THE little party travelled, as it is in the nature of the British tourist to travel, when he is fairly started, developing suddenly a perfect passion for sight-seeing, and for long and wearisome journeys. Mrs. Anderson, though she was old enough and experienced enough to have known better, took the plunge with the truest national enthusiasm. Even when they paused in Paris, which she knew as well as or better than anything in her own country, she still felt herself a tourist, and went conscientiously over again and saw the sights—for Kate, she said, but also for herself. They rushed across France with the speed of an express train, and made a dash at Switzerland, though it was so early in the year. They had it almost all to themselves, the routes being scarcely open, and the great rush of travellers not yet begun; and who, that does not know it, can fancy how beautiful it is among the mountains in May! Kate was carried entirely out of herself by what she saw. The Spring green brightening and enhancing those rugged heights, and dazzling peaks of snow; the sky of an ethereal blue, all dewy and radiant, and surprised into early splendour, like the blue eyes of a child; the paths sweet with flowers, the streams full with the melting snow, the sense of awakening and resurrection all over the land. Kate had not dreamed of anything so splendid and so beautiful. The weather was much finer than is usual so early in the year, and of course the travellers took it not for an exceptional season, as they ought, but gave the fact that they were abroad credit for every shining day. Abroad! Kate had felt for years (she said all her life) that in that word ‘abroad’ every delight was included; and now she believed herself. The novelty and movement by themselves would have done a great deal; and the wonderful beauty of this virgin country, which looked as if no crowd of tourists had ever profaned it, as if it had kept its stillness, its stateliness and grandeur, and dazzling light and majestic glooms, all for their enjoyment, elevated her into a paradise of inward delight. Even Maryanne was moved, though chiefly by her mistress’s many and oft-repeated efforts to rouse her. When Kate had exhausted everybody else, she rushed upon her handmaid.
‘Oh! Maryanne, look! Did you ever see—did you ever dream of anything so beautiful?’
‘No, miss,’ said Maryanne.
‘Look at that stream rushing down the ravine. It is the melted snow. And look at all those peaks above. Pure snow, as dazzling as—as——’
‘They looks for all the world like the sugar on a bride-cake, miss,’ said Maryanne.
At which Kate laughed, but went on—
‘Those cottages are called châlets, up there among the clouds. Look how green the grass is—like velvet. Oh! Maryanne, shouldn’t you like to live there—to milk the cows in the evening, and have the mountains all round you—nothing but snow-peaks, wherever you turned your eyes?’
Maryanne gave a shudder.
‘Why, miss,’ she said, ‘you’d catch your death of cold!’
‘Wait till Mees Katta see my bella Firenze,’ said old Francesca. ‘There is the snow quite near enough—quite near enough. You zee him on the tops of ze hills.’
‘I never, never shall be able to live in a town. I hate towns,’ said Kate.
‘Ah!’ cried the old woman, ‘my young lady will not always think so. This is pleasant now; but there is no balls, no parties, no croquée on ze mountains! Mees Katta shakes her head; but then the Winter will come, and, oh! how beautiful is Firenze, with all the palaces, and ze people, and processions that pass, and all that is gay! There will be the Opera,’ said Francesca, counting on her fingers, ‘and the Cascine, and the Carnival, and the Veglioni, and the grand Corso with the flowers. Ah! I have seen many young English Mees, I know.’
‘I never could have supposed Francesca would be so stupid,’ cried Kate, returning to the party on the quarter-deck—for this conversation took place in a steamer on the Lake of Lucerne. ‘She does not care for the mountains as much as Maryanne does, even. Maryanne thinks the snow is like sugar on a bride-cake,’ she went on, with a laugh; ‘but Francesca does nothing but rave about Florence, and balls, and operas. As if I cared for such things—and as if we were going there!’
‘But Francesca is quite right, dear,’ said Mrs. Anderson, with hesitation. ‘When the Summer is over, we shall want to settle down again, and see our fellow-creatures; and really, as Francesca has suggested it, we might do a great deal worse. Florence is a very nice place.’
‘In Winter, auntie? Are not we going home?’
