two days later, thorpe and his young people took an early morning train for geneva—homeward bound.
it was entirely easy to accept their uncle's declaration that urgent business summoned him to london, yet julia and alfred, when they chanced to exchange glances after the announcement, read in each other's eyes the formless impression that there were other things beside business. their uncle, they realized, must be concerned in large and probably venturesome enterprises; but it did not fit with their conception of his character that commercial anxieties should possess the power to upset him. and upset he undeniably was.
they traced his disturbance, in a general way, to the morning following the excursion up to glion and caux. he told them then that he had slept very badly, and that they must “count him out” of their plans for the day. he continued to be counted out of what remained of their stay at territet. he professed not to be ill, but he was restless and preoccupied. he ate little, but smoked continuously, and drank spirits a good deal, which they had not seen him do before. nothing would induce him to go out either day.
strangely enough, this disturbance of their uncle's equanimity synchronized with an apparent change in the attitude of their new friends on the floor below. this change was, indeed, more apparent than definable. the ladies were, to the nicest scrutiny, as kindly and affable as ever, but the sense of comradeship had somehow vanished. insensibly, the two parties had ceased to have impulses and tastes in common. there were no more trips together—no more fortuitous luncheons or formal dinners as a group.
the young people looked up at the front of the big hotel on this morning of departure, after they had clambered over the drifts into the snow-bedecked train, and opened the window of their compartment. they made sure that they could identify the windows of miss madden's suite, and that the curtains were drawn aside—but there was no other token of occupancy discernible. they had said good-bye to the two ladies the previous evening, of course—it lingered in their minds as a rather perfunctory ceremony—but this had not prevented their hoping for another farewell glimpse of their friends. no one came to wave a hand from the balcony, however, and the youngsters looked somewhat dubiously at each other as the train moved. then intuitively they glanced toward their uncle—and perceived that he had his hat pulled over his eyes, and was staring with a kind of moody scowl at the lake opposite.
“fortunately, it is a clear day,” said julia. “we shall see mont blanc.”
her voice seemed to have a hollow and unnatural sound in her own ears. neither her uncle nor her brother answered her.
at breakfast, meanwhile, in the apartment toward which the young people had turned their farewell gaze in vain, miss madden sipped her coffee thoughtfully while she read a letter spread upon the table beside her.
“it's as they said,” she observed. “you are not allowed to drive in the mountains with your own horses and carriage. that seems rather quaint for a model republic—doesn't it?”
“i daresay they're quite right,” lady cressage replied, listlessly. “it's in the interest of safety. people who do not know the mountains would simply go and get killed in avalanches and hurricanes—and all that. i suppose that is what the government wishes to prevent.”
“and you're on the side of the government,” said the other, with a twinkle in her brown eyes. “truly now—you hated the whole idea of driving over the simplon.”
lady cressage lifted her brows in whimsical assent as she nodded.
“but do you like this russian plan any better?” demanded celia. “i wish for once you would be absolutely candid and open with me—and let me know to the uttermost just what you think.” “'for once'?” queried the other. her tone was placid enough, but she allowed the significance of the quotation to be marked.
“oh, i never wholly know what you're thinking,” miss madden declared. she put on a smile to alleviate the force of her remarks. “it is not you alone—edith. don't think that! but it is ingrained in your country-women. you can't help it. it's in your blood to keep things back. i've met numbers of english ladies who, i'm ready to believe, would be incapable of telling an untruth. but i've never met one of whom i could be sure that she would tell me the whole truth. don't you see this case in point,” she pursued, with a little laugh, “i could not drag it out of you that you disliked the simplon idea, so long as there was a chance of our going. immediately we find that we can't go, you admit that you hated it.”
