CHAPTER XVI
She slept that night with the resolve beneath her pillow to be up and out before breakfast, but her weariness after long travelling and the February darkness of the early morning kept her sleeping till eight o'clock. Awakening and remembering where she was, she jumped up and looked out of the window. She saw the beginnings of the forest hardly a field's distance from their little garden of firs. The fresh air brushed her cheek and throat. Oh, she must be out—out to examine France by daylight. So after quick dressing and a hurried breakfast, she put on a warm coat and hastened through the garden gate.
The road on to which their little avenue ran was called, as she observed after walking a little distance in the direction from which they had come last night, the Rue du Château. All the French history and French literature she had ever read seemed touched to life by the three words. The château, her father had told her, had been inhabited by the Duc d'Orléans, Madame de Genlis, Queen Hortense and the Duc de Bourbon; and she imagined these people walking down the cobbles where she was walking. Madame de Genlis, as a writer of a hundred books and a famous figure in a stirring age, interested her most. She surely was Daphne's spiritual ancestor.
But not only these romantic names of the past thrilled her; the words over the shops, épicier, charcuterie, estaminet, and the advertisements of apéritifs were exotic and quickening. At the Place de la Forge the Rue du Château ran into a wider thoroughfare called the Rue de Paris. Could any name be more suggestive? Could anything be more typical than the tiny statue of the Virgin and Child in a little niche at the corner house, looking down on the road to Paris? In the middle of the Place was a large fountain, from whose centre rose a painted metal statue of a worker with his scythe, stripped to the waist and drinking from a gourd as he paused in his labour. Big-hipped women with shawls about their shoulders and their heads en cheveux were filling their buckets there. Little girls passed, carrying loaves as long as children. Boys with socks and bare calves, wearing little capes and porters' caps, walked over the cobbles to school. And the French language in the treble voices of children first came alive to Daphne.
She turned to her right towards a plastery church, and on its walls saw the words, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité; and the whole Revolution with a crowd of ghosts hovered about her consciousness. She walked on till she came to a dusty square, and from here she decided to climb through the side streets to the forest again. As she approached its skied arras of trees, a horn sounded from a café in its fringe, and awoke with its notes Henry IV and Marguerite de Valois and the whole pageant of Dumas.
But a few minutes more and she was in the forest, walking on a rutty and mossed road between untidy trees. On her right she saw traces of a decayed and tumbled wall overrushed by the tangled boscage. Farther, and she came to a ruined gateway with tumbled brick pillars on either side. Within was nothing but the confusion of trees and the interwoven riot of underbrush. One could hardly trace what had been the stately carriage-way. Still affixed to a tree was the weather-worn notice of some haughty castellan, "Propriété Privée. Défense d'entrer. Pièges à feu." She strolled on, trying to follow the line of tumbled wall, and thinking of that gate and the words, "Forbidden to enter"; and suddenly she saw, as she looked over it, woodcutters stacking faggots, and hatless, aproned women gathering twigs.
Though impressed by the futility of ambition, she felt the very melancholy an urge to write. "Broken gates of ruined châteaux," she murmured to herself. "Broken gates...." Tinkling bells disturbed her dreaming, and round a curve in the trees came a bareheaded girl with a flock of white goats.
That afternoon she took a pencil and some scribbling paper, and walked in the winter sunshine round and round the narrow house, wondering what to write about. She had bad moments when she felt that in all her life there was no emotion on which she could draw, and that her invention, when put to the test, was completely sterile. Still, it was pleasant to moon about the garden thus, striving to see in the populous regions of the past a tale worth telling.
But the next day she was secretly glad that the brain-tiring subject could be put aside in favour of the first exciting visit to Paris. And during the next few weeks she persuaded herself that she might legitimately neglect her actual writing, since she would be completing her preparation for the great work by all the education to be sucked out of intelligent visits to Paris.... No, it was not an excuse to escape from effort, but real hard work.
And February passed into March, and the spring came peeping in the trees of Montmorency, and still there was nothing on the scribbling paper—except scribbles.
But if she had not written much, she and Miss Carrell had learned Paris like a loved book. They talked proudly of the Palais Royal, the Louvre, the Boulevard des Italiens, the Palais de Justice and the Pantheon. Sometimes Mr. Bruno joined them in the evening and they dined on the boulevards, watching the crowds and the traffic hurry by, to the music of the paper women shrieking, "La Presse! La Presse!" They had been to the Opera, and Daphne, lifted to the roof by the singing of the soprano in the finale of the first act, and by the storm of applause at the curtain's fall, began to wonder whether her own genius might not really find its issue in great singing or great acting. She felt no longer sure of being a great writer. She was sure only that she was a genius.
April, May and June passed in an alternation of gay sightseeing in Paris and lonely fancy-gathering in the Montmorency Forest. Both were forms of delight, but there was a distinction. Visiting the city was entertainment and stimulation, but the solitary saunter a-dream among the burgeoning trees was that serene happiness that could only be called blessedness. She did not believe a more perfect serenity could be attained. And it could only be compassed alone. Had she had companions who could understand, it might have been very good to talk over her aspirations sometimes; but there were none. Her father was either too busy, or his knowledge too overawing, to be told of his ridiculous daughter's pretentious schemes. No, she would surprise him one day. So she wandered alone with her thoughts like the girl with the white goats. Bliss it was: and there hardly emerged the fear, though it moved to birth at times, that this was the bliss of a drug—that the long, luxurious brooding on what she would one day do was daily unfitting her for doing it.
In July, when they should have gone to Switzerland, Mr. Bruno decided that his work would not allow him to gratify this desire till next year. Nor should Owen, who had now joined them, take Daphne to the mountains, for himself had fixed his heart on doing that. So he sent both children to the Belgian coast, where they spent delightful days in Ostend and Middelkerke and Westende. This was to be every minute a holiday, decided Daphne, and writing was abandoned for bathing and sailing, and mild gambling at casinos and dancing at hotels. To recline on and finger the fine shingle, or watch the little rills running down their channels in the corrugated sand, or to sit up and hurl flat stones so that they leapt and ricochetted on the smooth sea was to live with childish memories. This holiday she discovered Owen: that he was a tall, presentable boy with the graceful figure of his father; and astonishingly efficient, managing all their money affairs and so leaving her to lax enjoyment. The fact was, each for the first time was proud of the other.
