GENERAL KERVICK was by habit a punctual man, and Thorpe found him hovering, carefully gloved and fur-coated, in the neighbourhood of the luncheon-room when he arrived. It indeed still lacked a few minutes of the appointed hour when they thus met and went in together. They were fortunate enough to find a small table out on the balcony, sufficiently removed from any other to give privacy to their conversation.
By tacit agreement, the General ordered the luncheon, speaking French to the waiter throughout. Divested of his imposing great-coat, he was seen to be a gentleman of meagre flesh as well as of small stature. He had the Roman nose, narrow forehead, bushing brows, and sharply-cut mouth and chin of a soldier grown old in the contemplation of portraits of the Duke of Wellington. His face and neck were of a dull reddish tint, which seemed at first sight uniformly distributed: one saw afterward that it approached pallor at the veined temples, and ripened into purple in minute patches on the cheeks and the tip of the pointed nose. Against this flushed skin, the closely-cropped hair and small, neatly-waxed moustache were very white indeed. It was a thin, lined, care-worn face, withal, which in repose, and particularly in profile, produced an effect of dignified and philosophical melancholy. The General's over-prominent light blue eyes upon occasion marred this effect, however, by glances of a bold, harsh character, which seemed to disclose unpleasant depths below the correct surface. His manner with the waiters was abrupt and sharp, but undoubtedly they served him very well—much better, in truth, than Thorpe had ever seen them serve anybody before.
Thorpe observed his guest a good deal during the repast, and formed numerous conclusions about him. He ate with palpable relish of every dish, and he emptied his glass as promptly as his host could fill it. There was hardly a word of explanation as to the purpose of their meeting, until the coffee was brought, and they pushed back their chairs, crossed their legs, and lighted cigars.
“I was lucky to catch you with my wire, at such short notice,” Thorpe said then. “I sent two, you know—to your chambers and your club. Which of them found you?”
“Chambers,” said the General. “I rarely dress till luncheon time. I read in bed. There's really nothing else to do. Idleness is the curse of my life.”
“I've been wondering if you'd like a little occupation—of a well-paid sort,” said Thorpe slowly. He realized that it was high time to invent some pretext for his hurried summons of the General.
“My dear sir,” responded the other, “I should like anything that had money in it. And I should very much like occupation, too—if it were, of course, something that was—was suitable to me.”
“Yes,” said Thorpe, meditatively. “I've something in my mind—not at all definite yet—in fact, I don't think I can even outline it to you yet. But I'm sure it will suit you—that is, if I decide to go on with it—and there ought to be seven or eight hundred a year for you in it—for life, mind you.”
The General's gaze, fastened strenuously upon Thorpe, shook a little. “That will suit me very well,” he declared, with feeling. “Whatever I can do for it”—he let the sentence end itself with a significant gesture.
“I thought so,” commented the other, trifling with the spoon in his cup. “But I want you to be open with me. I'm interested in you, and I want to be of use to you. All that I've said, I can do for you. But first, I'm curious to know everything that you can tell me about your circumstances. I'm right in assuming, I suppose, that you're—that you're not any too well-fixed.”
The General helped himself to another little glass of brandy. His mood seemed to absorb the spirit of the liqueur. “Fixed!” he repeated with a peevish snap in his tone. “I'm not 'fixed' at all, as you call it. Good God, sir! They no more care what becomes of me than they do about their old gloves. I gave them name and breeding and position—and everything—and they round on me like—like cuckoos.” His pale, bulging eyes lifted their passionless veil for an instant as he spoke, and flashed with the predatory fierceness of a hawk.
Intuition helped Thorpe to guess whom “they” might mean. The temper visibly rising in the old man's mind was what he had hoped for. He proceeded with an informed caution. “Don't be annoyed if I touch upon family matters,” he said. “It's a part of what I must know, in order to help you. I believe you're a widower, aren't you, General?”
The other, after a quick upward glance, shook his head resentfully. “Mrs. Kervick lives in Italy with HER son-in-law—and her daughter. He is a man of property—and also, apparently, a man of remarkable credulity and patience.” He paused, to scan his companion's face. “They divide him between them,” he said then, from clenched teeth—“and I—mind you—I made the match! He was a young fellow that I found—and I brought him home and introduced him—and I haven't so much as an Italian postage-stamp to show for it. But what interest can you possibly take in all this?” The unamiable glance of his eyes was on the instant surcharged with suspicion.
“How many daughters have you?” Thorpe ventured the enquiry with inward doubts as to its sagacity.
“Three,” answered the General, briefly. It was evident that he was also busy thinking.
“I ask because I met one of them in the country over Sunday,” Thorpe decided to explain.
