Schlangenbad, I found her just as fussy and as worrying as ever. 'Let me
see, how many of these horrid pfennigs make an English penny? I never
_can_ remember. Oh, those silly little nickel things are ten pfennigs
each, are they? Well, eight would be a penny, I suppose. A mark's a
shilling; ridiculous of them to divide it into ten pence instead of
twelve; one never really knows how much one's paying for anything. Why
these Continental people can't be content to use pounds, shillings, and
pence, all over alike, the same as we do, passes _my_ comprehension.
They're glad enough to get English sovereigns when they can; why, then,
don't they use them as such, instead of reckoning them each at
twenty-five francs, and then trying to cheat you out of the proper
exchange, which is _always_ ten centimes more than the brokers give you?
What, _we_ use their beastly decimal system? Lois, I'm ashamed of you.
An English girl to turn and rend her native country like that! Francs
and centimes, indeed! Fancy proposing it at Peter Robinson's! No, I
will _not_ go by the boat, my dear. I hate the Rhine boats, crowded with
nasty selfish pigs of Germans. What _I_ like is a first-class
compartment all to myself, and no horrid foreigners. Especially Germans.
They're bursting with self-satisfaction--have such an exaggerated belief
in their "land" and their "folk." And when they come to England, they do
nothing but find fault with us. If people aren't satisfied with the
countries they travel in, they'd better stop at home--that's _my_
opinion. Nasty pigs of Germans! The very sight of them sickens me. Oh, I
don't mind if they _do_ understand me, child. They all learn English
nowadays; it helps them in trade--that's why they're driving us out of
all the markets. But it _must_ be good for them to learn once in a way
what other people really think of them--civilised people, I mean; not
Germans. They're a set of barbarians.'
We reached Schlangenbad alive, though I sometimes doubted it: for my old
lady did her boisterous best to rouse some peppery German officer into
cutting our throats incontinently by the way; and when we got there, we
took up our abode in the nicest hotel in the village. Lady Georgina had
engaged the best front room on the first floor, with a charming view
across the pine-clad valley; but I must do her the justice to say that
she took the second best for me, and that she treated me in every way
like the guest she delighted to honour. My refusal to accept her twenty
guineas made her anxious to pay it back to me within the terms of our
agreement. She described me to everybody as a young friend who was
travelling with her, and never gave any one the slightest hint of my
being a paid companion. Our arrangement was that I was to have two
guineas for the week, besides my travelling expenses, board, and
lodging.
On our first morning at Schlangenbad, Lady Georgina sallied forth, very
much overdressed, and in a youthful hat, to use the waters. They are
valued chiefly for the complexion, I learned; I wondered then why Lady
Georgina came there--for she hadn't any; but they are also recommended
for nervous irritability, and as Lady Georgina had visited the place
almost every summer for fifteen years, it opened before one's mind an
appalling vista of what her temper might have been if she had _not_ gone
to Schlangenbad. The hot springs are used in the form of a bath. '_You_
don't need them, my dear,' Lady Georgina said to me, with a
good-humoured smile; and I will own that I did not, for nature has
gifted me with a tolerable cuticle. But I like when at Rome to do as
Rome does; so I tried the baths once. I found them unpleasantly smooth
and oily. I do not freckle, but if I did, I think I should prefer
freckles.
We walked much on the terrace--the inevitable dawdling promenade of all
German watering-places--it reeked of Serene Highness. We also drove out
among the low wooded hills which bound the Rhine valley. The majority of
the visitors, I found, were ladies--Court ladies, most of them; all
there for their complexions, but all anxious to assure me privately they
had come for what they described as 'nervous debility.' I divided them
at once into two classes: half of them never had and never would have a
complexion at all; the other half had exceptionally smooth and beautiful
skins, of which they were obviously proud, and whose pink-and-white
peach-blossom they thought to preserve by assiduous bathing. It was
vanity working on two opposite bases. There was a sprinkling of men,
however, who were really there for a sufficient reason--wounds or
serious complaints; while a few good old sticks, porty and whisty, were
in attendance on invalid wives or sisters.
[Illustration: HE CAST A HASTY GLANCE AT US.]
