‘THER WAS NO WIGHT, TO WHOM SHE DURSTE PLAIN.’
They had been at Montreux more than a week, and it seemed to Daphne as
if she had lived half her life on the shore of the beautiful lake, with
the snowy summit of the Dent du Midi rising yonder in its inaccessible
grandeur, above the fertile hills of the foreground, those precipitous
green slopes, where _châlets_ and farms were dotted about picturesquely
in positions that would have seemed perilous for birds’ nests.
The villa was charming; a white-walled _château_ all plate-glass
windows, verandahs, balconies, brightened from roof to basement by
crimson and white Spanish blinds. The rooms were prettily furnished
in a foreign style—commodes, cabinets, clocks, candelabra, and Louis
Quatorze chairs of a painfully upright architecture. To these Sir
Vernon had added several easy-chairs and couches of the _pouf_ species,
hired from an upholsterer at Geneva. Photographs in velvet or ivory
frames, books, work-baskets, easels, and five-o’clock tea-tables,
brought from South Hill, gave a home-like air to the rooms; and a
profusion of the loveliest flowers, exquisitely arranged, told of
Madoline’s presence.
There was a delicious garden sloping down to the lake, whose
gently-curving shore made here a lovely bay; a garden in which
roses grew as they only grow in the neighbourhood of water. There
were summer-houses of the airiest construction; trellised walks,
rose-shaded; a parterre of carefully-chosen flowers, with a fountain in
the centre; and the blue bright water at the edge of the lawn.
Here Daphne had established her boat, a light skiff with a felucca
sail and a striped awning, to be used at pleasure; a boat which, seen
flitting across the lake in the sunshine, looked like a swallow.
There was a capital boat-house at a corner of the lawn, wooden and
delightfully Swiss, with balconies fronting the lake, and an upper room
in which one could take one’s pleasure, sketching, writing, reading,
tea-drinking. The weather had been peerless since their arrival at
Montreux; and Madoline and Daphne spent the greater part of their lives
out of doors. They were always together, Daphne rarely leaving the
shelter of her sister’s wing. She had become amazingly industrious, and
had begun a tremendous piece of work in crewels, neither more nor less
than a set of curtain-borderings for the drawing-room at Hawksyard.
Vainly had Madoline entreated her to begin with an antimacassar or a
fender-stool, some undertaking which would demand but a reasonable
exercise of patience and perseverance. Daphne would hear of no work
that was not gigantic.
‘Do you think Cheops would ever have been famous if he had begun to
make pyramids on a small scale?’ she asked. ‘He would have exhausted
his interest in the idea, frittered away his enthusiasm upon trifles.
How much wiser it was in him to make a dash at something big while his
fancy was at a white heat! If I don’t embroider a set of curtains I’ll
do nothing.’
‘Well, dearest, you must follow your own fancy,’ answered Lina gently;
‘but I’m afraid your life will be a history of great beginnings.’
Daphne began with extraordinary industry upon a bold pattern of
sunflowers and acanthus leaves, huge sunflowers, huge foliage, on a
Pompeian-red ground. Whenever she was not in her boat, skimming about
the lake, she was toiling at a leaf or a sunflower, sitting on a
cushion at Lina’s feet, the sunny head bent over her work, the slim
white fingers moving busily, the dark brows knitted, in the intensity
of her occupation. She was always intent upon finishing a leaf, or a
stalk, or a petal, or on realising the grand effect of a completed
flower. She would sit till the last available moment before dinner,
rushing off to dress in a frantic hurry, and reappearing just as the
subdued announcement of dinner was being breathed into Sir Vernon’s
ear. Edgar was filled with delight to see her so occupied. It seemed to
him a pledge of future domesticity.
‘It is so sweet to see you working for our home,’ he said one
afternoon, seated on the grass at her feet, and placidly watching every
stitch.
‘Eh?’ she said, looking up in half-surprise, being much more interested
in the sunflowers for their own sakes than in their future relation to
the old Warwickshire Grange. ‘Oh yes, to be sure. I hope I shall finish
the curtains; but it is a dreadful long way to look forward. There will
be three hundred and fifty-five sunflowers. I have done one and a half.
That leaves just three hundred and fifty-three and a half to do. I
rather wish it were the other way.’
