The Market-Place

CHAPTER X

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.