The old soldier's eyes asked many questions in the moment of silence. “Which one—Edith?—that is, Lady Cressage?” he enquired. “Of course—it would have been her.”
Thorpe nodded. “She made a tremendous impression upon me,” he observed, watching the father with intentness as he let the slow words fall.
“Well she might,” the other replied, simply. “She's supposed to be the most beautiful woman in England.”
“Well—I guess she is,” Thorpe assented, while the two men eyed each other.
“Is the third sister unmarried?” it occurred to him to ask. The tone of the question revealed its perfunctory character.
“Oh—Beatrice—she's of no importance,” the father replied. “She goes in for writing, and all that—she's not a beauty, you know—she lives with an old lady in Scotland. The oldest daughter—Blanche—she has some good looks of her own, but she's a cat. And so you met Edith! May I ask where it was?”
“At Hadlow House—Lord Plowden's place, you know.”
The General's surprise at the announcement was undoubted. “At Plowden's!” he repeated, and added, as if half to himself, “I thought that was all over with, long ago.”
“I wish you'd tell me about it,” said Thorpe, daringly. “I've made it plain to you, haven't I? I'm going to look out for you. And I want you to post me up, here, on some of the things that I don't understand. You remember that it was Plowden who introduced you to me, don't you? It was through him that you got on the Board. Well, certain things that I've seen lead me to suppose that he did that in order to please your daughter. Did you understand it that way?”
“It's quite likely, in one sense,” returned the General. He spoke with much deliberation now, weighing all his words. “He may have thought it would please her; he may not have known how little my poor affairs concerned her.”
“Well, then,” pursued Thorpe, argumentatively, “he had an object in pleasing her. Let me ask the question—did he want to marry her?”
“Most men want to marry her,” was the father's non-committal response. His moustache lifted itself in the semblance of a smile, but the blue eyes above remained coldly vigilant.
“Well—I guess that's so too,” Thorpe remarked. He made a fleeting mental note that there was something about the General which impelled him to think and talk more like an American than ever. “But was HE specially affected that way?”
“I think,” said Kervick, judicially, “I think it was understood that if he had been free to marry a penniless wife, he would have wished to marry her.”
“Do you know,” Thorpe began again, with a kind of diffident hesitation—“do you happen to have formed an idea—supposing that had been the case—would she have accepted him?” “Ah, there you have me,” replied the other. “Who can tell what women will accept, and what they will refuse? My daughter refused Lord Lingfield—and he is an Under-Secretary, and will be Earl Chobham, and a Cabinet Minister, and a rich man. After that, what are you to say?”
“You speak of her as penniless,” Thorpe remarked, with a casual air.
“Six hundred a year,” the father answered. “We could have rubbed along after a fashion on it, if she had had any notions at all of taking my advice. I'm a man of the world, and I could have managed her affairs for her to her advantage, but she insisted upon going off by herself. She showed not the slightest consideration for me—but then I am accustomed to that.”
Thorpe smiled reflectively, and the old gentleman read in this an encouragement to expand his grievances.
“In my position,” he continued, helping himself to still another tiny glass, “I naturally say very little. It is not my form to make complaints and advertise my misfortunes. I daresay it's a fault. I know it kept me back in India—while ever so many whipper-snappers were promoted over my head—because I was of the proud and silent sort. It was a mistake, but it was my nature. I might have put by a comfortable provision for my old age, in those days, if I had been willing to push my claims, and worry the Staff into giving me what was my due. But that I declined to do—and when I was retired, there was nothing for me but the ration of bread and salt which they serve out to the old soldier who has been too modest. I served my Queen, sir, for forty years—and I should be ashamed to tell you the allowance she makes me in my old age. But I do not complain. My mouth is closed. I am an English gentleman and one of Her Majesty's soldiers. That's enough said, eh? Do you follow me? And about my family affairs, I'm not likely to talk to the first comer, eh? But to you I say it frankly—they've behaved badly, damned badly, sir.
“Mrs. Kervick lives in Italy, at the cost of HER son-in-law. He has large estates in one of the healthiest and most beautiful parts; he has a palace, and more money than he knows what to do with—but it seems that he's not my son-in-law. I could do with Italy very well—but that doesn't enter into anyone's calculations. No! let the worn-out old soldier sell boot-laces on the kerb! That's the spirit of woman-kind. And my daughter Edith—does she care what becomes of me? Listen to me—I secured for her the very greatest marriage in England. She would have been Duchess of Glastonbury today if her husband had not played the fool and drowned himself.”
“What's that you say?” put in Thorpe, swiftly.
