No doubt there would be a certain awkwardness, visible to others if not to themselves, about her living in one part of London and her children in another.
But here also her good sense would come on;--and, besides, this furnished house in town would be a mere brief overture to the real thing--the noble country mansion he was going to have, with gardens and horses and hounds and artificial lakes and deer parks and everything.
Quite within the year he would be able to realize this consummation of his dreams.
How these nice young people would revel in such a place--and how they would worship him for having given it to them for a home! His heart warmed within him as he thought of this.
He smiled affectionately at the picture Julia made, polishing the glass with vehement circular movements of her slight arm, and then grimacing in comic vexation at the deadly absence of landscape outside. Was there ever a sweeter or more lovable girl in this world? Would there have to be some older woman to manage the house, at the beginning? he wondered. He should like it immensely if that could be avoided. Julia looked fragile and inexperienced--but she would be twenty-one next month.
Surely that was a mature enough age for the slight responsibility of presiding over servants who should be the best that money could buy. Many girls were married, and given households of their own to manage, when they were even younger.
This reflection raised an obstacle against the smooth-flowing current of his thoughts. Supposing that Julia got the notion of marrying--how miserable that would make everything. Very likely she would never do any such thing; he had observed in her no shadow of a sign that a thought of matrimony had ever crossed her brain.
Yet that was a subject upon which, of course, she could not be asked to give pledges, even to herself.
Thorpe tried to take a liberal view of this matter.
He argued to himself that there would be no objection at all to incorporating Julia's husband into the household, assuming that she went to the length of taking one, and that he was a good fellow. On this latter point, it was only the barest justice to Julia's tastes and judgment to take it for granted that he would be a good fellow.
Yet the uncle felt uneasily that this would alter things for the worse. The family party, with that hypothetical young man in it, could never be quite so innocently and completely happy as--for instance--the family party in this compartment had been during these wonderful three months.
Mechanically he rubbed the window beside him, and turned to look out with a certain fixedness--as if he might chance to catch a glimpse of the bridegroom with whom Julia would have it in her power to disturb the serenity of their prospective home. A steep white cliff, receding sullenly against the dim grey skyline; a farmhouse grotesquely low for its size, crouching under big shelving galleries heaped with snow; an opening in front, to the right, where vaguely there seemed to be a valley into which they would descend--he saw these things.
They remained in his mind afterward as a part of something else that he saw, with his mental vision, at the same moment--a strikingly real and vivid presentment of Lady Cressage, attired as he had seen her in the saddle, her light hair blown about a little under her hat, a spot of colour in the exquisite cheek, the cold, impersonal dignity of a queen in the beautiful profile.
The picture was so actual for the instant that he uttered an involuntary exclamation--and then looked hastily round to see whether his companions had heard it. Seemingly they had not; he lolled again upon the comfortless cushion, and strove to conjure up once more the apparition.
Nothing satisfactory came of the effort. Upon consideration, he grew uncertain as to whether he had seen anything at all.
At the most it was a kind of half-dream which had visited him.
He yawned at the thought, and lighted a fresh cigar.
All at once, his mind had become too indolent to do any more thinking. A shapeless impression that there would be a good many things to think over later on flitted into his brain and out again.
"Well, how are the mountains using you, now?" he called out to his niece.
"Oh, I could shake them!" she declared. "Listen to this:
'A view of singular beauty, embracing the greater part of the Lake of Geneva, and the surrounding mountains, is suddenly disclosed.' That's where we are now--or were a minute ago. You can see that there is some sort of valley in front of us--but that is all. If I could only see one mountain with snow on it----""Why, it's all mountains and all snow, when you come to that," Thorpe insisted, with jocose perversity.
"You're on mountains yourself, all the time.""You know what I mean," she retorted. "I want to see something like the coloured pictures in the hotels.""Oh, probably it will be bright sunlight tomorrow,"he said, for perhaps the twentieth time that day.
"There--that looks like water!" said Alfred.
"See? just beyond the village. Yes, it is water.
There's your Lake of Geneva, at all events."
"But it isn't the right colour," protested Julia, peering through the glass. "It's precisely like everything else: it's of no colour at all. And they always paint it such a lovely blue! Really, uncle, the Swiss Government ought to return you your money.""You wait till you see it tomorrow--or next day,"said the uncle, vaguely. He closed his eyes, and welcomed a drowsy mood. As he went off to sleep, the jolting racket of the train mellowed itself into a murmur of "tomorrow or next day, tomorrow or next day," in his ears.