“but you wanted to go,” objected lady cressage, quietly. “that was the important thing. what i wanted or did not want had nothing to do with the matter.”
celia's face clouded momentarily. “those are not the kind of things i like to hear you say,” she exclaimed, with a certain vigour. “they put everything in quite a false light. i am every whit as anxious that you should be pleased as that i should. you know that well enough. i've said it a thousand times—and have i ever done anything to disprove it? but i never can find out what you do want—what really will please you! you never will propose anything; you never will be entirely frank about the things i propose. it's only by watching you out of the corner of my eye that i can ever guess whether anything is altogether to your liking or not.”
the discussion seemed to be following lines familiar to them both. “that is only another way of saying what you discovered long ago,” said lady cressage, passively—“that i am deficient in the enthusiasms. but originally you were of the opinion that you had enthusiasms enough for two, and that my lack of them would redress the balance, so to speak. i thought it was a very logical opinion then, and, from my own point of view, i think so now. but if it does not work in practice, at least the responsibility of defending it is not mine.”
“delightful!” cried celia, smiling gayly as she put down her cup again. “you are the only woman i've ever known who was worth arguing with. the mere operation makes me feel as if i were going through oxford—or passing the final jesuit examinations. heaven knows, i would get up arguments with you every day, for the pure enjoyment of the thing—if i weren't eternally afraid of saying something that would hurt your feelings, and then you wouldn't tell me, but would nurse the wound in silence in the dark, and i should know that something was wrong, and have to watch you for weeks to make out what it was—and it would all be too unhappy. but it comes back, you see, to what i said before. you don't tell me things!”
edith smiled in turn, affectionately enough, but with a wistful reserve. “it is a constitutional defect—even national, according to you. how shall i hope to change, at this late day? but what is it you want me to tell you?—i forget.”
“the russian thing. to go to vienna, where we get our passports, and then to cracow, and through to kief, which they say is awfully well worth while—and next moscow—and so on to st. petersburg, in time to see the ice break up. it is only in winter that you see the characteristic russia: that one has always heard. with the furs and the sledges, and the three horses galloping over the snow—it seems to me it must be the best thing in europe—if you can call russia europe. that's the way it presents itself to me—but then i was brought up in a half-arctic climate, and i love that sort of thing—in its proper season. it is different with you. in england you don't know what a real winter is. and so i have to make quite sure that you think you would like the russian experiment.”
the other laughed gently. “but if i don't know what a real winter is, how can i tell whether i will like it or not? all i do know is that i am perfectly willing to go and find out. oh yes—truly—i should like very much to go.”
miss madden sighed briefly. “all right,” she said, but with a notable absence of conviction in her tone.
a space of silence ensued, as she opened and glanced through another note, the envelope of which had borne no postmark. she pouted her lips over the contents of this missive, and raised her eyebrows in token of surprise, but as she laid it down she looked with a frank smile at her companion.
“it's from our young friend,” she explained, genially—“the painter-boy—mr. d'aubigny. it is to remind me of a promise he says i made—that when i came to london he should paint my portrait. i don't think i promised anything of the kind—but i suppose that is a detail. it's all my unfortunate hair. they must have gone by this time—they were to go very early, weren't they?”
lady cressage glanced at the clock. “it was 8:40, i think—fully half an hour ago,” she answered, with a painstaking effect of indifference.
“curious conglomeration”—mused the other. “the boy and girl are so civilized, and their uncle is so rudimentary. i'm afraid they are spoiling him just as the missionaries spoil the noble savage. they ought to go away and leave him alone. as a barbarian he was rather effective—but they will whitewash him and gild him and make a tame monstrosity of him. but i suppose it's inevitable. having made his fortune, it is the rule that he must set up as a gentleman. we do it more simply in america. one generation makes the fortune, and leaves it to the next generation to put on the frills. my father, for example, never altered in the slightest degree the habits he formed when he was a poor workman. to the day of his death, blessed old man, he remained what he had always been—simple, pious, modest, hard-working, kindly, and thrifty—a model peasant. nothing ever tempted him a hair's-breadth out of the path he had been bred to walk in. but such nobility of mind and temper with it all! he never dreamed of suggesting that i should walk in the same path. from my earliest childhood i cannot remember his ever putting a limitation upon me that wasn't entirely sensible and generous. i must have been an extremely trying daughter, but he never said so; he never looked or acted as if he thought so.—but i never stop when i begin talking of my father.”
“it's always very sweet to me to hear you talk of him,” lady cressage put in. “one knows so few people who feel that way about their fathers!”
celia nodded gravely, as if in benevolent comment upon something that had been left unsaid. the sight of the young artist's note recalled her earlier subject. “of course there is a certain difference,” she went on, carelessly,—“this mr. thorpe is not at all a peasant, as the phrase goes. he strikes one, sometimes, as having been educated.”