‘Beginning to flag already?’ said Lina, who was sketching a little bit
of the mountain landscape on the other side of the lake, a bold effect
of sun and shadow.
‘Not the least in the world,’ cried Daphne; ‘only I do so long to
see the effect of the curtains when they are finished. It will be
stupendous. But do you know, Edgar, I am afraid your mother will detest
them. One requires to be educated up to sunflowers; and Mrs. Turchill
belongs to that degraded period of art in which people could see beauty
in roses and lilies.’
‘One can hardly look back upon those dark ages without a shudder,’ said
Gerald Goring, stretched on a rustic bench close at hand, looking up at
the blue sky, an image of purposeless idleness. ‘Thank Providence we
have emerged from the age of curves into the age of angles—from the
Hogarthian to the Burne-Jonesian ideal of beauty.’
‘There was a period in my own life when I had not awakened to the
loveliness of the sunflower,’ said Daphne gravely. ‘I know the first
time I was introduced to one in crewel-work I thought it hideous; but
since I have known Tadema’s pictures I am another creature. Yet I doubt
if, even in my regenerate state, a garden all sunflowers would be quite
satisfactory.’
‘You would require the Roman atmosphere, classic busts and columns,
Tyrian-dyed draperies, and everybody dressed in the straight-down
Roman fashion,’ replied Gerald languidly. ‘No doubt Poppæa was fond
of sunflowers; and I daresay they grew in that royal garden where
Messalina held such high jinks that time her imperial husband came home
unexpectedly and somewhat disturbed the harmony of the evening.’
It was altogether an idle kind of life which they were leading just now
at Montreux. During the first week Edgar and Daphne had excursionised
a little upon the nearest hillsides in the early morning before
breakfast; but lovely as were the chestnut-woods and the limpid
streamlets gushing out of their rocky beds and dripping into stone
troughs fringed with delicate ferns, exquisite as was the morning air,
and the fairy picture of the lake below them, developing some new charm
with every hundred yards of the ascent, Daphne soon wearied of these
morning rambles, and seemed glad to forego them.
‘The weather is getting horribly oppressive,’ she said, ‘or perhaps
I am not quite so strong as I used to be. I would rather sit in the
garden and amuse myself more lazily.’
‘You must not pretend to be an invalid,’ said Edgar cheerily; ‘come
now, Daphne: why, there are not many girls can handle a pair of sculls
as you do.’
‘I didn’t say I was an invalid. In my boat I feel in my element, but
listlessly creeping about these hills wearies me to death.’
‘You are very different from me,’ answered Edgar reproachfully. ‘Your
company is always enough for my happiness.’
‘Then you shall have as much of my company as you please in the garden
or on the lake. But pray let us be idle while we can. When Aunt Rhoda
arrives we shall be goaded to all kinds of excursionising, dragged up
every hill in the district.’
‘I thought you wanted to climb mountains?’
‘Yes, mountains; Mont Blanc, or the Matterhorn, or Monte Rosa—anything
respectable. But to exhaust one’s energy in scaling green banks! Why,
in Wales they would call the Col du Jaman a bank. However, when Aunt
Rhoda arrive I shall be equal to the effort. Of course we shall have to
do Chillon.’
‘I thought you were so interested in Chillon.’
‘Yes, as an image in my mind. I love to gaze at its dark towers from
the distance, to send my fancies back to the Middle Ages, penetrate the
gloomy prison and keep the captives company—but to go over the cells
formally, in the midst of a little herd of tourists, staring over each
other’s shoulders, and treading upon each other’s toes—to be shown by
a snuffy old custodian the ring to which Bonnivard was chained, the
grating out of which he could see the “little isle that in his very
face did smile”—that is a kind of thing which I absolutely abhor.’
* * * * *
Mrs. Ferrers had written to her brother, informing him that as she
had been all her life longing for a glimpse of Swiss scenery, and
that as so favourable an opportunity had now presented itself for the
gratification of that desire, she had made up her mind to come straight
to Montreux by herself.
