At Bâle there was hurry and bustle, the half hour they ought to have had
there wasted away by some unaccountable loosening of the bandages of
discipline on the German side to four minutes--the conductor when
questioned said the engine had gone wrong, and explained, with a shrug
that was to help hide his shame in this failure of the infallible, that
engines were but human--and again there was an undignified scamper down
steps and up steps and along platforms, and they arrived panting, pushed
in by porters, only just in time into a compartment studded round with
sleeping Swiss.
Ingram left Ingeborg sitting temporarily on the edge of the seat
clasping her umbrella and coat and little bag, while he walked through
the train in search of more space, refusing to believe such a repulsive
thing could happen to him as that he should be obliged to travel to
Bellinzona with four sleeping Swiss; but the train seemed to be a
popular one, else a national festival was preparing or some other
upheaval that caused people to move about that night in numbers, and all
the compartments were full.
He went back to Ingeborg in a condition of resentful gloom. The four
Swiss were sleeping in the four corners, and the carriage smelt of
crumbs. He opened the window, and there was an immediate simultaneous
resurrection of the four Swiss into angry life. Ingram, fluent in
French, met them with an equal volubility, standing with his back to the
open window protecting it from their assaults, while Ingeborg looked on
in alarm; but the conductor when he came pronounced in favour of the
four Swiss. Pacified, they instantly fell asleep again; and Ingram, at
least not taking care of their legs, strode out into the corridor, where
he stood staring through the open window at midnight nature and cursing
himself for not having broken the journey at Bâle, while Ingeborg peeped
anxiously at his back round her coat and her umbrella.
From Bâle to Lucerne he was as unaware of her as if he had never met
her, so very angry was he and so very tired. Then at Lucerne two of the
Swiss got out, and turning round he saw her asleep in the compartment,
tumbled over a little to one side, still holding her things, and once
again she filled his heart. She was utterly asleep, in the most
uncomfortable position, dropped away in the middle of how she happened
to be sitting like a child does or a puppy; and he went in and sat down
beside her and lifted her head very cautiously and gently on to his arm.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him along his sleeve without
moving, in a sort of surprise.
"This is Lucerne," he whispered, bending down; how soft she was, and how
little!
"Is it? Why, that's where Robert and I--"
But she was asleep again.
She slept till he woke her up before Bellinzona, and so she never knew
the moment she had thrilled to think of when they would in the dawn of
the summer morning come out on the other side of the St. Gothard into
what, in spite of anything the Swiss might say, was Italy; and still
half asleep, mechanically putting on her hat and pausing to rub her eyes
while he urged her to be quick, she did not realise where she was. When
she did, and looked eagerly at the window, it was to turn to him
immediately in consternation.
"_Oh!_" she said.
"Yes," said Ingram, passing his hand quickly over his hair, a gesture of
his when annoyed.
It was raining.
They got out on to what seemed the most melancholy platform in the
world, a grey wet junction with a grey level sky low down over it and
over all the country round it. The Locarno train was waiting, and they
went to it in silence. It was a quarter to six, a difficult time of day.
The train, almost empty, jogged slowly through the valley of the Ticino.
Down the windows raindrops chased each other. On the road alongside the
railway, a road bound also for Locarno and dreary with brown puddles, an
occasional high cart crawled drawn by a mule and driven by a huddled
human being beneath a vast umbrella. The lake when they came in sight of
it was a yawn of mist.
