they spent the following day wandering with the crowds that fill the munich streets on bright sundays, and the darks arrived at midnight. the next morning they all went to the lake, this time finding a very different class of skaters in possession. munich has a small fashionable set whose members dress as fashionable people do everywhere. to-day, the women in their short cloth or tweed frocks and rich furs, their faces rosy with cold and exercise, enhanced the glittering beauty of the landscape; and the young officers were quite as decorative.
“some class,” said tay. “in europe there’s no choice between the aristocrats and the peasants. in my country, now, you couldn’t take your oath that all these birds of paradise weren’t clever shop-girls, until you got close enough to take notes. but here even a snub-nosed baroness, dressed like a housekeeper, shows her class.”
“that’s about all we’ve got left,” said dark. “you helped yourself to a sort of ready-made imitation of it, as you did to everything else it took us twenty centuries to grind out. think you might be generous and give us a little hustle in return. can i help you, mrs. france?”
he buckled on her skates and they joined the throng on the ice, tay following with ishbel. lord dark, something in the fashion of his wife, was a man of almost romantic appearance covering a practical character and a keen alert brain. he was as pure a saxon in type as still persists, with fair hair and moustache, straight proud features, and languid blue eyes in thick brown frames. his tall figure was lean and sinewy, but carried listlessly. thrown on his own resources, he would not have been driven on to the stage, out to south africa, or become a vague “something in the city”; he would deliberately have applied himself to the science of money-making and mastered it, his ends accelerated by his indolent manner, so tempting to sharpers. having inherited a considerable fortune, he was content with a career on the turf. his racing stud was notable, and rarely a year passed without adding to its reputation. he also amused himself with politics and society. devoted to ishbel for years before he could marry her, he was now as completely happy as a man may be whose wife is giving a large part of her energies to a cause of which he fastidiously disapproves. broadminded, he was quite willing that all women outside of his particular circle should vote, but wished that his ancestors had settled the question and spared his generation. astute in all things, however, he not only gave his wife her head up to a certain point, but of late had done what he could to help rush the thing through and have done with it. ishbel, like julia, was pledged to ignore the detested subject during this brief vacation.
“jolly place, munich,” he observed. “we always come here in august for the wagnerfeste. you see all europe as well as hear good music in comfort, which is more than you could ever say of baireuth. we’ve never been here in winter before. have you read up a bit? there ought to be good winter sports in the mountains.”
“rather. i don’t fancy mr. tay was here an hour before he discovered there was tobogganing (rodelling) and skiing at partenkirchen. he’s talked of little else.”
“good! then we’ll be really happy for a week.”
meanwhile ishbel was gently extracting a declaration of tay’s intentions toward julia by the diplomatic method of assuming all.
“it is too dreadful that you will take julia from us,” she said plaintively. “couldn’t you live in london?”
“not yet.” tay turned upon her a face of almost boyish delight. “but if she’ll really have me, we could come over every summer. do you think she will?”
“in the end, of course. i’ve known julia for sixteen years, and waited for her to fall in love. she never does anything by halves. but she may think she can’t leave england yet.”
“i wish these women didn’t take themselves so seriously,” said tay, viciously. “one would think the fate of england depended on them.”
ishbel laughed. “how like eric! but we are used to the sixteenth century masculine attitude. it wouldn’t matter so much about me, except that every one of us helps to swell the total, but julia is a great leader, with a wonderful power of attracting attention, making recruits, and inspiring her followers. we couldn’t spare her if the fight was to go on, but if it is won this year—well, i have told her to go and leave the rest to the other women in command.”
“oh, you have! bully for you! what did she say?”
“she wouldn’t commit herself. if i were you, i’d simply marry her.”
“so i shall, if i’m convinced she really cares for me.”
“you don’t doubt it?”
“i don’t know. she’s a puzzle to me. sometimes i think she’s the most natural being on earth, and at others—well—the so-called complex women aren’t in it.”
“she’s both, but none the less interesting.”
“oh, she’s interesting, all right. but she’s become such an adept at bluffing herself that i doubt if she always knows just where she’s at. just now she’s bluffed—or hypnotized?—herself into thinking she’s interested in me. but i have an idea she could switch off in the opposite direction as easily.”