From the beginning I noticed that Lady Georgina went peering about all
over the place, as if she were hunting for something she had lost, with
her long-handled tortoise-shell glasses perpetually in evidence--the
'aristocratic outrage' I called them--and that she eyed all the men with
peculiar attention. But I took no open notice of her little weakness. On
our second day at the Spa, I was sauntering with her down the chief
street--'a beastly little hole, my dear; not a decent shop where one can
buy a reel of thread or a yard of tape in the place!'--when I observed a
tall and handsome young man on the opposite side of the road cast a
hasty glance at us, and then sneak round the corner hurriedly. He was a
loose-limbed, languid-looking young man, with large, dreamy eyes, and a
peculiarly beautiful and gentle expression; but what I noted about him
most was an odd superficial air of superciliousness. He seemed always to
be looking down with scorn on that foolish jumble, the universe. He
darted away so rapidly, however, that I hardly discovered all this just
then. I piece it out from subsequent observations.
Later in the day, we chanced to pass a _cafe_, where three young
exquisites sat sipping Rhine wines after the fashion of the country. One
of them, with a gold-tipped cigarette held gracefully between two
slender fingers, was my languid-looking young aristocrat. He was blowing
out smoke in a lazy blue stream. The moment he saw me, however, he
turned away as if he desired to escape observation, and ducked down so
as to hide his face behind his companions. I wondered why on earth he
should want to avoid me. Could this be the Count? No, the young man with
the halo of cigarette smoke stood three inches taller. Who, then, at
Schlangenbad could wish to avoid my notice? It was a singular mystery;
for I was quite certain the supercilious young man was trying his best
to prevent my seeing him.
That evening, after dinner, the Cantankerous Old Lady burst out
suddenly, 'Well, I can't for the life of me imagine why Harold hasn't
turned up here. The wretch knew I was coming; and I heard from our
Ambassador at Rome last week that he was going to be at Schlangenbad.'
'Who is Harold?' I asked.
'My nephew,' Lady Georgina snapped back, beating a devil's tattoo with
her fan on the table. 'The only member of my family, except myself, who
isn't a born idiot. Harold's not an idiot; he's an _attache_ at Rome.'
I saw it at a glance. 'Then he _is_ in Schlangenbad,' I answered. 'I
noticed him this morning.'
The old lady turned towards me sharply. She peered right through me, as
if she were a Roentgen ray. I could see she was asking herself whether
this was a conspiracy, and whether I had come there on purpose to meet
'Harold.' But I flatter myself I am tolerably mistress of my own
countenance. I did not blench. 'How do you know?' she asked quickly,
with an acid intonation.
If I had answered the truth, I should have said, 'I know he is here,
because I saw a good-looking young man evidently trying to avoid you
this morning; and if a young man has the misfortune to be born your
nephew, and also to have expectations from you, it is easy to understand
that he would prefer to keep out of your way as long as possible.' But
that would have been neither polite nor politic. Moreover, I reflected
that I had no particular reason for wishing to do Mr. Harold a bad turn;
and that it would be kinder to him, as well as to her, to conceal the
reasons on which I based my instinctive inference. So I took up a strong
strategic position. 'I have an intuition that I saw him in the village
this morning,' I said. 'Family likeness, perhaps. I merely jumped at it
as you spoke. A tall, languid young man; large, poetical eyes; an
artistic moustache--just a trifle Oriental-looking.'
'That's Harold!' the Cantankerous Old Lady rapped out sharply, with
clear conviction. 'The miserable boy! Why on earth hasn't he been round
to see me?'
I reflected that I knew why; but I did not say so. Silence is golden. I
also remarked mentally on that curious human blindness which had made me
conclude at first that the supercilious young man was trying to avoid
_me_, when I might have guessed it was far more likely he was trying to
avoid my companion. I was a nobody; Lady Georgina Fawley was a woman of
European reputation.
'Perhaps he didn't know which hotel you were stopping at,' I put in. 'Or
even that you were here.' I felt a sudden desire to shield poor Harold.
'Not know which hotel? Nonsense, child; he knows I come here on this
precise date regularly every summer; and if he didn't know, is it likely
I should try any other inn, when this is the only moderately decent
house to stop at in Schlangenbad? And the morning coffee undrinkable at
that; while the hash--_such_ hash! But that's the way in Germany. He's
an ungrateful monster; if he comes now, I shall refuse to see him.'
[Illustration: HAROLD, YOU VIPER, WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY TRYING TO AVOID
ME?]
Next morning after breakfast, however, in spite of these threats, she
hailed me forth with her on the Harold hunt. She had sent the
_concierge_ to inquire at all the hotels already, it seemed, and found
her truant at none of them; now she ransacked the _pensions_. At last
she hunted him down in a house on the hill. I could see she was really
hurt. 'Harold, you viper, what do you mean by trying to avoid me?'