‘My dear, I know your uncle would wish you to see as much as possible before returning home,’ said Mrs. Anderson, faltering, and with considerable confusion. ‘I confess I had begun to think that—a few months in Italy—as we are here——’
Kate was taken by surprise. She did not quite know whether she was delighted or disappointed by the idea; but before she could reply, she met the eye of her cousin, whose whole face had kindled into passion. Ombra sprang to her feet, and drew Kate aside with a nervous haste that startled her. She grasped her arm tight, and whispered in her ear, ‘We are to be kept till you are of age—I see it all now—we are prisoners till you are of age. Oh! Kate, will you bear it? You can resist, but I can’t—they will listen to you.’
It is impossible to describe the shock which was given to Kate’s loyalty by this speech. It was the first actual suggestion of rebellion which had been made to her, and it jarred her every nerve. She had not been a submissive child, but she had never plotted—never done anything in secret. She said aloud, in painful wonder—
‘Why should we be prisoners?—and what has my coming of age to do with it?’ turning round, and looking bewildered into her cousin’s face.
Ombra made no reply; she went back to her seat, and retired into herself for the rest of the day. Things had gone smoothly since the journey began up to this moment. She had almost ceased to brood, and had begun to take some natural interest in what was going on about her. But now all at once the gloom returned. She sat with her eyes fixed on the shore of the lake, and with the old flush of feverish red, half wretchedness, half anger, under her eyes. Kate, who had grown happy in the brightening of the domestic atmosphere, was affected by this change in spite of herself. She exchanged mournful looks with her aunt. The beautiful lake and the sunny peaks were immediately clouded over; she was doubly checked in the midst of her frank enjoyment.
‘You are wrong, Ombra,’ said Mrs. Anderson, after a long pause. ‘I don’t know what you have said to Kate, but I am sure you have taken up a false idea. There is no compulsion. We are to go only when we please, and to stay only as long as we like.’
‘But we are not to return home this year?’
‘I did not say so; but I think, perhaps, on the whole, that to go a little further, and see a little more, would be best both for you and Kate.’
‘Exactly,’ said Ombra, with bitterness, nodding her head in a derisive assent.
Kate looked on with wistful and startled eyes. It was almost the first time that the idea of real dissension between these two had crossed her mind; and still more this infinitely startling doubt whether all that was said to her was true. At least there had been concealment; and was it really, truly the good of Ombra and Kate, or some private arrangement with Uncle Courtenay, that was in her aunt’s mind. This suggestion came suddenly into her very heart, wounding her as with an arrow; and from that day, though sometimes lessening and sometimes deepening, the cloud upon Ombra’s face came back. But as she grew less amiable, she grew more powerful. Henceforward the party became guided by her wayward fancies. She took a sudden liking for one of the quietest secluded places—a village on the little blue lake of Zug—and there they settled for some time, without rhyme or reason. Green slopes, with grey stone-peaks above, and glimpses of snow beyond, shut in this lake-valley. I agree with Ombra that it is very sweet in its stillness, the lake so blue, the air so clear, and the noble nut-bearing trees so umbrageous, shadowing the pleasant châlets. In the centre was a little white-washed village church among its graves, its altar all decked with stately May lilies, the flowers of the Annunciation. The church had no beauty of architecture, no fine pictures—not even great antiquity to recommend it; but Ombra was fond of the sunshiny, still place. She would go there when she was tired, and sit down on one of the rush-bottomed chairs, and sometimes was to be seen kneeling furtively on the white altar steps.
Kate, who roamed up and down everywhere, and had soon all the facility of a young mountaineer, would stop at the open church-door as she came down from the hills, alpenstock in hand, sunburnt and agile as a young Diana.
‘You are not going to turn a Roman Catholic, Ombra?’ she said. ‘I think it would make my aunt very unhappy.’
‘I am not going to turn anything,’ said Ombra. ‘I shall never be different from what I am—never any better. One tries and tries, and it is no good.’
‘Then stop trying, and come up on the hills and shake it off,’ said Kate.
‘Perhaps I might if I were like you; but I am not like you.’
‘Or let us go on, and see people and do things again—do all sorts of things. I like this little lake,’ said Kate. ‘One has a home-feeling. I almost think I should begin to poke about the cottages, and find fault with the people, if we were to stay long. But that is not your temptation, Ombra. Why do you like to stay?’
‘I stay because it is so still—because nobody comes here, nothing can happen here; it must always be the same for ever and for ever and ever!’ cried Ombra. ‘The hills and the deep water, and the lilies in the church—which are artificial, you know, and cannot fade.’