‘It is a tremendous undertaking for one who has travelled so little,’
she wrote; ‘for you know, dear Vernon, how my devotion to Lina and
your interests kept me a prisoner at South Hill during those years in
which I should naturally have been seeing all that is worth seeing in
this beautiful world. It is an awful idea to travel all the way from
Warwickshire to Lake Leman, with only a maid, but I feel that this is
a golden opportunity which must not be lost. To be in Switzerland with
you and dearest Lina will be a delight, the memory of which will endure
all my life. It is quite hopeless to suppose that dear Marmaduke can
ever travel with me beyond Cheltenham, or Bath, or Torquay. His health
and his settled habits both forbid the thought. Why, then, should I not
take advantage of your being in Switzerland to realise a long-cherished
wish? I shall be no trouble to you: I do not ask you even to receive me
under your roof, unless indeed you happen to have a spare room or two
at your disposal. You can make arrangements for me and my maid to live
_en pension_ at one of those excellent hotels which I am told abound
on the banks of the lake, and I can spend all my days with you without
feeling myself either a burden or an expense.’
‘What are we to do, Lina?’ asked Sir Vernon, when his elder daughter
had read the letter; ‘your aunt will be a terrible bore in any case,
but I suppose she will be a little less of a nuisance if we put her out
of the house.’
‘There are three spare rooms,’ said Lina. ‘It would be rather
inhospitable to send her to an hotel—if she will not be any trouble to
you, dear father——’
‘Oh, she will be no trouble to me,’ said Sir Vernon. ‘I’ll take care of
that.’
‘Then I think you had better let me write and ask her to stay with us.’
‘Ask her!’ quoth Sir Vernon, ‘egad, she has asked herself.’
The letter was written, and by return of post there came a gushing
reply, announcing that Mrs. Ferrers had broken the intelligence of her
departure to dear Marmaduke, who had borne the blow better than might
have been expected, and who was amiably resigned to the loss of his
wife’s society during the ensuing six weeks. Is not a modern Anglican
cleric bound to imitate in somewise the example of the early Christian
martyrs? Fire or sword he is not called upon to suffer, nor to fight
with wild beasts in the arena; but these small domestic deprivations
are a scourge of the flesh, which tend to exercise his heroic temper.
‘Todd,’ said Marmaduke, in a fat and unctuous voice, ‘you must take
particular care of me while your mistress is away. You know what I
like, Todd, and you must make sure that I have it.’
* * * * *
Mrs. Ferrers arrived one sunny afternoon, with three Saratoga trunks,
and the newest things in sunshades. She had a generally exhausted air
after her journey, and declared that she seemed to have been travelling
since the beginning of the world.
‘The dust, the heat, the glare between Paris and Dijon I can never
describe,’ she protested as she sank into the most luxurious of the
easy-chairs, which her eagle eye had detected at the first glance.
‘Please don’t try,’ said Gerald, ‘we went through it all ourselves.’
‘It was something too dreadful,’ murmured Aunt Rhoda, looking so cool
and ladylike in her pale-gray cashmere gown and flounced sicilienne
petticoat, that it was difficult to believe she had ever been a victim
to dust and heat.
She was refreshed with tea and bread and butter, and looked round her
with placid satisfaction.
‘It is really very sweet,’ she murmured. ‘This villa reminds me so
much of the Fothergills’ place just above Teddington Lock—the lawn—the
flower-beds—everything. But, do you know, Switzerland is not quite so
Swiss as I expected to find it.’
‘That was just what Daphne said,’ answered Madoline.
‘Did she really?’ murmured Aunt Rhoda, looking across at Daphne, who
was sitting idly by the low tea-table. Mrs. Ferrers felt a little vexed
with herself at being convicted of coinciding with Daphne.
‘I suppose it is inevitable,’ she said, with a lofty air, ‘that a
place of which one has dreamed all one’s life, which one has pictured
to oneself in all the brightest colours of one’s own mind and fancy,
should be just a little disappointing. It was tiresome to be told
at Geneva that Mont Blanc had not been seen for weeks, and it was
provoking to find the cabman horribly indifferent about Rousseau—for,
of course, I made a point of going to see his house.’
‘And did you go to Ferney?’ asked Daphne eagerly. ‘Isn’t it pretty?’
‘My dear Daphne, you forget that I am a clergyman’s wife,’ said Mrs.
