Part 15 (1/2)
When at last she and her brother had gone, he made short work of his breakfast, and drank his coffee at a gulp. A restless activity suddenly informed his movements. He lit a cigar, and began pacing up and down the room, biting his lips in preoccupation as he went. After a little, he opened a window, and ventured cautiously as far out on the balcony as was necessary to obtain a view of the street below. Eventually, he identified his nephew and niece among the pedestrians beneath him, and he kept them in sight till, after more than one tiresome halt at a shop window, they disappeared round a bend in the road. Then he turned and came back into the room with the buoyant air of a man whose affairs are prospering.
He smiled genially to himself as he gathered from the table in one capacious hand all the pieces of bread his beloved niece had broken up, and advanced again to the open window. Waiting here till one of the dingy gulls moving aimlessly about was headed toward him, he tossed out a fragment. The bird dashed at it with a scream, and on the instant the whole squawking flock were on wing. He suffered the hubbub to proceed unappeased for a little while he kept a watchful though furtive eye on that balcony to the left, below. Unhappily he could not get out far enough to see whether the inner curtains of its window were drawn. He threw another bit of bread, and then looked at his watch. It was a few minutes past nine. Surely people travelling to see scenery would be up by this hour.
The strategy of issuing just enough bread to keep the feathered concourse in motion commended itself to his mind. As a precautionary measure, he took all the rolls remaining on the table, and put them in the drawer of a desk by the window. It even occurred to him to ring for more bread, but upon consideration that seemed too daring. The waiter would be sufficiently surprised at the party's appet.i.tes as it was.
Half an hour later, his plan of campaign suddenly yielded a victory.
Lady Cressage appeared on her balcony, clad in some charming sort of morning gown, and bareheaded. She had nothing in her hands, and seemed indifferent to the birds, but when Thorpe flung forth a handful of fragments into the centre of their whirling flock, she looked up at him.
It was the anxious instant, and he ventured upon what he hoped was a decorous compromise between a bow and a look of recognition.
She was in no haste to answer either. He could see rather than hear that she said something to her invisible companion within, the while she glanced serenely in the general direction of his balcony. It seemed to him that the answer to her remark, whatever it was, must have exerted a direct influence upon his destiny, for Lady Cressage all at once focussed her vague regard upon him, and nodded with a reasonably gracious smile.
”It's wonderful luck to find you here,” he called down to her. Having played their part, he wished now that the birds were at Jericho. Their obstreperous racket made conversation very difficult. Apparently she made him an answer, but he could catch nothing of it.
”I'm here with my niece and nephew,” he shouted down. ”I don't hear what you say. May I come down and pay my respects--later on? What is your number, and when may I come?”
These questions, as he flashed them in review through his mind, seemed to be all right from the most exacting social point of view. Doubtless it was equally all right that, before replying, she should consult her companion, as she did at some length. Then she replied--and he had no difficulty now in hearing her above the birds--that it would be very nice of him to come, say, in an hour's time. She told him the number--and then almost abruptly went in.
Thorpe, during this hour that ensued, smoked with volcanic energy. He tried to interest himself in one after another of half a dozen Tauchnitz novels his niece carried about, with a preposterous absence of success.
He strove to arrange in some kind of sequence the things that he should say, when this momentous interview should begin, but he could think of nothing which did not sound silly. It would be all right, he argued to himself in the face of this present mental barrenness; he always talked well enough on the spur of the moment, when the time came--and still was not rea.s.sured.
He wondered if both ladies would be there to receive him, and decided that they would probably regard that as indispensable to the proprieties. In that case, their conversation would necessarily be of the most casual and general character. He would tell them a good deal about his niece, he foresaw. A man travelling about with a niece--and such a delightfully lady-like and engaging little niece--would take on some added interest and dignity, he perceived, in the eyes of ladies travelling alone. He essayed to estimate just how much they would probably like Julia. Of course he would say nothing about her mother and the book-shop; a vague allusion to a widowed sister would be ample on that head. But there could be confident references to Cheltenham; he knew from what Julia had said that it suggested the most satisfactory social guarantees, if taken strictly by itself. And then so much would depend upon Julia herself! If she succeeded in striking up a friends.h.i.+p with them--ah, then everything would be all right. Perhaps they would take a fancy to Alfred too! He was a boy, of course, but conceivably the fact that he wanted to paint, and knew about pictures, would appeal to them. He seemed to have heard somewhere that artists were the very devil among women.
