclaimed angrily, as she tore open the
envelope.
The letter began with no fond words of endearment. The writer dashed at
his meaning with passionate directness, with feeling too intense to be
eloquent.
‘Tell me what I am to do. After last night, my future, my life, are in
your hands. Both belong to you if you will have them. Shall I break
the truth to Lina? Shall I tell her how, little by little, in spite of
myself, my heart has been beguiled away from that calm affection which
was once all-sufficient for the joy of life; how a new and passionate
love has replaced the old; and that, although I shall honour, respect,
and admire her as the first and best of women till the end of my days,
I am no longer, I never can be again, her lover? I think, Daphne, that
the hard, outspoken, brutal truth may be the wisest and best. Let us
look Fate in the face. Neither you nor I can ever be happy asunder.
Will the sacrifice of my happiness secure Lina’s? Answer me from your
heart of hearts, my beloved, as you answered me on the bridge last
night.’
There was not an instant’s doubt in Daphne’s mind as to how this letter
must be answered. Lina’s happiness sacrificed to hers! Lina, so good,
so pure-minded, in all things so much above her, to be made miserable,
in order that she might triumph in a successful treachery!
‘I don’t think the most virtuous person in the world could loathe me
worse than I should loathe myself, if I were to do this thing,’ she
said to herself resolutely.
She sat down by the open window, wrapped in her loose white
dressing-gown, her soft golden hair falling over her shoulders like a
veil, her cheeks pale, her eyes heavy, an image of youthful sorrow.
‘Not for this wide world,’ she wrote, answering Gerald Goring’s
question as directly as he had asked it, ‘not to be completely and
unspeakably happy would I rob my sister of her happiness; not if it
could be done without making me a monster of ingratitude, the most
treacherous and despicable of women. All you and I have to do is to
forget our folly of last night, and to be true, each of us, to the
promises we have made. You would be, indeed, a loser, condemned to
pay a life-long penalty for your foolishness, if you could barter
such a flower as Madoline for such a weed as me. Be true to her, and
you will find your reward in that truth. Do you know how good she is;
how priceless in her purity and love; and could you let her go for my
sake—for a creature who is compounded of faults and inconsistencies,
caprices, self-will; a creature with no more soul than Undine?
Remember how long she has loved you; think how much she is above you
in the beauty of her character; how fitted she is to make your home
happy, your life nobler and better than it could ever be without
her. Why, if, in some moment of madness, you were to surrender her
love, your life to come would be one long regret for having lost her.
Forget, as I shall forget; be true, as I will be true, heaven helping
me; and let me write myself, without a blush, in this my first, and,
perhaps, my last letter to you,—Your Sister,
DAPHNE.’
Her eyes were streaming with tears as she wrote. Every word came from
her heart. There was no duplicity of thought, no lurking hope that
Gerald might refuse to be ruled by her. She wrote to him faithfully,
honestly, resolutely, her heart and mind exalted by her intense
love of her sister. And when the letter was sealed and given to the
chambermaid—who must have wondered a little at this outbreak of
letter-writing before breakfast as a new development in the British
tourist—she stole softly to the door leading into Madoline’s room and
opened it as noiselessly as she could.
Lina was still asleep, the calm beautiful face turned towards the
sunlight, the long dark lashes dropping on the oval cheek, the lips
faintly parted. Daphne crept to the bed-side and sat down beside her
sister’s pillow. Lina awoke and looked up at her.
‘My pet, have you been here long? Is it late?’ she asked.
‘Late for you, love. About half-past seven. I have only this moment
come in.’
‘How white and haggard you look!’ said Lina anxiously. ‘Have you had a
bad night?’
‘I did not sleep particularly well. I seldom can in a strange place.’
‘Daphne, I am afraid you are ill—or unhappy. There was something in
your manner last night that alarmed me.’
‘I am not ill: and I have not felt so happy for a long time as I feel
this morning.’