Ferrers, with dignity. ‘Do you suppose that I would worship at the
shrine of a man who made a mock of religion?’
‘Not of religion,’ muttered Gerald, ‘but of priestcraft.’
‘But you were interested about Rousseau,’ said Daphne. ‘I thought they
were both wicked men—that there was nothing to choose between them.’
‘Voltaire’s infidelity was more notorious,’ replied Mrs. Ferrers; ‘I
could never have told Marmaduke that I visited the house of an avowed——’
‘Deist,’ interjected Gerald.
Hard pressed, Mrs. Ferrers was constrained to admit that she had never
read a line written by either Voltaire or Rousseau, and that she had
only a kind of dictionary idea of the two men, so vague that their
images might at any moment become confounded in her mind.
When she had reposed a little after her journey, and had seen the
contents of the Saratoga trunks arranged in wardrobe and drawers, Aunt
Rhoda showed herself a most ardent votary of the picturesque. She had
a volume of Byron in her hand all day, and quoted his description of
Leman and Chillon in a way that was almost as exasperating as the
torture inflicted by a professional punster. She insisted upon being
taken to Chillon on the morning after her arrival. She made Gerald
organise an excursion from Evian to the mountain village above, at the
foot of the Dent d’Oche, for the following day. She made them take
her to the Rochers de Naye, to the Gorge du Chauderon; to Lausanne by
steamer one day, to Nyon another day. She was always exploring the
guide-books in search of excursions that could be managed between
sunrise and sundown.
Sir Vernon, having settled himself in his study at Montreux, with books
and papers about him, was just as much dependent for his comfort and
happiness upon Lina’s society as ever he had been at South Hill. It
was out of the question that a daughter so unselfish and devoted could
leave her invalid father day after day. Thus it happened that Madoline
in a manner dropped out of the excursionising party. Gerald could
not be dispensed with—though he more than once declared in favour of
staying at home—for nobody else was familiar with those shores, and
Mrs. Ferrers protested that it would be impossible to get on without
him.
‘You all have your Baedekers,’ he argued, ‘and you are only going over
beaten tracks. What more can you want?’
‘Beaten tracks!’ exclaimed Aunt Rhoda indignantly. ‘I’m sure those
pathways you took us up yesterday on the way to the Dent d’Oche had
never been trodden upon except by the cows. And I hate groping about
with my nose in a guide-book. One always misses the things best worth
seeing. Do you think we could get on without him, Daphne?’ she asked
in conclusion, appealing to her younger niece, to whom she had been
unusually amiable ever since her arrival.
‘I think we might manage without Mr. Goring,’ Daphne answered gravely,
with never a glance at Gerald. She had scrupulously avoided all
direct association with him of late. ‘Edgar and I are getting to know
Switzerland and Swiss ways wonderfully well.’
‘Have you ever been to the Gorge du Chauderon?’ asked Aunt Rhoda.
Daphne confessed that this particular locality was unknown to her. She
did not even know what the Gorge was, except that it sounded, in a
general way, like a glen or ravine.
‘Then how can you talk such arrant nonsense?’ demanded her aunt
contemptuously. ‘What good could you or Edgar be in a place that
neither of you have ever seen in your lives? You can’t know the proper
way to get to it, or the safest way to get away from it. We should all
tumble over some hidden precipice, and break our necks.’
‘Baedeker doesn’t say anything about precipices,’ said Daphne, with her
eyes on that authority.
‘Baedeker thinks no more of precipices than I think of a country lane,’
answered Aunt Rhoda.
‘I am sure Lina would like to have Mr. Goring at home sometimes,’ said
Daphne. Gerald had strolled out into the garden while they talked.
‘Could we not get a guide?’
‘I detest guides,’ replied her aunt, who knew that those guardians of
the strangers’ safety were expensive, and fancied she might have to pay
her share of the cost. ‘Gerald may just as well be with us as moping
here. I know what my brother is, and that he will keep Lina dancing
attendance upon him all day long.’