“It was as good as suicide,” insisted the General, with doggedness. His face had become a deeper red. “They didn't hit it off together, and he left in a huff, and went yachting with his father, who was his own sailing-master—and, as might be expected, they were both drowned. The title would have gone to her son—but no, of course, she had no son—and so it passed to a stranger—an outsider that had been an usher in a school, or something of that sort. You can fancy what a blow this was to me. Instead of being the grandfather of a Duke, I have a childless widow thrust back upon my hands! Fine luck, eh? And then, to cap all, she takes her six hundred a year and goes off by herself, and gives me the cold shoulder completely. What is it Shakespeare says? 'How sharper than a serpent's teeth'——”
Thorpe brought his fist down upon the table with an emphasis which abruptly broke the quotation in half. He had been frowning moodily at his guest for some minutes, relighting his cigar more than once meanwhile. He had made a mental calculation of what the old man had had to drink, and had reassured himself as to his condition. His garrulity might have an alcoholic basis, but his wits were clear enough. It was time to take a new line with him.
“I don't want to hear you abuse your daughter,” he admonished him now, with a purpose glowing steadily in his firm glance. “Damn it all, why shouldn't she go off by herself, and take care of her own money her own way? It's little enough, God knows, for such a lady as she is. Why should you expect her to support you out of it? No—sit still! Listen to me!”—he stretched out his hand, and laid it with restraining heaviness upon the General's arm—“you don't want to have any row with me. You can't afford it. Just think that over to yourself—you—can't afford—it.”
Major-General Kervick's prominent blue eyes had bulged forth in rage till their appearance had disconcerted the other's gaze. They remained still too much in the foreground, as it were, and the angry scarlets and violets of the cheeks beneath them carried an unabated threat of apoplexy—but their owner, after a moment's silence, made a sign with his stiff white brows that the crisis was over. “You must remember that—that I have a father's feelings,” he gasped then, huskily.
Thorpe nodded, with a nonchalance which was not wholly affected. He had learned what he wanted to know about this veteran. If he had the fierce meannesses of a famished old dog, he had also a dog's awe of a stick. It was almost too easy to terrorize him.
“Oh, I make allowances for all that,” Thorpe began, vaguely. “But it's important that you should understand me. I'm this sort of a man: whatever I set out to do, and put my strength into it, that I do! I kill every pheasant I fire at; Plowden will tell you that! It's a way I have. To those that help me, and are loyal to me, I'm the best friend in the world. To those that get in my way, or try to trip me up, I'm the devil—just plain devil. Now then—you're getting three hundred a year from my Company, that is to say from me, simply to oblige my friend Plowden. You don't do anything to earn this money; you're of no earthly use on the Board. If I chose, I could put you off at the end of the year as easily as I can blow out this match. But I propose not only to keep you on, but to make you independent. Why do I do that? You should ask yourself that question. It can't be on account of anything you can do for the Company. What else then? Why, first and foremost, because you are the father of your daughter.”
“Let me tell you the kind of man I am,” said the General, inflating his chest, and speaking with solemnity.
“Oh, I know the kind of man you are,” Thorpe interrupted him, coolly. “I want to talk now.”
“It was merely,” Kervick ventured, in an injured tone, “that I can be as loyal as any man alive to a true friend.”
“Well, I'll be the true friend, then,” said Thorpe, with impatient finality. “And now this is what I want to say. I'm going to be a very rich man. You're not to say so to anybody, mind you, until the thing speaks for itself. We're keeping dark for a few months, d'ye see?—lying low. Then, as I say, I shall be a very rich man. Well now, I wouldn't give a damn to be rich, unless I did with my money the things that I wanted to do, and got the things with it that I wanted to get. Whatever takes my fancy, that's what I'll do.”
He paused for a moment, mentally to scrutinize a brand-new project which seemed, by some surreptitious agency, to have already taken his fancy. It was a curious project; there were attractive things about it, and objections to it suggested themselves as well.
“I may decide,” he began speaking again, still revolving this hypothetical scheme in his thoughts—“I may want to—well, here's what occurs to me as an off-chance. I take an interest in your daughter, d'ye see? and it seems a low-down sort of thing to me that she should be so poor. Well, then—I might say to you, here's two thousand a year, say, made over to you in your name, on the understanding that you turn over half of it, say, to her. She could take it from you, of course, as her father. You could say you made it out of the Company. Of course it might happen, later on, that I might like to have a gentle hint dropped to her, d'ye see, as to where it really came from. Mind, I don't say this is what is going to be done. It merely occurred to me.”
After waiting for a moment for some comment, he added a second thought: “You'd have to set about making friends with her, you know. In any case, you'd better begin at that at once.”
The General remained buried in reflection. He lighted a cigarette, and poured out for himself still another petit verre. His pursed lips and knitted brows were eloquent of intense mental activity.