‘Why, dearest?’
‘Because I have been making good resolutions, and I mean to act upon
them.’
‘Would it be too much to ask what they are?’
‘Oh, a general determination to be very obedient to you, and very
respectful to my father, and very tolerant of Edgar’s stupidities, and
all that kind of thing, don’t you know?’
‘My darling, I can’t bear to hear you talk of Edgar like that. He is so
thoroughly good.’
‘Yes,’ sighed Daphne, with an air of resignation. ‘If there were only a
little rift in his goodness, I should get on with him so much better.
It is dreadful to have to deal with a man whose excellence is always
putting one to shame.’
‘I think you could be easily worthy of him.’
‘No, I couldn’t. And if I could I wouldn’t. And now I must run away
and dress, for I want to explore those hills across the river before
breakfast.’
She looked bright and fresh and full of youthful energy an hour
afterwards, when she went down to the sitting-room, where Edgar was
loafing about wearily, longing for her to appear. Her neat tailor gown
of darkest olive cashmere, and coquettish little olive-green toque,
set off the pearly tints of her complexion and the brightness of her
loosely-coiled hair. She came into the room buttoning a long Swedish
glove, the turned-back sleeve showing the round white arm.
‘What a fetching get-up,’ said Edgar, who was apt to embellish his
speech with those flowers of slang which are in everybody’s mouth; ‘but
what is the use of those long gloves tucked away under the sleeve of
your gown?’
‘No use,’ answered Daphne; ‘but they’re fashionable. I want you to
come and ramble on that hill over there before breakfast. Do you mind?’
‘Mind!’ cried Edgar. ‘You know I am always delighted to walk with you.
But, I say, Daphne, what was the matter with you last night? You were
so cross.’
‘I know I was; but I am never going to be cross again. I am going to
turn over a new leaf. I have been wild and wilful, but I am not wilful
now.’
‘You are always the dearest and best of girls,’ answered Edgar
fatuously.
They passed Gerald Goring on the stairs. Daphne gave him a friendly
nod, just the easiest salutation possible; but her cheek paled as she
went by, and her reply to Edgar’s next observation was somewhat wide of
the mark.
He talked Baedeker to her as they went across the bridge; and he talked
Baedeker about the watch-towers; and still again Baedeker when, in the
course of their wanderings, they came to a chapel on a height, from
whence there was a lovely view, exquisitely beautiful in the clear calm
summer morning. They roamed about together till it was time to go back
to the ten o’clock breakfast, by which hour Sir Vernon had resigned
himself to the ordeal of facing his family.
After breakfast there came more sight-seeing, Sir Vernon having decided
upon going on to Berne by a late afternoon train. So they all set out
together in a roomy landau to explore the town and neighbourhood. They
went into the arsenal, where a funny old man in a blue blouse showed
them ancient and modern gunnery. They saw the venerable lime-tree which
stands in front of the Town Hall and the Rathhaus, propped up with
wood and stone; a tree which, according to tradition, was originally a
twig borne by a young native of Fribourg when he arrived in the town,
breathless from loss of blood, to bring the news of the victory of
Morat. ‘Victory!’ he gasped, and died.
Gerald, more than usually cynical this morning, declined to believe in
either the twig or the heroic messenger.
‘I always shut my mind against all these romantic stories upon
principle,’ he said languidly. ‘The outcome of all modern research—Mr.
Brewer, and all the rest of it—is to prove that none of these
delightful traditions has a germ of truth in it. It saves a great deal
of trouble to begin by disbelieving them.’
They went about the town in rather a dawdling desultory way, looking at
the fronts of old houses, at the queer little shops, and finally paused
before the church of St. Nicholas, which they had seen so dimly last
night. Edgar insisted upon going in, but Daphne would go no farther
than the doorway, where she looked respectfully at the bas-reliefs
which she was told to admire.
‘I saw quite enough of it last night,’ she said, when Edgar urged her
to go in and explore the interior.