“oh, he was at a public school, lord plowden tells me,” said the other, with interest. “and his people were booksellers—somewhere in london—so that he got a good smattering of literature and all that. he certainly has more right to set up as a gentleman than nine out of ten of the nouveaux riches one sees flaunting about nowadays. and he can talk very well indeed—in a direct, practical sort of way. i don't quite follow you about his niece and nephew spoiling him. of course one can see that they have had a great effect upon him. he sees it himself—and he's very proud of it. he told me so, quite frankly. but why shouldn't it be a nice effect?”
“oh, i don't know,” celia replied, idly. “it seemed to me that he was the kind of piratical buccaneer who oughtn't to be shaved and polished and taught drawing-room tricks—i feel that merely in the interest of the fitness of things. have you looked into his eyes—i mean when they've got that lack-lustre expression? you can see a hundred thousand dead men in them.”
“i know the look you mean,” said lady cressage, in a low voice.
“not that i assume he is going to kill anybody,” pursued miss madden, with ostensible indifference, but fixing a glance of aroused attention upon her companion's face, “or that he has any criminal intentions whatever. he behaves very civilly indeed, and apparently his niece and nephew idolize him. he seems to be the soul of kindness to them. it may be that i'm altogether wrong about him—only i know i had the instinct of alarm when i caught that sort of dull glaze in his eye. i met an african explorer a year ago, or so, about whose expeditions dark stories were told, and he had precisely that kind of eye. perhaps it was this that put it into my head—but i have a feeling that this thorpe is an exceptional sort of man, who would have the capacity in him for terrible things, if the necessity arose for them.”
“i see what you mean,” the other repeated. she toyed with the bread-crumbs about her plate, and reflectively watched their manipulation into squares and triangles as she went on. “but may that not be merely the visible sign of an exceptionally strong and masterful character? and isn't it, after all, the result of circumstances whether such a character makes, as you put it, a hundred thousand dead men, or enriches a hundred thousand lives instead? we agree, let us say, that this mr. thorpe impresses us both as a powerful sort of personality. the question arises, how will he use his power? on that point, we look for evidence. you see a dull glaze in his eye, and you draw hostile conclusions from it. i reply that it may mean no more than that he is sleepy. but, on the other hand, i bring proofs that are actively in his favour. he is, as you say, idolized by the only two members of his family that we have seen—persons, moreover, who have been brought up in ways different to his own, and who would not start, therefore, with prejudices in his favour. beyond that, i know of two cases in which he has behaved, or rather undertaken to behave, with really lavish generosity—and in neither case was there any claim upon him of a substantial nature. he seems to me, in fact, quite too much disposed to share his fortune with tom, dick, and harry—anybody who excites his sympathy or gets into his affections.” having said this much, lady cressage swept the crumbs aside and looked up. “so now,” she added, with a flushed smile, “since you love arguments so much, how do you answer that?”
celia smiled back. “oh, i don't answer it at all,” she said, and her voice carried a kind of quizzical implication. “your proofs overwhelm me. i know nothing of him—and you know so much!”
lady cressage regarded her companion with a novel earnestness and directness of gaze. “i had a long, long talk with him—the afternoon we came down from glion.”
miss madden rose, and going to the mantel lighted a cigarette. she did not return to the table, but after a brief pause came and took an easy-chair beside her friend, who turned to face her. “my dear edith,” she said, with gravity, “i think you want to tell me about that talk—and so i beg you to do so. but if i'm mistaken—why then i beg you to do nothing of the kind.”
the other threw out her hands with a gesture of wearied impatience, and then clasped them upon her knee. “i seem not to know what i want! what is the good of talking about it? what is the good of anything?”
“now—now!” celia's assumption of a monitor's tone had reference, apparently, to something understood between the two, for lady cressage deferred to it, and even summoned the ghost of a smile.