“Well, do you see any objections to it?” demanded Thorpe, at last.
“I do not quite see the reasons for it,” answered the other, slowly. “What would you gain by it?”
“How do you mean—gain?” put in the other, with peremptory intolerance of tone.
General Kervick spread his hands in a quick little gesture. These hands were withered, but remarkably well-kept. “I suppose one doesn't do something for nothing,” he said. “I see what I would gain, and what she would gain, but I confess I don't see what advantage you would get out of it.”
“No-o, I daresay you don't,” assented Thorpe, with sneering serenity. “But what does that matter? You admit that you see what you would gain. That's enough, isn't it?”
The older man's veined temples twitched for an instant. He straightened himself in his chair, and looked hard at his companion. There was a glistening of moisture about his staring eyes.
“It surely isn't necessary—among gentlemen”—he began, cautiously picking his phrases—“to have quite so much that's unpleasant, is it?”
“No—you're right—I didn't mean to be so rough,” Thorpe declared, with spontaneous contrition. Upon the instant, however, he perceived the danger that advantage might be taken of his softness. “I'm a plain-spoken man,” he went on, with a hardening voice, “and people must take me as they find me. All I said was, in substance, that I intended to be of service to you—and that that ought to interest you.”
The General seemed to have digested his pique. “And what I was trying to say,” he commented deferentially, “was that I thought I saw ways of being of service to you. But that did not seem to interest you at all.”
“How—service?” Thorpe, upon consideration, consented to ask.
“I know my daughter so much better than you do,” explained the other; “I know Plowden so much better; I am so much more familiar with the whole situation than you can possibly be—I wonder that you won't listen to my opinion. I don't suggest that you should be guided by it, but I think you should hear it.”
“I think so, too,” Thorpe declared, readily enough. “What IS your opinion?”
General Kervick sipped daintily at his glass, and then gave an embarrassed little laugh. “But I can't form what you might call an opinion,” he protested, apologetically, “till I understand a bit more clearly what it is you propose to yourself. You mustn't be annoyed if I return to that—'still harping on my daughter,' you know. If I MUST ask the question—is it your wish to marry her?”
Thorpe looked blankly at his companion, as if he were thinking of something else. When he spoke, it was with no trace of consciousness that the question had been unduly intimate.
“I can't in the least be sure that I shall ever marry,” he replied, thoughtfully. “I may, and I may not. But—starting with that proviso—I suppose I haven't seen any other woman that I'd rather think about marrying than—than the lady we're speaking of. However, you see it's all in the air, so far as my plans go.”
“In the air be it,” the soldier acquiesced, plausibly. “Let us consider it as if it were in the air—a possible contingency. This is what I would say—My—'the lady we are speaking of' is by way of being a difficult lady—'uncertain, coy, and hard to please' as Scott says, you know—and it must be a very skilfully-dressed fly indeed which brings her to the surface. She's been hooked once, mind, and she has a horror of it. Her husband was the most frightful brute and ruffian, you know. I was strongly opposed to the marriage, but her mother carried it through. But—yes—about her—I think she is afraid to marry again. If she does ever consent, it will be because poverty has broken her nerve. If she is kept on six hundred a year, she may be starved, so to speak, into taking a husband. If she had sixteen hundred—either she would never marry at all, or she would be free to marry some handsome young pauper who caught her fancy. That would be particularly like her. You would be simply endowing some needy fellow, beside losing her for yourself. D'ye follow me? If you'll leave it to me, I can find a much better way than that—better for all of us.”
“Hm!” said Thorpe, and pondered the paternal statement. “I see what you mean,” he remarked at last. “Yes—I see.”
The General preserved silence for what seemed a long time, deferring to the reverie of his host. When finally he offered a diversion, in the form of a remark about the hour, Thorpe shook himself, and then ponderously rose to his feet. He took his hat and coat from the waiter, and made his way out without a word.
At the street door, confronting the waning foliage of the Embankment garden, Kervick was emboldened to recall to him the fact of his presence. “Which way are you going?” he asked.
“I don't know,” Thorpe answered absently. “I think—I think I'll take a walk on the Embankment—by myself.”
The General could not repress all symptoms of uneasiness. “But when am I to see you again?” he enquired, with an effect of solicitude that defied control.
“See me?” Thorpe spoke as if the suggestion took him by surprise.
“There are things to be settled, are there not?” the other faltered, in distressed doubt as to the judicious tone to take. “You spoke, you know, of—of some employment that—that would suit me.”
Thorpe shook himself again, and seemed by an effort to recall his wandering attention. “Oh yes,” he said, with lethargic vagueness—“I haven't thought it out yet. I'll let you know—within the week, probably.”