‘Why, Daphne, it was too dark for you to see anything.’
‘All churches are alike,’ she answered impatiently. ‘Please don’t
worry.’
Sir Vernon, who happened to be within earshot, looked at his daughter
curiously, wondering at this development of modern manners. Could a
pearly delicacy of complexion, luminous eyes of that dark gray which
is almost violet, and bright gold hair, quite make amends for this
utter want of courtesy? But Edgar appeared perfectly content to be so
treated; and it was Edgar who was most concerned in the matter.
They dawdled away a long morning seeing the town and driving about
the somewhat pastoral landscape which surrounds it, lunched late, and
started at five o’clock for Berne, where they arrived at the Berner
Hof in time for a late dinner. Daphne grumbled a little on the way,
protesting against the landscape between Fribourg and Berne as a
relapse into English pastoral scenery.
‘What do I want with meadows, and orchards, and cottages?’ she
exclaimed. ‘I can see those in England. If it were not for the cows
living on the ground-floor, and the fodder being carried up to the roof
by those queer slanting covered ways, there wouldn’t be a shade of
difference between the houses here and those at home, except that these
are ever so much dirtier.’
‘You ought to have come a few million years ago, when Switzerland was a
glacial chaos,’ said Gerald.
The Berner Hof pleased Sir Vernon by its spaciousness and air of
English comfort, but it impressed Daphne as an hotel which would have
been more in keeping with Liverpool or Manchester.
‘I had quite made up my mind that in Switzerland we should stop at
wooden _châlets_ perched upon mountain ledges, with an impending
avalanche always in view, and the “_Ranz des Vaches_” sounding in the
distance all day long.’
‘There are such hostelries,’ answered Gerald; ‘but I think, if you
found yourself at one of them, you would be rather inclined to wish
yourself at the Berner Hof, or the Beau Rivage.’
Next day was the first Tuesday in the month, and the occasion of the
monthly market, a grand assemblage of small dealers from the adjacent
country.
They all went out directly after breakfast, and proceeded straight
to the noble central street, a mile in length, which under various
names pierces the town in a straight unbroken line from one end to
the other. Very old and quaint are the houses in this long street,
many of them built over arcades, under which the foot-passengers walk,
and within whose arches the market-people set out their stalls. The
drapery stalls, gay with many-coloured handkerchiefs fluttering in the
summer air; the jewellers’ stalls, all twinkling and flashing with that
silver trinketry which is a national institution, chains of endless
length, necklaces, earrings, bracelets, glittering in the sun; stalls
loaded with fruits and vegetables; stalls of gaudy-coloured pottery,
jugs and jars of queerest, quaintest shapes; and up and down the stony
street cows and oxen being led perpetually, meek, submissive, gentle,
beautiful, in an endless procession; while every here and there under
a countryman’s cart the patient dogs of burden lay at rest, placid
but watchful, faithful guardians of the master’s property. It was a
scene of picturesque and national life which pleased Daphne immensely.
She had never seen such a market before, never seen so long a street,
except the monotonous length of a Parisian boulevard as she was being
jolted along in a fly from station to station. Here she saw the people
in their national costume. Here Switzerland seemed really Swiss.
She flew from stall to stall, admiring, selecting, bargaining, wanting
to buy a barrowful of red and orange pots and pans.
‘They would look so lovely in the corridor at South Hill, on high
brackets,’ she said.
‘I’m afraid the brackets would have to be very high,’ answered Lina,
smiling at her.
‘I suppose you mean that for a sneer,’ retorted Daphne, ‘but if Mr.
Burne Jones, or Mr. Rosetti, or Mr. Morris were to say those pots and
pans were the right thing, there would be an eruption of them over the
walls of every fashionable room in England. I consider them positively
lovely. And as for the silver chains, I shall never live without one
round my neck.’