“there is really nothing to tell,”—she faltered, hesitatingly—“that is, nothing happened. i don't know how to say it—the talk left my mind in a whirl. i couldn't tell you why. it was no particular thing that was said—it seemed to be more the things that i thought of while something else was being talked about—but the whole experience made a most tremendous impression upon me. i've tried to straighten it out in my own mind, but i can make nothing of it. that is what disturbs me, celia. no man has ever confused me in this silly fashion before. nothing could be more idiotic. i'm supposed to hold my own in conversation with people of—well, with people of a certain intellectual rank,—but this man, who is of hardly any intellectual rank at all, and who rambled on without any special aim that one could see—he reduced my brain to a sort of porridge. i said the most extraordinary things to him—babbling rubbish which a school-girl would be ashamed of. how is that to be accounted for? i try to reason it out, but i can't. can you?”
“nerves,” said miss madden, judicially.
“oh, that is meaningless,” the other declared. “anybody can say 'nerves.' of course, all human thought and action is 'nerves.'”
“but yours is a special case of nerves,” celia pursued, with gentle imperturbability. “i think i can make my meaning clear to you—though the parallel isn't precisely an elegant one. the finest thoroughbred dog in the world, if it is beaten viciously and cowed in its youth, will always have a latent taint of nervousness, apprehension, timidity—call it what you like. well, it seems to me there's something like that in your case, edith. they hurt you too cruelly, poor girl. i won't say it broke your nerve—but it made a flaw in it. just as a soldier's old wound aches when there's a storm in the air—so your old hurt distracts and upsets you under certain psychological conditions. it's a rather clumsy explanation, but i think it does explain.”
“perhaps—i don't know,” edith replied, in a tone of melancholy reverie. “it makes a very poor creature out of me, whatever it is.”
“i rather lose patience, edith,” her companion admonished her, gravely. “nobody has a right to be so deficient in courage as you allow yourself to be.”
“but i'm not a coward,” the other protested. “i could be as brave as anybody—as brave as you are—if a chance were given me. but of what use is bravery against a wall twenty feet high? i can't get over it. i only wound and cripple myself by trying to tear it down, or break through it.—oh yes, i know what you say! you say there is no wall—that it is all an illusion of mine. but unfortunately i'm unable to take that view. i've battered myself against it too long—too sorely, celia!”
celia shrugged her shoulders in comment. “oh, we women all have our walls—our limitations—if it comes to that,” she said, with a kind of compassionate impatience in her tone. “we are all ridiculous together—from the point of view of human liberty. the free woman is a fraud—a myth. she is as empty an abstraction as the 'liberty, equality, fraternity' that the french put on their public buildings. i used to have the most wonderful visions of what independence would mean. i thought that when i was absolutely my own master, with my money and my courage and my free mind, i would do things to astonish all mankind. but really the most i achieve is the occasional mild surprise of a german waiter. even that palls on one after a time. and if you were independent, edith—if you had any amount of money—what difference do you think it would make to you? what could you do that you don't do, or couldn't do, now?”
“ah, now”—said the other, looking up with a thin smile—“now is an interval—an oasis.”
miss madden's large, handsome, clear-hued face, habitually serene in its expression, lost something in composure as she regarded her companion. “i don't know why you should say that,” she observed, gently enough, but with an effect of reproof in her tone. “i have never put limits to the connection, in my own mind—and it hadn't occurred to me that you were doing so in yours.”
“but i'm not,” interposed lady cressage.
“then i understand you less than ever. why do you talk about an 'interval'? what was the other word?—'oasis'—as if this were a brief halt for refreshments and a breathing-spell, and that presently you must wander forth into the desert again. that suggestion is none of mine. we agreed that we would live together—'pool our issues,' as they say in america. i wanted a companion; so did you. i have never for an instant regretted the arrangement. some of my own shortcomings in the matter i have regretted. you were the most beautiful young woman i had ever seen, and you were talented, and you seemed to like me—and i promised myself that i would add cheerfulness and a gay spirit to your other gifts—and in that i have failed wofully. you're not happy. i see that only too clearly.”
“i know—i'm a weariness and a bore to you,” broke in the other, despondingly.