With the briefest of nods, he turned and crossed the road. Walking heavily, with rounded shoulders and hands plunged deep in his overcoat pockets, he went through the gateway, and chose a path at random. To the idlers on the garden benches who took note of him as he passed, he gave the impression of one struggling with nausea. To his own blurred consciousness, he could not say which stirred most vehemently within him, his loathing for the creature he had fed and bought, or his bitter self-disgust.
The General, standing with exaggerated exactness upon the doorstep, had followed with his bulging eyes the receding figure. He stood still regarding the gateway, mentally summarizing the events of the day, after the other had vanished. At last, nestling his chin comfortably into the fur of his collar, he smiled with self-satisfaction. “After all,” he said to himself, “there are always ways of making a cad feel that he is a cad, in the presence of a gentleman.”
ON a Sunday afternoon, early in February, Thorpe journeyed with his niece and nephew from Bern to Montreux.
The young people, with maps and a guide-book open, sat close together at the left side of the compartment. The girl from time to time rubbed the steam from the window with a napkin out of the lunch-basket. They both stared a good deal through this window, with frequent exclamations of petulance.
“Isn't it too provoking!” cried the girl, turning to her uncle at last. “This is where we are now—according to Baedeker: 'As the train proceeds we enjoy a view of the Simmen-Thal and Freiburg mountains to the left, the Moleson being conspicuous.' And look at it! For all one can see, we might as well be at Redhill.”
“It is pretty hard luck,” Thorpe assented, passively glancing past her at the pale, neutral-tinted wall of mist which obscured the view. “But hang it all—it must clear up some time. Just you have patience, and you'll see some Alps yet.”
“Where we're going,” the young man interposed, “the head-porter told me it was always cloudier than anywhere else.”
“I don't think that can be so,” Thorpe reasoned, languidly, from his corner. “It's a great winter resort, I'm told, and it rather stands to reason, doesn't it? that people wouldn't flock there if it was so bad as all that.”
“The kind of people we've seen travelling in Switzerland,” said the girl—“they would do anything.”
Thorpe smiled, with tolerant good humour. “Well, you can comfort yourself with the notion that you'll be coming again. The mountains'll stay here, all right,” he assured her. The young people smiled back at him, and with this he rearranged his feet in a new posture on the opposite seat, lighted another cigar, and pillowed his head once more against the hard, red-plush cushion. Personally, he did not in the least resent the failure of the scenery.
For something more than three months, this purposeless pleasure-tour had been dragging him about from point to point, sleeping in strange beds, eating extraordinarily strange food, transacting the affairs of a sight-seer among people who spoke strange languages, until he was surfeited with the unusual. It had all been extremely interesting, of course, and deeply improving—but he was getting tired of talking to nobody but waiters, and still more so of having nothing to do which he could not as well leave undone if he chose. After a few days more of Switzerland—for they had already gazed with blank faces at this universal curtain of mist from such different points of view as Lucerne, Interlaken, and Thun—it was clear to him that they would, as he phrased it, to himself, make a break for home. Unless, indeed, something happened at Montreux. Ah, would anything happen at Montreux? For four days his mind had been automatically reverting to that question; it lurked continually in the background of his thoughts, now, as he smoked and idly ruminated, on his way southward through the fog.
All the rest of the prolonged trip had been without any specific motive, so far as he was concerned. The youngsters had planned all its routes and halts and details of time and connections, and he had gone along, with cheerful placidity, to look at the things they bade him observe, and to pay the bills. Perhaps in all things their tastes had not been his tastes. He would have liked more of Paris, he fancied, and less of the small Dutch and North German towns which they seemed to fancy so much. Still, the beer was good—and really their happiness, as a spectacle, had given him more satisfaction than a thousand miles of boulevards could have done.
He liked this niece and nephew of his more than he could ever have imagined himself liking any young people. They had been shy with him at the outset—and for the first week his experiment had been darkened by the belief that, between themselves, they did not deem him quite good enough. He had been wise enough, then, to have it out with the girl—she was the one to whom he felt it easiest to talk frankly—and had discovered, to his immense relief, that they conceived him to be regarding them as encumbrances. At breakfast next morning, with tactful geniality, he set everything right, and thereafter they were all extremely happy together.
So far as he could judge, they were very superior young people, both intellectually and spiritually. The girl spoke French, and her brother German, with what seemed to him remarkable proficiency. Their young minds were the repositories of an astounding amount of information: they knew who Charles the Bold was; they pointed out to their uncle the distinction between Gothic and Romanesque arches; they explained what was the matter with the Anabaptists; they told him that the story of the Bishop and the rats at Bingen was a baseless myth, and that probably there had never been any such man as William Tell. Nor did they get all this out of the guide-books which they pored over with such zest. It was impossible not to see that they were familiar with large numbers of the subjects that these books discussed, and that the itinerary which they marked out had reference to desires and interests that they had cultivated for themselves.