In September, when they returned to St. Leu, she realised that her holiday was over and she must now start again on her work. But as she and her brother pushed open the gate of the little garden of firs she was dismayed to find herself dreading the task and the repetition of the long, worrying hours that ended in a few scribbled lines and unmeasurable discouragement. The shock was like a moment of overthrow. Was she one who had the creative temperament without the power to create? No, no; that would be too awful a disappointment. She was indolent, that was all. When she was supposed to be unpacking upstairs she was really facing a revelation. She was mentally and physically slothful. And why? Why, when she knew she was charged with a vitality of body and mind? It was habit. It was the legacy of her childhood. She walked to the window and looked out upon the forest. Loth to do it, she was yet angrily blaming her father and all the careless people about the steps of her childhood who had allowed her to learn indolence and practise it to perfection.
Once the chaos stirred and the spirit of creation moved above it. She had been drifting about the forest glades, strewn with old leaves and broken twigs, and after descending a flexuous lane, happened upon a white church. It was Taverney Church, and five hundred years old, from the evidence of its clerestory windows, which were as lovely as those of an Early English cathedral. Beyond it thronged the houses of Taverney. She walked into its walled cemetery, a strangely silent place bounded on three sides by the forest trees and on the fourth by the high wall of the church. Epitaphs were always interesting, so she wandered among the graves, moved to sadness by the tawdry wreaths of wire and beads and the china flowers. One grave, because it had many such offerings and a border of pansies, stayed her to examine it closer. On the stone slab she read:
"Ici Repose
Geneviève Rollier,"
and in silver lettering on one cross of beads, "A Notre Mère"; on another, "A Notre Amie"; and on a wreath that seemed by right the largest, "A Mon Epouse." There was a scroll across some dirty china flowers with the words, "Nous ne t'oublierons jamais." She stared at it, unconscious of a drooping mouth. She was wondering what Géneviève had achieved before her husband and her children laid her there; whether their loving offerings had outlasted their sadness; whether Géneviève's life had been worth while.
Suddenly she looked up. She knew that never before had she been so conscious of her response to all the pain in life. It pleased her that she could sense it thus and be troubled by it. Here was the secret of how to write it. You must really feel with men—and what had she felt so far? How completely self-centred her life had been! And as long as it was self-centred you could not really feel with others.... She would like to begin being unselfish—a saint perhaps; the peer of St. Theresa as well as of Madame de Genlis.
Out of her pity for this woman, why should she not write an imaginary life? Yes, she would do it. They would be here many months, and how she would enjoy studying local colour, local history and local temperaments! ... It was so much easier to study conditions and jot down notes, in a book than to grind at a table.... She caught that thought as it flitted through her mind, and wrung its neck. "Madame Rolland" should be a masterpiece, and she would spare no labour on it.
Throughout that autumn and winter she did struggle on odd days to get something on paper. But oh, it was difficult! How often was she tempted to throw down her pencil and dream again! And that inspiration in Taverney Churchyard—where was it? She had to bully and shake her memory to find out what the emotion had been. And it would be a great relief sometimes to decide she must walk back to the cemetery and find out.
With the spring came all the excitement of thinking about their summer visit to Switzerland and Italy. But April brought moments of dismay. The Uitlanders of the Transvaal, some dusty country thousands of mile away in South Africa, had sent a petition to the Queen for protection from strange Dutchmen called Boers. And Mr. Bruno, pleased with the drama of it and with his own keen vision and understanding, talked of an inevitable war.
"Of course there'll be war. Any one with twopence worth of imagination and knowledge of Englishmen can see how the tale will write itself.... So what about your continental trotting now, Duffy?"
She hardly knew whether to think him teasing or to be alarmed.
"But what on earth has it got to do with us going to Switzerland?"
"Everything. You've never seen a real war, have you? Small things like authors' incomes are apt to disappear. And now you're going to see a war, when English people won't be able to show their faces on the Continent for fear of being spat on."
"Oh, Daddy, it won't happen. It can't. At least, not till we've been and come back."
So Mr. Bruno hoped, too indolent, really, to believe otherwise. And when the Dutchmen of Cape Colony moved to mediate between England and the Transvaal Boers he affected a great relief.
"Yes, Duffy, I think you might pack—with a heart full of thanks to these godly old men of the Africander Bund. They've been your good fairies. At any rate, nothing'll happen for some months yet."
CHAPTER XVII
When, one early July afternoon, Daphne and her father arrived at the Hotel Frohnalstock, at Brunnen, on the Lake of Lucerne, she learned that the news of their coming was already abroad among the guests, and looked forward to her descent that evening into the lounge or on to the terrace where these interested people would be waiting for their dinner. There was the pleasing memory, too, of six very simple but very new dresses in her trunks. She selected in her bedroom the one of pale cinnamon, and had completed her dressing by seven o'clock, which was half an hour too soon. Much too soon, for she had determined that her father and she should not enter the lounge till five minutes before the meal, so that as many people as possible might be congregated there. Twenty-five minutes to wait.
The French windows of her bedroom opened on to a private loggia; and stepping out into an air of Egyptian warmth, she purposed to kill time by staring at the lake. To her this view from her bedroom balcony seemed the most wonderful on which she had ever gazed. From the gardens at the hotel's base, four stories below, the lake spread a width of tranquil water, brilliant in the evening sun, till it lost itself in the dark reflections of the pine-clad mountains opposite. To the left—for Brunnen was almost at the lake's end—the water appeared to finish in a dark corner, shut from light by the wooded slopes. Above the pines before her rose the white peaks of the Urirotstock. At their foot, where the mountains formed a headland, a white rock, not unlike a coarse obelisk, stood alone in the water. Somewhere in the trees was the Rutli meadow where, many hundred years ago, the representatives of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden swore their forest cantons into an eternal alliance—and Switzerland was born.
It was her father who had decided that they must come first to Brunnen. Was not all its surrounding country—Schwyz, and Einsiedeln, and the Rutli meadow, and the Tellskapelle—the cradle of Swiss history and the holy ground of Swiss legends? Never would she forget her approach to it by steamboat from Lucerne. The grandeur of the mountains and the serenity of the water had raised in her, as she sat staring over the rail, a longing for intenser emotions than she had yet known—love, she supposed, no matter whether it brought joy or tragedy. She felt that she was ripe for something like that. Her mind was not superstitious; she had no belief in destiny or that she had been brought to this incomparable place for a pre-ordained experience. She just wondered whether, since something must happen some day, it might not happen here. She was now nineteen.
Five past seven. And dinner was at seven-thirty. During the next twenty minutes she kept looking at her watch, like an actor before the calls, "House-lights," and "Curtain." At twenty-five past she walked into her father's room next door.
"Come along quickly," she said. "They all know you're here, and I want to show you off."
They descended the wide, soft-carpeted stairs, Daphne with that unusual quiet and dignity which the consciousness of evening dress can throw about those unaccustomed to wearing it. As they entered the lounge and she pretended to be looking for some chairs the flutter of interest among the people made her more self-conscious than ever. She knew that all were glancing at her father and herself over newspapers, liqueurs or pince-nez. This feeling of notoriety threw her into an over-acted naturalness, and she said rather loudly:
"Oh, there we are, Daddy; there's a table and two chairs. I'll bag them."