'My dear aunt, _you_ here in Schlangenbad! Why, when did you arrive? And
what a colour you've got! You're looking _so_ well!' That clever thrust
saved him.
He cast me an appealing glance. 'You will not betray me?' it said. I
answered, mutely, 'Not for worlds,' with a faltering pair of downcast
eyelids.
'Oh, I'm _well_ enough, thank you,' Lady Georgina replied, somewhat
mollified by his astute allusion to her personal appearance. He had hit
her weak point dexterously. 'As well, that is, as one can expect to be
nowadays. Hereditary gout--the sins of the fathers visited as usual. But
why didn't you come to see me?'
'How can I come to see you if you don't tell me where you are? "Lady
Georgina Fawley, Europe," was the only address I knew. It strikes me as
insufficient.'
His gentle drawl was a capital foil to Lady Georgina's acidulous
soprano. It seemed to disarm her. She turned to me with a benignant wave
of her hand. 'Miss Cayley,' she said, introducing me; 'my nephew, Mr.
Harold Tillington. You've heard me talk of poor Tom Cayley, Harold? This
is poor Tom Cayley's daughter.'
'Indeed?' the supercilious _attache_ put in, looking hard at me.
'Delighted to make Miss Cayley's acquaintance.'
'Now, Harold, I can tell from your voice at once you haven't remembered
one word about Captain Cayley.'
Harold stood on the defensive. 'My dear aunt,' he observed, expanding
both palms, 'I have heard you talk of so _very_ many people, that even
_my_ diplomatic memory fails at times to recollect them all. But I do
better: I dissemble. I will plead forgetfulness now of Captain Cayley,
since you force it on me. It is not likely I shall have to plead it of
Captain Cayley's daughter.' And he bowed towards me gallantly.
The Cantankerous Old Lady darted a lightning glance at him. It was a
glance of quick suspicion. Then she turned her Roentgen rays upon my face
once more. I fear I burned crimson.
'A friend?' he asked. 'Or a fellow-guest?'
'A companion.' It was the first nasty thing she had said of me.
'Ha! more than a friend, then. A comrade.' He turned the edge neatly.
We walked out on the terrace and a little way up the zigzag path. The
day was superb. I found Mr. Tillington, in spite of his studiously
languid and supercilious air, a most agreeable companion. He knew
Europe. He was full of talk of Rome and the Romans. He had epigrammatic
wit, curt, keen, and pointed. We sat down on a bench; he kept Lady
Georgina and myself amused for an hour by his crisp sallies. Besides, he
had been everywhere and seen everybody. Culture and agriculture seemed
all one to him.
When we rose to go in, Lady Georgina remarked, with emphasis, 'Of
course, Harold, you'll come and take up your diggings at our hotel?'
'Of course, my dear aunt. How can you ask? Free quarters. Nothing would
give me greater pleasure.'
She glanced at him keenly again. I saw she had expected him to fake up
some lame excuse for not joining us; and I fancied she was annoyed at
his prompt acquiescence, which had done her out of the chance for a
family disagreement. 'Oh, you'll come then?' she said, grudgingly.
'Certainly, most respected aunt. I shall much prefer it.'
She let her piercing eye descend upon me once more. I was aware that I
had been talking with frank ease of manner to Mr. Tillington, and that I
had said several things which clearly amused him. Then I remembered all
at once our relative positions. A companion, I felt, should know her
place: it is not her _role_ to be smart and amusing. 'Perhaps,' I said,
drawing back, 'Mr. Tillington would like to remain in his present
quarters till the end of the week, while I am with you, Lady Georgina;
after that, he could have my room; it might be more convenient.'
His eye caught mine quickly. 'Oh, you're only going to stop a week,
then, Miss Cayley?' he put in, with an air of disappointment.
'Only a week,' I nodded.
'My dear child,' the Cantankerous Old Lady broke out, 'what nonsense you
do talk! Only going to stop a week? How can I exist without you?'
'That was the arrangement,' I said, mischievously. 'You were going to
look about, you recollect, for an unsophisticated Gretchen. You don't
happen to know of any warehouse where a supply of unsophisticated
Gretchens is kept constantly in stock, do you, Mr. Tillington?'
'No, I don't,' he answered, laughing. 'I believe there are dodos and
auks' eggs, in very small numbers, still to be procured in the proper
quarters; but the unsophisticated Gretchen, I am credibly informed, is
an extinct animal. Why, the cap of one fetches high prices nowadays
among collectors.'
'But you will come to the hotel at once, Harold?' Lady Georgina
interposed.