Ingeborg stared out at these things in silence. It was incredible that
this should be Italy--again in spite of anything the Swiss might
say--while on the other side of the Alps all Germany, including
Kökensee, lay shimmering in light and colour. Ingram sat in the farthest
corner of the carriage, his hands thrust in his pockets, his hat pulled
over his eyes, looking straight in front of him. He was a mass of varied
and profound exasperations. Everything exasperated him, even to the long
trickle slowly creeping towards him down the floor from Ingeborg's wet
umbrella. There was nothing she could have said or done at that moment
that would not have rubbed his exasperation into a flame of swift and
devastating speech. Luckily she said and did nothing, but sat quite
silent with her face turned away towards the blurred window panes. But
if she did not speak or do she yet was; and he was acutely conscious,
though he never took his eyes off the cushions opposite, of every detail
of her in that grey and horrible light, of her crumpled clothes, her
drooping smudgedness, her hat grown careless, and her hair in wisps. He
had wanted to show her Italy, he had extraordinarily wanted to show her
Italy in its summer magnificence, and there was--this. As a result what
he now extraordinarily wanted was to upbraid her. He did not stop to
analyse why.
At the hôtel in Locarno where they went for baths and breakfast--he had
planned originally to show her the beautiful walk from there along the
side of the lake to Cannobio, but now beyond baths and breakfast he had
no plan--a person in shirt sleeves and a green apron who inadequately
represented the hall-porter, for it was not yet seven and the
hall-porter was still in bed, unintelligently and unfortunately spoke to
Ingeborg of Ingram in his hearing as _Monsieur votre père_.
This strangely annoyed Ingram. "It's your short skirt," he said, with
suppressed sulphur. "You positively must get some clothes. Dressed like
that you suggest perambulators."
"But this is my _best_ dress," she protested. "It's quite new. I mean,
I've never had it on before since it was made."
And with the easy tactlessness of one who has not yet learned to be
afraid, she looked at him and laughed.
"Why," she said, "this morning I'm perambulators and only last night,
quite late last night, I was the peace of God."
To this, however, he did not trust himself to reply, but vanished with a
kind of pounce into his bathroom.
He came to breakfast clean, but in a mood that could bear nothing, least
of all good temper. Ingeborg was by nature good tempered. She sat there
pleased and refreshed--after all, he remembered resentfully, she had had
five hours' sleep in the train while he had not had a wink--gaily making
the best of things. She pointed out the strength of the coffee and the
crispness of the rolls. She asked him if he did not think it a nice
hôtel. She did not agree when he alluded to the waiter as blighted. She
predicted a break in the weather at eleven, and said that it had always
come true what her old nurse used to tell her, that rain at seven meant
fine at eleven.
He hated her old nurse.
Until he had had some sleep, a long steady sleep, he would, he knew, be
nothing but jarred nerves. When then after breakfast she inquired, with
a cheerful air of being ready for anything, what they were going to do
next, he briefly announced that he was going to sleep.
"Oh? Shall I have to go, too?" she asked, her face falling.
"Of course not."
"Then," she said eagerly, "I'll go out and explore."
"What, in this rain?"
"Oh, I've got goloshes."
Goloshes! He retreated into his room.
It annoyed him intensely that she should be not only ready but pleased
to go out for her first walk in Italy without him. He threw himself
angrily on the bed, rang the bell, and bade the person who answered it,
the same young man in shirt sleeves and a green apron who had welcomed
them, tell Madame that if he were not awake by luncheon time she was not
to wait for him, but was to have luncheon at the proper hour just the
same.
The young man sought out Ingeborg in her room. She was tugging on her
goloshes, one foot on a chair, her face flushed with effort and
expectancy.
"_Monsieur votre père_--" he began.
"_Ce n'est pas mon père_," said Ingeborg, turning an amused face to him
as she tugged.
"_Monsieur votre mari_--"
"_Quoi? Certainement pas_," said Ingeborg, who in spite of her prize for
French was unacquainted with the refinements of that language. "_Ce
n'est pas mon mari_," she said, energetically repudiating.
"_Ah--Monsieur n'est pas le mari de Madame_," said the young man
trippingly.
"_Certainement pas_," said Ingeborg. "_Mon mari est à la maison_."
"_Ah--tiens_," said the young man.
"_C'est mon ami_," said Ingeborg.