And she almost ran towards them. Then she sat down, and, picking up a French journal, tried to appear at ease. Sometimes, however, she swept her eyes around the guests. There was still in her mind the wonder if, by faint chance, he, the lover, was there. No, she didn't think so. Once she did encounter the eyes of a young man who immediately avoided hers and became lost in a book—proof that he had been staring at her. Not liking to look his way again, she kept her quick impression of fair hair, none too tidy and inclined to fall towards one eyebrow, a clear forehead, and a very ordinary, rather childish but rather "sweet" face. His dress seemed slightly different from an Englishman's. Later she snatched another glance at him, just as a draught from the open windows blew that falling hair right across his forehead, and she thought that Shelley—at least in brow and hair—must have been like that.
A gong sounded in some remote passage, and its din grew louder as it was brought towards the lounge. The young man rose, and she saw that his figure was other than she had expected: he was tall, stooped a little, and, though probably twenty-five years old, had not yet lost the gracelessness of seventeen. A girl, almost certainly his sister, joined him, and they walked together into the spacious white restaurant.
During dinner Daphne was more than once aware that he had resumed his study of her, though pretending to chat with his sister. It was always her, rather than her father, that he watched, so she began to doubt if it was the Bruno name that engaged him. It looked very like instant admiration. One could not but return an interest.
After dinner, on the broad terrace that overlooked the lake, she sat with her father listening to a string quartette and watching other people walk up and down. The youth was among them, walking with his sister and an older man, who was conceivably her admirer, and every time he passed Daphne he pretended to know nothing of her nearness, talking gaily to his companion.
Soon her father yawned and spoke about early bed after his disgusting night in a train, but she begged for permission to stay up at least till ten, and presently he left her there. She got up from her chair, and, going to the balustrade of the terrace, watched the changing light on the water. A primordial darkness possessed the Rutli trees, and a night that was almost frightening filled the corner where the lake ended.
Next morning she was very late in getting up, and breakfasted alone between half-past nine and ten. Hurrying over the coffee and rolls, she passed out of the restaurant's doors on to the terrace to see if her father were sitting there with a book. She saw him twenty yards away in interested conversation with the youth who was seated, with obvious reverence, at his side. Hastily she withdrew into the restaurant and walked into the lounge through its communicating doors. There in an easy-chair she browsed the pictures in some English magazines till her father, entering from the terrace, stared about the room as if seeking his daughter. She whistled a long, fluttering note with a curve at its end, and Mr. Bruno perceived her.
"Duffy," said he. "Do you want to play tennis?"
"Oh, yes!"
"Well"—he sat beside her—"there's an American boy here who came up to me this morning——"
"You mean Shelley."
"Shelley? No, Detmould he calls himself. He came up to me with a most becoming modesty and asked if he might make himself known as he was a great admirer of your father's books—and tried to write himself. We've been having a most stimulating talk. He's got brains; indeed, a remarkable mind, I fancy. I should think he'll do something one day." Daphne exhibited interest, although disappointed that it had been the Bruno name, after all, which attracted him. "But now he's just asked if I and my daughter play tennis. I told him my age, which I am glad to say surprised him, and then said I'd ask you if you'd like to play."
"Oh, rather!"
"Then I think if you'll whistle to him as you did to me just now he'll come to heel."
"You whistle to him," suggested she.
"Personally, I make a distinction between dogs and men," said Mr. Bruno, getting up and walking towards the terrace. "To men I generally cough." He coughed and h'med, and drew the American boy into the room.
"This is my daughter, Mr. Detmould." Daphne jumped up, incurably thinking of herself as a child. "She ought to play well, since she's fresh from school."
"I'm not fresh from school. I left over two years ago."
"She was more or less expelled two years ago, since when I've had her on my hands. Duffy, this is Mr. Detmould, who kindly says you may play with him and his sister."
"Oh, thanks. I should love to.... Shall I go and change?"
She asked this of the young Detmould, who seemed rather embarrassed, and stuttered:
"Sure; if you will, thanks; and I'll go and get Elsie and Clarkson."
His American accent pleased her.
When she returned in a white tennis coat to the lounge she saw the young Detmould in flannels, and talking deferentially to her father. With his white shirt open at the throat, his hair already blown and his rather childish features, he would have looked a growing schoolboy, had it not been for a set—almost pained—thoughtfulness in his eyes and mouth. He rose as she entered, said: "Well, good-bye, sir," to Mr. Bruno, and led the way to the tennis-court.
The tennis-court was of dried earth, and had been cut out of a wooded slope. On three of the banks, therefore, were trees: horse-chestnuts and figs, with firs behind, and under the branches a few old and blistered garden-seats. A beaten track climbed from the gate in the surrounding network to the garden seats. At the minute, on the pale, slate-coloured earth, Elsie Detmould was playing a single with Mr. Clarkson, their companion of the previous night. They stopped as Daphne appeared.
"It's awfully nice of you to come," said Elsie with her pleasant American drawl. "I'm afraid none of us are any good except Henry"—she nodded towards her brother—"and he's terrible."
Then Henry was his name—Henry Detmould—and he didn't fit either.
In the first set Daphne was partnered with Henry, and whether it was that she was excited by the all-conquering play of her partner, or aided by the weakness of Mr. Clarkson and Elsie, she knew not, but she played as she never remembered playing before. The set went to her and Henry at 6-0.
"Goodness!" exclaimed Elsie. "I guess you're a player. What's wrong with a change of partners?"
Flushed with her success, Daphne determined to play her hardest against Henry, and she and Mr. Clarkson fought a fine losing battle. The points were contested with such obstinacy that each time they were won or lost she threw up both her arms and shrieked with excitement. And at the set's close she said over the net to Henry Detmould:
"You've no business to play at all, playing as well as that."
He blushed, and his sister endorsed: "He is horrible, isn't he?"
Tired, they were moving towards the seats, Elsie Detmould and Mr. Clarkson in front, and Daphne and Henry following with the net between them.
"But you'll make a wonderful player yourself," said Henry.
"Oh, I'm no good," protested Daphne. "I didn't play all last year."
"You're a born player. All you want is a spell of singles with some one a little stronger than yourself."
"Do you think so?"
"Yes. Will you—will you play at least one set of singles with me every day. I should love to—to bring you out."
"Oh, may I? But won't it be horribly dull for you?"
"Not at all. I——" There he stopped, unable to phrase exactly what he was thinking. They were on the beaten path now, she leading, and when they reached the seat he picked up her white coat and silently helped her on with it.