Julia, upon even first sight, made a much pleasanter impression than her mother's hesitating description had prepared him for. As he came to know her well, he ceased to remember that there was a question in any mind as to her being a pretty girl. There was less colour in her face than he could have wished. Her smooth, pallid skin, almost waxen in texture, had a suggestion of delicate health which sometimes troubled him a little, but which appealed to the tenderness in his nature all the time. The face was unduly thin, perhaps, but this, and the wistful glance of the large grey eyes in repose, made up an effect that Thorpe found touched him a good deal. Even when she was in visibly high spirits, the look in these eyes seemed to him to be laying claim to his protection. She could be merry upon occasion, in a gentle and tranquil way, and as her self-confidence expanded under the shelter of their growing intimacy, she disclosed to her uncle plenty of initiative and individuality—but what he felt in her most was a peculiarly sweet and girlish trustfulness, which made him like himself more than he had ever done before. He could feel that he was at his very best—a hitherto unsuspected best—when Julia was about. He wanted to buy for her everything in the windows upon which she bestowed the most casual approving glance. It was a delight merely to look at her, and to meditate upon the felicity of being able to do things for so charming a girl.
Alfred made a less direct demand upon his uncle's admiration, but he was a very good fellow all round. He was big and fair and muscular, and nothing about him but his spectacles seemed in Thorpe's mind to be related to his choice of art as a profession. That so robust and hearty a young fellow should wish to put paint on a canvas with small brushes, was to the uncle an unaccountable thing. It was almost as if he had wanted to knit, or do embroidery. Of the idleness and impatience of discipline which his mother had seemed to allege against him, Thorpe failed to detect any signs. The young man was never very late in the morning, and, beside his tireless devotion to the task of hunting up old pictures in out-of-the-way places, did most of the steward's work of the party with intelligence and precision. He studied the time-tables, audited the hotel-bills, looked after the luggage, got up the street-maps of towns and the like, to such good purpose that they never lost a train, or a bag, or themselves. Truly, an excellent young man. Thorpe noted with especial satisfaction his fine, kindly big-brother attitude toward his sister Julia—and it was impossible for him to avoid the conviction that Louisa was a simpleton not to appreciate such children. They did not often allude to their mother; when they did, it was in language the terms of which seemed more affectionate than the tone—and Thorpe said often to himself that he did not blame them. It was not so much that they had outgrown their mother's point of view. They had never occupied it.
The journey, so far as Thorpe comprehended its character, had been shaped with about equal regard for Julia's interest in the romance of history, and Alfred's more technical and practical interest in art. Each had sufficient sympathy with the tastes of the other, however, to prevent any tendency to separation. They took their uncle one day to see where William the Silent was assassinated, and the next to observe how Rembrandt's theory of guild portrait-painting differed from Van der Helst's, with a common enthusiasm. He scrutinized with patient loyalty everything that they indicated to him, and not infrequently they appeared to like very much the comments he offered. These were chiefly of a sprightly nature, and when Julia laughed over them he felt that she was very near to him indeed.
Thus they saw Paris together—where Thorpe did relinquish some of the multiplied glories of the Louvre to sit in front of a cafe by the Opera House and see the funny people go past—and thence, by Bruges and Antwerp, to Holland, where nobody could have imagined there were as many pictures as Thorpe saw with his own weary eyes. There were wonderful old buildings at Lubeck for Julia's eyes to glisten over, and pictures at Berlin, Dresden, and Dusseldorf for Alfred.
The assumption existed that the excursion into the Thuringenwald to see the memorials of Luther was especially for the uncle's benefit, and he tried solicitously to say or look nothing which might invalidate it. There were other places in Germany, from Mainz to Munich, which he remembered best by their different beers. They spent Christmas at Vienna, where Julia had heard that its observance was peculiarly insisted upon, and then they saw the Tyrol in its heaviest vesture of winter snows, and beautiful old Basle, where Alfred was crazier about Holbein than he had been at Munich over Brouwer. Thorpe looked very carefully at the paintings of both men, and felt strengthened in his hopes that when Alfred got a little older he would see that this picture business was not the thing for a young gentleman with prospects to go into.
It was at Basle that Thorpe received a letter from London which directly altered the plans of the party. He had had several other letters from London which had produced no such effect. Through Semple, he had followed in outline the unobtrusive campaign to secure a Special Settlement, and had learned that the Stock Exchange Committee, apparently without opposition, had granted one for the first week in February.