'Certainly, aunt. I will move in without delay. If Miss Cayley is going
to stay for a single week only, that adds one extra inducement for
joining you immediately.'
His aunt's stony eye was cold as marble.
So when we got back to our hotel after the baths that afternoon, the
_concierge_ greeted us with: 'Well, your noble nephew has arrived,
high-well-born countess! He came with his boxes just now, and has taken
a room near your honourable ladyship's.'
Lady Georgina's face was a study of mingled emotions. I don't know
whether she looked more pleased or jealous.
Later in the day, I chanced on Mr. Tillington, sunning himself on a
bench in the hotel garden. He rose, and came up to me, as fast as his
languid nature permitted. 'Oh, Miss Cayley,' he said, abruptly, 'I do
want to thank you so much for not betraying me. I know you spotted me
twice in the town yesterday; and I also know you were good enough to say
nothing to my revered aunt about it.'
'I had no reason for wishing to hurt Lady Georgina's feelings,' I
answered, with a permissible evasion.
His countenance fell. 'I never thought of that,' he interposed, with one
hand on his moustache. 'I-- I fancied you did it out of fellow-feeling.'
'We all think of things mainly from our own point of view first,' I
answered. 'The difference is that some of us think of them from other
people's afterwards. Motives are mixed.'
He smiled. 'I didn't know my deeply venerated relative was coming here
so soon,' he went on. 'I thought she wasn't expected till next week; my
brother wrote me that she had quarrelled with her French maid, and
'twould take her full ten days to get another. I meant to clear out
before she arrived. To tell you the truth, I was going to-morrow.'
'And now you are stopping on?'
He caught my eye again.
[Illustration: CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES, HE MURMURED.]
'Circumstances alter cases,' he murmured, with meaning.
'It is hardly polite to describe one as a circumstance,' I objected.
'I meant,' he said, quickly, 'my aunt alone is one thing; my aunt with a
friend is quite another.'
'I see,' I answered. 'There is safety in numbers.'
He eyed me hard.
'Are you mediaeval or modern?' he asked.
'Modern, I hope,' I replied. Then I looked at him again. 'Oxford?'
He nodded. 'And you?' half joking.
'Cambridge,' I said, glad to catch him out. 'What college?'
'Merton. Yours?'
'Girton.'
The odd rhyme amused him. Thenceforth we were friends--'two 'Varsity
men,' he said. And indeed it does make a queer sort of link--a
freemasonry to which even women are now admitted.
At dinner and through the evening he talked a great deal to me, Lady
Georgina putting in from time to time a characteristic growl about the
_table-d'hote_ chicken--'a special breed, my dear, with eight drumsticks
apiece'--or about the inadequate lighting of the heavy German _salon_.
She was worse than ever: pungent as a rule, that evening she was grumpy.
When we retired for the night, to my great surprise, she walked into my
bedroom. She seated herself on my bed: I saw she had come to talk over
Harold.
'He will be very rich, my dear, you know. A great catch in time. He will
inherit all my brother's money.'
'Lord Kynaston's?'
'Bless the child, no. Kynaston's as poor as a church mouse with the
tithes unpaid; he has three sons of his own, and not a blessed stiver to
leave between them. How could he, poor dear idiot? Agricultural
depression; a splendid pauper. He has only the estate, and that's in
Essex; land going begging; worth nothing a year, encumbered up to the
eyes, and loaded with first rent-charges, jointures, settlements. Money,
indeed! poor Kynaston! It's my brother Marmaduke's I mean; lucky dog,
_he_ went in for speculation--began life as a guinea-pig, and rose with
the rise of soap and cocoa. He's worth his half-million.'
'Oh, Mr. Marmaduke Ashurst'
Lady Georgina nodded. 'Marmy's a fool,' she said, briefly; 'but he knows
which side of his bread is buttered.'
'And Mr. Tillington is--his nephew?'
'Bless the child, yes; have you never read your British Bible, the
peerage? Astonishing, the ignorance of these Girton girls! They don't
even know the Leger's run at Doncaster. The family name's Ashurst.
Kynaston's an earl-- I was Lady Georgina Ashurst before I took it into
my head to marry and do for poor Evelyn Fawley. My younger brother's the
Honourable Marmaduke Ashurst--women get the best of it there--it's about
the only place where they do get the best of it: an earl's daughter is
Lady Betty; his son's nothing more than the Honourable Tom. So one
scores off one's brothers. My younger sister, Lady Guinevere Ashurst,
married Stanley Tillington of the Foreign Office. Harold's their eldest
son. Now, child, do you grasp it?'