After a rest they decided on a return set, and Daphne in her keenness ran first down the track on to the court. When all were placed for play, she frowned through the strings of her racket at Henry saying: "Now, don't you be too much of a beast this time," and he looked awkwardly away, but smiled. In this set she did not play so well, being anxious to justify his invitation, and, when it was over, felt compelled to say: "You can withdraw your invitation if you like."
"No," smiled he. "I've no desire to. In fact, if you play badly I shall put you through a longer course."
She answered nothing, but again walked ahead up the beaten path. That Henry Detmould, even as Roger six years before, had been attracted to her from the first glance, was plain enough, and that her own response was already troubling her. It was a different response. This American boy had not Roger's good looks to quicken her admiration and pride; she knew nothing whatever about him, and yet—Heaven only knew why—she fancied her heart was beating a little quicker for him.
Having returned to the hotel, she ran up all those stairs, dismissing the last of her breath, and, before preparing for lunch, entered in her diary: "Played tennis 10.30 to 12.30 with Miss Detmould, Mr. Clarkson, and Shelley."
She did not see him again till after dinner on the terrace. Then when the quartette was again playing they found themselves sitting side by side and watching the evening as it fell over the water or lit up behind the mountains.
The talk had begun with perfunctory remarks about their tennis, but it only became really interesting when the falling darkness inspired them to discuss themselves.
"Do you know," said Henry suddenly, "I'm really bowled over by meeting your father and you here. I've so long been a student of his books. In fact, I think they decided the course of my life."
Next to hearing praise of oneself the most uncomfortable thing is to hear praise of one's parents, and Daphne replied awkwardly:
"They are quite good, aren't they?"
"I think they're magnificent."
"Have you published any books?"
"Lord, no!" muttered he. "And I've very little hopes of any one ever publishing my stuff; but I'm always writing, and always shall do. Do you write, too?"
"I want to."
"Oh, you will, then. You're sure to."
"I don't know." Daphne's head shook. "I'm losing hope. I seem to have no powers of invention at all. I can't invent any plot that hasn't been done before."
"Invention! What do you want with invention? Invention's the opposite of true art."
Her face swung to his.
"How do you mean?"
"Invention, inasmuch as it is invention, must be insincere. Art isn't the invention of entertaining stuff, it's—it's—oh, it's the liberation, for your own relief, of all the emotion stirred in you by the spectacle of life. It's the transmuting into some art form of your reaction, as we say in America—your reaction to life."
"Regardless of whether any one will read it, or publish it?" queried Daphne.
"Absolutely.... Or no.... No, you do hope, when you've given a created form to your emotion, that there'll be those one day who will recognise it as akin to their own, and care to contemplate it, and even thrill to it.... But that mustn't be the thought that drives you to write."
This was the beginning. Henry poured out his views on art. Art wasn't entertainment.... The true artist gave but little thought to the spectator.... All he sought was expression—escape—release.... And these ideas, coming on a living voice, driven forward by a personality that attracted her, stood clear before Daphne. Never from her confused reading had they come out like this. She'd been wrong—she'd been all along wrong; half of her desire to write had been hunger for fame, and the other half imitation. Her reaction to life? She hadn't got one.... And yet there had been moments.... Yes, perhaps one-tenth of her desire had been the true impulse.
The talk became a confession where Daphne, as a penitent, sought counsel from her director. She confessed that, so far from having emotions and a view-point of her own, she was never thrilled by a noble passage in an author without wanting to write like him and from his view-point.
"Exactly," said Henry. "Your reaction has been to literature and not to life."
"And yet I don't know," demurred she. "There have been times——" And she told him the story of Taverney Churchyard. Henry listened, sometimes wrinkling his brow at the lake as he thought out answers, sometimes turning to watch her as she spoke. His reply lingered, and when it came was strange.
"Forgive me asking it, but have you suffered at all in your life?"
She smiled over the inevitable reply.
"Not much, I suppose."
"Because I've a fancy that it's not till we've suffered a great deal that our hearts, when they are moved like that, will be so charged with sympathy that it gives us much—everything to write."
And ambition. What was to be done about her ambition? Must she believe, then, that she was a sham—for she was sure, whatever he said, she would never expel it? "I do want to do all you say, but I do want to be famous, too, and soon, while all my friends are alive."
Henry thought long, and once ran his fingers into the hair that the breeze on the terrace was blowing across his forehead. "No, it must go," he said; and at that moment he threw the end of his cigarette over the balustrade as if it were Daphne's ambition. It must go. It was a corruptive principle. All that could remain of it was her hope to please the few who would understand.
"I am convinced that many true artists start from those two points of ambition and imitation, and work through, dropping the false values, one by one, till they discover their real selves."
Silence, till Daphne asked:
"But if you never get anything published at all?"
Henry looked along the emptying terrace. They must have been talking for hours.
"A really big thing, I fancy, always gets through—sooner or later. But, at any rate, people like you and me, if we're never able to produce anything big enough, at least can join the few who understand."
When she smiled "Good night" at him at the lift door and walked along the corridor to her bedroom, she had a sense that she had enjoyed the most wonderful conversation in her life. With no one else had she been able to talk like that. In such an intimacy was a serenity as delightful, as blissful—there was no other word—as when she walked with her thoughts in the glades of Montmorency.
CHAPTER XVIII
But these intimate conversations belonged, as by right, to the darkness of after dinner. The sunny mornings—and in the summer of 1899 the days were monotonously, illustriously sunny—would see them on the tennis court, playing their practice singles. Enthusiasm more and more possessed Daphne as she found her strokes getting stronger, her eyes surer, and her feet swifter. She still ran shrieking from side to side of the court as he placed the ball now in one corner and now in another; and when she shrieked she apologised, promising "she would not do that again." If he beat her with a malicious and impossible ball she looked angrily at him through the strings of her racket, and even threw out her tongue.
When the games were over, and he declared that he was thirsty, she would say, "So'm I. Let's go and get some fizzy." And they would walk back to the terrace, where she poured out the drink for him. Always she remarked that when she was close to him, pouring out his drink, he would be silent and almost painfully abstracted. That she was encouraging him she knew, but could not cease from it; something compelled her to show that she was happy in this fellowship and ready to think of herself and him as a separated pair.