"_Ah--tiens, tiens_," said the young man; and he delivered his message
with a sudden ease and comfort of manner.
But though the young man's manner grew easy, after his report of this
brief dialogue the hôtel's manner grew stiff, for on the slip of paper
presented to Ingram to be filled in with his name he had, unaware of the
things Ingeborg was saying, described himself and her as Mr. and Mrs.
Dobson, and the hôtel, in which English Church services were held, and
which was at that moment, though the season was over, being stayed in by
several representative English spinsters, and a clergyman also from
England with a wife and grown-up daughters, most respectable nice ladies
who all took him out every day twice, once after breakfast and once
after tea, for a little walk--the hôtel decided, putting its heads
together in the manager's office, that it would, using tact, encourage
the Dobsons to depart.
It could do nothing, however, for the moment, for the lady had
disappeared with an umbrella into the wet, and the gentleman, it could
hear, was sleeping; and this condition of things continued for many
hours, the lady not coming into luncheon but remaining in the wet, and
the gentleman, it could hear, going on sleeping. Then it became aware
that they were both having tea in a distant corner of the slippery
windowed wilderness of bamboo chairs and tables described in its
prospectus as the Handsome Palmy Lounge, and that they had drawn up a
second table to the one their tea was on and piled it with undesirably
dripping branches of the yellow broom that grew high up in the hills,
and that they were being noticed with suspicion by the hôtel's authentic
guests who were used to having their tea in the silent stupor of the
really married, because the gentleman, contrary to the observed habits
of genuine husbands, was talking to the lady instead of reading the
_Daily Mail_.
The hôtel was nothing if not competent. It could handle any sort of
situation competently, from runaway couples to that most unpleasant form
of guest of all, the kind that came alive and went away dead. Full of
tact, it allowed the lady and gentleman to finish their tea undisturbed;
then it sent some one sleek to inform them that, most unfortunately,
their rooms had been engaged for weeks beforehand for that very night,
and therefore--
But before this person could even begin to be competent the gentleman
requested him to have a carriage round in half an hour as he intended
going on that evening; and thus the parting was accomplished, as all
partings should be, urbanely, and the manager was able to display his
doorstep suavity and bow and wish them a pleasant journey.
The Dobsons departed in a gay mood, with the branches of yellow broom
rhythmically nodding between them over the edge of the waterproof apron
that buttoned them in. Ingram had slept soundly for seven hours, and
felt altogether renewed. He was taking her to Cannobio, along the road
he had hoped to walk with her in sunshine; but Ingeborg, who had climbed
hills till her blood raced and glowed, saw peculiar beauties even in the
wetness, and would not believe that sun could make things lovelier.
Outside Locarno, in that flat and grassy place beyond the town where the
beautiful small hills draw back for a little from the lake, and the
ox-eyed daisies grow so big, and the roads are strewn white with the
blossoms of acacias, it stopped raining and Ingram had the hood put
down. The mountains on the other side of the lake were indigo-coloured,
with pulled-off tufts of woolly clouds lying along them down near the
water. The lake was a steely black. The valley brooded in sullen
lushness; and the branches of broom they carried with them in the
carriage cut through the sombre background like a golden knife.
"The one doubt I have," said Ingeborg, breathing in the warm scented air
in long breaths, "is that it's all too good to be true."
"It isn't," said Ingram, safely disentangled for a while from the
intricate effect on his enthusiasms of fatigue and dirt and headaches,
"it's absolutely good and absolutely true. But only," he said, turning
and looking at her, "because you're here, you dear close sister of my
dreams. Without you it would be nothing but grey empty space in which I
would just hang horribly."
"You wouldn't. You couldn't not be happy in this," she said, gazing
about her.
"If you weren't here I wouldn't see it," said Ingram, firmly believing
it in the face of the fact that nothing ever escaped his acute vision.