Even this news, tremendously important as it was, did not prompt Thorpe to interfere with the children's projects. There was no longer any point in remaining away from London; there were, indeed, numerous reasons for a prompt return. But he was loth to deprive the youngsters of that descent into smiling, sunlit Italy upon which they had so fondly dwelt in fancy, and after all Semple could do all that was needful to be done for another month.
So they went to Basle, and here it was that another kind of letter came. It was in a strange hand, at once cramped and fluttering, which puzzled the recipient a good deal; it was a long time before even the signature unravelled itself. Then he forced himself to decipher it, sentence by sentence, with a fierce avidity. It was from General Kervick.
The next morning Thorpe astonished his young companions by suggesting an alteration in their route. In a roundabout and tentative fashion—in which more suspicious observers must have detected something shamefaced—he mentioned that he had always heard a great deal about Montreux as a winter-resort. The fact that he called it Montroox raised in Julia's mind a fleeting wonder from whom it could be that he had heard so much about it, but it occurred to neither her nor her brother to question his entire good faith. Their uncle had displayed, hitherto, a most comforting freedom from discrimination among European towns; he had, indeed, assured them many times that they were all one to him. That he should suddenly turn up now with a favourite winter-resort of his own selection surprised them considerably, but, upon reflection, it also pleased them. He had humoured all their wishes with such unfailing and bountiful kindness, that it was a delight to learn that there was something he wanted to do. They could not finish their breakfast till the guide-book had been brought to the table.
“Oh! How splendid!” Julia had cried then. “The Castle of Chillon is there!”
“Why of course!” said Thorpe, complacently.
They laughed gayly at him for pretending that he had known this, and he as good-humouredly accepted their banter. He drew a serious long breath of relief, however, when their backs were turned. It had gone off much better than he had feared.
Now, on this Sunday afternoon, as the train made its sure-footed way across the mountains, the thought that he was actually to alight at Montreux at once fascinated and depressed him. He was annoyed with himself for suffering it to get such a hold upon his mind. What was there in it, anyway? There was a big hotel there, and he and his youngsters were to stop at it, and if he accidentally encountered a certain lady who was also stopping there—and of course the meeting would bear upon its face the stamp of pure chance—what of it?
And if he did meet her, thus fortuitously—what would happen then? No doubt a lady of her social position met abroad great numbers of people that she had met at home. It would not in any way surprise her—this chance encounter of which he thought so much. Were there sufficient grounds for imagining that it would even interest her? He forced his mind up to this question, as it were, many times, and invariably it shied and evaded the leap.
There had been times, at Hadlow House, when Lady Cressage had seemed supremely indifferent to the fact of his existence, and there had been other times when it had appeared manifest that he pleased her—or better, perhaps, that she was willing to take note of how much she pleased him. It must have been apparent to her—this fact that she produced such an impression upon him. He reasoned this out satisfactorily to himself. These beautiful women, trained from childhood for the conquest of a rich husband, must have cultivated an extraordinary delicacy of consciousness, in such matters. They must have developed for themselves what might be called a sixth sense—a power of feeling in the air what the men about were thinking of them. More than once he had caught a glimmer of what he felt to be the operation of this sense, in the company of Lady Cressage. He could not say that it had been discernible in her glance, or her voice, or her manner, precisely, but he was sure that he had seen it, somehow.
But even assuming all this—admitting that in October, on a wet Sunday, in the tedium of a small country-house party, she had shown some momentary satisfaction in the idea that he was profoundly impressed by her—did it at all follow that in February, amid the distractions of a fashionable winter-resort, and probably surrounded by hosts of friends, she would pay any attention to him whatever? The abject fear that she might not even remember him—might not know him from Adam when he stood before her—skulked about in the labyrinths of his mind, but he drove it back whenever it showed itself. That would be too ignominious.
The young people at the other side of the compartment, forever wiping the window with the napkin, and straining their eyes to see the invisible, diverted his unsettled attention. A new perception of how much he liked them and enjoyed having them with him, took hold of his thoughts. It had not occurred to him before, with any definiteness, that he would be insupportably lonely when the time came to part with them.
Now, when he dwelt upon it, it made him feel sad and old.
He said to himself at once, with decision, that there need be no parting at all. He would take a house without delay, and they should live with him. He could not doubt that this would be agreeable to them; it would solve every problem for him.