Soon her father took to coming and watching them at tennis. He must learn, he said, whether there was anything in this noisy rumour of his daughter's skill. As an outcome of his survey he was struck by his daughter's exceedingly good form in the matter of tennis and her exceedingly bad form in the matter of manners—shrieking and leaping as she did whenever there was occasion for triumph or reprobation, shouting "Oo!" and "Lordy!" and "Coo!" and even staring impudently at the young man through the grill-window of her racket. The second time he watched, an early evening after tea, he was strongly impressed by the unconscious or subtly concealed way in which she was throwing herself at this American boy. He pulled his moustaches over it, sitting under the chestnut trees above the play. The thing interested him as a philosopher and a student of human nature, and he ruminated, detached from it, as though the girl were not his daughter. In watching this attraction between a man and a maid, thought he, he was very near to the acme of things. If to a vitalist philosophy love was life at its greatest intensity, here was he watching it break through and bud vividly. An unconscious youth and girl didn't realise that this was the explanation of their genius for love. Yes, life touched no higher point than this; and nuptials, therefore, to those who could see, were a coronation ceremony of life.
These thoughts were interrupted by the game's early close. Young Detmould had promised to meet his sister returning on the steamboat from Treib; and Mr. Bruno was slightly disturbed to hear his daughter call out: "Oh, must you go? What a shame! I'll come with you to the gate."
"Bon Dieu!" thought Mr. Bruno. "That's going rather far."
The gate she meant was at the end of a narrow serpentine path that threaded downward through the crowding firs. He allowed her five minutes before following her; and then, lighting a cigar to fortify him in a difficult interview, strolled along the path. She was leaning, as he saw on turning the last bend, against the post of the little swing gate, and sucking a large and ungovernable sweetmeat. The American boy must have just disappeared, and Daphne be indulging a reverie. This sight of his daughter resting against a gate and symbolising the acme of things touched him. He called:
"Duffy."
She looked up, startled.
"Come back with me and be lectured."
She replied nothing, but sucked the abominable lollipop (thus treating his promised lecture with scanty reverence), and taking her elbow from the gate-post came to him. And it was as they were walking back that he said:
"You're obviously throwing yourself at the head of that American youth."
"Oh, I'm not!" she exclaimed.
"You said that like a Cockney serving-girl. I tell you you are deliberately—whether in the body or out of it I can't say—throwing yourself at the besotted young man, who's quite palpably in love with you."
The sentence was music in Daphne's ears. She liked her father to think that Henry Detmould was in love with her, and so said nothing for fear of damaging the thought.
"Tell me, Duffy, what would you think of a bookseller who was so unable to recognise a first edition that would one day be of some value that he flung it into the twopenny box for the first loiterer to buy?"
She provided the answer expected from her.
"I should think him a silly fool, I suppose."
"Well, but thou art the man—the creature, I mean."
"Daddy, I'm not. You're imagining it all. Besides, you might go on saying that for ever. I must like some one one day."
"Yes; but, Duffy go slow, go slow. What you may think is love is often self-hypnotism. You've always had a fairly clear brain, so make sure first."
"But how does one make sure?"
"How? I don't know. I think time alone will test it for you. What do you know of young Detmould? You've only met him for a week or two. All I can say for him is that he has the grace to be much shyer of encouraging you than you are of him."
"I've never encouraged him one bit."
"Not deliberately and vulgarly. But whether you know it or not, my dear, you hang out teasing flags."
She ran upstairs to dress for dinner, and closed her bedroom door, as if to add more privacy to her thoughts. She stood behind her window and looked out.
How did one make sure?
What did she really feel? Certainly she wanted to keep her lure for Henry, and her long thoughts about him. With this new interest life had dyed itself very bright; and if a wand could wave it away so that it had never been, everything would drop into paleness again. Up till their arrival at Brunnen her book-thoughts had crowded her mind, but now Henry had sent them below and occupied their room. In his talks on the terrace at night he had given her more than any one else in the world. Not only had he unveiled the wrongness in her approach to art, but his wide-thrown learning had indirectly shamed her into disturbing realisations. He talked of philosophy—and what did she know of philosophy? Wrinkling his forehead, or pressing a hand on his hair, he spoke of painters, sculptors, musicians, architects, declaring that he who would be master of one art must be jack of them all—and she knew hardly anything of the names he mentioned! Greatness, she realised, as she listened in a humiliated silence, was not born from dreaming on it, nor was it attained by the slothful who read only what was easy. If you were to express your reaction to life, you must aim at little else than all knowledge, so should it be the reaction of a fine mind. All this he had given her. Was she in love with him? She created a very private picture of herself lying in Henry's arms, pressed against his heart. It sent a tremor of joy through her.
But what did he feel? There was that first night's staring at her. There was his pointed choice of her to play tennis with, though really she could be nothing more than a wild pupil. And sometimes when he caught her eyes he swung his own away uncomfortably. But was it only a passing attraction—a holiday flirtation? No, it didn't seem like that. That strange agitation of his hands, when she stood very close to him and poured out his drink—it didn't look like flirting.
She stepped forward and stood on her loggia, staring over the lake at the fir-woods climbing the opposite mountain. The evening was close, and the water filmed and inert. A little boat with two people in it was coming home to Brunnen from the Schillerstein. After watching it for a while, she quickly turned her head leftward and upward to the floor above—where Henry's window was. He was standing on his balcony, looking down at her loggia. And he had seen her glance, and awkwardly waved his hand, as if to show he was unembarrassed. She pretended not to have recognised him, and retreated into her room.
That night there was dancing in the lounge. Daphne, with a Spanish embroidered shawl about her shoulders, sat next her father, watching the first waltz, and hoping Henry would soon come and ask her to dance, that her father might be further persuaded of his love. But not once did he come near her. He danced two or three dances with his sister, and some more with a very pretty girl, whom Daphne had often noticed. But she was not jealous of her, for Henry as he waltzed seemed abstracted and mechanical.
Daphne was not left without partners. The most persistent suitor was a tall, moustached Swiss, who, having once found her, was beyond question lost in admiration of his discovery. She talked gaily to him in French, but was thinking all the while: "Why doesn't Henry come? Is he hurt about something? Did he think I snubbed him by not answering his wave? I didn't mean to snub him—I was only shy...." She tried a happier thought. "Perhaps he doesn't want to compromise me by being seen so much with me, and this is so public. Yes, it's that. It's a good sign, rather than a bad one." But when they passed each other dancing, and he smiled a merry recognition, as if there were nothing remarkable in their not dancing together, she doubted again. "I shall know to-morrow morning, if he asks me to play tennis with him as usual."
In the morning she dawdled on the terrace in the hope of his invitation, but he passed her gaily, calling that he was going to climb the Selisberg with his sister and Clarkson. Almost it appeared as if he had made up his mind to avoid her. And in the evening, after dinner, he, Elsie and Clarkson sat with her father and her, and all discussed with perfect naturalness their adventures during the day. Never did he attempt to escape from the shelter of a crowd. At ten o'clock she retired to her bedroom with her wound. "Time is so short. We shan't have more than a month here, and we are wasting precious days. Henry, you know you want to be with me. You know you do."