At last the weary time of waiting had worn itself out, somehow, and, after a final polis.h.i.+ng before his gla.s.s, he went down, and found his right corridor, and knocked at the door. A pleasant voice bade him enter, and, hat and gloves in hand, he went in.
As he had imagined, both ladies were present. He had not been prepared, however, for the fact that it was the American who played the part of hostess. It was she who received him, and invited him to sit down, and generally made him free of the apartment. When he shook hands with Lady Cressage, there was somehow an effect of the incidental in the ceremony, as if she were also a guest.
Nothing could have been simpler or more pleasing than the little visit turned out to be. Miss Madden had suddenly grown tired of the snowless and dripping English winter, and had as promptly decided to come to Switzerland, where the drifts ought to be high enough, and the frosts searching enough, in all conscience. They had selected Territet, because it was familiar to her, and because it was on the way to Martigny and Brieg, and she had had a notion of crossing either the Simplon or the St. Bernard in winter. As she found now, the St. Bernard was quite impracticable, but admittedly a post road was kept open over the Simplon. It was said now that she would not be allowed to proceed by this, but it often happened that she did the things that she was not allowed to do. The hotel-people at both Brieg and Berisal had written refusing to let their horses attempt the Simplon journey, and they were of course quite within their rights, but there were other horses in Switzerland. One surely could buy horses--and so on.
Thorpe also had his turn at autobiography. He told rather whimsically of his three months' experiences at the tail of the juvenile whirligigs, and his auditors listened to them with mild smiles. He ventured upon numerous glowing parentheses about Julia, and they at least did not say that they did not want to know her. They heard with politeness, too, what he could contrive to drag in about his artist-nephew, and said it must be very pleasant for him to have such nice company. At least Miss Madden said this: her companion, as he thought it over afterward, seemed hardly to have said anything at all. She answered the few remarks which he found it possible to direct to her, but the responses took no hold upon his memory. He fancied that she was bored, or unhappy, or both.
Finally, in the midst of commonplaces which, to his apprehension, were verging upon flatness, a bold inspiration disclosed itself--as splendid as the Dent du Midi revealing its glaciers above the mounting sunrise--in his brain.
”We should all be charmed if you would come up and dine with us tonight,” he said, under the abrupt impulsion of this idea. ”It's been such an age since we wanderers have had the privilege of company at our table!”
The felicity of these phrases from his lips attracted his admiring attention, even while he waited in suspense for an answer to them.
The ladies exchanged a look. ”Yes,” said Miss Madden, after the slightest of pauses, ”we shall be very happy.”
Shortly thereafter Thorpe took his leave, and went downstairs and out.
He wandered about till luncheon time, observing the mountains across the lake from various standpoints, and, as it were, with new eyes. He was interested in them in a curious new fas.h.i.+on; they seemed to say things to him. His lip curled once at the conceit that he was one of the Alps himself.
CHAPTER XII
IT did not happen until three days later that Thorpe's opportunity to speak alone with Lady Cressage came.
In this brief period, the two parties seemed to have become fused in a remarkable intimacy. This was clearly due to the presence of the young people, and Thorpe congratulated himself many times each day upon the striking prescience he had shown in bringing them.
Both the ladies unaffectedly liked Julia; so much so that they seemed unwilling to make any plans which did not include her. Then it was only a matter of course that where she went her brother should go--and a further logical step quite naturally brought in their willing uncle. If he had planned everything, and now was ordering everything, it could not have gone more to his liking.