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.