One day succeeded another without bringing back the former intercourse. It was a mystery. Only when other people were with them did they meet. And yet she knew all the while that he was longing to have her alone. She would leave herself in places where he was likely to arrive, and then, shy of appearing to have done it on purpose, stroll away as soon as she saw him in the distance. Sometimes when she was thus set for him, the moustached Swiss would appear, and, though courteous to him, she would be thinking: "I don't want you. I don't want you. I'm awfully sorry if you're in love with me, because I know what it is to love without return. I'm sorry." And as soon as possible she would escape.
Her father took her on carriage excursions to Tellsplatte and the Einsiedeln Monastery, and Altdorf, and up the Furka Pass to the Rhone Glacier; and on the same days Henry went climbing with Elsie and their friend. A week of this mere friendliness heightened her doubt to misery, and her love to passion. Not now did she bring it to trial. She would not so insult it. She was madly in love with Henry. She wanted Henry with his boyish features and shape and his rich mind—his mind that blent with hers and fertilised it. She wanted him for her exclusive possession, to imprison him in herself. She was unable to read, unable to talk to people, and annoyed with her father when he came to chat. Always she wished to be worrying out the problem, "Does he love me?" sometimes answering it, "Yes, I know he does, in spite of all," and at other times, "He did for a few days, he really did, but not now." Or she refused herself so much comfort as that, declaring, "No, he was never more than just interested." And she would review every look she had seen in him, and every sentence he had uttered, in quest of proofs that he had loved her; and with a sunken heart decide that there was nothing that she could twist into more than a transient interest. She played an old childish game, "If I pass that post before some one speaks to me, then he does love me," and if it went against her, refused to believe in it. The terrace and the tennis court and its seat under the chestnuts, and all the places where they had been together, clothed themselves with pain. And if people in their innocence spoke to her about Mr. Detmould, or "that young American," she felt she had a proprietary interest in him, and gave information as one who spoke with authority.
Her fist had clenched over the vow: "You shall come back to me first. I won't go to you. Time may be short, but you shall come to me first."
In the end, however, she went to him.
He was sitting quite alone in a dark corner of the long terrace, as far as possible from the people round the string quartette. Pretending not to see him, she wandered past.
"You look tired," came his voice from the obscurity.
"Oh ... hallo!"
He extended the chair that was next to him, leaving his arm along its back.
"Why not sit down?"
After some meaningless hesitation she accepted the chair.
"I will—for a little," stuttered she, as he withdrew his arm. "But it's cold, isn't it?"
"I don't think so."
It was a preamble to nothing; neither found more words. She looked at the Spanish shawl, lying on her lap, and fiddled with its embroidery. Something told her that Henry was agitated and trembling internally, though nothing in his posture or movements suggested it; only the foot of his crossed leg swung gently. At one moment she knew that he was looking at her arms, and she scanned them herself. Hard tennis had made them slenderer than usual, and exposure had browned them; they were trembling.
"If you're cold," said Henry at last, "you'd better put your shawl on. Let me put it round you."
He took it off her lap and, as she bent forward without looking at him, placed it about her shoulders, careful not to touch her. She leaned back in her chair.
"Do you think you've been playing too much tennis?" asked he.
"Oh, no. Why?"
"You look tired—and frailer."
"Then I certainly shan't play much more. It's my ambition to get fatter."
"Oh, no!"
"Oh, yes!"
"No," he repeated. "You're all right as you are. I like your narrow shoulders—and your slimness—and your childish clothes. I wouldn't have you different."
As with such words they seemed to have fluttered very near to something, both withdrew into silence.
"Elsie and I and Clarkson are going to climb the Mythen to-morrow." Thus he deliberately broke the pause.
"Are you?"
"Yes.... Or I'm supposed to be going too. I'm not sure that I want to. I feel I'd rather laze about here. We go away so soon."
"Do you?"
"In a fortnight's time."
She showed no feeling, though the shadow of a future pain fell near.
"We're going on a walking tour," he continued—"over the Furka Pass and down into Brigue. I was tremendously keen on it, but the prospect bores me now. However...."
"I wish you weren't going. It'll be rotten here without your sister and you."
Henry uncrossed his legs and lit a cigarette.
"Have you ever thought," said he, "that one never discovers the truth of how to live until it's too late to live?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I am twenty-five, and I've found no code by which one lives a full life and yet hurts nobody. When I've read enough and thought enough and got the brains to think out a philosophy of living, I shall probably be too old to live."
Daphne nodded as if she partly understood.
After a silence that often moved with undelivered words, he proceeded, gaining time between sentences by tending his cigarette:
"Take a hypothetical case. An artist of some sort—let us say a man seeking to be a great, and, above all, a true musician—wants to be loyal to life as it calls him—knows that he ought to be loyal to it.... And it suddenly calls with a voice so sacred that it seems almost like a religious call—through some love, I mean—it—it calls him to the wilful snapping of all the world's inhibitions. He is not in the happy position of possessing a religion to tell him that these inhibitions are the laws of God. If he were, the problem would be solved at once, and his duty plain.... But instead, he suspects that they are things improperly thought out, and enforced by those who have forgotten what it was like to love.... Well, a vision has haunted all artists that their road to beauty is through lawlessness and danger.... They have seen that Art is a sort of Mysticism, because you will never attain to its highest places unless you are ready to leave all and follow life.... And it isn't pure selfishness, as people say, for timidity and selfishness and security often pull on the other side.... Oh, but this is old stuff—much of it is in your father's books—but it comes alive for one, when one is going through what thousands have gone through before...."
"I don't think I understand," said Daphne.
With that he stopped like a train against the buffers.
Between ten and eleven that night she stood near her window—or out on her loggia, laying hands on the balustrade and looking over the lake tranced by the darkness.
"He does love me. I'm sure of it. Just now he does. And I do love him. I love him madly."
But why? Of his past or his full character she knew nothing; she had only looked on his outward appearance, and into his mind with its enthusiasm. But whether, to those who knew him in the deep, he was good or bad she didn't care. She would almost like to be told of sins he had committed, that she might assure him they were nothing to her.
But what would come of it all?
"What do I really believe will happen? I suppose I really believe we shall be separated when he goes, and perhaps come together in the future, or perhaps not. But, of course, we shall part without telling each other anything.... He couldn't very well speak, after only knowing me a few weeks."
Strange that, too sunk in the joy of loving, she was not made miserable by this sense of shortness. It had not yet got through her exultation, or the little of it that flushed her feelings, by adding poignance, sweetened them.