“that is precisely what you're not,” celia went on. “we mustn't use words of that sort. they don't describe anything in our life at all. but i should be better pleased with myself if i could really put my finger on what it is that is worrying you. even if we decided to break up our establishment, i have told you that you should not go back to what you regard as poverty. upon that score, i had hoped that your mind was easy. as i say, i think you attach more importance to money than those who have tested its powers would agree to—but that's neither here nor there. you did not get on well on 600 pounds a year—and that is enough. you shall never have less than twice that amount, whether we keep together or not—and if it ought to be three times the amount, that doesn't matter.
“you don't seem to realize, edith”—she spoke with increased animation—“that you are my caprice. you are the possession that i am proudest of and fondest of. there is nothing else that appeals to me a hundredth part as much as you do. since i became independent, the one real satisfaction i have had is in being able to do things for you—to have you with me, and make you share in the best that the world can offer. and if with it all you remain unhappy, why then you see i don't know what to do.”
“oh, i know—i behave very badly!” lady cressage had risen, and with visible agitation began now to pace the room. “i deserve to be thrown into the lake—i know it well enough! but celia—truly—i'm as incapable of understanding it as you are. it must be that i am possessed by devils—like the people in the new testament. perhaps someone will come along who can cast them out. i don't seem able to do it myself. i can't rule myself at all. it needs a strength i haven't got!”
“ah!” said celia, thoughtfully. the excited sentences which edith threw over her shoulder as she walked appeared, upon examination, to contain a suggestion.
“my dear child,” she asked abruptly, after a moment's silence, “do you want to marry?”
lady cressage paused at the mantel, and exchanged a long steadfast glance with her friend. then she came slowly forward. “ah, that is what i don't know,” she answered. apparently the reply was candid.
miss madden pursed her lips, and frowned a little in thought. then, at some passing reflection, she smiled in a puzzled fashion. at last she also rose, and went to the mantel for another cigarette. “now i am going to talk plainly,” she said, with decision. “since the subject is mentioned, less harm will be done by speaking out than by keeping still. there is a debate in your mind on the matter, isn't there?”
the other lady, tall, slender, gently ruminative once more, stood at the window and with bowed head looked down at the lake. “yes—i suppose it might be called that,” she replied, in a low voice.
“and you hesitate to tell me about it? you would rather not?” celia, after an instant's pause, went on without waiting for an answer. “i beg that you won't assume my hostility to the idea, edith. in fact, i'm not sure i don't think it would be the best thing for you to do. marriage, a home, children—these are great things to a woman. we can say that she pays the price of bondage for them—but to know what that signifies, we must ask what her freedom has been worth to her.”
“yes,” interposed the other, from the window. “what have i done with my freedom that has been worth while?”
“not much,” murmured celia, under her breath. she moved forward, and stood beside edith, with an arm round her waist. they looked together at the lake.
“it is lord plowden, is it not?” asked the american, as the silence grew constrained.
lady cressage looked up alertly, and then hesitated over her reply. “no,” she said at last. upon reflection, and with a dim smile flickering in her side-long glance at celia, she added, “he wants to marry you, you know.”
“leave that out of consideration,” said celia, composedly. “he has never said so. i think it was more his mother's idea than his, if it existed at all. of course i am not marrying him, or anybody else. but i saw at hadlow that you and he were—what shall i say?—old friends.”
“he must marry money,” the other replied. in an unexpected burst of candour she went on: “he would have asked me to marry him if i had had money. there is no harm in telling you that. it was quite understood—oh, two years ago. and i think i wished i had the money—then.”
“and you don't wish it now?”
a slight shake of edith's small, shapely head served for answer. after a little, she spoke in a musing tone: “he is going to have money of his own, very soon, but i don't think it would attract me now. i like him personally, of course, but—there is no career, no ambition, no future.”
“a viscount has future enough behind him,” observed celia.
“it doesn't attract me,” the other repeated, vaguely. “he is handsome, and clever, and kind and all that—but he would never appeal to any of the great emotions—nor be capable of them himself he is too smooth, too well-balanced, too much the gentleman. that expresses it badly—but do you see what i mean?”
celia turned, and studied the beautiful profile beside her, in a steady, comprehending look.
“yes, i think i see what you mean,” she said, with significance in her tone.
lady cressage flushed, and released herself from her companion's arm. “but i don't know myself what i mean!” she exclaimed, despairingly, as she moved away. “i don't know!—i don't know!”