‘Come and make your selection,’ said Edgar, pointing to one of
the biggest and grandest stalls in the open place near the famous
clock-tower, where the cock was to crow, and the figure of grim old
Time was to turn his glass, and all manner of wonderful things were
to happen just before the striking of the hour. This stall showed the
best array of silver trinketry which they had seen yet, and the country
people were clustered about it, gazing at the bright new silver, and
a good deal at golden-haired Daphne in her creamy Indian silk gown, a
radiant figure under a creamy silk umbrella.
‘Choose the prettiest, Daphne, and wear it for my sake,’ said Edgar,
with his portly leather purse in his hand, an English pigeon offering
himself up to be plucked.
‘_Combien?_’ he asked, rather proud of his readiness with a foreign
language, pointing to the handsomest of the chains, a duster of many
slender chainlets, about three yards long.
‘_Wie viel?_’ asked Daphne, with a compassionate glance at her
affianced.
‘It is ver sheep,’ answered the vendor, showing a disgusting
familiarity with the English tongue. ‘Gut und sheep, sehr schön, ver
prurty, funf pound Englees.’
‘Five pounds!’ screamed Daphne: ‘why, I thought it would be about five
shillings! Pray come away, Mr. Turchill. They see we are English.’
She turned from the stall indignantly, and marched across to look
at the fountain, where the gigantic figure of an ogre, in the act
of dropping a child into the yawning cavern of his jaws, stands out
against the tall white houses, balconied, jalousied, like a bit of
Parisian boulevard made picturesque by a dash of Swiss quaintness.
The vegetables and the pottery stalls, and the fluttering cotton
handkerchiefs were grouped all about the fountain, a confusion of vivid
colour.
‘That is something like a statue,’ cried Daphne, looking up
unblinkingly at the giant grinning at her through a warm hazy
atmosphere. ‘A dear old thing which recalls the fairy-tales of
one’s childhood, instead of a stupid old Anglo-Indian general, whom
nobody ever heard of, riding a tame old horse. Why don’t we have
Kindlifressers and other fairy tale statues in the London streets? They
would make London ever so much livelier.’
Here Edgar came after her, carrying a small box neatly papered and tied
up, which he put into her hand.
‘May you never wear heavier fetters than these!’ he said, having
composed the little speech as he came along.
‘What,’ she exclaimed, ‘did you actually buy the chain after all? Well,
I do despise you. Could you not see that the man was swindling you?’
‘He was not so bad as you think. I only gave him three pounds for the
chain, and I believe it is worth as much as that. I should think it
cheap at thirty if you were pleased with it,’ he added, with homely
tenderness.
‘Oh, you poor predestined victim to extortion,’ exclaimed Daphne,
looking at him with a serio-comic air. ‘Such a man as you ought never
to go about without a keeper. However, as you have been so good as
to allow yourself to be fleeced for my sake, I accept the chain with
pleasure, and will wear it as the badge of my future captivity.’
She shot a swift side-glance at Gerald as she spoke, curious to see
how he took this direct allusion to an engagement which it had been
her habit somewhat to ignore. He was standing looking listlessly along
the street, interested neither in man nor woman; but though he had an
air of utter vacancy, eyes that saw not, ears that heard not, Daphne
detected a quiver of lip and brow, which showed her that the shot had
gone home.
Sir Vernon had gone to the museum to look at the pictures, leaving the
young people free to wander where they pleased until dinner-time. They
went up and down the arched ways, looking at the shops and stalls, the
country people, the dogs, the cattle; then turned aside from this busy
thoroughfare, where all the life and commerce of the canton seemed to
have concentrated itself, to explore the dusky cathedral, where all was
silence, and coolness, and repose. There was one great disappointment
for Daphne. The grand panoramic picture of the Alps, for which the
minster terrace is celebrated, was not on view to-day. The mountains
hid themselves behind a gauzy veil, a warm vapour which thickened the
air above the old city.