Kate did not understand this little bitter jibe at the end of her cousin’s speech; but was overwhelmed with surprise when Ombra next morning suggested that they should resume their journey. They were losing their time where they were, she said; and as, if they were to go to Italy for the Winter, it would be necessary to return by Switzerland next year, she proposed to strike off from the mountains at this spot, to go to Germany, to the strange old historical cities that were within reach. ‘Kate should see Nuremberg,’ she said; and Kate, to her amazement, found the whole matter settled, and the packing commenced that day. Ombra managed the whole journey, and was a practical person, handy and rational, until they came to that old-world place, where she became reveuse and melancholy once more.
‘Do you like this better than Switzerland?’ Kate asked, as they looked down from their windows along the three-hundred-years-old street, where it was so strange to see people walking about in ordinary dresses and not in trunkhose and velvet mantles.
‘I don’t care for any place. I have seen so many, and one is so much like another,’ said Ombra. ‘But look, Kate, there is one advantage. Anything might happen here; any one might be coming along those streets and you would never feel surprised. If I were to see my father walking quietly this way, I should not think it at all strange.’
‘But, Ombra—he is dead!’ said Kate, shrinking a little, with natural uneasiness.
‘Yes, he is dead, but that does not matter. Look down that hazy street with all the gables. Any one might be coming—people whom we have forgotten—even,’ she said, pressing Kate’s arm, ‘people who have forgotten us.’
‘Oh! Ombra, how strangely you speak! People that care for you don’t forget you,’ cried Kate.
‘That does not mend the matter,’ said Ombra, and withdrew hurriedly from the window.
Poor Kate tried very hard to make something out of it, but could not; and therefore she shrugged her shoulders and gave her head a little shake, and went to her German, which she was working at fitfully, to make the best of her opportunities. The German, though she thought sometimes it would break her heart, was not so hard as Ombra; and even the study of languages had to her something amusing in it.
One of the young waiters in the hotel kept a dictionary in the staircase window, and studied it as he flew up and down stairs for a new word to experiment with upon the young ladies; and another had, by means of the same dictionary, set up a flirtation with Maryanne; so fun was still possible, notwithstanding all; and whether it was by the mountain paths, or in those hazy strange old streets, Kate walked with her head, as it were, in the clouds, in a soft rapture of delight and pleasantness, taking in all that was sweet and lovely and good, and letting the rest drop off from her like a shower of rain. She even ceased to think of Ombra’s odd ways—not out of want of consideration, but with the facility which youth has for taking everything for granted, and consenting to whatever is. It was a great pity, but it could not be helped, and one must make the best of it all the same.
And thus the Summer passed on, full of wonders and delights. Mrs. Anderson and her daughter, and even Francesca, were invaluable to the ignorant girl. They knew how everything had to be done; they were acquainted alike with picture-galleries and railway-tickets, and knew even what to say about every work of art—an accomplishment deeply amazing to Kate, who did not know what to say about anything, and who had several times committed herself by praising vehemently some daub which was beyond the reach of praise. When she made such a mistake as this, her mortification and shame were great; but unfortunately her pride made her hold by her opinion. They saw so many pictures, so many churches, so much that was picturesque and beautiful, that her brain was in a maze, and her intellect had become speechless.
They took their way across the mountains in Autumn, getting entangled in the vast common tide of travellers to Italy; and, after all, Francesca’s words came true, and it was a relief to Kate to get back into the stream—it relieved the strain upon her mind. Instead of thinking of more and lovelier pictures still, she was pleased to rest and see nothing; and even—a confession which she was ashamed to make to herself—Kate was as much delighted with the prospect of mundane pleasures as she had been with the scenery. Society had acquired a new charm. She had never been at anything more than ‘a little dance,’ or a country concert, and balls and operas held out their arms to her. One of the few diplomatic friends whom Mrs. Anderson had made in her consular career was at Florence; and even Mr. Courtenay could not object to his niece’s receiving the hospitalities of the Embassy. She was to ‘come out’ at the Ambassador’s ball—not in her full-blown glory, as an heiress and a great lady, but as Mrs. Anderson’s niece, a pretty, young, undistinguished English girl. Kate knew nothing about this, nor cared. She threw herself into the new joys as she had done into the old. A new chapter, however it might begin, was always a pleasant thing in her fresh and genial life.