His fancy sketched out the natural and legitimate extensions of this project. There would be, first of all, a house in town—a furnished house of a modest sort, having no pretension save to provide a cheerful temporary shelter for three people who liked one another. Here the new household would take shape, and get its right note of character. Apparently Louisa would not be urged to form part of this household. He said to himself with frankness that he didn't want her, and there had been nothing to indicate that her children would pine for her. She showed good sense when she said that her place was in the shop, and in her ancestral home over the shop. No doubt there would be a certain awkwardness, visible to others if not to themselves, about her living in one part of London and her children in another. But here also her good sense would come on;—and, besides, this furnished house in town would be a mere brief overture to the real thing—the noble country mansion he was going to have, with gardens and horses and hounds and artificial lakes and deer parks and everything. Quite within the year he would be able to realize this consummation of his dreams.
How these nice young people would revel in such a place—and how they would worship him for having given it to them for a home! His heart warmed within him as he thought of this. He smiled affectionately at the picture Julia made, polishing the glass with vehement circular movements of her slight arm, and then grimacing in comic vexation at the deadly absence of landscape outside. Was there ever a sweeter or more lovable girl in this world? Would there have to be some older woman to manage the house, at the beginning? he wondered. He should like it immensely if that could be avoided. Julia looked fragile and inexperienced—but she would be twenty-one next month. Surely that was a mature enough age for the slight responsibility of presiding over servants who should be the best that money could buy. Many girls were married, and given households of their own to manage, when they were even younger.
This reflection raised an obstacle against the smooth-flowing current of his thoughts. Supposing that Julia got the notion of marrying—how miserable that would make everything. Very likely she would never do any such thing; he had observed in her no shadow of a sign that a thought of matrimony had ever crossed her brain. Yet that was a subject upon which, of course, she could not be asked to give pledges, even to herself.
Thorpe tried to take a liberal view of this matter. He argued to himself that there would be no objection at all to incorporating Julia's husband into the household, assuming that she went to the length of taking one, and that he was a good fellow. On this latter point, it was only the barest justice to Julia's tastes and judgment to take it for granted that he would be a good fellow. Yet the uncle felt uneasily that this would alter things for the worse. The family party, with that hypothetical young man in it, could never be quite so innocently and completely happy as—for instance—the family party in this compartment had been during these wonderful three months.
Mechanically he rubbed the window beside him, and turned to look out with a certain fixedness—as if he might chance to catch a glimpse of the bridegroom with whom Julia would have it in her power to disturb the serenity of their prospective home. A steep white cliff, receding sullenly against the dim grey skyline; a farmhouse grotesquely low for its size, crouching under big shelving galleries heaped with snow; an opening in front, to the right, where vaguely there seemed to be a valley into which they would descend—he saw these things. They remained in his mind afterward as a part of something else that he saw, with his mental vision, at the same moment—a strikingly real and vivid presentment of Lady Cressage, attired as he had seen her in the saddle, her light hair blown about a little under her hat, a spot of colour in the exquisite cheek, the cold, impersonal dignity of a queen in the beautiful profile.
The picture was so actual for the instant that he uttered an involuntary exclamation—and then looked hastily round to see whether his companions had heard it. Seemingly they had not; he lolled again upon the comfortless cushion, and strove to conjure up once more the apparition. Nothing satisfactory came of the effort. Upon consideration, he grew uncertain as to whether he had seen anything at all. At the most it was a kind of half-dream which had visited him. He yawned at the thought, and lighted a fresh cigar. All at once, his mind had become too indolent to do any more thinking. A shapeless impression that there would be a good many things to think over later on flitted into his brain and out again.
“Well, how are the mountains using you, now?” he called out to his niece.
“Oh, I could shake them!” she declared. “Listen to this: 'A view of singular beauty, embracing the greater part of the Lake of Geneva, and the surrounding mountains, is suddenly disclosed.' That's where we are now—or were a minute ago. You can see that there is some sort of valley in front of us—but that is all. If I could only see one mountain with snow on it——”
“Why, it's all mountains and all snow, when you come to that,” Thorpe insisted, with jocose perversity. “You're on mountains yourself, all the time.”
“You know what I mean,” she retorted. “I want to see something like the coloured pictures in the hotels.”
“Oh, probably it will be bright sunlight tomorrow,” he said, for perhaps the twentieth time that day.
“There—that looks like water!” said Alfred. “See? just beyond the village. Yes, it is water. There's your Lake of Geneva, at all events.”
“But it isn't the right colour,” protested Julia, peering through the glass. “It's precisely like everything else: it's of no colour at all. And they always paint it such a lovely blue! Really, uncle, the Swiss Government ought to return you your money.”
“You wait till you see it tomorrow—or next day,” said the uncle, vaguely. He closed his eyes, and welcomed a drowsy mood. As he went off to sleep, the jolting racket of the train mellowed itself into a murmur of “tomorrow or next day, tomorrow or next day,” in his ears.