But what did he mean by that talk of the world's inhibitions, and of timidity and selfishness and security pulling you back, and of not hurting others? She could make nothing of this. If he yielded to his love for her, how would he injure anybody or affront the world? Was he perhaps engaged to a girl? Or—quick, heart-gripping fear!—had he meant some one other than herself—some married woman, perhaps—when he spoke of a love that called him? Was he only using her as a friendly person to whom he could pour out his trouble?
"No, he meant me." Her heart steadied. "He meant me. I'm sure of it. I can't tell why, but I know it."
Resolved to keep this certainty and to take it into her dreams, she turned into the light of her bedroom, leaving the window wide open, for the night was close, undressed, and got into bed. With a mind studiously emptied, like a room for Henry to walk about in, she fell asleep. Her dreams, as often happened, had nothing to do with him whom she had tried to will into them. She dreamt that she was back in the months before they came to Switzerland, wandering along the roads of the Montmorency Forest, and watching the men quarrying the yellow stone for the local villas, or the woodcutters stacking their faggots. Once she was in a gloomy avenue of huge fir trees that approached the gates of a château, and down the avenue came the girl of her own age, herding her white goats. Of such places as Brunnen, or of such people as she would meet there, she had as yet no knowledge.... Now she was walking along a sun-spotted glade towards St. Prix, where Miss Sims's class and Miss Vidella's spectacled stare were awaiting her; and abruptly, without break in the sunlight, and without wetting her in the least, the rain began to tear through the branches. It was magnificent. Any second the thunder would come. The first crash, with its rolling echoes, woke her.
She saw through her open window that it was early morning, and the rain was rushing down in lines so perpendicular, so visible, and so close as to seem like the warp of unmade linen. A flash of lightning introduced another clap of thunder which repeated itself, for interminable seconds, among the mountains and in the great basin of the lake. There were rhythmical pauses in the rain, and when its curtain was removed, the peaks, framed by her window, stood folded round with clouds. She jumped up to watch. The storm's rhythm was wonderful. For a few moments the clouds would dissipate, revealing the snowfields rosy with sunrise, and then condense again, and there would be thunder and the shattering curtain of rain.
The immediate message of the storm was one of hope. Henry was to have gone climbing the Mythen to-day, and now, perhaps, he wouldn't go. In mid-morning the weather would clear and they would play tennis, or it would stay wet and they would find some sheltered place to talk. Her watch said five o'clock; if only she could keep the storm over Brunnen till Elsie and Henry had finally abandoned their early start for the Mythen! But it began to pass, and in fifteen minutes might never have been. Stepping on to the loggia she gave a quick glance towards Henry's room; its sunblinds were up and its French windows thrown open. Possibly he was getting ready—but, no, surely he wouldn't go—he would make excuses to remain behind, and after breakfast she would find him lingering on the terrace waiting for her to appear. Free of his sister and Clarkson, he would suggest their game of tennis, and when that was over they would walk together with feigned naturalness along the winding path between the firs, and he would abruptly ask her to let him row her over to the Rutli, and once on the water they would glide to solitary places under the farther bank.
Such would be their morning, and she dressed suitably for it. But in the restaurant there was no Henry dawdling at his breakfast-table, where she had hoped to see him, nor was he on the terrace or in the lounge, when she wandered through them.
He had gone, then. He had gone with his sister to climb the Mythen.
She was stabbed by it. It meant worrying out all over again the problem whether or not he was in love with her. "He must have made any excuse to stay if he felt for me what I feel for him. Then he doesn't." Seated on a chair on the terrace, she passed in review, one, two, and three times, every symptom of love or every hint of indifference he had shown the first day. And the evidence, after this crowning incident of the Mythen, seemed to show that he liked her a little, but knew none of the doubting, hungry, monopolising love that was hers. It was a terrible verdict—and she didn't believe it. "He does love me, I know it. But why then did he go?" Her father came and sat beside her, and she wished he would go away. He went; but other people strolled up and started to be pleasant. Some of them, deceived by her blithe answers, kept her in conversation for long quarters of an hour, while her problem waited where it was hidden, crying to her to return. At last, for fear of being spoken to, she left the hotel and walked along the streets of Brunnen.
In these streets, if she walked away from the lake, she could see the twin points of the Mythen rising high above the broken sky-line. How exactly like the two humps of a sitting camel they were! No, they were too pointed—a little too conical for that. Sometimes they looked like two pyramids, joined together as Siamese twins were joined. Trees mantled them for a great way up, and then the points rose naked. Through those trees, though they were miles away, one could almost see the paths where he was climbing.
When she entered the restaurant for dinner that evening, a rapid, careless, over-shoulder glance showed him talking gaily to his sister. In that glance his profile had appeared to be almost ugly; and, though surprised, she was pleased, half hoping that, by seeing his plainness, she could be cured of her love and given relief from its pains. But the thought was dead as soon as born.
Waiters cleared the lounge for dancing, but she did not want to dance. And when the tall, moustached Swiss came seeking her for his partner, she declared that she had resolved not to dance to-night. Escaping from her father's side, she went and sat alone in the comparative darkness of the terrace. It was deserted except for a couple in the distance who were sitting out a dance. She left the Spanish shawl on her lap, and, stretching her legs before her, crossed one ankle over the other. There was an iron table beside her, and she rested her elbow upon it. Her mood made her wish she could light a cigarette like a man, and send up her thoughts in puffs or rings of smoke.
She might have sat there fifteen minutes when Henry appeared and walked towards her.
"You've deserted us," smiled he.
"Yes, I'm tired."
"So am I."
"Did you climb the Mythen?"
"Yes, to the very top. That's why I'm done for. So's Elsie. She's danced two dances and gone to bed."
He sat on a chair the other side of the iron table. Taking a loose silver matchbox from his waistcoat pocket, he lit a Swiss cigar and laid the matchbox on the table.
"I thought possibly you wouldn't go," ventured Daphne, "when I saw the storm this morning."
"I shouldn't have minded much if it had stayed a bit longer and prevented our going. I was never very eager about it."
This led them into the accustomed silence; he was engrossed in watching his smoke, and she, happy because he had sought her out, picked up his matchbox and twisted it in her fingers, with her face averted. Once, lest the silence became too noticeable, he said:
"I danced three dances with Miss Storry, and they were three too many for any one so exhausted."
And Daphne, resolved to be generous, answered:
"I think she's such an awfully pretty girl."
"Yes. I suppose she is."
After that he returned to his smoke and Daphne to her playing with his matchbox. The silence was next broken by Mr. Bruno, who walked up behind a cigar.
"Ah, you, Mr. Detmould, being American, can afford to take your holiday slowly, but my daughter and I, being English Imperialists, will have to quicken the tempo of ours, I'm afraid."
"What are you talking about, Daddy?" asked Daphne languidly, as he drew up a chair.