'Perfectly,' I answered. 'You speak like Debrett. Has issue, Harold.'
'And Harold will inherit all Marmaduke's money. What I'm always afraid
of is that some fascinating adventuress will try to marry him out of
hand. A pretty face, and over goes Harold! _My_ business in life is to
stand in the way and prevent it.'
She looked me through and through again with her X-ray scrutiny.
'I don't think Mr. Tillington is quite the sort that falls a prey to
adventuresses,' I answered, boldly.
'Ah, but there are faggots and faggots,' the old lady said, wagging her
head with profound meaning. 'Never mind, though; _I'd_ like to see an
adventuress marry off Harold without my leave! _I'd_ lead her a life!
I'd turn her black hair gray for her!'
'I should think,' I assented, 'you could do it, Lady Georgina, if you
gave your attention seriously to it.'
From that moment forth, I was aware that my Cantankerous Old Lady's
malign eye was inexorably fixed upon me every time I went within
speaking distance of Mr. Tillington. She watched him like a lynx. She
watched _me_ like a dozen lynxes. Wherever we went, Lady Georgina was
sure to turn up in the neighbourhood. She was perfectly ubiquitous: she
seemed to possess a world-wide circulation. I don't know whether it was
this constant suggestion of hers that I was stalking her nephew which
roused my latent human feeling of opposition; but in the end, I began to
be aware that I rather liked the supercilious _attache_ than otherwise.
He evidently liked me, and he tried to meet me. Whenever he spoke to me,
indeed, it was without the superciliousness which marked his manner
towards others; in point of fact, it was with graceful deference. He
watched for me on the stairs, in the garden, by the terrace; whenever he
got a chance, he sidled over and talked to me. Sometimes he stopped in
to read me Heine: he also introduced me to select portions of Gabriele
d'Annunzio. It is feminine to be touched by such obvious attention; I
confess, before long, I grew to like Mr. Harold Tillington.
The closer he followed me up, the more did I perceive that Lady Georgina
threw out acrid hints with increasing spleen about the ways of
adventuresses. They were hints of that acrimonious generalised kind,
too, which one cannot answer back without seeming to admit that the cap
has fitted. It was atrocious how middle-class young women nowadays ran
after young men of birth and fortune. A girl would stoop to anything in
order to catch five hundred thousand. Guileless youths should be thrown
among their natural equals. It was a mistake to let them see too much of
people of a lower rank who consider themselves good-looking. And the
clever ones were the worst: they pretended to go in for intellectual
companionship.
I also noticed that though at first Lady Georgina had expressed the
strongest disinclination to my leaving her after the time originally
proposed, she now began to take for granted that I would go at the end
of my week, as arranged in London, and she even went on to some overt
steps towards securing the help of the blameless Gretchen.
We had arrived at Schlangenbad on Tuesday. I was to stop with the
Cantankerous Old Lady till the corresponding day of the following week.
On the Sunday, I wandered out on the wooded hillside behind the village;
and as I mounted the path I was dimly aware by a sort of instinct that
Harold Tillington was following me.
He came up with me at last near a ledge of rock. 'How fast you walk!' he
exclaimed. 'I gave you only a few minutes' start, and yet even my long
legs have had hard work to overtake you.'
'I am a fairly good climber,' I answered, sitting down on a little
wooden bench. 'You see, at Cambridge, I went on the river a great deal--
I canoed and sculled: and then, besides, I've done a lot of bicycling.'
'What a splendid birthright it is,' he cried, 'to be a wholesome
athletic English girl! You can't think how one admires English girls
after living a year or two in Italy--where women are dolls, except for a
brief period of intrigue, before they settle down to be contented frumps
with an outline like a barrel.'
'A little muscle and a little mind are no doubt advisable adjuncts for a
housewife,' I admitted.
'You shall not say that word,' he cried, seating himself at my side. 'It
is a word for Germans, "housewife." Our English ideal is something
immeasurably higher and better. A companion, a complement! Do you know,
Miss Cayley, it always sickens me when I hear German students
sentimentalising over their _maedchen_: their beautiful, pure, insipid,
yellow-haired, blue-eyed _maedchen_; her, so fair, so innocent, so
unapproachably vacuous--so like a wax doll--and then think of how they
design her in days to come to cook sausages for their dinner, and knit
them endless stockings through a placid middle age, till the needles
drop from her paralysed fingers, and she retires into frilled caps and
Teutonic senility.'
'You seem to have almost as low an opinion of foreigners as your
respected aunt!' I exclaimed, looking quizzically at him.