‘I can’t think what I have done to offend the Alps,’ cried Daphne
petulantly. ‘They seem to bear a grudge against me. They wouldn’t show
me their frosty pows at Geneva, and they won’t at Berne. I am not going
to break my heart about them, however. Please let us get the cathedral
over as fast as we can, and go and look at the bears. I am dying to see
the live bears; for I have seen so many inanimate ones in stone, and
wood, and iron, that I seem to have bears on the brain.’
They were standing in the open square in front of the cathedral,
looking up at the bronze statue of Rudolph von Erlach, with the four
seated bears at its base. They went into the church presently, and
admired the fifteenth-century stained glass, and sculptured Pietas, and
the choir stalls. As they were leaving the church, they saw a man and
a woman going quietly into the vestry, preceded by the minister in his
black gown.
‘A wedding evidently,’ whispered Edgar to Daphne. ‘Wouldn’t you like to
see a Swiss wedding?’
‘Do you think they are going to be married? What a sober idea of
matrimony! I should have thought a Swiss wedding would have been like a
scene in an opera.’
An inquiry of the verger proved that it was really a wedding, so
they all crept quietly into the spacious vestry, and stood in the
background, while the priest tied the knot according to the Calvinistic
manner.
It was not a grandiose or thrilling ceremonial, yet there was a
certain sober earnestness in its very simplicity. The rite, shorn
of all ornament, was a religious rite performed with all the grave
businesslike straightforwardness of a civil agreement. Matrimony thus
approached wore a somewhat appalling aspect: no sweet harmony of boyish
voices shrilling a bridal hymn; no mighty organ exploding suddenly
in the crashing chords of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March; only a man
and woman standing before a priest in a naked stony vestry; a priest
who interrogated them coldly, with his eyes on his book, very much
as if he had been hearing them their Catechism. The man had a dull
indifferent look, and there was that in the bearing and appearance
of the dowdily-dressed woman which hinted that the marriage was an
after-thought.
Daphne shuddered as she came out of the sunless vestry.
‘That is not my idea of a quiet wedding,’ she said. ‘Please let us go
to the bears; I am dying to see something cheerful.’
They went back to the crowded arcades, the stalls, the processional
cattle, and all the life and bustle of a monthly market, and down the
whole length of the street, till they found themselves on a bridge that
spanned a deep hollow between two hills. On one side of the bridge
they looked down into the cattle market, where a multitude of blue
blouses, of every shade and tone, from the vivid azure garment bought
yesterday, to the faded and patched coat of age and poverty, mixed up
with the brown, and cream, and roan, and dun of the cows and oxen,
made a wonderful harmony in blues and browns. On the other side there
was a famous bear-pit, where half-a-dozen mangy-looking animals are
maintained in a state of inglorious repose for the honour of the city.
The bear is not a handsome or a graceful beast, nor does his woolly
front beam with intelligence. Yet he has a look of ponderous
benevolence, a placid air of being nobody’s enemy but his own, which
commends him to those who enjoy his acquaintance only at a distance.
He is fond of being fed, and has an amiable greediness, which brings
him in direct sympathy with his patrons. There is something childlike,
too, and distinctly human in his love of buns, to say nothing of his
innate aptitude for dancing. These qualities are liable to distract
the judgment of his admirers, who forget that at heart he is still a
savage, and that his hug is mortal.
Daphne had provided herself with a bag of cakes, and immediately
became on the friendliest terms with three ragged-looking Bruins who
were squatting on their haunches, ready to receive the favours of
an admiring public. She would not believe Baedeker’s story of the
English officer, who fell into the den, and was killed by these woolly
monsters, after a desperate fight for life.
‘I couldn’t credit anything unkind of them,’ she protested. ‘See how
patiently that dear thing waits, with his mouth wide open, and how
dexterously he catches a bit of roll.’