“julia is a bit odd,” admitted ishbel. “especially since she came back from the east. even before she went, she wasn’t much like anybody else, owing, no doubt, to that strange old mother of hers; but au fond she’s the most loyal and sincere of mortals. and it takes matrimony—a love-match—to clear a woman’s brain of cobwebs. marry julia and take her to the young world, and i’ll venture to say she’ll forget all she learned in the east, and a good part of her inheritance. then she’ll be the most charming of women.”
“that’s the way i talk to myself when i’m not in the dumps. but do you really want her to marry an american? it would be more like you to want to keep her over here.”
“i did once plot and scheme to make her marry a very dear friend of us all, lord haverfield—nigel herbert—you must have read his books.”
“ah!”
“that was rather imprudent of me. but it’s all over long ago. julia never cared for him, and i have always said that when she did care for any man, i’d turn match-maker in earnest and do all i could to help him marry her—that is, if i liked him—and we’re all quite in love with you.” she flashed the sweetness of her charming countenance on him, and he thought her almost as beautiful as julia. “i want her to be happy, for she was once terribly unhappy. her experience was truly awful?—”
“i never want to think of it,” said tay, hastily. “i refuse to remember that she has ever been married. look at here—will you promise to be on my side if she goes off on one of her tangents?”
“i will!” and she gave his hand a little shake. she longed to tell him that france might die any minute, but she had once more given her word to bridgit, and could only hope that france would take himself off before tay left england. “but if the worst comes to the worst, i’ll get round it somehow,” she thought.
a moment later a rapid change of partners was effected, tay threw his arm lightly round julia’s waist, and they waltzed down the lake to the amazement of the less agile germans.
“suppose you look up,” said tay. “if you’re blushing because i have my arm round you for the first time, i’d like to see it.”
julia laughed and threw back her head. she was blushing, and her eyes sparkled. “i’ll admit i never felt so happy in my life.”
“are you as much in love with me as you were two days ago?” he asked dryly.
“oh—rather more, i think.”
“if you like the sensation of my arm round you at a temperature of ten above zero, in full view of all munich, can you imagine the ineffable happiness of being kissed by me in the vicinity of one of those tiled stoves with the door shut?”
“then if all these people should suddenly disappear, you wouldn’t care to kiss me in the midst of this enchanted wood?”
“i’d kiss you wherever i got a chance, and what’s more i’ll do it. so prepare yourself.”
“your promise!”
“promise nothing. i absolve myself right here. and you talk suffrage if you can!”
“alas, i don’t want to. but i shan’t let you make love to me.”
“oh, yes, you will,—when and where i please.”
julia looked a little frightened. “oh, no—we mustn’t go that far?—”
“you merely want to flirt and make me miserable? well, i’ve had just as much of that as i propose to stand. you’re laying up a frightful retribution, my lady.” he tightened his clasp and drew her as close as the skates would permit. “be consistent,” he whispered. “you are eighteen. you remember nothing. we are really engaged, you know. you are mine this week. we have four days more. put that imagination of yours to some good use. believe that we are to be married this day fortnight.”
“if i go too far—you would never forgive me.”
he laughed grimly. “if you go that far, you’ll go farther. of course i understand you. it’s a proof of the adorable innocence you have managed to preserve that you don’t know what playing with fire means to the man. you propose to abandon yourself discreetly, get a certain excitement out of words and coquetry while we’re here safely chaperoned, and then throw me down hard in the cause of duty when we return to london. well, that’s not my program. now, we’ll say no more about it.”
they climbed up the interior of the great statue bavaria, in the afternoon, to gaze at the tumbled peaks of the alps glittering through the haze that promised fine weather. then the women rested for the opera of the evening, and tay and dark smoked in one of the cafés, talked horse and business, and, incidentally, drifted into a friendship that was to lead to strange results. dark had influential friends in the city and promised tay his immediate assistance in bringing his prospective partners to terms. tay, who liked sport as well as most american men, although he had little time to devote to it, forgot that he was in love while “swapping” stories of the race-track. both, secretly despising the other’s nationality, discovered that when men are men they are pretty much the same the world over. they cemented the bond by cursing suffrage with all the epithets, profane, picturesque, savage, and humorous, in their respective vocabularies, and left the café arm in arm, feeling that they had talked woman back into her proper sphere and that all was well with the world.