Mr. Goring went with them everywhere, and seemed nothing loth to
labour in their service. He knew the ground thoroughly, and led them
over it in a quiet leisurely way, unknown to the average tourist, who
goes everywhere in a scamper, and returns to his native land with his
mind full of confused memories. He had to put up with a great deal of
Aunt Rhoda’s society during all these excursions, and was gratified
with lengthy confidences from that lady; for Daphne was loyal to her
faithful lover, and walked with him and talked with him, and gave him
as much of her company as was possible. She talked of Hawksyard and her
future mother-in-law, of the tenants, and the villagers, the horses and
dogs. She talked of hunting and shooting, of everything which most
interested her lover; and then she went home in the evening so weary
and worn out and heart-sick that she was glad to sit quietly in the
verandah after dinner, petting a tawny St. Bernard dog called Monk,
a gigantic animal, who belonged to the house, and who had attached
himself to Daphne from her first coming with a warm regard. He was her
sole companion very often in her boating excursions, when she went
roaming about the lake in her light skiff, enjoying all the loveliness
of the scene, as she could only enjoy it, in perfect solitude.
‘Surely it is hardly safe for that child to go about without a
boatman,’ exclaimed Mrs. Ferrers, as she stood at the open window of
her brother’s study, watching the swallow-sail as it flitted across the
sunlit ripples, bending to every movement of the water. ‘Vernon, do you
know that the lake is over a thousand feet deep?’
‘I don’t think the depth of water makes any difference,’ replied Sir
Vernon calmly. ‘The Avon is deep enough to drown her; yet we never
troubled ourselves about her aquatic amusements in Warwickshire. I have
Turchill’s assurance that she is perfect mistress of her boat, and I
think that ought to be enough.’
‘Of course if you are satisfied I ought to be,’ said Mrs. Ferrers,
with her ladylike shrug; ‘but I can only say that if I had a daughter
I should not encourage her in a taste for boating. In the first place,
because I cannot dispossess my mind of the idea of danger; and in the
second, because I consider such an amusement revoltingly masculine.
Daphne’s hands are ever so much wider since she began to row. I was
horrified the other day at discovering that she wears six-and-a-half
gloves.’
Daphne liked those quiet mornings on the lake, or a ramble among
vineyards or orchards, with Monk for her sole companion, better than
the formal pilgrimages to some scene made famous by the guide-books.
Those excursions with her aunt and Mr. Goring and Edgar had become
passing wearisome. The strain upon her spirits was too great. The
desire to appear gay and happy and at ease exhausted her. The effort
to banish thought and memory, and to take a rapturous pleasure in
the beauty of a picturesque scene, or the glory of a summer sky, was
becoming daily more severe. To talk twaddle with Edgar, to smile in his
face, with that gnawing pain, that passion of longing and regret always
troubling her soul, was a slow torture which she began to think must
sooner or later be mortal.
‘Can I go on living like this for ever?’ she asked herself, after
one of those endless summer days, when, in the same boat, in the
same carriage with Gerald Goring, lunching at the same inn, admiring
the same views, treading the same narrow paths or perilous wooden
footbridges, she had yet contrived to keep herself aloof from him.
‘Can I always go on acting a part—pretending to be true when I am
false to the core of my wicked heart, pretending to be happy when I am
miserable?’
The mountains and the lake were beginning to lose something of their
enchantment, something of their power to lift her out of herself and
to make her forget human sorrow amidst the immensities of Nature. She
did not love them less as they grew familiar, nay, her love increased
with her knowledge; but the distraction diminished. She could think
of herself and her own sorrow now, under the walls of Chillon, just
as keenly as in the elm walk in Stratford churchyard. The wide lake
glittering in the morning sun was no longer a magical picture, before
which every thought of self faded. Gliding dreamily along the blue
water she gave herself up to a sadness that was half bitter, half
sweet; bitter, because she knew that her life was to be spent apart
from Gerald Goring; sweet, because she was so certain of his love. He
told her of it every day, however carefully she avoided all direct
association with him: told her by veiled words, by stolen looks, by
that despondency and gloom which hung about him like a cloud. Love has
a hundred subtle ways of revealing itself. A fatal passion needs not to
be expounded in the preachments of a St. Preux, in the moral lectures
and intellectual flights of a Julie. Briefer and more direct is the
language of an unhappy love. It reveals itself unawares; it escapes
from the soul unconsciously, as the perfume from the rose.