Even the delight of leaning upon a stone parapet to feed bears in a not
too odoriferous den must come to an end at last, and Daphne, having
had enough of the national beasts, consented to get into a roomy open
carriage which Gerald had found while she was dispensing her favours,
to the admiration of half-a-dozen country people, who were leaning
lazily against the parapet, and wondering at the beauty of the two
English girls in their cool delicate-hued raiment.
There was plenty to admire in the neighbourhood of Berne, albeit the
Alps were in hiding, and after a light luncheon at a confectioner’s
in one of the arcades, they drove about till it was time to dress for
dinner.
They started early on the next afternoon for Thun, and between Berne
and Thun the Jungfrau first revealed herself in all her virginal
beauty—whiter, purer than all the rest of the mountain world—to
Daphne’s delighted eyes. Never could she take her fill of gazing on
that divine pinnacle, that heaven-aspiring mount, rising above a
cluster of satellite hills, like Jupiter surrounded by his moons.
‘If you told me that on that very mountain-top Moses saw God, I should
believe you,’ cried Daphne, deeply moved.
‘I am sorry to say the pinnacle on which Jehovah revealed Himself to
His chosen mouthpiece is a shabby affair in comparison with yonder
peak, a mere hillock of seven thousand feet or so,’ said Gerald,
looking up from the day before yesterday’s _Times_.
‘You have seen it?’
‘I have stood on Serbâl, and Gebel Mousa, and Bas Sasâfeh, the three
separate mountain-tops which contend for the honour of having been
trodden by the feet of the Creator.’
‘How delightful to have seen so much of this world!’
‘And to have so little left in this world to see,’ answered Gerald;
‘there is always the reverse of the shield.’
‘It will make it all the pleasanter for you to settle down at Goring
Abbey,’ said Daphne, assuming her most practical tone. ‘You will not be
tormented by the idea of all the lovely spots of earth, the wonderful
rivers and forests and mountains which you have not seen, as Edgar and
I must be at dear old Hawksyard. But we mean to travel immensely, do we
not, Edgar?’
Another distinct allusion to her coming life, the near approaching
time when she and Edgar would be one. The Squire of Hawksyard smiled
delightedly at this recognition of the bond.
‘I am sure to do whatever you wish, and go wherever you like,’ he
answered; ‘but I am tremendously fond of home, one’s own fireside,
don’t you know, and one’s own stable.’
‘And one’s own china-closet, and one’s own linen-presses,’ added
Daphne, laughing; ‘and one’s own jams and pickles and raspberry
vinegar. Are not those things numbered among the delights of Hawksyard?
But I mean you to take me to the Amazon, and when we have thoroughly
done the Andes, we’ll go over the Isthmus of Panama, and across Mexico,
and finish up with the Rockies. They are only a continuation of the
same range, don’t you know, the backbone of the two Americas.’
Edgar laughed as at an agreeable joke.
‘But I mean it,’ protested Daphne, with her elbow resting on the ledge
of the window, and her eyes devouring the Jungfrau. ‘We are going to be
a second Mr. and Mrs. Brassey in the way of travelling.’
Mr. Turchill looked somewhat uncomfortable, moved by the thought of a
hunting-stable running to seed, at home, while he, a wretched sailor at
the best of times, lay tossing in some southern archipelago, all among
dusky islanders, and reduced to a fishy and vegetable diet. If Daphne
were in earnest the sacrifice would have to be made. Upon that point
he was certain. Never could he resist that capricious creature; never
could he deny her a pleasure, or beat down her airy whims with the
sledge-hammer of common sense.
‘I believe we shall be one of the most foolish couples in Christendom,’
he said aloud; ‘but I think we shall be one of the happiest.’
‘A girl must be very hard-hearted who could not be happy with you,
Edgar,’ said Madoline, looking at him with a frank sisterly smile. ‘You
are so thoroughly good and kind.’
‘Ah, but goodness and kindness don’t always score, you know,’ he
replied, with a laugh in which there was just a shade of sadness.