"I see all this only through you. You are my eyes. Without you I go
blind, I grope about with the light gone out. You don't know what you
are to me, you little shining crystal thing--you don't begin to realise
it, my dear, my dear sweet Found-at-Last."
"And this morning," said Ingeborg, smiling at him, but only with a
passing smile on her way to all the other things she wanted to look at,
"you said I suggested perambulators."
For a space they drove on in silence, for he deplored her trick of
reminding him of past moods. But beyond Ascona, where the mountains come
down to the lake and leave only just room enough between them and the
water for the road to twist through, he recovered again, consoled by her
joy in the beauty of the drive and unable to see her happiness without
feeling pleased. After all, what he most loved in her was that she was,
so miraculously, a child; a child with gleams of wisdom flickering like
a lizard's tongue in her mouth, and who even when she was silly was
silly also somehow in gleams--gleams of silver and sunshine. And always
at the back of her, far away, hidden in what he thought of as depths of
burning light, was that elusive thing by which he was so passionately
attracted, the thing he was going to paint, the thing his own secret
self crept to, knowing that here was warmth, here was understanding, her
dear, dear little soul.
The evening at Cannobio was unsatisfactory. Ingeborg manifestly enjoyed
herself, but it was with an absorption in what she was seeing and an
obliviousness to himself that seemed to him both excessive and tiresome.
Here was everything to make two people so happily alone whisper--warmth,
dusk, the broad shadow of plane-trees, unruffled water, lights
romantically twinkling in corners, the twanging of a distant guitar,
laughter and singing and the glint of red wine from the little lit-up
tables along the front of the restaurants beneath the arcade at the back
of the piazza, and he there, Ingram, after all a person of real
importance, Edward Ingram at her feet, only asking to be allowed to
explain to her in every variety of phrase how sweet she was. But she was
dead to her opportunities. There wasn't another woman in Europe, he told
himself angrily, who would not have whispered.
They wandered out of their hôtel after dinner, a square pink Italian
albergo facing the lake where the town left off, and free, as indeed
Cannobio altogether was, from transitory English with their awful eyes,
and they strolled about looking at things. He did not look much, for he
knew these Italian sights and sounds by heart, and at that moment only
wanted to look at her; but the least little thing caught her attention
away from him absolutely, to the exclusion of anything he might be
saying. Positively she even preferred to listen to the throb of the
steamer coming nearer from the other end of the lake than to him; and
she interrupted him in the middle of a sentence that intimately
concerned herself to stand still in the piazza and ask him what he
thought of the smells.
"I don't think about them at all," he said shortly.
"Oh, but there are such a lot of them," she exclaimed, sorting them out
with her lifted nose. "There's the smell of roses, and the smell of
lake, and the smell of frying, and there's more roses, and then there's
garlic, and then there's a quite dim one, and then there's a little puff
of something else--I don't know what--sheer Italy, I expect. _I_ never
smelt so many smells," she ended, with a gesture of astonishment.
He tried to get her away from them. He led her to a bench beneath a
plane-tree. "Come and sit by me and I will tell you things," he said,
luring her. "Look, there's the moon got free from the clouds--and do you
see how the coloured lights of the steamer that's coming shine right
down a ladder of light into the water? And what do you think of the feel
of the air, little sister? Isn't it soft and gentle? Doesn't it remind
you of all kind and tender things?"
"But much the most wonderful of anything are these smells," she said,
absorbed in them. "There are at least twelve different ones."
"Never mind them. I want to talk."
"But they're so amusing," she said. "There are interesting ones, and
exciting ones, and beautiful ones, and disquieting ones, and awful ones,
and too-perfect-for-anything ones, and they're all chasing each other up
and down and round and round us."
He lit a cigarette. "There," he said, "that will blot the whole lot of
them into only one, and you'll talk to me reasonably. Let us talk while
we can, my dear. In a little time we shall be dead to all feeling for
ever and ever."
"Yes, we shall be little shreds of rottenness," she said placidly.