Daphne was very thankful when her aunt’s active and insatiable spirit
was fain to subside into repose; not because Mrs. Ferrers was tired
of sight-seeing, but simply because she had conscientiously done
every lion within a manageable distance of Montreux. In her secret
soul Aunt Rhoda thought contemptuously of the bluest, biggest, lake
in Switzerland, and all the glory of the Savoy range. Had not these
easily-reached districts long ceased to be fashionable? Her soul
yearned for Ragatz or Davos, St. Moritz or Pontresina, the only places
of which people with any pretence to good style ever talked nowadays.
It was all very well for Byron to be eloquent about Lake Leman or
ecstatic about Mont Blanc; for in his time railways and monster
steamboats had not vulgarised Savoy, and a gentleman might be rapturous
about scenes which were only known to the travelled Englishman. But
to-day, when every Cook’s tourist had scaled the Montanvert, when ‘Arry
was a familiar figure on the skirts of the Great Glacier, who could
feel any pride or real satisfaction in a prolonged residence on the
Lake of Geneva. With all those subtle wiles of which a worldly woman
is mistress did Mrs. Ferrers try to direct her brother’s thoughts and
fancies towards the Engadine. She reminded him how the fashionable
London physician had lauded the life-giving, youth-renewing quality
of the atmosphere, and had particularly recommended Pontresina, if he
could but manage the journey.
‘But I can’t manage it, and I don’t mean to manage it,’ retorted Sir
Vernon testily. ‘Do you suppose I am going to endure a jolting drive of
twenty-four hours——’
‘Fourteen at most,’ murmured his sister.
‘A great deal you know about it! Do you think I am going to be carted
up hill and down hill in order to get beforehand with winter on a bleak
plateau, diversified with glaciers and pine-trees? It is absurd to
suggest such a thing to a man in weak health.’
‘It is for your health that I make the suggestion, Vernon,’ replied
his sister meekly. ‘You cannot deny that Dr. Cavendish recommended the
Engadine.’
‘Simply because the Engadine is the last fad of the moneyed classes.
These doctors all sing the same song. One year they send everyone to
Egypt, another year they try to popularise Algiers. One would suppose
they were in league with the Continental railways and steam companies.
One might get one’s nerves braced just as well at Broadway or Malvern,
or on the Cornish moors; one might get well or die just as comfortably
at Penzance or Torquay. You quite ignore the trouble of a change of
quarters. I have made myself thoroughly comfortable here. If I were to
go to the Engadine I should take only Lina and Jinman, and you would
have to take Daphne home and keep her at the Rectory till our return.’
This was not at all what Mrs. Ferrers had in view. She had taken for
granted that if she could induce her brother to go to the Engadine
she would be taken, as a matter of course, in his train. He was a
free-handed man in all domestic matters, though he very often grumbled
about his poverty; and he would have paid his sister’s expenses without
a thought, if he were willing to endure her company. But it seemed that
he was not willing, and that she had been unconsciously urging him to
her own ruin. To have her Swiss experiences suddenly cut short, to
have that audacious little flirt Daphne planted upon her for a month’s
visit! The thing was too horrible to contemplate.
‘My dear Vernon,’ she exclaimed, with affectionate eagerness, ‘if
you do not feel yourself equal to the journey it would be madness to
undertake it.’
‘Exactly my own idea. Please say no more about it,’ he answered coldly.
‘I am sorry you are tired of Montreux.’
‘Tired! I adore the place. It is positively delicious. A little
stifling, perhaps, in the heat of the day, but beyond measure, lovely.’
After this Mrs. Ferrers never more spoke word about St. Moritz or
Pontresina. She saw by last week’s society papers that everybody worth
talking about was taking his or her pleasure in that exalted region;
but she only sighed and kept silence. The ‘society papers’ ignored
Lake Leman altogether, nor did they ever mention Mont Blanc. It seemed
as if they hardly knew that such things existed. Their contributors all
went straight through. Aunt Rhoda remembered how, many years before,
when she had gone through the Trossachs and had been full of enthusiasm
and delight, and had gone home proud of her tour, her travelled friends
had so scorned her that she had never again ventured to mention Katrine
or Lomond, Inversnaid or the Falls of Clyde.