He was talking about the privileges of belonging to an Imperialist nation, he explained, and the chances it offered of conscientiously shooting Dutchmen in their own country. Didn't she realise that, as a loyal Englishwoman, she would soon be at war with the Transvaal?
"I'm not going to war with any one," she grumbled; and Henry, turning towards her father, said that he had thought the news was better.
Her father then spread himself to be interesting, as, indeed, he could be in such a matter as this. The French and German papers in the lounge, said he, were so much more feminine and indiscreet than the ponderous English journals. And they showed that the Transvaal was arming to the eyebrows, and that trainloads of suspicious packing-cases, labelled as farming implements, were pouring from France and Germany—through Capetown, if you please—and up to Pretoria. And the Boers were buying horses in every market, and Europe's soldiers-of-fortune appearing in the Boer streets. And the English, in their usual humorous way, had answered all this by sending out two companies of engineers.
Henry inquired when the fighting would begin.
"When the rain comes, and the grass for the horses," said her father.
Henry nodded. The conception was picturesque.
"In September or October, I suppose," pursued Mr. Bruno. "As soon as the veldt is right, old Kruger won't wait for us to send him an ultimatum, he'll send his own instead. He'll say: 'Come on!' And I expect we shall send out two more companies of engineers."
But Daphne, momentarily stimulated, was no longer interested. Had all Europe been going to war it would not have found an inch of resting-room in her mind, for her love was a monopolising and unsociable tenant. Even the thought that this war might prevent their visit to Italy was unimportant now. Italy was nothing. It lay beyond the day when Henry and she should have parted. What mattered was that their few remaining hours were flying, and fate seemed determined that they should never be alone.
And in the next few days they did not meet except in the presence of others. This was all the stranger, since Elsie Detmould had kept to her bed for two days, having taken cold when climbing the Mythen. Henry, one would have thought, would have been freer to seek out Daphne. But he didn't, and she sat on terrace or in lounge, and an unread book on her knees, arguing over and over again her old case. On the Wednesday, three days before he went, he did come for a little while and sit beside her—the table between them as before. And all his words, she dared to believe, hinted at warmer meanings behind.
"I don't want to leave this place a bit," he grumbled.
"When are you going?"
"Saturday morning—soon after sunrise.... It's—it's not to be thought."
Daphne turned her head towards those meeting mountains where the lake appeared to finish in a dark corner. Up through them, as far as she could remember, climbed the serpentine road to the Furka Pass. She pictured Henry, with knapsack and alpenstock, bending to its steeper slopes, till he reached the summit of the pass and ascended to the ice-fields of the Rhone Glacier.
"Oh, but you'll enjoy going over the Furka. The view from the glacier is too wonderful for words. I can imagine you on the ice."
"I wish you were coming too," he murmured.
"So do I. But we're staying here a little longer, and then going to Grindelwald."
"Yes, I know."
"But will your sister be well enough to do all that walking?"
"Oh, yes, that's what she's come for. She was ill in the spring, and was determined to get rid of it. She's always been a dashing sort."
Daphne was now seeing a picture of Henry's childhood, and feeling jealous of Elsie and all those who had known him during the twenty-five years before she did.
"Yes," continued Henry, "I've been looking it out on the map. We shall be only about thirty miles apart, and yet have all the highest mountains of the Bernese Oberland between us."
This could be met only with silence.
The next morning, Thursday, when she was strolling through the hotel, she played on her pains by trying to imagine that it was Saturday, and that Henry had already left. And as she looked at the places where they had talked together, she knew she would not be able to endure the hotel after he had gone; these places would hit her wound too cruelly. Much better to be clear of Brunnen, seeing something new! How could she get away? How could she ask her father to take her away without betraying her secrets? Impossible as it seemed to his incisive eyes, it must be attempted.
She found him on the seat above the empty tennis court with a book and a cigar.
"Daddy," she began, sitting next to him. "Aren't you getting bored with this place yet?"
"Not particularly. Are you?"
She thought it out.
"No. But I'm quite keen on moving on and seeing somewhere else.... I'm so afraid, you see, that this old war'll prevent us doing half of what we planned—you said we'd have to speed up things a bit—so I vote we go on to Grindelwald."
He did not turn and look at her in an enquiring surprise, but studied the tennis court before him; and she knew that he had guessed everything. He did not chaff her, saying, "Let's see, the American boy goes on Saturday, doesn't he?" for he knew (and she could almost feel his knowledge) that the matter had passed beyond chaff. Of his gentleness he would erect between them a pretence of ignorance, though each would know that neither believed in it.
"I shouldn't mind," said he. "I'm afraid I am rather apt to take root where I can find a garden and book. When do you suggest going?"
"Well, not to-morrow, of course. But Saturday perhaps, or Sunday. I'm awfully keen on seeing the other places."
"Saturday's the day after to-morrow, isn't it? Well, certainly if you order it. You're in command of this expedition."
Dinner that evening showed Elsie back in her place; and Daphne, when she followed the diners into the lounge, resolved to make much of her. She had seen hardly anything of Henry's sister, what with their climbing in the daytime and the attentions of Mr. Clarkson at night. And for some reason she wanted Elsie Detmould to take away with her a liking for Daphne Bruno. So now, since Elsie was sitting alone, she took the wicker chair at her side and asked after her cold.
"I reckon I'd forgotten its existence till you mentioned it," drawled Elsie pleasantly. "Two days in bed'll finish off the best of colds.... But I was determined to be quit of it, as we've all this marching ahead of us."
"Yes, I know. I'm sorry you're going so soon. Must you?"
"Yes, I guess we can't stay here all the time. We want to see other places, and we haven't too long in Switzerland. I've got to get back to my mother, and Henry's got to get back to his wife."
It was as if a revolver had been shot off in Daphne's ear.
But as instantaneous was the conviction that she must keep perfect control of herself and show nothing to Elsie. Elsie had spoken quite naturally and without malice, evidently having seen nothing more than friendliness between her brother and Daphne. Daphne turned and looked at her, laughing.
"I never knew he was married!"
"Married? Very much so. He was married four years ago."
Daphne frowned a humorous incredulity—as if the joke were getting better.
"Four years? He doesn't look old enough."
"He married at twenty-one."
"I suppose he's a father, too. But I simply can't imagine it."
"No, he's not a father yet."
"He ought to have brought his wife with him, on a lovely holiday like this."
"Ah, but she especially arranged that he should bring me. I'm really recuperating from a breakdown."
"Awfully sporting of her," said Daphne.
"Yes, she's a good sort. And I guess she quite enjoys a holiday from Henry. Husbands are a bit trying sometimes."
How Daphne kept up that conversation and her suitable smiling till the moment when politeness allowed her to escape she never knew. There must have been half an hour of it before she found herself in her bedroom with the door closed.