"God, who wastes a sunset every night--" he said, getting up to stamp on
the match he had thrown away--
"If they were mine," she interrupted, "I'd keep them all in a gallery or
a portfolio."
"--understands, I suppose," he went on, sitting down again, "why such
dear things as this evening here, this time of being alone together
here, should end and be forgotten."
"As long as I live," she said with earnestness, "it will not be
forgotten. All my other memories will be like a string of--oh, just
beads and nuts and fir-cones, till I get to this one, and then on the
string there'll be suddenly a shining jewel."
"Really? Really?" he murmured, stopping to look into her eyes, revived
by this speech. "Little flame in my heart, really?"
"Oh," said Ingeborg dreamily, in her husky, soft voice, "but the
wonderfullest thing, the wonderfullest jewel. My first Italian
town--Cannobio...."
He ceased to be revived. He smoked in silence. The effect on her of
Italy was as surprising as it was unexpected. At Kökensee she had been
entirely concentrated on him, eagerly listening only to him, drinking in
only what he said, worshipping. Here she seemed possessed by a rage for
any sights and sounds merely because they were new. There had been
moments from the very start in Berlin when he almost felt of secondary
interest, and they appeared to be becoming permanent. It was disturbing.
It was incredible. It was grotesque. Perhaps it would be as well to take
her away from the lakes, from all that part of the country which
apparently caught her imagination on its most sensitive side. Perhaps
Milan for a while, with pavements and museums.
"Please, will you give me some of that money?" she asked across his
reflections.
"Which money?" he said, looking at her.
"My money."
"What on earth for?"
"I want to send Robert a picture postcard."
He threw his cigarette away. "It would be most improper," he said,
passing his hand rapidly over his hair. "Highly improper."
"Improper?" she echoed, staring at him. "To send Robert a picture
postcard?"
"Grossly. It simply isn't done."
"What? Not send Robert--but he'd like to see where we've got to."
"For heaven's sake don't _talk_ about Robert," he exclaimed, getting up
quickly; the idea of the picture postcard profoundly shocked him.
"Not talk about him?" she repeated, staring at him in astonishment. "But
he's my husband."
"Exactly. That's what makes him so improper."
"What? Why, I thought husbands were just the very things that never
could be improper."
"Ingeborg," he said, walking angrily up and down in front of her, "are
you or are you not being taken care of on this--this holiday by me? Are
you or are you not travelling with me?"
"Yes, I know. But I don't see why I shouldn't send Rob--"
"Well, then, if you don't see you must believe. You've just got to
believe me when I tell you certain things are impossible."
"But Robert--"
"Good heavens, don't _talk_ of Robert. If I beg you not to, if I tell
you it spoils things for me, if I ask you as a favour--" He stopped in
front of her. "My dear, my little mate, my everything that's central and
alive among the husks--"
"Of course I won't, then. At least, I'll try to remember not to," she
said, looking at him with a smile that had effort in it as well as
surprise. "But I don't see why a picture postcard--"
The steamer they had seen for so long, the last one of the day from
Arona to Locarno, was nearing the pier, and the piazza suddenly swarmed
with busy groups preparing to go on it or see each other off.
"Let's come away," said Ingram, impatiently. "Let's come _away_!" he
repeated with a stamp of his foot. "I hate this crowd."
She got up and walked beside him towards the hôtel, her eyes on the
ground.
"I really can't see why I shouldn't send Robert--" she began.
"Oh, damn Robert!" he exclaimed violently.
She looked at him. "Damn Robert?" she echoed, immensely surprised.
"But--don't you _like_ Robert?"
"No," said Ingram. "No," he said, even louder. "Not here. Not now. Now
don't," he added in extreme irritation as he saw her mouth opening, "ask
me why, don't ask me to explain. Go to bed, Ingeborg. It's time all
children under ten were in bed. And get up early, please, because we're
going to start the first thing for--anyhow, for somewhere else."