She settled down as well as she could to the domestic quiet of
Montreux—the mornings and afternoons in the garden; the everlasting
novels and poetry and crewel-work; Daphne and the St. Bernard sitting
on the sloping grass by the edge of the water, or loitering about among
the flowers. She bore this luxurious monotony as long as she could, and
then she was seized with a happy thought which opened a little vista of
variety.
She discovered, one sultry afternoon, that Lina was looking pale and
fagged, and called her brother’s attention to that fact.
‘I don’t wish to alarm you, Vernon,’ she said, as they were all
sitting at afternoon tea on the lawn, in the shade of a magnificent
willow, whose long tresses trailed in the lake; ‘but I believe if you
don’t give Lina a little change from this baking valley, she will be
seriously ill.’
‘Pray don’t say that, Aunt Rhoda; I assure you that I am perfectly
well,’ remonstrated Madoline, looking up from her cups and saucers.
‘My dear, you are one of those unselfish creatures who go on pretending
to be well until they sink,’ replied Mrs. Ferrers, with an air of
knowing ever so much more about Lina than Lina knew herself. ‘You
are languishing—positively pining for mountain air. Everybody is not
created with the constitution of a salamander,’ she added, with a
contemptuous glance at Daphne, who was sitting in the full glare of the
afternoon sun, ‘and for anybody except a salamander this place for the
last three days has been almost intolerable. Dearly as I love you all,
and delighted as I am to be with you, it has been only the idea of the
dust and the heat of the railway that has prevented my going back to
Warwickshire.’
Sir Vernon looked uneasily at his beloved daughter. He had kept her a
good deal about him; he had let her stay at home to bear him company,
when the others were breathing the cool air of the lake, or climbing
into the fresher atmosphere of the hills; and now it slowly dawned upon
him that his selfishness might have endangered her health. Rhoda was
always an alarmist—one of those unpleasant people who scent calamity
afar off, and are prescient of coming trouble in the hour of present
joy; but it was true that Madoline was pale and languid-looking. She
had a fatigued look, and her beauty had lost much of its bloom and
freshness.
‘Lina is not looking well,’ he said, glancing at her uneasily; ‘what
can we do for you, dear?’
‘Nothing, father,’ answered Lina, with her gentle smile: ‘there is
nothing the matter.’
‘You told me this morning that you could not sleep last night,’
murmured Mrs. Ferrers.
‘It was a very warm night,’ admitted Lina, vexed at her aunt’s
fussiness.
‘Warm! It was stifling. This lake is at the bottom of a basin,
completely shut in by hills,’ said Mrs. Ferrers, as if she had made a
discovery. ‘I’ll tell you what we could do, Vernon. I might take the
two girls up to the hotel at Glion, or at Les Avants. They are both
very nice rustic hotels, clean and airy. A few days in that mountain
air would pick Lina up wonderfully.’
‘Would you like to go, dear?’ asked Sir Vernon doubtfully.
‘I should like it of all things, if you would go with us,’ answered his
daughter; ‘but I don’t want to leave you.’
‘Never mind me, Lina. I can get on pretty well for a few days, sorely
as I shall miss you. I suppose three or four days will be enough?’
‘Ample,’ said Mrs. Ferrers, delighted at having gained her point. ‘We
can ramble about and see everything that is to be seen in three or four
days.’
‘So be it, then. Start as soon as you like. You had better send Jinman
up at once to engage rooms for you. This is Monday. I suppose if you
start to-morrow morning you can come back on Friday.’
‘Certainly. Three days in that magnificent air will be quite long
enough to make Lina strong,’ replied Mrs. Ferrers, assured that in
three days she would have exhausted the pleasures of a lively hotel and
picturesque surroundings.
‘I wish you were coming with us, dear father,’ said Madoline.
‘My dearest, do you think it would do me any good to have my old
bones dragged up an almost perpendicular hill, and to put up with the
indifferent accommodation of a rustic hotel? I am much better taking my
ease here. The young men will want to go with you, no doubt.’
‘If you please, sir,’ answered Edgar.
Gerald Goring said never a word, but it was taken for granted that he
meant to go. He and Madoline must, of course, be inseparable until that
solemn knot should be tied which would make them one and indivisible
for ever and ever.